Imagine multiclassing Cleric and Celestial Warlock, and your patron is one of your Gods underlings. Your character arc is helping your patron get back in your god’s good graces after their major slip up, and helping reconcile their relationship by being a good friend to both.
Better idea for the thieves guild one, "I give false name," "Roll deception" *roll and pass* "Well, I know that ain't your name, but ya know what? You got yourself some skill, almost had me convinced for a second." And then play out the encounter like that was the first step of the player being scoped out.
That would be really interesting. The idea of the guild member being amazed by the PC skill is very immersive, and it would lead to a totally different, yet awesome, outcome to the encounter.
That was the test my drow had for entering into a thieves guild. I convinced my recruiter I was an high elf. Black skin, white hair, purple eyes. The guy went speaking to his superior, who told me to drop disguise self, and tried to dispell me when I told him I didn't have it on. I got in.
I actually recognize the angel from the first story, her name is Vildeis, she's an angel empyreal lord from Pathfinder and would absolutely NOT try to strongarm someone into following her or damn them if they refused.
Thaaat just makes the DM just that little bit worse! Not just punishing a player for not playing a character they're not interested, but also blatantly misrepresenting an angel with lore.
@@mikedarin7681 Yeah, they basically get that they have to be patient since mortal beings are easily frightened and stuff and their job is to help mortals, ultimately. They can sometimes seem cold with how little hesitation they show, but they are doing the best they can to carry out a good god's wishes.
That "dont be pedantic" story got to me. >Be level 6 sorcerer >SBEG Casts silence on me >I try to use subtle spell to cast fireball. >DM: "Dude you can't use verbal components while in silence" >Me: "Subtle spell makes it ignore vocal and somatic" >Dm: "Dude quit trying to metagame." >Cant cast spells that entire fight and am taken down in 3 turns. >Party is taken down and all my shit is taken. >Get yelled at by other player for talking back to dm.
@@anticorrupcao5631 even if your character didn't recognize the spell as silence, literally anything that would normally make noise not making noise will alert you that something is off. Like when the barbarian starts charging in a rage, but without noise, you clearly know something is up.
it's this kind of situational stuff that makes sorcerer awesome and unique. people get to uppity about rules lawyer bs. sometimes people are just ignorant of how a class works and if you don't correct it you might as well be a commoner
There's really no fairness between dm and players since the dm holds all the cards. That's why you DON'T want a petulent manchild as a DM. As a DM you can, at worst, begin punishing players' over reliance on something. My players just keep ganging up on the doors, and I can't really stop that. What I can do, is have the noise draw monsters to them. Problem solved
@sum body I don't think thats what he meant. As there are multiple gods that can be actually proven in d&d, just because he adopts his duties for another god, doesn't mean he no longer believes in or has a desire to serve another God. That being said, when a player who worships a gods starts worshiping another god of opposite beliefs, such as worshiping Tyr and Bhaal for example, thats when they would start having penalties to their magic abilities.
@sum body A new deity every level, but he keeps all previous deities. I mean, he didn't really specify so its up to interpretation, but I read it as worshiping multiple gods.
@@thorn249 eh. Because its just worshiping the whole pantheon. The only problem I'd ever have with it would be if they have gods that are at odds with one another. But even then I'd play his gods against one another in minor ways so that he has conflicts to either resolve or let fester.
Bro the one dm I had was like this, we were freinds for a bit and he succckkkssss at being dm, i offered to do it once because I enjoy describing scenes and things but when ever I would dm or someone else he’d complain and blah blah blah… yeah it kinda sucked really turned me away from dnd and we didn’t even do dnd it was less involved because he “didn’t understand or like the rules”
This happens to me a lot as a player. It’s a DM vs Player mentality thing. For instance: We found out a bunch of people in Orlane were brainwashed… so the party split up to start rounding them up. I went to the barracks at night and snuck in trying to NON LETHALLY knock out all of the guardsman while they slept one by one. I reasoned I should be able to do this seeing as I could dish out the necessary damage, and with Pass Without Trace I had a 27 stealth roll. Eventually I convinced the DM of my argument but in the process I was called every awful thing you can call a D&D player. “You’re a that guy” “You’re a rules lawyer” “You’re a murder hobo” etc
As the forever DM this happens to me a lot. The party was raiding the base of a violent street gang. I planned for the leader to escape through a secret tunnel into the sewers and continue to cause problems for the party. The party decided to kidnap one of the guards, disguise self the sorcerer to look like him, attack the base and have the sorcerer sneak in during the confusion and follow him through the escape tunnel. Because of a backstory thing of the sorcerer being a criminal being redeemed the party could track him. Then they found the leader, and captured him. I had to completely remake my plans for the next three sessions because of this, but god damn did the players love it. 100% worth it.
Jacob: If you have trouble throwing traps at your players because they're way to smart. Me to player: You see a pressure plate on the floor. Player: I step on it. Me: OK then...
Me as a Rogue: Lockpick Kit Barbarian: I kick down the door. Fails strength check and damages hand. Ranger: I shoot the door, breaks arrow. Other Barbarian: I throw the gnome though the door. DM: OKAAAAY, so you said you wanted to Lockpick?
@@Endershock1678 Oml, yes. Absolutely this. An exchange from my group: DM: "While searching the cave you're exploring, you find what looks like a string 3 inches above the ground." Pc1: "How should we get over this?" PC2: "I try to yeet PC1 over the tripwire." PC1: "What? No! I try to test PC2 over the wire!" DM: "You guys could take damage for recklessly trying to shot-put each other." (PC1 and PC3 bickering over who gets thrown over.) Me: "Can I inspect the wire further?" DM: "Yep. On closer inspection, it is a small spider web spanning the width of the cave." Me: "Can I cut the web with my sword?" DM: "Sure." (Cuts web) DM: "HEY, LOOK! THE WEB IS GONE!
@@neog8029 I guess here's the full story with mine, and I messed up some details so I'm correcting those real quick. I've played as a Rogue with massive lockpicking proficiency (I have Expertise in it and a Dex Modifier of +5), and we got a Barbarian and Monk trying to break it down (it had a DC strength check of 20), a Paladin who really wanted to screw us all over with Thunderous Smite (lawful good btw), which, funny story, once awakened a Terrasque and got the party (I wasn't in this one) killed, and a Ranger who wanted to shoot the door and then Yeet our gnome through the door, all of this while the Bard was ready to help with both the others and me with Bardic Inspiration, and I was just sitting there watching these idiots while the two other competent people (a cyborg warlock and sorcerer gnome) in our party kept suggesting the Rogue (me) pick the lock. And this night, we were all rolling super low for some reason, so this entire interaction gave us two critical failures and caused two people to take damage as well as wasting a Bardic Inspiration. It was fun.
roll perception to figure out if the room is trapped it is but you don't know where the traps are... I just imagine they notice a sign on the far wall that reads "this room is trapped"
Realistically it could just be noticing where some of the traps are, but the ribbon not identifying any of the triggers. Like noticing some small holes in a wall or the ceiling, but if the traps are pressure plate triggered, and they are perfectly level with the rest of the floor, the ribbon wouldn't change elevation to identify any of the pressure plates. Or maybe it just didn't land on any.
Someone cast find traps lol "yup theres traps in this room. Some will spike ya, some will squish ya, one turns you into a kitty cat, in a barrel of acid." So where are they? NO no no, you just sense the presence of these traps...read the spell that's literally what it does. I hate that spell.
That angel of self-harm story I feel it would have actually been a really cool event wholesale if the DM wasn't a wuss about it and accepted "screw you" as an actual answer, instigating a quest to find whatever's causing the creepy vision and curse and destroy it. It could have become some sort of personal nemesis for the human fighter character, giving him some development without forcing a different playstyle on him.
Heriarka Alternatively, allowing him to wake up the other players in order to have a chance at defeating a Solar (a CR 21 creature), and thus have enough XP among those who survive to defeat the main campaign enemies.
