In a recent Mythic Adventures one shot play test our characters were doing exceptionally well, having made most encounters look like a joke.
Then we made it to the Queen's Hand. The battle started rough, and are group was quickly put on the defensive. We went from "trying to kill her" to merely trying to hold her off long enough to pour the tears of last remorse into the volcano's heart.
Then suddenly, as it seemed we might actually succeed, the GM had her plane shift away. We were happy at first, thinking that she knew she had lost and had decided to flee before the wrath of her defeated goddess caught up with her.
That is until she returned with an army of powerful minions and slew us all. According to the GM, she went to another plane, grabbed the first weak being she could find, and intimidated into making a wish FOR HER.
So she got an army. An army that killed all of us.
There was NEVER any chance of winning. The GM just up and decided to screw us.
Did he go too far? He didn't break any rules, but...it just seems like something he shouldn't have done.
What do you think? How should we move forward from here? How would you react if it happened to you?
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Are you positive that GM doesn't have really any further plans, that this is not a simple plot section of campaign?
I don't believe any sane GM would just kill the party and tell them they don't stand a chance. PC's always have to have a chance. That's how heroes are born.
In the above example, I would upon bringing the army (if this even makes sense, because wishes aren't that simple) ask the PC's to drop their weapons and accept immediate surrender or gave the PC's some chase and alternate chance of escape, since combating an army might be impossible.
Is this real or another of your hypotheticals, RD? 'cause it sounds like a hypothetical.
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So a creature with a wish got intimidated into granting them a wish? Yeah no. Yeah no way. If its one of the few demons who HAVE to grant it to someone else, I can see them just gutting the person. Also plane shift is just as inaccurate as teleport is. What kinda creature granted the wish? Glabrezus can only grant it to mortal humanoids.
When a like large/huge outsider gets bothered by another creature out of nowhere, it goes into attack mode. Especially if it could see it was wounded. I'd expect a hefty penalty to the check.
Looking it up now.
She can only planeshift to elemental planes, the material and astral plane.
So looking at her options, only Genies could have granted it. Guess what Genies can do? Planeshift away.
It appears her text follows the same rules as Genies, so I'd guess that she couldn't benefit from it either.
If none of the players enjoyed and/or agreed with the outcome then it was a GMing failure pure and simple.
The GM decides what's kosher and what isn't, limited only by his imagination and the buy-in belief of the players.
This leaves the GM with the responsibility to make the results satisfying, regardless of apparent character success or failure.
The ONLY way to do a RPG wrong is to not have fun.
Sounds like your GM needs to re-evaluate what his role and purpose at the game session really is.
Sounds like your GM either has a plan, IE Resurrection/Reincarnation plot lines... Or maybe my favorite, 'fight your way out of the underworld' type of game.
That said, if he just up and killed you all to end the game (you did say it was a one shot), that really just... Sucked. I wouldn't say he wasn't in his right as GM to do it, but... That was rather a dick move.
If you hadn't said "one shot play test" I'd have been pretty annoyed if I'd been playing.
If it really was just a play test, with the aim being to test out the rules more than to have a normal game, then does it really matter what happened? Wasn't the point to see how the rules worked out rather than to "win" or "lose"?
You mentioned it was a "one shot play test", so the GM has nothing to lose by slaughtering everyone at the end of the encounter. If this were supposed to be a longer campaign then yes, I'd be ticked. With games like this you should almost assume your character will die, because why the heck not? It's like sitting down to a play a one shot Chuthulu game--it's not a matter of if your character dies, but when and how badly. But like I said if this were a game where you had truly invested in the characters then you would have every right to be upset. It this situation its just not worth the energy.
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Whether it's a one-shot or not is kinda irrelevant.
It's still a dick move to say "Yep you're dead. Game over. See ya next week!".
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In a long-running campaign this could have been a plot device (even if a rather ham-fisted one, it seems to me).
In a one-shot adventure... dick move. But maybe it's not a one-shot, or it's a longish one-shot. Or that fateful battle is the prelude/basic premise of a brand new campaign.
