Maybe this game has been running a long time and they were late joiners? That would mean they'd start at level 15 or something similar. You don't want to joining a level 15 party as 1st-level characters.
And, for the record, I've seen some games that started at 1 and ended at 15 or beyond. The highest was 1 all the way up to 30 (well, okay, we skipped a 3 levels or so between 21 and 24 or something like that) And that game was beyond awesome.
Sure, I'm not saying it absolutley cannot be done, however I would say that rocking up to a pick-up game in a store full of randoms would be pretty much guaranteed 100% not be the place it would be ever going to happen.
Games that went from 1 to "these amps go to 11" were only as a result of playing a series of module paths back in the 1st ed/2nd ed days - and a boxed module can make even a mediocre GM look like a champ... so I'll merrily concede these exceptions.
I do maintain though that a meaningful 15th+ requires a LOT of serious work and thought about backgrounds and motivations - and the campaign truly needs to be of a whole extra magnitude - otherwise it quickly decends into yet-another-dicefest.
Cheeto-man at your local games store is unlikely to have that sort of DM-Fu running, or if he does, his mojo wont be on display for a PUG.
Games that went from 1 to "these amps go to 11" were only as a result of playing a series of module paths back in the 1st ed/2nd ed days - and a boxed module can make even a mediocre GM look like a champ... so I'll merrily concede these exceptions.
I was actually speaking about a D&D 3.0 game. Our first 3.0 game. And no modules used whatsoever. And the DM started roleplaying with that campaign.
And it was one of the best I have ever seen. But then again, the guy's a natural.
And I'll also say that with a module, a mediocre GM might be able to look like a champ, but remember that a bad GM will be a bad GM.
And using a module doesn't make you mediocre by default.
And using a module doesn't make you mediocre by default.I had to tell that to my 'last straw story' DM. :/
I loved that story. A bad DM is bad enough, heap on levels of drama whore and....wow.
And it was one of the best I have ever seen. But then again, the guy's a natural.And I'll also say that with a module, a mediocre GM might be able to look like a champ, but remember that a bad GM will be a bad GM.
And using a module doesn't make you mediocre by default.
So yeah I still feel pretty cozy with my generalisation - if the guy was a natural then it explains a lot... so I'm still safer avoiding the rocks and steering clear of Cheeto Man and his '15+ Epic levels of awesum'.
I agree, a poor GM is a poor GM period, I was only inferring that the modules can help bring the standards UP, a good GM can turn a pre-pack module into something better though, something often 'unforgettable' (in a good way).
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I loved that story. A bad DM is bad enough, heap on levels of drama whore and....wow.And using a module doesn't make you mediocre by default.I had to tell that to my 'last straw story' DM. :/
I wish he had replied. I would like to apologize for my bad form, but I would like to hear that he at least learned something from it all. I don't hold much hope for that.
Ugggh, I just had to walk out on a group tonight part of me hated to do it because I could tell the GM put a ton of effort into his game but it was too much for me.
The GM was a nice guy and spent more time than any GM I have ever seen on his campaign world. His storyline was a little bit of a railroad and there seemed to be a number of cinematic scenes. Most of the combats seemed like scripted set pieces, he definitely had an idea of how the combat was 'supposed' to go. However I can work with a campaign like this, I don't prefer that style of combat, but I really enjoy the roleplaying.
The problem was we were playing the game in a FLGS and we somehow grabbed one each of every classic negative gamer stereotype as a player. We had the player who spent the entire time playing games on his IPhone, the gamer who played a thief and tried to pickpocket every npc he saw. We had the player playing the elf, who thought he was superior and belittled all other races(who in a shocking turn of events also tried to be the resident rules lawyer except he didn't know the Pathfinder rules and kept using misinterpreted 3.5 rules). We had the optimizer who couldn't, you know the guy who takes a buckler for AC then conveniently forgets that he can't use it while swinging a 2-handed sword. We had the guy who decided to 'play a chick' his words not mine. And then proceeded to make juvenile jokes about women and the fact that he was playing one all night.