@@evannibbe9375 A little bit of a pipe dream with the whole CR 21 creature (most parties don't get to the level to fight one of those lol) but a good idea nonetheless.
@@kooldudematt1 Wrong, and good job liking your own reply. What was witnessed in that story was railroading and calling it anything else is both insane and inaccurate. If the player doesn't want to roleplay it or be forced into a different playstyle or have their class changed, they shouldn't have to. It's only wrong and fun-ruining to force something on someone anyways, not to mention killing their character because they said no.
@@failtronic2646 _It is metagaming _*_by definition_*_ to allow your thoughts as a player about the overall state of the game to interfere with your characters' journeys within it._ When you sit down at session 0 to a campaign it is _always_ made abundantly clear that _you. Are. In. The. Dungeon. Master's. World. He. Is. "God". Here._ There are a figuratively infinite number of ways to deal with the situation that was mentioned in the video and we both know it (well, assuming you have any sort of RPG experience). With regards to being _IN CHARACTER_ it is damn near impossible to logically explain (as a player) how it is that your little PC is somehow totally immune to the presence of a deity. That shows a complete and total disregard for the game itself. Look throughout REAL WORLD HISTORICAL TEXTS about what happens when _anyone_ meets a deity or some otherworldly power that they previously did not believe in or did not have knowledge of. TERROR. FEAR. RESPECT. and COWERING are the results in 99.9% of all cases. If for SOME reason your character is able to shrug this type of encounter off as no big deal then you had better have a _DAMNED GOOD_ backstory inclusion about why. Forcing someone to multiclass is nigh impossible to do within the confines of the rules (yeah, as the DM you could technically say in session 0 "no, you're not playing 'x' as only the following 'a, b, c…' will be allowed in this campaign" but that is a different scenario entirely). The problem is that the player simply _LET_ it happen. D&D is not a "safe" game for your characters. Weird shit happens at the DM's (and RNG's) discretion. Divine encounters in D&D don't just randomly make someone a paladin. That is _one possible outcome_ but you will not get _any_ [good] possible outcome if you simply roll over in character and let fate have its way with you. If I was the DM in that campaign (well, first of all the player would not have died but let's just assume they did for argument's sake), the player could still play that character _after death_ in an effort to get their body back and it would even open up a path to having that deity as an endgame BBEG whom that player's character could eventually enact vengeance upon for what they did to them. It's pure ridiculousness to just blame the DM for pushing a story point. Straight up _DO NOT PLAY RPG GAMES IF YOU REFUSE TO LISTEN TO THE GAME MASTER. IT LITERALLY GETS PLAYERS KICKED FROM TABLES. DO NOT BE A FOOL AND FOLLOW THE RULES._
I can't stress enough how important it is to cast away the "Player Vs. DM" mindset as early as possible. It's one of the reasons I never started playing D&D, but soon realized, through my girlfriend, that Player and DM are a team. DM's usually want you to win as much as you do. Fun DM's will occasionally use their screens to cheat FOR you, even.
The first and most important use of the DM's screens is actually to allow him/her to cheat on the dice to balance the party, most of the time in favour of the players (if in defavour it's usually to create more challenge so more fun).
one campaign where my brother was the DM, my sorcerer ass for reasons I can't even remember decided to check if a dragon was still near our inn by peeking his head out. Cue breath attack to the face & barely surviving because my brother was nice & cheated the already nerfed dragon stats to use that as a warning shot.
Unless your group enjoys DM vs. Players! Honestly sometimes it can be really fun to have a DM that desperately wants to stop you from doing shenanigans and is totally failing lol
Exactly rules are good guidelines to help as long as they dont hinder the party to the point where its funner to play without the more restrictive ones, like how a lot of games dont care to much about item dimensions, but still use carrying capacity to still give them freedom, and instead of the main worry be spacial dimensions, its basic math that can be remedied by having like a mule or something, same with food just as the dm either create a character with the outlander background, or encourage a player to do it, and dont be picky about food/ fresh water unless your basically in a wasteland/desert.
"Stop being pedantic it's about fun." "I agree, and it's not fun for my spell to not do one of the things it _specifically says it's supposed to do_ just because you felt like it."
The story with the traps be like: "I check the bus schedule." "Okay. The bus schedule says 'there are buses.'" "When are the buses coming?" "You don't know."
okay in reference to jake's comment about creative solutions; i usually throw a trap into a dungeon that is almost guaranteed to hit an unaware character. the story: our half-orc fighter, wood elf druid, and shifter barbarian are checking out a dungeon, entering the puzzle room section. fighter figures out the pressure plate puzzle's solution, then enters a new room-- Bang, gets hit with an acid coated dart. the other party members start looking for other traps in the room. druid sees holes in next room, decides to wild shape into spider, and trigger the traps and dodging the darts. manages to avoid a gout of flame trap with a nat 20. i let the flame trap go off without any harm to spoder-druid. druid procedes to disarm everything else in the puzzle maze. i was proud of the druid's rolls and idea, so i give her inspiration. combat rolls up and barbar gets inspiration. then the countdown room (think lost) swings by and fighter gets brilliant idea to let the counter go off. inspiration. my players all got inspiration from amazing plays. they were 6th level and used a sphere of annihilation to decimate a neothilid worm as they ran away in the same session. if they didn't get inspiration prior they all would have gotten it from the sphere of annihilation trap they used on that bastard.
For real, that DM sounds like someone who is completely uncreative and didn't have backups ready to "wear the party down" when they inevitably outsmarted him, so he just forced them to get hit with the traps. Your players aren't going to want to play if all they're doing is rolling dice for zero reason, just so you can tell a linear story where player agency has no meaning.
The GM made my neutral Druid evil through head trauma so I spent every session killing, plotting, and using magic to give the towns and cities back to nature. The rest of the players tried to stop me and after six towns and two cities he was be headed in front of his mushroom army. This was my murder hobo story but, it was very controlled and with general agreement from the group that it was ok for me to be the main villain
No D&D is better than bad D&D. Trust me, i learned this the hard way. My first ever group was a very toxic 3.5 game. Ill spare the whole story for now, but it involves someone yelling at me for being new and "not playing my character correctly", the pcs threatining to kill my pc if i don't do something obviously dangerous, and then the dm calling me stupid for doing so. The group peer pressuring me into playing classes i didn't want to play. Also, i found out one year later that the of the players bullied someone as a revenge plan. That person commits suicide because of the bullying. Edit: things are MUCH better now ever since i moved past that one game. I've been palying 5e for about 5 years at this point
Those people sound more like sociopaths and probably only played due to a desire to live out fantasies of control and violence. It’s people like that who give the nut job moral panic bitches ammo
I had one of the PC's in my group assassinate my character because he could not kill anyone else anywhere to become an assassin... And the DM was like. Sure that's fair.
Damn! Those people are absolute pure jerks! The dm agreeing with them makes everything worse! I swear that people like this peer pressure some people so badly that they forget what d and d is about! Having FUN! Not bullying a newbie who’s just gotten into the hobby! Fuck them
The deception one could’ve been cool if the person said “that was an impressive lie, but we knew who you were shortly after you stepped foot inside the city”
Eh accept he rolled a 32 so the guy would then question his intelligence gathering officers about why they got his name wrong. With a 32 you could convince your own mother that your name is not what she thinks it is.
@@NinjaSushi2 not in my table, but you do you. Context: even if i would make the player roll, it would be pointless, since the thieves guild literally has eyes everywhere, this would just be a "test"
You shouldn't ask for a roll if you already planned the outcome. Some things are just not possible no matter how skilled you are. "I roll persuasion to get the mayor to give me their house and title. I rolled a 30" That's not gonna fly. A better outcome would have been to allow them to tell the lie without a roll. If the guild already knew who the player was, they could have went along with the lie to make the PC think that they succeeded with the deception to add drama to the reveal later. Or have the guild member cut them off mid-sentence with something like "yeah sure protect your identity and all that, but give us some credit. We didn't get this big without learning who else was playing the game. We've had eyes on you since you got here" (reveal some random dude stepping out of the masses and waving before fading back into the crowd)
"Make a Deception check." 32. "He easily sees through your lie and calls you by name." .... "And in local news, a man was found dead in his basement, with a bag of dice and a DM screen lodged in his rectum."