In any case you shouldn't be worried: your PC will resurface when the plot device has run its course, or you were supposed to discard the character at the end of the adventure anyway, so there you go.
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You mentioned it was a "one shot play test", so the GM has nothing to lose by slaughtering everyone at the end of the encounter. If this were supposed to be a longer campaign then yes, I'd be ticked. With games like this you should almost assume your character will die, because why the heck not? It's like sitting down to a play a one shot Chuthulu game--it's not a matter of if your character dies, but when and how badly. But like I said if this were a game where you had truly invested in the characters then you would have every right to be upset. It this situation its just not worth the energy.
Pathfinder =/= Call of Cthulhu.
Different expectations with regards to character survival.
yeah as the others have said, it's a one shot so what does it matter in the long run?
Yes the GM was a bit of a prat and the ending was rubbish but at the end of the day you play tested the Mythic rules so job done. Although I do see now that if the GM decides to run a Mythic game with you guys I ould see the follow hapeen..NO WAY NOT AGAIN.
Dick GM move, forget it, chalk it up as a bad one off and move on.
(personaly it sounds to me like the GM was fed up with the way the game was going and just wanted to end it so it wouldn't carry on..)
Since it was 1 shot AND a test run, I believe the dm finished yal off to see what could stop ya AND imo to not use the same characters in future campaigns.
If it was indeed a playtest, then everyone is testing including the dm to gauge the actual strengths and weaknesses of the mythic tier. So that army coukd have been a test to see howwell u fare since yal having been breezing thru everything else. It could have been also a not so subtle way to end ur characters so they cant be used for a future campaign in their present glory and power.
Tbh it was just a one shot and a play test, so I wouldn't get to hurt about it. I mean we don't know if he gathered that army so that someone in the grp coukda used wish and taken the army that was right there and be under yals command and have a better chance of defeating her.....just saying. Yal was having problems and maybe the dm brought in tools for yal to suceed but no one thought to use them...but then again I don't know the party make up.
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In honesty it sounds a bit extreme to have had the Queen teleport awat and bring back an army you have no chance of defeating. But, maybe there is a reason? Seems unlikely. Let us know what happens.
So a creature with a wish got intimidated into granting them a wish? Yeah no. Yeah no way. If its one of the few demons who HAVE to grant it to someone else, I can see them just gutting the person. Also plane shift is just as inaccurate as teleport is. What kinda creature granted the wish? Glabrezus can only grant it to mortal humanoids.
When a like large/huge outsider gets bothered by another creature out of nowhere, it goes into attack mode. Especially if it could see it was wounded. I'd expect a hefty penalty to the check.
You've misunderstood I think. The way I understood it is, the Queen can cast wish herself, but not grant her own wishes. So she teleported away and found a nearby creature, intimidated that creature into wishing for an army for her, and then returned with the army.
Which sort or brings up the question of, can she successfully intimidate another creature into making wishes for her?
In honesty it sounds a bit extreme to have had the Queen teleport awat and bring back an army you have no chance of defeating. But, maybe there is a reason? Seems unlikely. Let us no what happens.
So a creature with a wish got intimidated into granting them a wish? Yeah no. Yeah no way. If its one of the few demons who HAVE to grant it to someone else, I can see them just gutting the person. Also plane shift is just as inaccurate as teleport is. What kinda creature granted the wish? Glabrezus can only grant it to mortal humanoids.
When a like large/huge outsider gets bothered by another creature out of nowhere, it goes into attack mode. Especially if it could see it was wounded. I'd expect a hefty penalty to the check.
You've misunderstood I think. The way I understood it is, the Queen can cast wish herself, but not grant her own wishes. So she teleported away and found a nearby creature, intimidated that creature into wishing for an army for her, and then returned with the army.
Which sort or brings up the question of, can she successfully intimidate another creature into making wishes for her?