I knew the first session I hated it, the GM was trying to run this epic roleplaying story that he had spent years working on, while the players were trying to play a hack and slash game, and doing it badly. Blatant mistakes on character sheets were everywhere, everyone seemed to roll dice when the GM wasn't looking and if it was a bad roll they would pick it up and roll again while if it was a good roll they would let it sit and then point to it when the GM looked up. However out of respect to the work the GM put in, I went to a second session to see if maybe it would get better. Five hours and a single fight with zombies later, I was done. The highlight was either the half hour we spent arguing the rules on if a zombie could charge through a plate glass window, or near the end when the GM basically told the group that he gives up because none of the zombies can hit the players and that he just had to throw away 3 pages of cinematic scenes he wrote up for just this fight.
Sorry bout the wall of text just venting after the 5 most frustrating gaming hours of my life.
Aravan, may as wel grab taht GM and call in a few buddies and have your own session sans idiots.
At least the GM seemed genuinely interested :)
Aravan, may as wel grab taht GM and call in a few buddies and have your own session sans idiots.
At least the GM seemed genuinely interested :)
Seriously +1
Get him out of the game store and into a group of players you know and trust. As a huge world-building nerd myself, I would never, EVER take a campaign I spent any significant amount of time on to a FLGS. He may have only done that because he lacked players for a home game. Hell.... what city is this in? I'd play in heartbeat ;)
Aravan, may as wel grab taht GM and call in a few buddies and have your own session sans idiots.
At least the GM seemed genuinely interested :)
I think "3 pages of cinematic scenes he wrote up" kind of indicates it wasn't just the players who were bad tabletop stereotypes.
I think "3 pages of cinematic scenes he wrote up" kind of indicates it wasn't just the players who were bad tabletop stereotypes.Aravan, may as wel grab taht GM and call in a few buddies and have your own session sans idiots.
At least the GM seemed genuinely interested :)
Yes, but that's only one bad habit to break him of once he's playing rather than DMing.
Yes, but that's only one bad habit to break him of once he's playing rather than DMing.I think "3 pages of cinematic scenes he wrote up" kind of indicates it wasn't just the players who were bad tabletop stereotypes.Aravan, may as wel grab taht GM and call in a few buddies and have your own session sans idiots.
At least the GM seemed genuinely interested :)
Agreed, I know of several good DMs I have played with who had problems with railroading when they were novices.
Hopefully not sounding too ignorant here, but what does FLGS stand for?
Hopefully not sounding too ignorant here, but what does FLGS stand for?
Glad you asked so I didn't have to.
If I can give a tip to all DMs out there (as I am one right one), treat each player equally, without listening to any power trip they might get.
As long as there's room for real world consquences, sure. That is to say, players (characters) get equal opportunity but the outcomes depend on what they do with them.
I just say that because I've been accused of showing favouritism to the one or two players in a group who actually step up, volunteer to do things, etc, etc...
So I'm always a little sensitive to that particular criticism - especially since I'm used to it coming from people who almost exclusively speak in metagaming (ie - "We're supposed to go with this guy, that's why we met him here") and seem to *want* to just be led by the nose from "plot-point" to "plot-point".
We are a city of 4.5Million, and there's only ONE 'FLGS' that I can name, and in my entire time in the hobby (almost three decades now!) there has been one other. We have a couple of LGS. Well they aren't really local either...GS!
We just don't have FLGS's sadly.
I think "3 pages of cinematic scenes he wrote up" kind of indicates it wasn't just the players who were bad tabletop stereotypes.
...ok thats pretty valid :)
But it DOES show some potential, and a bit of imagination... so just perhaps with a good set of players and a regular outlest for the creativity, perhaps the next session would have two pages, then going forward maybe just one page a session.
It sure beats.