See, this could be a fantastic bluff, with the guard saying something like "Oh, I'm sorry, you look just like someone else I know. Do you have a twin?" to basically tell them that if they don't have more creative thinking, they'll still be recognized inside the hideout.
1 thing about the deception roll: even if they know you, lying as a pro will still somewhat earn you thieves' respect. Doing bad lying however might have negative consequences.
An interesting twist to create paranoia. Roll deception "Ok, got a 30 (or whatever) Now roll perception "Ok, got a 15" "The representative seems to accept your story." !!!!!!!!
@@zacherytobin6434 Sure, but I take the DM guide for DC difficulty (30 being "near impossible") as my guide. For myself, my "roll a nat 20 moments" pop up when I've set a DC and the character can't possibly make the DC due to negative bonuses, penalties, etc.. I feel like if my players roll anything over a 30, it's successful. Easily, the DM could've written a note in a moment of silence after that interaction and said, "He slowly nods" and resume the conversation, all the while having that seed mistrust - or possibly even respect - for that PC within the guild because the guy he has just lied to already knows the PC's real name. So it was a success and the player gets the satisfaction of rolling over a 30, but also circumstances arise because he expertly lied to people that already know his name.
Honestly i wouldnt call for a roll, if you, someone i dont know, tell me your name is John Deeandee for all I fucking know it might as well be, thats the point of a name. However; as a GM make a note of the name they give and if they slip up give them full consequences.
I once nuked an entire cult and their hostages before they could escape through a portal with a magic arrow and I'm still the most moral and good aligned player at my table
Paul Roig I DM’ed a home brew campaign where the party was supposed to defuse a magical nuke, but instead they opted to trigger it before it was teleported to the material plane, saving the world and taking a chunk out of the Feywild. They all died of course, but it was the finale and everyone had a blast.
@@paulroig469 I mean, it wasn't literally a nuke, but a 60ft sphere explosion of radiant damage, the hostages were mages and the big bad's wife was taking them to do lord knows what in Shadowfell while we slaughtered him and his knights/mercs. We've had players come and go but have a 'main three cast', one of whom doesn't like to make huge decisions, but will do dirty work for good or bad decisions either way. The other, started off as a slightly sex mad halfling who would seduce anything that moved until he got an STD (which he recovered from), now he's a power/science mad cleric who will kill anything who opposes him, or kill for 'science'. For instance, when we defeated an entire company of Kobold mercs, we discovered they had haphazardly placed a hatchery next to the main gate, I suggested taking the eggs back to a village they devastated, so that the young could be raised in a safe place and help the populace return to normal faster, this guy wanted to throw them into the shadowfell to see what happened. He managed to steal one of the 9 hatchlings, throwing it in, it died, but then he brought it back out of some 'remorse'... Let's just say he's trying(?) to be a better guy since he got a wife and his adopted kobold experiment... But now we have a conundrum where after killing the Big Bad, we've secured a godkiller weapon, he and another player want to keep it for ourselves, while I and another want to "cast it into the fire, destroy it". We aren't purely bad, but sometimes the campaign calls for really hard choices, and I have to wrangle everyone from going the crazy route with our halfling friend and then talk him off the ledge... But this problem might end with our group yeeting each other into lava depending... My personal best moment was single handedly stopping a major war between two kingdoms, compared to his worst moment, demanding we keep a portal door to the shadowfell, bring it into a major city, then the Big Bad uses it to lay waste to the city and we get blamed.
Honestly, this is a fairly "Lawful Good Paladin Done Right" moment, where you chose the good of the many over the safety of the few. If the cult was allowed to get away, they likely would have caused more casualties than you had by killing all that were there. If you WERE a paladin or cleric of Lawful Good, that's the kind of act that I'd state your character may get a few nightmares over before their god told them they were correct to act as they did and give you a boon for being willing to make that choice so someone else didn't have to.
It sounds like OP #1 already made their human fighter interesting. I could tell by the way that they wrote that he was a fun character, and I woulda loved to have him in my game. Shame the DM couldn't see that.
Gee, I wonder how someone could actually think, "I'm going to play a collaborative storytelling game with my friends. You know what those friends really would think is cool and would make them want to keep playing? For me to commit sex crimes against them."
DnD Horror Stories: DM'd a session where my party slammed a Roc's head into a stun warded door at level 6. This happened repetitively till they permanently blinded, clipped, and murdered it. This was my own fault. They leveled up.
Once upon a time, I was in a D&D game which was a homebrew version of the Rise of Tiamat campaign. 3 sessions in, we were in a temple and was asked by a wizard to take one of the eggs of Tiamat to a safe place. The players were set upon by a group of cultists and Kobolds. So, we received the egg, dealt with the cultists and kobolds, then escaped through some tunnels. We made it out safe, everyone is okay, and then the start of the next session, we start discussing the egg, and the DM tells us 'you don't know where the egg is'. And we as a group collectively thought 'we must've gotten pickpocketed or dropped it', so we retraced our steps. And retraced. And retraced. This went on for nearly 5 hours. Ultimately, we got fed up with the DM and demanded him tell us what happened to the egg that we KNEW we had taken off the wizard. And because we explored absolutely EVERY option we could. After 5 hours of this, we were all pissed. Except one player. It was revealed, that this ENTIRE TIME, this player and the DM had been in cahoots, and the player's character had been 'hiding' the egg from everyone. The DM literally railroaded us into not finding the egg for the s**ts and gigs of a joke that wasted 5 hours of player's time. I didn't finish the session which had about an hour left, I just left it. I have a sense of humour, I can appreciate a good D&D prank, but this was a deliberate and sadistic waste of 5 players time.
Wow, what the fuck. I can respect the idea, but 5 hours of that is at _least_ 4 hours and 30 minutes too long to let it go on. DM should've thrown you a bone after the first half hour at _most._
reminds me of a story i saw in a different video: the party has been hired to help with a peace treaty with a band of orcs. part of the treaty involved giving the orc leader a fancy jeweled dagger. the Paladin player took several precautions to prevent the party Thief from stealing it, including storing it inside his armor. BUT...when they arrive at the orc camp and start negotiations, the dagger is gone. SOMEHOW, the thief stole it, without even ROLLING for it, with the DM's help. the orcs become enraged, and are about to kill the entire party, INCLUDING the thief... the Paladin manages to buy some time with a good Diplomacy roll, and demands that the thief return the dagger. the thief refuses, which makes no sense, since he already has several better weapons. so then the Paladin says, "i attack the thief." the thief player looks nervous, and the DM blurts out, "you're a lawful good Paladin, you CAN'T attack your own teammate!" so, the Paladin player picked up his stuff and immediately walked out without another word. and the rest of the players (except the thief) did the same.
@@ericb3157 Oh gods. Somehow this "lawful stupid" meme just refuses to die. Did somebody at least tell the DM that attacking (arresting) a thief that is about to rekindle a war is 1. good 2. lawful and third: sensible. And even if it wasn't alignments are not ironclad fae contracts, it should never restrict player agency. (Although that agency may change the alignment, with corresponding consequences)
About rewarding your players for smart ways to get past traps, in a recent session I did just that. There was a 80ft long room, and every 10 feet there was a pressure plate that released a puff of gas from the nearest wall when stepped on. Fighter just runs across room, lots of damage but not downed. Everyone else followed suit, except for the bard. He was thinking. He asked how wide the holes where, and I said there was one every 10 feet that was about the size of a fist. He grabbed a rock with mage hand, plugged the first hole, and stepped on the pressure plate. No damage. He did this for the entire length of the room, and got across completely unharmed, while everyone else needed a short rest to patch up their wounds.