Actually, that's pretty smart. This is a tactic I can see any PC worth his salt would think to do. I'm not sure about all the plane jumping part, but the idea of making someone else "wish your wishes" is just smart (as long as it's worded well of course).
You mentioned it was a "one shot play test", so the GM has nothing to lose by slaughtering everyone at the end of the encounter. If this were supposed to be a longer campaign then yes, I'd be ticked. With games like this you should almost assume your character will die, because why the heck not? It's like sitting down to a play a one shot Chuthulu game--it's not a matter of if your character dies, but when and how badly. But like I said if this were a game where you had truly invested in the characters then you would have every right to be upset. It this situation its just not worth the energy.Pathfinder =/= Call of Cthulhu.
Different expectations with regards to character survival.
I have no expectations of survival when it comes to one shots. As a matter of fact I prefer to die in one shots so that there is at least closure for the character. It makes me feel like there were actual stakes (even though the game was a one time thing). Survival is pretty meaningless.
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Plane shifting away and then plane shifting back....
...you appear 5 to 500 miles (5d%) from your intended destination...
...it's not actually possible to plane shift back to the spot where you left...unless you choose a spot between 5 and 500 miles away from where you left, then randomly roll a d100 5 times and get exactly the result you predicted, as well as rolling a d8 (for direction) and also get the exact number you predicted.
Also, plane shift affects up to 8 individuals. Not much of an army.
I'd like to see the exact wording of that wish, then use that exact wording next time you get a wish and let the DM deal with that.
Is this real or another of your hypotheticals, RD? 'cause it sounds like a hypothetical.
Oh this really happened, though allow me to rephrase a bit: We didn't so much get killed, as have our prides totally killed. We were literally fist-bumping and high-fiving...until we weren't. Due to our builds we were able to escape as easily as the ifrit, though that would mean abandoning absolutely everything our character set out to do.
Was it implied that you should, or could, escape?
We could have escaped at any time, however doing so would mean the utter failure of the mission we had set out to accomplish.
In the end, despite our having retrieved the artifact and mystic waters and successfully calming the volcano with them, and (barely) escaped the scene, the GM declared that without having defeated "the conduit of the goddess" that was the ifrit, she essentially "revitalized" the volcano a week later and destroyed the village we were meant to protect anyways. In short, we lost in just about every meaningful way.
Technically, our characters went back to the village, told them we had calmed the volcano, were rewarded and praised, went on vacation, and received news of the towns utter annihilation while sipping pina coladas on the beach.
What buggers me the most about it, is there really is no reason for the ifrit not to have done it in any other way. It really was a good in-game idea, albeit a mean out-of-game one.
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Was it implied that you should, or could, escape?We could have escaped at any time, however doing so would mean the utter failure of the mission we had set out to accomplish.
In the end, despite our having retrieved the artifact and mystic waters and successfully calming the volcano with them, the GM declared that without having defeated "the conduit of the goddess" that was the ifrit, she essentially "revitalized" the volcano a week later and destroyed the village we were meant to protect anyways. In short, we lost in just about every meaningful way.
What buggers me the most about it, is there is no reason for the ifrit not to have done it in any other way. It really was a good idea, albeit a mean one.
What was the exact wording of that wish, Ravingdork?
Hell if I know, Malchi.
But...but...we don't have wishes of our own...
...and I doubt the GM is going to let us easily obtain them.
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Is this the usually playstyle of your GM? I'd understand this if your GM would commonly pull the rug out from under you, as an antagonist who somehow escapes is going be back to his/her old tricks. At the very least did the GM explain some of the things that you guys *could* have done to prevent this from happening? If so, were they completely outlandish, given your characters' scope of knowledge on the situation?
Have you or anyone in your group recently tried to use planar binding wish-slaves or similar? I could see it being a "payback" in the vein of "if you don't want the DM to do it, don't do it yourself".
Other than that, yeah, I think it's pretty much a mean thing to do. One shot or not, it's not fun to lose without an honest chance.