DM:Umm ok theres like, a fight, with some Goblins, roll some dice.
Player 1: OK I hit a Goblin. /rolls die
Player 2: Yeah I'll hit a Goblin too. What does the terrain look like.
DM: Oh you are in a bar.
Player 1: Woohoo, a 20, did I hit?
DM: Yeah you hit the Orc.
Player 2: Oh we were in a forest five minutes ago.
DM: The bar is in a forest.
Player 1: I thought I was hitting a Goblin?
DM: Orc, Goblin, its all the same thing - you kinda hit it with your sword or something.
FLGS type gaming for the win!
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DM:Umm ok theres like, a fight, with some Goblins, roll some dice.
Player 1: OK I hit a Goblin. /rolls die
Player 2: Yeah I'll hit a Goblin too. What does the terrain look like.
DM: Oh you are in a bar.
Player 1: Woohoo, a 20, did I hit?
DM: Yeah you hit the Orc.
Player 2: Oh we were in a forest five minutes ago.
DM: The bar is in a forest.
Player 1: I thought I was hitting a Goblin?
DM: Orc, Goblin, its all the same thing - you kinda hit it with your sword or something.FLGS type gaming for the win!
That so needs to be staged, and posted to youtube.
After finally moving out of DC and into the midwest after graduate school, I found myself in a smallish town, a new job where I'm legally only allowed to work 80 hours a week (though I often wind up having to work more), and knowing absolutely nobody. So after a few months of never having any time for a social life outside of work and sleep, I decided to look back into gaming again for the first time in a decade or so. I had played was the dungeon master A LOT in high school and for a year or so afterwards, but when that group of friends dissolved (as they always do after high school), I never got back into it again.
So I looked into it, and D&D had moved on to 4th edition in my absence. I knew nothing about it, and was hoping to find a game where I could at least somewhat remember the rules. So I found a meetup that was about 30 minutes or so from my new house in the ghetto that was playing 2nd edition, and they were open to new players.
I showed up, slightly nervous, with a bag containing some pencils and a pouch of old plastic dice. I didn't even have my old PHB anymore. But the people in the group were incredibly welcoming and friendly. I was surprised to find that most of them were actually my age, and that a few of them also had just started gaming again after a several year hiatus. I thought that since it had been a while, I'd roll up a character that was easy to build, and probably easy to play. A basic human fighter.
It was a homebrew world, which the DM had been building for several years and he apparently knew the entire planet in and out, and some of the players that had known him a while were pretty happy in it. So I pulled out my fighter, and asked the DM if there was an easy way to get my character into the storyline. I was flexible, whatever would work for the story.
The party was in a small keep in the wilderness of some sort, having just arrived there from an apparently disastrous mission gone wrong where everyone nearly died trying to get a MacGuffin of some sort. They had returned to the keep to heal up if they could, and get some more information about the evil doer they were up against from the local nobility. The DM and I agreed that an easy way for me to be in the town was that I was a town guard, but that the guarding business was getting old, and I was interested in looking for other employment, hopefully with a band of heroes out to do good in the world. That way it was going to be really easy, all he'd have to do is give the party and I a chance to run into each other and we'd quickly role-play a reason for me to join the group.
The DM proceeded to spend the next 8 HOURS having the party meddle around the keep and village and always just missing where my character was, and never giving us an opportunity to meet. He wasn't doing it to be an a**hole, he was actually a rather nice guy, he was just an incredibly inefficient and useless DM. He had no idea how to guide a storyline, or give a group of players a reason to perform a task.
After 4 hours of literally not ever meeting a single member of the team, just watching the players wander around the village buying rations and having discussions among themselves about the mission they were on, and even trying to push the plot forward by role-playing things on their own between themselves, I was going mad. I wanted to grab the DM by the lapels and start screaming "You don't know what you are doing! I haven't been a DM in 10 years, but if you hand this game over to me, I will have this party together and on the road in 20 minutes! We all know how this works, we are all at an inn, and my character approaches the table and we spend 4 minutes role-playing a conversation that gets the new guy into the game, and then we move on with the story!"