Thanks for that content warning!! I'm not sensitive to that stuff, but I was at the table eating dinner with my kids at the time. Got to pause it and watch the rest afterwards without any awkward ass explanations that I wasn't expecting to do at the dinner table haha cheers!
Hey Jacob or the editor, I just wanted to thank you for the content warning. It means alot and I just wanted to make sure you knew that it was appreciated!
I am not too sensitive about that, but I obviously see it is some fecked up shite. My sister and niece were both touched by some gross demonic bastard when they were kids, so I understand how it feels like for people who are sensitive about rape to hear jokes about something that can't be joked about. I also appreciated that they warned everyone about the topic.
Worst D and D group I have been in is when I was playing one of my first game. I played as a rogue monk and was always in the back as the druid was the group leader and the person in charge as a shapeshifter with the third member as a fighter. We played a few session before the DM who I was friends with IRL told me that I should be more interactive and be more creative. I have social anxiety and did not know my other players that well but I enjoy roleplaying so I took his advice and became more creative and started to take point in combat and started being creative and going first. I then got yelled at for doing stupid stuff every time if the party's plan failed as they all blamed me, including the DM for things going wrong even when I was not the one coming up with the plan I went back to taking the rear and letting them plan and got yelled at again for not engaging in conversation again by the DM. I told him how I felt and I left stopped playing. I have not talked to the DM since even though we were good friends IRL since.
You’d think a roll like that would make the thieves guild guy actually question if they knew their name. Like even if it was an old childhood friend maybe a lie that good would make them second guess themselves and wonder if you’re just a look-alike or even a Döppleganger.
Yeah, well if someone already knew his name/who he was, then it'd be impossible to pass yourself off as someone else to that person, and therefore, the member would still know who he was.
30+ is _almost_ impossible. So it only works if bluffing gods is _supposed_ to be possible. If it is, and you pull off, that's rad as fuck and should be allowed to happen.
The DM in that game called for a roll when they shouldn't have. Yes, a 32 is stupidly high. However, if they already knew who the player was, they would know how good of a liar they are and would likely be predisposed to disbelieve anything that they said. In this instance the proper thing would be to not call for a roll because success is impossible and allowing them to roll and fail with a 32 just leads to bad feels and metagaming. The only reason I would ask for a roll in a situation like this was if I knew the player would normally succeed if not for the special circumstance. That way the player knows something is amiss because they're positive they didn't screw up the deception attempt.
The first guy could have given the “generic” character another option. Like, how does he avoid following the angel? How does the party get the angel to leave him alone? That could be a plot hook. It could be interesting, and spice him up while also playing the character he wants.
4:39 that's literally what happened to my first character, although the dm didn't care about my domain I just accidentally prayed to Odin instead of pelor and started a God war. Started as a life cleric died as a war cleric with lycanthropy.
reminds me of a fan-story where someone actually tried to negotiate with the Living Gazebo... NAT 20. her first good roll of the game! the Gazebo actually joined the party and stayed with them until the BBEG "killed" it with a "dispel magic" that turned it onto an ordinary gazebo.
Talking about attempting rape, I had to deal with that on my first time dming for anyone outside my family. It was all new people, we met through Facebook and they seemed cool enough. The person I want to talk about was playing a wizard and he was a murder hobo, which always ended on him nearly dying since he had a really shitty HP pool. I had my issues with him and I spoke to the party because I wanted to kick him out, he was disruptive and annoying (both as a character and irl), but the rest of the party out voted me, so I gave him a second and third chance. On that third, however, what he did shocked all of us. First of all, he had hinted up to this point he was an "incell" (which I didn't know the meaning of until after this happened). That aside, the party was fighting the redbrand ruffians at their hideout and one of them fell prone with his ass up (i did it for comedic purposes), which he seemed to take particular interest in. On his turn he asked me if he could move up to the prone ruffian, I counted the squares and he had 5 ft to spare, so I said yes. He then declared he was going to pull the guy's pants down and rape him. I said no, obviously, fuck no, but he started arguing that he wanted to, so the whole party jumped in to defuse the situation. In the end I kicked him out, but I couldn't believe it.
Yeah that is not ok. That kind of shit needs to be ‘okayed’ by everyone before the opportunity arises. Even if just one person is absolutely not ok about the idea of RAPE as a joke or otherwise in the game, then that’s it, it ain’t happening. That shouldn’t even be a majority vote. Glad you booted his sorry ass
For the first story. Make an EVEN more generic character for the same game. Make it a paladin. But play them as the most boring, lawful stupid character in existence
I played with a group that said that my Half-Elf Thief was useless, because I chose to focus on having high skills, instead of combat. I play Shadowrun now.
There's a lot of Dex based skills, how was your character not at least decent in combat? Did they just get mad at you for not taking combat focused feats as you leveled up? Fault on them. If you just refused to attack, even with a ranged weapon, than the fault may have been on you. If you want to play a technical pacifist, make sure you're a class that can do something else useful when their turn comes up in battle.
in pathfinder, one of my players is a spy, non combat oriented, and gets by by having ranged disarm reactions, and a feat that lets you not only use slight of hand instead of disarm (which is usually an attack) but also run up and take whatever was stolen (subverting any restrictions like say having their hands full) so he literally just steals every enemies weapons and just kerps doing diplomacy lmao. not a strict non combat build (im a big fan of non combat games) but it is so effective because it just takes all the combat and tells it to be quiet while the adults are role playing lol
I remember having the Bard's Handbook (AD&D 2ndE), and the general consensus was that all the kits (oldschool subclasses) were garbage except for the single one that could give a +1 to attack. And I was like: but skalds are cool *storywise!* Anyway, I like the balanced mix 5E has going on with most classes. You can go either way and never be totally useless.
"I hate when a DM makes you have to roll for everything." Some of my best games ever of fun and hilarious situations, used that house rule. Example: Paladin, opens door, failed. The Paladin takes the handle of the door, and swings it open, and with his 18/92 str, the massive force shatters the door, sending splinters and pieces of the door flying! The Paladin has to do a Con save. Rolls a Nat1, unlucky for the Paladin, one of the Splinters of the door, flies and pierces his eye, roll damage 1d2. The Paladin takes 2 damage, and lost sight in his Right eye. This Paladin, was played by Me, his name was Rolf Akimir, this was a 2e game, so not pathfinder stuff. The game had many hilarious situations that had lasting impact. It is how you use it, that determines how fun, or how frustrating it can be.
I agree! In the very first game I ran for 5e, our low intelligence monk went to try a locked tavern door. Jiggled the handle, nothing happened, so he tried to kick the door. I asked him to roll what I intended to be a strength check against the door, and he rolled a nat 1 and stubbed his big toe, taking a couple hitpoints in damage! The whole table had a good laugh over that and we've had many other laughs like it. It's definitely all in how you use it.
@@NoriMori1992 What is said, is that it sucks no matter how it is played out, if the DM asks you to roll for things that you normally don't roll for, then it sucks. That is literally their stance, I literally came with a counter argument for this. And by Session 0 you should already know what Rules the DM has, if you don't like it, then why are you in it? And the example they have, has very little context. Like what if the Thieves guild has kept track on them, maybe they have spied on you (Which is literally a thing they do), what if the person he speaks too is an old acquaintance? So lets make a scenario; A level 15 Bard, dresses up and uses minor illusion to make himself look like a Noble. And when he goes to speak to the Royal Guard Captain of the city, to get some information, the DM asks to roll for Deception. Unknown to the Player, the Noble he disguised himself at, has turned up dead, the Royal Guard Captain knows this, because he has literally seen the corpse himself. So no matter how high the bard rolls for Deception, the Royal Guard Captain *will* see through it, because he knows the guy standing in front of him, is dead, and someone is guised as him. So what do we learn from this context? Context matters. It is like when a player has disguised themselves as the guard captain, or officer, and then runs into them. No matter what you roll for deception, they know you are not a mirror and that you are not them. So into the slammer you go.