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Sometimes I imagine that all the bad gamers of the world have moved to RD's town. His session reports surely make it sound that way. ^^
Is this the usually play style of your GM? I'd understand this if your GM would commonly pull the rug out from under you, as an antagonist who somehow escapes is going be back to his/her old tricks. At the very least did the GM explain some of the things that you guys *could* have done to prevent this from happening? If so, were they completely outlandish, given your characters' scope of knowledge on the situation?
He's never really pulled his punches before. This may just be a slightly more extreme version of his old tendencies.
We had NO knowledge skills in the party during this play test, which ultimately proved to be a constant pain (such as not knowing simple things like trolls needing fire or acid to be truly slain or important things like that the waters might be dangerous--my barbarian was blinded for THREE days).
Have you or anyone in your group recently tried to use planar binding wish-slaves or similar? I could see it being a "payback" in the vein of "if you don't want the DM to do it, don't do it yourself".
Other than that, yeah, I think it's pretty much a mean thing to do. One shot or not, it's not fun to lose without an honest chance.
Nope. We haven't had a a game over 10th-level in almost two years it seems.
EDIT: Been saying ifrit when I should have been saying efreeti. Got confused because the GM kept referring to her as an "ifrit genie."
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Your mythic. If you can't deal with an army of non mythics or at least escape from one...well your fault really at that point.Have you read the mythic book? it does not turn you into a god. It turns you into the closest way d20 can turn you into Heracles. major difference.
On topic: that seems a bit harsh unless the GM has other plans. In a game I was in once we had to die in order to get to this one castle in the sky in order to furthur plot points. But witjout that it seems like a heavy abuse of the rules. Wish, for both PCs and NPCs, should very risky business. Wish for an army? here is an army of not very loyal demons, should have been more specific. Want infinite power? Heres a device that never runs out of 12 watts of power. Using it to crush a party is very unsportsmanlike.
Umm...demi gods of greek legends take on armies and win. You get to go FIRST vs anything non mythic. If you don't have an escape clause, your failing at playing high power...which mythic is. IF you don't have a way to deal with an army, you hit your escape button. It's when you start to think that you ARE A GOD that you die. This is not specific to just mythic play.
In the end, despite our having retrieved the artifact and mystic waters and successfully calming the volcano with them, and (barely) escaped the scene, the GM declared that without having defeated "the conduit of the goddess" that was the ifrit, she essentially "revitalized" the volcano a week later and destroyed the village we were meant to protect anyways. In short, we lost in just about every meaningful way.
Technically, our characters went back to the village, told them we had calmed the volcano, were rewarded and praised, went on vacation, and received news of the towns utter annihilation while sipping pina coladas on the beach.
What buggers me the most about it, is there really is no reason for the ifrit not to have done it in any other way. It really was a good in-game idea, albeit a mean out-of-game one.
Up to this point I was thinking your GM was just setting you up for a recuring villain. While it makes sense for the villian to do this, it is a common staple NOT to. I mean why didn't Sauron just make MORE ruler rings? The whole "Drat foiled again!" motif.
How did your characters find out about the volcano to begin with? Why didn't you find out it was happening again?
Other than that really, the only options you have are the standard: Talk to the GM, or just roll your eyes, sigh and move on. If you want validation: Then yes, I think that was a crappy move on the GM's part.
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Is this real or another of your hypotheticals, RD? 'cause it sounds like a hypothetical.Oh this really happened, though allow me to rephrase a bit: We didn't so much get killed, as have our prides totally killed. We were literally fist-bumping and high-fiving...until we weren't. Due to our builds we were able to escape as easily as the ifrit, though that would mean abandoning absolutely everything our character set out to do.
Was it implied that you should, or could, escape?We could have escaped at any time, however doing so would mean the utter failure of the mission we had set out to accomplish.
In the end, despite our having retrieved the artifact and mystic waters and successfully calming the volcano with them, and (barely) escaped the scene, the GM declared that without having defeated "the conduit of the goddess" that was the ifrit, she essentially "revitalized" the volcano a week later and destroyed the village we were meant to protect anyways. In short, we lost in just about every meaningful way.