At the end of 8 hours of gaming, the only thing that managed to happen was my character was finally introduced to the group (by passing by the guard (me) posted at the front gate). Absolutely nothing else happened for the entire session that pushed the plot forward. The other players seemed to be pretty annoyed that things moved slowly in that game too, but I think they were so desperate for a game that they were willing to live with it.
I tried with that group another couple times over a couple of months, but again, nothing ever happened. It was a waste of an evening each time. And when I wasn't playing there, I was getting annoyed that the hosts (not the DM) were always bickering with each other about their marriage in front of all the other players. I don't need to hear people having a marital fight, I'm there to imagine a martial one.
So I walked away, amiably enough, as it wasn't as though anyone there was a real dick or anything. It was just a miserable way to play the game. I then found a game shop north of my little house in the ghetto where they ran LFR in 4E. I started going there for a few months, and the "one shot adventure" method really worked well for my constantly shifting schedule, and the guys in the shop were great. I made some friends with some of them, but eventually found that 4E was not filling the gap for me that I wanted an RPG to fill. For me, at least in the store, it was all about the combat, like a table top version of an online game like WoW or something. And while there inherently isn't anything wrong with that, it wasn't as fun as the RPGs that I had played years before. After talking about this with a couple of guys at the shop, I found there were others who agreed with me, and we started putting together a Pathfinder game. Now I"m hooked, I still work crazy hours, but I've got a group of friends outside of work again, and I'm having a hell of a lot of fun both as a player and as a DM with the pathfinder system.
I'm male in real life and play male characters, but decided to do something different by playing a female character just to do something different, I mean its a roleplaying game, its not really me and i dont wanna be a female in real life. Anywho, the other players started to complain about it, so I switched the concept, fine no problem.
She was gonna be a heavy enchantment sorceress, was looking good, but anyways, i think i changed it to a paladin or something, i cant remember. The other players were creating characters together and were filling the race, weight hiegh, you know stuff like that, when one of them said he was gonna play a FEMALE cat woman, I'm a very introvertive person, so I didn't say anything, but it was burning with rage inside, instead of playing with them I decided to step aside, of course I never said why, but the DM knew it was because of that, so i just decided to help the dm with rules and stuff because he was new to DMing.
I ask because, called shots and pixie sticks aside, I'd jump at the chance to play a 15th level game.I'm all good with the notion of a L15 Game, but with the caveat that we built up to it. I wouldn't suggest starting from L1, as frankly I've never SEEN an L1 game end anywhere NEAR 15, but there's no way I'd think starting much above 10 would be 'a good thing'.
I tend to find peoples campaigns that kick off or are focussed on that level tend to be REALLY REALLY cheesy and suck very hard.
Post level 10 it takes a very good GM with good resources for it to be anything more than just a bashfest.
Sorry, I'd be happy to be contradicted, but Ive been at this game a long time, met a lot of players, been in loads of different peoples campaigns, and been to endless number of cons and collected my bits of wood to prove it - but I've only seen the (very very) rare exception.
I have ran a game to 20. Two got to 13, but people got better jobs, and left. I am now running a 14th level game. We should see level 15 this week.
when one of them said he was gonna play a FEMALE cat woman, I'm a very introvertive person, so I didn't say anything, but it was burning with rage inside, instead of playing with them I decided to step aside
Umm I don't get it, why didn't you play your character?
The first game i ever played in was a game of World of Darkness, more specifically mage, and it had been going on for a bit before i was introduced somewhere in the middle.
Our game master was fairly loose with the rules because all of the players were new to the system, including the game master, so we just kinda played and had fun with what we did even if it wasnt technically legal by the book.