Similar thing in one of my games. Shot at a glass statue as a "f you" kind of thing, and my DM made me roll for damage. "Weird," I thought. Turns out, with the highass damage I rolled, shards of glass flew in all directions and everyone in the party had to make a Dex saving throw to avoid damage. Funniest shit man.
Dm: is there to create a story for the players to overcome, but not too easy nor not too hard Player: is meant to be there to help other players and be helped by other players to overcome a challenge
It's kinda long, and probably not as interesting as the ones in the video, but I've got a story to share: > Very first time playing D&D ever. We're doing 3.5e, which in hindsight, is not great for people new to TTRPGs. > I have two characters ready, a Neutral Good half-elf ranger and a Lawful Evil tiefling fighter (supposed to be a blackguard/anti-paladin, but I didn't know those existed yet, so I settled for fighter). > Consult DM on which character would be better for the campaign. She tells me to play the tiefling fighter because it'll be "interesting". > Fast-forward to first session. > There is another DM that I didn't know about. This barely matters, because the second DM ends up being the only one for all but two of the sessions anyway. > Almost the entire party is Chaotic Good. I can already tell that playing a Lawful Evil character with this party won't go well. > Beginning of the story is full of events where my character either gets hurt or has to leave the area because of blinding, holy light. I accept this because I'm playing what, as far as I'm concerned, is a literal demon, so at the time I think this makes sense. > 2nd session ends with my character and another party member being ambushed by *35 Lv1 kenkus* because the 2nd DM kept ignoring us and wanted to punish us for "not paying attention to the game". The DM fudges the rolls super hard to make us lose the fight. > 3rd session begins with our characters being stripped of their gear and sold into slavery. Nobody else in the party realizes we're gone. > This is the beginning of where the campaign really falls apart, because the DMs decided their GMPCs mattered more than us. > One of the GMPCs appears from nowhere and single-handedly saves my character and the other kidnapped party member, repeatedly calling us idiots the entire time. We later reunite with the party by sheer coincidence. > 4th session begins with half the party waking up to being torn apart by fiends. We try to fight back, but are severely outmatched, and lose pretty badly. > I should mention that, before the campaign started, the DM told us that it'll be a beginner-friendly game and "nobody will die". > This turns out to be either an illusion or shared dream, and has no importance to the later story whatsoever. > Campaign continues for several sessions with most events just being the party having to run away from kaijus that the GPMCs are able to fend off single-handedly. > Final session begins with a literal god of evil approaching the party and demanding they kill me. He also rips off my right arm, so I can't use my greatsword anymore. > By this point, I've long since caught on to the fact that the DMs didn't like either me or just my character, and wanted him dead. > Play along and make up some BS about how I was a double agent, waiting for the right time to kill everyone and steal their stuff to give my god an advantage in a Ragnarok-esque war. > Half-heartedly PvP the other players and lose even more badly than I normally would have, because I'm reduced to using a broken bastard sword with my left arm. > Party wins, takes my stuff, god of evil vanishes, everyone moves on like nothing happened. > Around 2/3rds through the session, party fights some slavers and releases their captives. > DM casually asks me to reveal my next character. Suspect they didn't expect me to have more than one prepared. Joke's on them, I made a replacement after the 3rd session. > Dual-wielding Chaotic Good human barbarian. Trying to leave my "greatsword and plate armor" comfort zone a little, but don't really know what I'm doing. > Reveal that my character is the adopted brother of the dwarf cleric, exposit other small bits of backstory to justify this. > DM actually kind of likes my character because it reminds him of his favourite game. Players like him because of the mental image of a human who grew up thinking he was just a really tall dwarf. > Party rests at nearby town. One of the other players, a dragonborn fighter who got a divine sword that my tiefling character was openly jealous of, goes to a shop. > The player never really took the game very seriously, would pretty much go along with anything he thought was funny. > Lightbulb moment. Say that the ghost of my tiefling character is haunting the dragonborn, and he hears his voice in his head constantly, like an almost literal shoulder devil. > Dragonborn player thinks this is hilarious and makes it canon. > The game eventually ends on an underwhelming cliffhanger, and the DMs never hold another session with this group again.
I wish there had been more to this campaign. Glad you stuck it through instead of bailing when you realized they wanted your Tiefling gone. Nicely written, too.
@@DeetotheDubs Looking back, I think I might not have stayed interested in D&D if I didn't see it through to the end, so I'm glad I took it all in stride at the time, despite gradually realizing that it wasn't a very good way to play the game.
@@TheHellspawnHero I know this is a late comment but did you get better experiences after that? I hate it when people hate D&D because of one bad experience.
@@christianholbrook2686 Oh yeah, definitely. A couple months later, I moved onto a new group DM'd by one of the other players in my first group, who was a lot more okay with letting the players play basically whoever you want, as long as you weren't outright disruptive, annoying, etc. Technically, we mostly played Pathfinder (though we've done a handful of 5e one-offs and a campaign that ended with a TPK only three sessions in, which was mostly my fault), and we didn't actually finish that many campaigns because our then-regular DM tends to get fixated on new campaign ideas and often wanted to do them right away instead of finishing what we were still in the middle of, but overall, it'd been a much more pleasant experience not having to deal with anyone acting like they secretly hate someone. Even if my first experience with tabletop RPGs was a poor one, I'm still grateful it happened, since I don't think I'd have gotten into D&D if I weren't there.
Bad DM: "It's about fun so stop being a rules lawyer!" Response: "I'm trying to have fun by using my abilities and you're ruining it by ignoring them. You're a sad excuse for a DM. I'm leaving."
I accidentally walked out on a bad DM about three or four years ago citing work obligations. It was technically true, but the work obligations didn't last the twelve months I was expecting them to (in that they found somebody else to work Tuesday nights to cover that person's maternity leave and I just got the extra hours elsewhere.) I'm told he was seething pretty hard when I showed back up at the same club six weeks later playing different stuff with somebody else there I'd befriended in the meantime, and harder still when I showed up the week of Halloween dressed as my character for the other guy's table.
@@Dragonmoon98 Honestly I'd argue it's not the best response. Absolutely better than not doing anything, but I'd go with a much softer one at first and try to convince them to improve rather than come out of the gate with "I'm leaving". Plus, adding an insult makes it more likely that the person you're talking to will just get defensive and end up basically ignoring the feedback entirely. Now if they *don't* improve and aren't receptive at all, THAT'S when you pull out the "I'm leaving".
Earlier this year, our GM made the king of a nation essentially be untouchable and hold an annual tournament to try and hit him. Fighter rolled a nat 20, spent superiority die and was blessed.. total 37 to hit.. MISS
If you want to make someone hard to hit, things like blur and displacement with a moderately high AC. Add Percentile miss chance to the mix, instead of bending the rules to your story
As a minigame that's actually not a bad idea though. Give some dude an AC of 35 and see if the players can stock up on bonuses until they hit him, then win a prize. I might use that :p
my horror story: "ok, we found this super rare egg. who carries it?" "i think is should!" "Oh Oh, Me Me Me" My Character being ignored: "uuhh i got floating disc... mage hands... unseen servant... i can hold things guys..." "ok ok, i think i know who should hold it... THE TINY HALFLING MONK WHO LITERALLY ALMOST GOT US KILLED A MINUTE AGO!!!"
Am I the only DM who revels in the moment the players foil my plans? Like I love that they are being creative and engaging with my adventure! I feel validated whenever someone cares enough about our game to put extra effort into their actions!
At least that makes sense. It's a background, meaning that's how they were raised. That still technically have the skills learned, and maybe the know some informants or how to duck and weave through cities. They just reformed after learning all of that.