Technically, our characters went back to the village, told them we had calmed the volcano, were rewarded and praised, went on vacation, and received news of the towns utter annihilation while sipping pina coladas on the beach.
What buggers me the most about it, is there really is no reason for the ifrit not to have done it in any other way. It really was a good in-game idea, albeit a mean out-of-game one.
So...yeah, that is a dick move. If escape was never an option and he sent an army after you that you could not deal with and he knows it, yes it's a dick move.
You get to go FIRST vs anything non mythic. If you don't have an escape clause, your failing at playing high power...which mythic is. IF you don't have a way to deal with an army, you hit your escape button. It's when you start to think that you ARE A GOD that you die. This is not specific to just mythic play.
SO NOT TRUE about initiative. In nearly every encounter my barbarian participated in he went dead last.
Maybe you're thinking of the old unbalanced play test rules?
(We did have a pretty decent escape button at least.)
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Umm...demi gods of greek legends take on armies and win.
Really? Which ones?
Heracles? - Nope. 12 labors not one was fighting an army and winningAchilles? - Nope. Had a whole army and an elite team at his side... and still ended up dead. I'd call that Not a win.
Theseus? - Nope. Beat up a Minotaur, but needed help from the bull's sister.
Odysseus? - Nope. Had a whole army with him (or his crew), while he did make it out alive it took him 10 years to get home
Perseus? - Nope. Killed Medussa, but had a TON of help.
Jason? - Nope. Had the Argonaughts (and Heracles sometimes). Was sort of a douchebag too.
Bellerophon? - Nope. Would anyone even know his name if not for Tom Cruise? His family did some cool stuff, but still didn't defeat an army.
Cadmus? - Nope. He needed an army to kill a dragon. Okay he did found Thebes but he regrew his army from the dragon's teeth... and they scared him so much that he had half them killed.
Now I'm not sure what all this means or even what my point was anymore, but that was a lot of fun going back through all those heroes... I kinda miss 'em.
Weird. I always thought Odysseus was an ordinary mortal who just had a lot of brains. Learning he was actually a demigod kinda kills his badass in my mind.
Anyways, I think it should be pointed out that if the loophole the GM exploited was valid, all efreet would do it. Efreet are clever, after all. If they could force someone to wish in their favor, there would not be a single efreeti without his own personal army of loyal dracoliches. I mean, that's three wishes per day, so all he has to do is capture a single human and bam, infinite power.
Clearly the wish has to be made willingly, with no intervention of the efreeti. The GM haxxed.
Well...I dunno.
May fall into the same logic as "Why not the Wraithpocalypse?" "Because it wouldn't be very fun.".
If your characters had a wish could they reliably wish for the same army or would the GM invoke the creative wish clause and give them something else entirely? If yes then it is a fair move, if no then you got screwed. Consistency is the hallmark of fairness when GMing.
ShadowcatX, that comparison is pretty invalid. Capturing an efreet is a difficult task, and they are assuredly going to twist the wishes you get. Capturing and enslaving Kyle Kobold will take about two seconds. Again, if it would work, why wouldn't every single efreeti (and quite a few djinn) do it? How would it be it possible to run into an efreeti who hasn't proxy-wished himself to godhood? Heck, odds are they'd shortly kill Kyle Kobold right after wishing for a servitor race with no ambitions that would make all the helpful wishes the efreet could hope for.
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Did he go too far? He didn't break any rules, but...it just seems like something he shouldn't have done.
Well, I think you answered that one later on.
In short, we lost in just about every meaningful way.
You don't sound like you had fun, and to be honest it sounds like he robbed you of a lot of it by GM fiat. That's a pretty big no no in my book.
What do you think? How should we move forward from here? How would you react if it happened to you?
Personally? I'd talk to the GM if I was calm enough to talk about it to say "hey man that sucked, can we not do that again?" but if I was really turned off or bothered I'd probably take off. A GM who goes out of his way to make me lose through fiat robs me of the trust and faith I have that I'll have respect and a chance of winning. There's a thrill in death even depending on the circumstances, but this way just feels robbed, sudden, and forced.