My character was a master of space magic and force magic. For those of you who dont know what that means, it means that i can pretty much teleport wherever the heck i want and controll just about any force of energy you could think of.
At one point, for whatever reason, we (and by we i am excluding me) decided to let one of the current players have a go at Dming the game for a whial. The old DM handed him a stack of notes so he could continue the story, but he decided to totally switch gears on us and make a completely new story.
When he is laying down is seeds and wattering with his magical can of cluebat juice, he says to search out the temple of the grand lakes. This game took place in the U.S. and so we all thought he ment it was in 1 of the 5 grand lakes. Seems logical no?
So after our little meeting with magical new deity that said "go over there!!!" I use my powers to teleport our group to the grand lakes. I tell them to wait on the shores as i do some recon. I bend the light around me so that i am invisible, bring a pocket of air with me and procede to fly under water each lake using magic vision to search for a magic temple and after 4 lakes of not finding it i figure i pretty much have it down.
I head into the 5th lake and he says that i see a blip in the distance with my magic vision of an area with magical resonance. I tell him that i fly down there realy quick to get a closer look and he tells me that i swim into the middle of a feeding frenzy of several dozen hydras. He then procedes to tell me that they smell me and begin tearing me apart.
So i end up making it out of there with my life and tell my party that the magic deity lied to us. So i then flew into outer space with my air pocket, harnes all my magical energy into one final middle finger to the universe and blow up the world. Game over... Lets roll up some new characters and you are never allowed to DM again.
when one of them said he was gonna play a FEMALE cat woman, I'm a very introvertive person, so I didn't say anything, but it was burning with rage inside, instead of playing with them I decided to step asideUmm I don't get it, why didn't you play your character?
Like I said i was REALLY angry, I coulnd't stand the hypocrisy of them, so I decided I'd rather not.
Like I said i was REALLY angry, I coulnd't stand the hypocrisy of them, so I decided I'd rather not.
Fair enough :( sad that you didn't even get to run with your cool concept though... but what a pack of douches.
Yeah, I think if I got grief from a group for wanting to play a certain type of character, and then someone else in that group turned around and did so without getting any of the same grief, I'd probably walk as well.
After finally moving out of DC and into the midwest after graduate school, I found myself in a smallish town, a new job where I'm legally only allowed to work 80 hours a week (though I often wind up having to work more), and knowing absolutely nobody.
"only" 80 hours per week!? 8-0
Yeah, I think if I got grief from a group for wanting to play a certain type of character, and then someone else in that group turned around and did so without getting any of the same grief, I'd probably walk as well.
Especially if it was one of the people telling me I couldn't do that was making said character. Generally what they really mean is "Hey I want to do something similar, so I'll stop you doin git so I don't have any competition. Double standards by their friends let them get away with it."
My first real high school girlfriend talked up her friends like they were the greatest players who ever were and managed to convince me - using her feminine charms - that I had never really played unless I played with them.
So when they finally got the group back together after a long hiatus, I was there, ready to show off my own gaming chops. Turned out to be a kitchen filled with about ten stoners, all half-baked and munchy and gabbing constantly and loudly. Most of their characters were the type that gave us all bad reputations back in the eighties: all evil, all with horrifying backstories, all with names taken from Black Sabbath liner notes and wielding ridiculously jagged weapons poorly drawn on dog-eared binder paper. If the DM actually ever started the game, I am to this day largely unaware of it because all I could hear was a bunch of heated people laughing over Doritos for about an hour and a half.
Anyway, not to be deterred, I tried again with them about a month later. Same thing, but this time a big chunk of them got bored and wandered off, leaving only a small core of actual gamers. I ad hock GMed a modern action game for them for a few hours, and we had a blast. But I never went back.
As DM/GM, I've ended a few campaigns early, for the following reasons:
1. A player had become so disruptive over time as to have ruined the whole thing for everybody else. After getting rid of him the whole group decided it was better to move onto something new.