"Hey, you're alignment is lawful good, you can't spare that (quarter blood) vampire 's life because vampires are evil". For context, my character was a divine soul sorcerer. Mother dearest is a goddess of healing and I'm a pacifist and try my best to help people around me. Unless they are say... Zombies and skeletons and don't really have the ability to form thought, I will try not to kill them, with few exceptions. I found a quarter blood vampire with with most of her limbs sliced off and bleeding out on a table, so I panic casted cure wounds on her and was essentially trying to protect her, since she looked like she was suffering and my caring nature couldn't leave her alone, and for some reason, half the party didn't understand that "Lawful Good" doesn't mean "Slay all 'Evil' beings". And what makes this so much worse is that she is only 1/4th vampire and at this point has committed no evil deeds... WE HAVE A HALF ORC IN OUR PARTY! He was the one most willing to kill her because she was 1/4th vampire, because he didn't trust someone who is part monster. Long story short, I stayed with her for a long rest (partially to protect her, partially because I was out of spell slots and Sorcery Points. They fought a construct, rogue got downed, I had to heal them, and then we went into the lady fight. I left the vampire girl in the room I found her, but tied the door and left my familiar in it (so I didn't have my familiar for the lady fight). Afterwards, we all talked it out and agreed I was in the right, and wrote a new set of table rules so this doesn't happen again.
@@nebs6888 I mean, if the DM has problems with the magic system because they are rather new as a DM they can always communicate to the players before the adventure that it would be cool if they wouldn't necessarily pick heavy spell casters until the DM got into the system. That's at least how a good role playing group would handle it.
I like the name "Concept Police" for these kinds of DMs. They punish players for playing a character concept they personally don't like. Sometimes they even entirely ban races and classes from every game they run because some annoying player from years ago soured them to it. When you invite players into your game, it stops being "your" game. It's theirs too. Back off.
I used Find Familiar, since I prefer that. At least I would, but we have a Goliath and Dragonborn who has a penchant for running in headfirst. And yet somehow, I'm the one who dies the most because all crits land on me.
I have been DMing for about 16 years now and I have never had a truly horrible game experience however I have noticed I have caused problems in the past. > A Player has a pet bunny that is precious to her > I want to make a dramatic moment > I have her wake up to find her bunny has been killed, mutilated, and become posssessed by an evil spirit > Player is forced to kill her precious bunny >I think that was swell storytelling > Later find out that my player (which we were both 12 at the time) went home and cried over her rabbit. > I try and tell her she's just being ridiculous and that she's just trying to make me feel bad. Frankly I feel like all of these stories have a common denominator. A lack of respect for the other people in the group. In my case I like to hide behind the fact I was 12 at the time and "didn't know better" but frankly I did. I wanted a knee jerk reaction out of my players and doing that was plucking low hanging fruit. To this day that player has never lived that down (not because I took away her bunny but because it deeply hurt her... and I didn't it completely flippantly and then tried to make her look like she was somehow being mean to me for trying to make me feel bad)... a few years back I invoked that storyline again by introducing the spirit of the rabbit as a patron saint of pets that protected woodland critters and household pets from the depredations of all kinds of ill intent. Every single non-combat pet that has been in my games are protected from malevolent intent (as in I won't kill them off screen or in ways that aren't somehow directly caused by the player)... I have since evolved to find more moving and effective ways of using beloved pets to create tension in a storyline without brutalizing in extreme detail something a player cares about. It was a serious dick move on my part and it kills me that I was ever that immature... even if I was immature at the time.
My table rule is the person has to declare what the roll is for, then I acknowledge in some way, then they roll. And due to one player, we now have a "let the dice lie until the result is determined" rule, to prevent creative number generation.
I like the idea that rolls that aren't requested/declared are imaginary and don't exist, but I also think that a player doing a purely personal roll to determine reaction/restraint without mentioning what it's for is perfectly fine, so long as rolling for such works within the character, as it adds a bit of surprise to particular situations that could make things interesting
I was playing that artificer and tinkered and made a vile smell like the best damn meat these winter wolves have smelled he said roll to see If you deceive them I got a 25 "The wolves watch as you throw the fake vile and immediately attacked me" Tf is that bs
A DC25 is considered "very hard"... _how was distracting wolves with a meat smell considered "very hard"_ If these wolves were *completely* unfazed by the smell of the tastiest meat possible, then I don’t think you even fought actual wolves. Isn’t it lovely when DMs railroad?
Im a year late, but arent winter wolves smart? Even if they smelled the best meat ever coming from the broken vial that contains no meat, wouldnt they still probs go for the player?
@@myminion74 That depends on how you play their motivations. There's arguably a bit of wiggle room for a DM and the group to decide how enemy motives work in their campaign. If enemies are essentially cartoon punching bags, the wolves might be after the players for no particular reason but evil. On the other hand, if enemies are motivated by ration self-gain, then the wolves would probably go after the easier food source unless ordered to attack by a superior. Also a possibility is that monstrosities might be relentless forces of evil, in which case they probably would be going after the players. However, the fact that it was stated as a failed deception rather than a nonstarter suggests that they were in fact searching for food, in which case they would go after the easier food source and attempt to avoid unnecessary confrontation by intimidating potential threats into leaving. Thus, the wolves ignoring food would have been a possibility, but the DM seemed to hinge their behaviour not on what they would attack, but by what would deceive them. That's not even getting into why that would be a deception roll. It would have little to do with facial expression and more to do with the quality of the vile. That should have been an arcana check, imo, if even a check at all. tl;dr Depends on what type of campaign is being run. That DM seemed to agree the wolves would have gone for it if the deception had worked.
I know this is really late but I would of had the dc be 5 for one wolf and every 5 over that is an additional wolf who goes for the vile. Then had the wolves do an intellegence check vs spell dc (with advantage) to determine its not real food. This could of given you some wiggle room in the fight without you just getting out scott free.
I love how wholesome this video was in the end. Normally DM horror stories just leave me with a taste of bitterness :| Especially when it's one of these "And then I got my revenge" player stories where they deal with real life problems in game 😖
Two of the worst examples from my passed DMs were fudging rules to kill players and waiting until a player was pounding a wooden stake through a vampire's heart with a nat 20 to decide he "wouldn't allow it"
My favorite character (a Great Old One Warlock called Splish-Splash Eldritch-Blast as a nickname) became less and less connected with humanity as he became closer to the Great Old One, and eventually became unable to tell good from bad, I killed 3 people I could of healed because they said "help me" and he saw that as end suffering and thus death... God I miss him...
17:05 I was playing a barbarian human who had some grieving issues that he never really came to terms with. Little did I know this characters ...recklessness, was causing issues outside of the table for 2 other players (5 players, 1 dm) Noone told me FOR A YEAR+ until the literally day after that campaign ended ....it's been 3 years and change since that campaign ended and it still fucks with me Lesson: talk shit out with your group ...if you cant, get a new group.
@@Monarch_Crown_Security The character was a very ...ideal based character. Stubborn, never broke a promise, rescued his friends no matter the opposition, etc (a bit cliche looking back on it now) And that often got him into a lot of trouble. At the table it was all laughs and fun and i even checked in a few times, yknow, to make sure i wasnt being too chaotic. The story comes to a close after some time and we have a talk about what we did and didnt like (so we can plan for the next campaign together) and 2 others explicitly stated my character to be a horrid example of a pc and that they hated it immensly. There we a scene where the wish spell came into play. My character, not knowing what we possessed, wanted to become strong (+2 str mechanically) and thus got said unlock.. which is where i think part of the hate comes from (dm let me roll 1d100 and on a 100 i got wish and on any other roll something bad (or nothing would happen) you can guess what i rolled. It was a mix of not communicating and being angry with me over a dice roll. I was still brand new to d&d at the time (3rd character EVER) and it fucked with me for a long-time after that... still makes me 2nd guess my characters even today, 5 years later. Hopefully that provided context, will try to answer questions if you have any
Eugh, as someone who can personally relate to this kind of story, I feel that. I’m sorry you had to deal with the knowledge that your character bothered people for over a year, I hope you can eventually get over that and not have to worry about it in future characters.