Funny, finding and enslaving something to grant wishes seems like exactly the sort of things PCs usually try and do. Sucks when the shoe is on the other foot though, eh?
Two wrongs don't make a right, eh? The GM and PCs are not adversaries out to ruin each other's day; ideally you are friends.
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But...but...we don't have wishes of our own...
...and I doubt the GM is going to let us easily obtain them.
Sure you do, find a creature that can cast it and just use intimidate to force it to grant you them. The GM has already shown this works and is a valid tactic.
How so? Why shouldn't a DM be able to use PCs tricks against them?
Well, its because
It is the DM's job to make the game fun and challenging
The players can use Pun-Pun sure, but probably not going to happen in 99+% of games. However if the GM uses Pun-Pun he murders them hands down and there wasn't any challenge or fun to be had. Just rocks fall everyone dies. You want to start up a game with me? Rocks fall you die. You had the antirock spell? Well you were in an antimagic field. GM Fiat is a fake difficult and just wins if you let it.
I don't think comparing GM fiat to what a player can do is a fair comparison. Similarly excessive cheese is just uncalled for from both sides imo.
ShadowcatX, that comparison is pretty invalid.How so? Why shouldn't a DM be able to use PCs tricks against them? It is the DM's job to make the game fun and challenging for his players, and sometimes that's going to mean that maybe the pcs don't know everything that happens behind the screen. Hell, sometimes that means that not everything that happens behind the screen is perfectly legal, hence why rule 0 exists.
If half of what RD posts he does in game he's pulled far more outlandish things in game than this.
Why did you take the first part of my quote and ignore the exact answer to your
How so?
EDIT: Oh, and by the way, Odysseus wasn't a demigod. He was all-human, like I thought. And yet he probably came the closest to dispatching an army among the listed Greek heroes. ;)
If half of what RD posts he does in game he's pulled far more outlandish things in game than this.
More than this!? What kinds of outlandish things do you think I've done exactly? O_O
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Is this the usually play style of your GM? I'd understand this if your GM would commonly pull the rug out from under you, as an antagonist who somehow escapes is going be back to his/her old tricks. At the very least did the GM explain some of the things that you guys *could* have done to prevent this from happening? If so, were they completely outlandish, given your characters' scope of knowledge on the situation?He's never really pulled his punches before. This may just be a slightly more extreme version of his old tendencies.
We had NO knowledge skills in the party during this play test, which ultimately proved to be a constant pain (such as not knowing simple things like trolls needing fire or acid to be truly slain or important things like that the waters might be dangerous--my barbarian was blinded for THREE days).
Have you or anyone in your group recently tried to use planar binding wish-slaves or similar? I could see it being a "payback" in the vein of "if you don't want the DM to do it, don't do it yourself".
Other than that, yeah, I think it's pretty much a mean thing to do. One shot or not, it's not fun to lose without an honest chance.
Nope. We haven't had a a game over 10th-level in almost two years it seems.
EDIT: Been saying ifrit when I should have been saying efreeti. Got confused because the GM kept referring to her as an "ifrit genie."
I wasn't talking of knowledge in the sense of game terminology, sorry, but did you have any situational or plot indications that matters could have been handled differently by your characters, did this antagonist even 'curse you wretched adventurers for setting her back, and that you all will rue the day when she comes back with a vengeance, etc.'?
In the end, despite our having retrieved the artifact and mystic waters and successfully calming the volcano with them, and (barely) escaped the scene, the GM declared that without having defeated "the conduit of the goddess" that was the ifrit, she essentially "revitalized" the volcano a week later and destroyed the village we were meant to protect anyways. In short, we lost in just about every meaningful way.
So you left the efreeti in the volcano, with an army, and went on vacation for a week? Then while you were gone, the efreeti, who had been trying to activate the volcano, somehow activated the volcano? Is that the gist of what you're saying?