2. We invited a new guy and his girlfriend, not knowing how extensive his rules lawyering would go. Now, I don't mind a little help from a knowledgeable player at all; in fact, I like it. But this guy acted more like a watchdog, and it killed the best thing about our game, which was the spontaneity. Example: the first session we played, this player so disagreed with my interpretation of a rule, that he reset all the minis on the table to the beginning of the encounter and demanded we replay the battle. Again, the campaign felt ruined as I had made too many concessions by the time we had had enough, to go back to what it was.
3. The boyfriend of one of my favorite players was invited for a session or two. He ended up staying for years through more than one campaign. He actually cheats when he thinks he can get away with it. He's also guilty of a few dozen annoying in-game habits, but the real last straw was just that he always held the game up or made us rearrange everybody's schedule to accommodate him. Normally, we're really flexible, but this is not a humble guy who is grateful that we help him out. This is a guy who doesn't understand why we don't all adore him and his every munchkin antic and flubbed die roll.
You get tired of that.
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...the first session we played, this player so disagreed with my interpretation of a rule, that he reset all the minis on the table to the beginning of the encounter and demanded we replay the battle...
Wow.
Seriously, wow.
He pulled that in the first session? I don't think I've ever played with someone so disrespectful to a GM as that. I have to assume that after that stunt he wasn't invited to the second session.
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AKA 8one6
Example: the first session we played, this player so disagreed with my interpretation of a rule, that he reset all the minis on the table to the beginning of the encounter and demanded we replay the battle.
Any player doing that to me would get a brief lecture about how the umpire is right, even when he is wrong, and if he doesn't like it there is a door over there.
...the first session we played, this player so disagreed with my interpretation of a rule, that he reset all the minis on the table to the beginning of the encounter and demanded we replay the battle...Wow.
Seriously, wow.
He pulled that in the first session? I don't think I've ever played with someone so disrespectful to a GM as that. I have to assume that after that stunt he wasn't invited to the second session.
He should have tried a more mature approach like holding his breath until he turned blue, or flipping over the table and shouting "I'm taking my toys and going home!!".
DM:Umm ok theres like, a fight, with some Goblins, roll some dice.
Player 1: OK I hit a Goblin. /rolls die
Player 2: Yeah I'll hit a Goblin too. What does the terrain look like.
DM: Oh you are in a bar.
Player 1: Woohoo, a 20, did I hit?
DM: Yeah you hit the Orc.
Player 2: Oh we were in a forest five minutes ago.
DM: The bar is in a forest.
Player 1: I thought I was hitting a Goblin?
DM: Orc, Goblin, its all the same thing - you kinda hit it with your sword or something.
Why does the line "I attack the darkness!" come to mind?
Look at me, now at your players, now back at me. I'm on a celestial mount.
he was gonna play a FEMALE cat woman
Well, a male cat woman would be weird.
After finally moving out of DC and into the midwest after graduate school, I found myself in a smallish town, a new job where I'm legally only allowed to work 80 hours a week (though I often wind up having to work more), and knowing absolutely nobody."only" 80 hours per week!? 8-0
I know. Reading that made me think of myself as a spoiled brat, with my 35 hour work week.
I'm going to buck the trend a little, and tell you about how a game I ran ended poorly because of something stupid I did. The campaign setting was high magic. One of the common features of this game is that it was almost modern, but in the sense that technology had been mostly replaced by magic (everburning torches instead of lamp posts, wands of dowsing instead of fire extinguishers...etc.) The group was an adventuring company. In this world, Adventuring was a legitimate business, of which you had to have a license for, and had to pay taxes on. I decided that I wanted to give my players something that would allow them to travel to other continents, even other planes, so that the options for exploration would be more open ended. So, I gave them a flying ship. Now, at the time, the players didn't know that the capabilities of this ship were taken from spelljammer (before I get boos and hisses about including spelljammer material in my game, I wanted to give my players the option of traveling to other planes, especially other material planes ie: other planets). So this is what my players did. They hired a crew, they traveled to what was considered a third world country, and they set up a mining corporation, and became filthy friggin rich. They decided as a group that adventuring wasn't cost effective, and dangerous to boot, but with a little magical help, they could strip mine an area, and transport it via airship for cheap. I couldn't blame the players for doing it, I mean hell, its probably what I would do in real life if given the situation. Now, I could have just thrown a monkey wrench in the way. I could have had the ship blow up, or some other reasonably plausible way for them to lose it. But it felt cheap. So the game ended because I didn't have the forethought of what I gave them would cause. There are, btw, a couple of ways to "win" at DnD. One of them is to become too rich to adventure. So my players "won".