I was *blessed in my first ever foray into D&D* Unbeknownst to me, my brother *has been DMing for veterans & new players online, since he was 10 years old*
To counteract the bad vibes, I'd like to tell a story about my DM, who did _not_ railroad or punish us when we did something so unexpected that it even surprised _us._ We've been playing this campaign for two years. We've spent the better part of those two years hunting down a cult. Recently, we finally made it to their lair, our goal being first and foremost to find and assassinate the leader - a decapitation strike - and then to deal with his underlings. The first infiltration went very poorly and we were forced to retreat, but fortunately we had found a teleportation circle inside one of the leader's sitting rooms, so we could return at any time. We spent the next few days repairing one of our magic items, doing research, copying spells, and so on. And every night, we scried on the leader to see what he was up to. The night before we planned to go back, we saw him in the same room that had the teleportation circle. And out of nowhere, one of us said, "Let's just attack him now!" We weren't mentally prepared, and the army unit that was standing by to help us mop up after the assassination was expecting the attack tomorrow. But it didn't matter. This opportunity to catch him by surprise, with our full health and abilities, was too good to pass up. Our wizard immediately cast Teleportation Circle. During the minute it took to cast, we hastily gathered our equipment; and three of us chugged Potions of Speed, including the monk, who also took a Potion of Enlargement. And then we teleported directly into this guy's room. This was not our DM's intention or expectation in the slightest. We caught her completely by surprise. But you know what? She let us do it. The spell took a minute to cast, so she could have had the leader leave his room by the time we got there. But she didn't. She let us have our crazy off-the-cuff attack. Not only that, but she even let us level up before we went, because she had been planning to level us up at the end of the session anyways. Her only condition was that if we wanted to get a surprise round, we had to stay late and do it now, because she wasn't going to give us a week to think about what we would do for this surprise attack that our characters had decided on literally one minute ago. So it was a longer session than usual, but it was completely worth it. The monk stunned the leader on her first turn. My turn was after that, so he automatically failed his DEX save when I cast Disintegrate. I had _just_ taken this spell - my first-ever 6th level spell - upon levelling up. I had been planning to use it either way, but I knew it was risky because it doesn't do _any_ damage if they make their save. But thanks to the monk, I didn't have to worry about that this time, and I did 76 damage on my first turn. It was a great way to inaugurate my brand new spell. We continued the fight next session, and proceeded to obliterate him. Even with lair actions that plunged us into magical darkness and then filled the room with poison gas, we killed him in less than three rounds without him getting a chance to attack even once - the monk stunned him again on her second turn. It was _beautiful._ Our struggle with the cult isn't wrapped up yet, but this fight represented everything we've been working towards for two years, and the DM let us cheese the hell out of it in a fun and exciting way.
Man, one of the DMs I was with ages ago played favorites with characters. They'd never let me have anything, ever. First, they told me that the stats I rolled, even though they were worse than point buy average or a standard array, were permanent outside ASI or magical items to improve it. They said my dwarf character had to have the strength to wear the heavy armor they were proficient in despite the racial trait, said clerics could slot as many spells as they have slots, and never hashed out the backstory with me to get a character that fit the world.
very late i know but i suppose the implication is that your dm allowed rerolls for players except for you? if it was just you rolling for your stats and the dm doesn't give you ability increases beyond the asis or magic items then that's kinda just the point of rolling for stats, isn't it? like if you wanted to be on par with point buy then use point buy, right?
I played D&D for the first time freshman year in high school. I don’t think it was 5E but idk what edition it was. We find a locked chest. Rogue fails to pick it. I offer to break the lock with my ax. Critical 1. Ax comes back and hits me. Roll for damage. Damage somehow kills me. DM just killed my character and I couldn’t play for the rest of the day. Made me hate D&D until a few weeks or months ago when a good friend of mine had me watch critical role. Now I’m in a campaign with a great DM and I’m having a great time
@Hamza Ali anyone that puts their expectations for their DnD sessions as high as Critical Role, you're likely gonna be very disappointed. Matt and his friends have been playing together for literally nearly a decade, and he has the time, money, and energy to put all of the effort he has into the games he runs along with having good friends to play with. Critical Role should never be what you think of when you walk into Dnd sessions.
W H E R E I S Y O P A R E N T S I think what me meant by that was that is that Critical Role got him back into D&D. He doesn’t expect all games to be like that. He even said that he’s loving his current game. Which, objectively, I doubt is better than Critical Role.
W H E R E I S Y O P A R E N T S Critical role got me back into D&D since freshman year of high school was over 10 years ago and the show didn’t exist at the time. I’m enjoying my current campaign and I know it’s not going to be like critical role.
@@butcanyoudothis3320 Well, Matthew Mercer has been DMing and playing for over a decade, Marisha Ray and Taliesin Jaffe have been playing with him for almost as long. Travis, Laura, Sam, Liam and Ashley played their first game for campaign 1 in Pathfinder two years before the show started to stream, so not quite a decade for them.
18:04 Time to set an event on my calendar for April 1st with a link to this video, have me completely forget what the link was to, rewatch the entire video, only to remember at the very end :D
This reminds me of the time I was a monk, and tried to break open a chest with my quarter staff, because I thought it was a mimic. The DM said, "The mimic bites and breaks your quarter staff."
13:00 There are some tables where sexual assaults, rapes, and other "Mature"-rated activities occur with the *consent of all players* that these things are possible (or likely) occurrences. The problem here is the character's backstory. If this character was visited by Bahamut in the manner that he so described, the appropriate response by the DM (again, assuming that the campaign is M or X-rated) is to have the deity wreak vengeance upon the character and take the player through a very serious chain of events that will alter the way that they play moving forward.
The story as told here happened at an Adventure League table. Depending on the age of the player and other players at the table reasonable responses start at their removal from that game and move rapidly up to banning them from the establishment. Players like that are why we can't have nice things.
@@briankeeler2508 knowing that makes it honestly a thousand times worse. I get being the shit gremlin, though never to *that* level, but I also exclusively played homebrews. Adventure Leagues are... a whole other barrel of fish for why that's a fucked up set of behaviors. Just.. don't do that. Ever.
I just like that killing people for no reason is considered kind of bad but still just harmless fun, but rape is the unspeakable crime that cannot be named. The people making the video are on the verge of tears talking about rape, but laughing at the murder of innocents and children. Just seems silly to me.
The thing is, I've played a criminal type character, and honestly, it's really fun. It's just like, don't act like a spree killer, ffs. You can handle your objectives in a harsh, callous manner, or you can pickpocket or steal certain things to help your party out. Just little stuff here and there that says like "this guy is shady, and maybe not someone to cross" or "he believes the ends justify the means". My dude would like, make reckless decisions, break into places to get information for the party (which often went really well because the DM let me be a goblin rogue), and I used my underworld connections to get us in whenever we arrived somewhere new. It was a lot of fun being a character that was willing to do unsavory things to help advance the party. That doesn't require you to be an actual psychopath lol.
I've played so few games of D&D due to scheduling shit and general inaccessibility from where I live so I thankfully only have one really bad DM story. We were fighting a gang of goblins or something (it's been a year or two, I can't really remember all the exact details) and I decided to try and throw my scimitar at one of them. Literally right after I said that the DM chimed in with "you're relatively new to the game, why don't you just stick to straightforward attacks and not do anything crazy?" Completely killed my investment in the campaign.