Wasn't Pathfinder, but we had a PC do a heel turn and force us into a situation where we would lose all our experience (karma) that we had built up for two sessions. We lost it all and then his character tried to join our group again later. Yeah...we quit playing after that. The DM had actually planned it ahead of time with the player.
Also, had a guy in our party whose character had gained an ungodly power and was pretty proud of himself. So he took on an impossible feat and died about 4 hours into the session. Unfortunately, we were at his house. The session ended there. People that take this stuff personally bug me.
They decided as a group that adventuring wasn't cost effective, and dangerous to boot, but with a little magical help, they could strip mine an area, and transport it via airship for cheap.
I dunno, Natives of Third World Hell Holes seem to take very dim views on people setting up strip mining operations, and tend to try and kill and eat the foreign devils with alarming regularity - still happening now in the 21st C, let alone gong back in time!
Similarly, this wonderful airship would be a great target for thieves and saboteurs.
In fact I can think of umpteen reasons why this could all end in tears for the players!
Remember, getting a kingdom is ONE thing, defending it is another entirely. You can't win by wealth - or Bill Gates has won at "REAL LIFE(tm)" yet there are still problems to solve, and things to be done...
So the game ended because I didn't have the forethought of what I gave them would cause. There are, btw, a couple of ways to "win" at DnD. One of them is to become too rich to adventure. So my players "won".Two words: Rival corporation.
Alternately: Angry Druids, always good for fighting technological progress when necessary.
Alternately: Angry Druids, always good for fighting technological progress when necessary.So the game ended because I didn't have the forethought of what I gave them would cause. There are, btw, a couple of ways to "win" at DnD. One of them is to become too rich to adventure. So my players "won".Two words: Rival corporation.
Or, even worse for them: Non-angry druids, calmly deciding that they belong dead. Sitting down, discussing the most efficient method of killing them while drinking herbal tea and having discussions about gardening in between.
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Or, even worse for them: Non-angry druids, calmly deciding that they belong dead. Sitting down, discussing the most efficient method of killing them while drinking herbal tea and having discussions about gardening in between.Alternately: Angry Druids, always good for fighting technological progress when necessary.So the game ended because I didn't have the forethought of what I gave them would cause. There are, btw, a couple of ways to "win" at DnD. One of them is to become too rich to adventure. So my players "won".Two words: Rival corporation.
QFT...
the one class I would never ever want to have as the Villain to my Hero...a Calm, Rational, Pragmatic Neutral Evil Druid.
Just like KaeYoss said...sit down, determine strengths and weaknesses, plot insurrection, murder, mayhem, and sabotage with a clear mind and absolute clarity of purpose...no thank you.
Or, even worse for them: Non-angry druids, calmly deciding that they belong dead. Sitting down, discussing the most efficient method of killing them while drinking herbal tea and having discussions about gardening in between.Alternately: Angry Druids, always good for fighting technological progress when necessary.So the game ended because I didn't have the forethought of what I gave them would cause. There are, btw, a couple of ways to "win" at DnD. One of them is to become too rich to adventure. So my players "won".Two words: Rival corporation.QFT...
the one class I would never ever want to have as the Villain to my Hero...a Calm, Rational, Pragmatic Neutral Evil Druid.
Just like KaeYoss said...sit down, determine strengths and weaknesses, plot insurrection, murder, mayhem, and sabotage with a clear mind and absolute clarity of purpose...no thank you.
True, a calm and collected druid would be a scarier opponent than an angry druid, as there are just so many ways they could disrupt a mining operation without even trying very hard.
On a tangent, I'm fascinated to see that so far NO ONE has defended the Duskblade class - it's borked and we all know it :PThere's nothing to defend - Duskblade is a fine class with relatively few problems and it's incredibly well balanced. People who disagree are objectively wrong.I disagree here. While the Duskblade isn't wildly broken, it's definitely got too much to recommend it over core-only methods of doing the same thing. It's hard to justify a straight fighter over this guy, for instance, so if that's how your group rolls, the Duskblade is probably too strong.
He's not genre shaking or anything. But your statement that he's "incredibly well balanced" and that it's just a fact, is incorrect. He would shine like crazy in the party I'm playing in, for instance, which features a monk, a fighter, and a fighter/rogue as the primary damage dealers. Is a superoptimized party, he wouldn't really shine much at all, however. So saying he's balanced depends on a lot.
I don't mind the idea of some classes being NPC only, but there really needs to be a reason for that in game or it's just dumb. More importantly, the DM told them "core only". Not "western classes only" or something. Presumably, you could be a fighter / wizard, for instance, or a fighter / sorceror- but he explicitly banned the Duskblade. The implication is that the DM wasn't comfortable with non-core material, but in fact just didn't like the players having cool toys. That's petty. Having unmemorizable spells in spell books is even more headdesk than that. If you feel that the Duskblade is too powerful for your game, and you ban it to PCs, then if you want to give them a fighter / mage style challenge, you should build that with what you are given- and if the CR is higher than you'd like because that's a poor build, suck it up and award the extra XP.
Here's my bad story, this is from high school:
The group I ate lunch with one year was me, my friend J, and...
I couldn't help but mention that you left out barbarians in your comparision. When a core class can out-class another in everything they do you statement fails.
Why not try comparing a barbarian to a duskblade in 3.5>
Last Straws..
I've never walked away from a campaign..except for one in PBP here and that was a conflict over the DM's minimalist style of posting...
As a DM offline I've had one last straw situation where the player just wouldn't take a hint.
The Setting..
A homebrew campaign set in my own world and with an epic plot. We were playing Night below and..gods forgive me..the full on AD&D Players Options books(yes I know it was broken)
The Character...
A Lawful Good Justicar(Martial Cleric) serving the god of Law and Justice.
The situation.
The Character began the campaign by making all the classic Lawful Stupid mistakes. Killing NPC's because they were not lawful...suggesting that prisoners be tortured to extract information from them that they did not have and could never have answered questions about..you know the sort of thing.
So I give him an IC talking to by his immediate superior..he ignores it.
Then I give him an IC talking to by the head of his Order..he ignores it.
I'm getting slightly worried at this point and have a talk to the player away from the game he tells me he'll change.
Next session he's not showing any change..Ok I think he needs an in game reason to do this..I give him an omen from his god in the form of a dream..he ignores it.
Next session I go for broke..I haul him up in front of his deity and tell him straight..ammend your ways or suffer the consequences. He acts suitably contrite and promises to mend his ways..and then goes back to normal.
At this point I realised he couldnt play LG to save himself..so I told him that his alignment had changed to Lawful Neutral explaining that I had given him 4 chances to change and he had not taken any notice.
He went ballistic and stormed out of that session..he returned at the next game just to tell us that he would be leaving the group and that his character would be turning Evil..so I turned him into a running villain for the next two years.
I should off course point out that he was 17 and the rest off us were in their 20's and 30's at the time.
My God-daughter at 16 played with more maturity - and she's completely out to lunch, although in a nice way!