One of the most important things any new DM needs to be taught is that you need to be prepared with characters, locations, connections, etc but also for the eventuality that none of that will come up. That the players will never ask about them or choose to follow any threads associated with them. I've seen so many DMs who are super excited about what they've created and proceed to tell the characters all about what they've missed out on. But, from my perspective, it's important to not tell them anything about what they missed out on. You can hint that they've missed out on something but you should never give specifics. Partly because it means you can potentially reuse that idea later but, more importantly, it encourages players to explore. Finding out cool things is their reward for asking the questions, challenging inconsistencies presented, talking to the strange character, etc. One way I see DMs fall foul of this is when a character has a secret and they just explain all of those secrets neatly in an unattended journal belonging to them. It's usually better to leave a trail of hints that players may or may not follow. Learning the secret/truth is the reward for noticing and following the trail. Reveals often have a muted impact if they're not built up or earned. You need the player to be invested in knowing the answer. If players missed something cool, my next thought would be "Did they miss it forever or should I play into this much later down the line? Not in a way that directly punishes them or is mean-spirited but maybe one where something happens because of it and the players are reminded of some of the clues they disregarded. They are left to come to the realisation that their choices created this outcome." I think this sort of thing helps the world come more alive. What the players don't do is just as important as what they do do.
I got quite upset once because the dm got my character raped when he was unconsious and couldn't do anything. The other players seemed to find it funny (as it didn't happen to their character) so i just kept silent about the discomfort. i told my self to not be so attached to my character, but watching this video really made me aknowledge how not cool it actually was. Just in general, you don't joke with rape
@sum body Doesn't matter if they're poorly defined, anyone with a brain can still work out the difference. It's not like perception vs investigation or nature vs survival.
Worst DM-moments that happened to myself: Me and the only other female were rail-roaded into goinf to an art exhibit by ourselves. We get knocked out with no save while there. Had to spend the rest of the night waiting for the guys to rescue us. At our repeated questions if we could save ourselves, we just got "nos". Nothing we did would help apparently. Mind you, I was maxed out on strangth and she was a magic user. Can't remember what the guys did to get out of the stone casts we were in (don't ask, something about turning women into statues), but both of our nerves snapped when one of the guys complained about us not "properly" thanking them. Seriously?! We were the tank and the healer! We are not your damsel-NPCs but part of your group and have saved you loads of times. I was really tempted to let the next enemy get his skinny, glass-canon, elven ass. Sadly, my character wouldn't do that, so I ate that damage as usual. Another time, my character got impregnated magically very much against her will and again with no other way out. I was told it didn't matter, because the hag that did it would collect the baby anyway. Erm... No? If I have to carry that demon spawn for nine months, it's my char's. If you want a big bad, push it out of your own vagina. PS.: I wonder why so few women play pnps? To be fair the later dm apologized for that later. He copied that from somewhere supposedly.
@@the_birthday_skeleton Nah. I've played that game and would have certainly remembered that sort of weirdass, soft-core scene. Additionally, he has never played Dragon Age. (I know, because I keep on bugging him about it. He grew up to be an awesome DM and player. No weirdness left from his early days. 👍)
7:57 At this point in the game... After the dm has told me not to stop and debate rules and its about fun not playing by the rules... I no longer have a reason to track my characters remaining health. It is now infinite, because its about fun not playing by the rules, and well not being prone in the dying state is more fun.
You see, as a GM, I feel it is my duty to make sure the players feel as accomplished as possible. To give them a vague direction into the story, but making sure there is enough freedom for them to surprise me because that’s very fun as well
When the murder hobo character tried to assault one of the PC's, the DM should have had Bahamut come down and give him the "Or Else" as in the original deal, "Change your ways or else"
No, what?? it’s gone past the game. You can’t belittle it by continuing to play with that person’s character. You don’t roleplay the consequences of the attempted rape. You throw them out of the game immediately.
@@joearnold6881 tbh I'd have it be a both/and. "Bahamut swoops down and eats you. Get out, don't come back, have a nice life or whatever." Then let the remaining players decide, do we continue on or rewind time and play through again without that character? Because yeah, 100% agree that the player needs to be booted immediately. But for the sake of the other players, you need to figure out what happens in-universe. But honestly, based on how the story was told the DM should have intervened long before that moment. I'm all for player agency, but actively destroying the game and world the DM built (which is what it sounds like as described) means being invited to go play Skyrim instead.
I just watched this 3yr old video for the first time today, and when he said "Have yourself a good April", it made me rewind to make sure I heard it correctly lol
When I first got into dnd I joined a toxic group and they basically were all murder hobos so I thought it was normal and then I branched out and joined a few other campaigns eventually getting kicked out due to my wicked ways. Over time I learned from my mistakes and basically went to rehab so I could enjoy dnd and prevent others from not enjoying it. Luckily one of the dms understood that and eventually let me back in after experiencing how I had grown as a player.
Well, about the "in game sexual assalt" Once happened in one of my games, I was dming. I guess it was also my fault for not thinking about something like "and lights out" when a murder hobo PC walked into a brothel. It was a very dark scene, but another PC got in the room. The first guy, after a brutal scene, tried to transform two women into werewolves (he got the curse about 10 days before). The second one... sees the scene and asks to be transformed too. The PCs, or rather the players I would say, were debating about giving the curse to the second PC. That was the last session of that campaign, not strictly because of what happened, but it was a little awful from there on. Taught me a lot about dming though.
In a sense, you are a factor in my Horror Story with my DM, because I had watched your Class Videos, including the one on the Warlock, and I had heard about the Celestial Warlock as a result. Some background - started playing D&D in August, but I didn't have any of the books (understandable), but the DM and other players did (okay). I try to learn the rules, and I watch your videos - very funny by the way, had to laugh, and I hope that you do updated versions of them to talk about the additional subclasses - and I heard about the Celestial Warlock. By the point I've watched your Class videos, the DM is taking a break in his campaign due to Creativity Block, and one of the others is acting as a Substitute DM and we're playing Lost Mines of Phalandover until the DM can figure out certain aspects of his homebrewed story. As a result, DM is playing as a Paladin (very important). Also, I have a notebook, where I jot down ideas for random characters, most of which I'll probably never play anyways. Onto the story. I get idea about a Holy Priest being a Warlock. I bring up idea to my DM. DM: While a cult leader might worship their patron, I don't see a Holy Priest doing that. Patrons tend to be very jelous. Me: What if the patron was one of those Holy beings - um, a Celestial? DM: I've never heard of such a thing. Me: I heard about it on TH-cam. DM: Is it Official Wizards of the Coast material? (He doesn't want third-party stuff.) Me: I'm sure it is. DM: Well I've never heard of it, and unless you have it in a book or a PDF, it's not Official. (To be fair, he only had the Core books at the time.) Me: You sure? DM: I've got 20 years of experience while you've got less than two months. I would know. (Also to note, the guy was in the Marines and he had a look in his eyes that said "Now would be a good time to shut up!") Me: Okay. (Mentally.) Game On. Turns out, a book I had picked up at the library, Xanathar's, held the answer to my problem - over on page 54. The next week, when I went back, I noticed that one of the other players had a copy. Me: Hey, Other Player, could you show DM page 54? DM: What for? Me: Remember last week? I found a warlock a Holy Priest could be. DM: (Decides to be a good sport.) Other Player, mind if I borrow your book? Other Player: Sure. DM: (Reads, and we all laugh at the idea of unicorn knights. Then he reads about the Level one abilities, and freezes.) Two healing spells in one turn? (Fails Wisdom Save.) Sub-DM: (No one has ever seen the DM like this.) I think you broke him. DM: (After 30, or so, seconds, Makes his Wisdom Save.) That just invalidates the reason to play Paladin! (remember, he was playing as one for the LMoP campaign.) (He gives me a look that basically says "I'm impressed!") After this, he got his own copy of Xanathar's, and we've added a few new characters in based off of it and Volo's. Of course, due to what's been going on, haven't played for a few weeks. During this time, picked up most off the player-based books I don't own, including Wildemount - this has the Hollow One Template, which allows one to play as the Unded, like a reverent - which is useful as one of our group became a member of the Undead due to a deal with the God of Death in order to be cured of a serious sickness. So, I told my DM over the phone. DM: Official Wizards of the Coast books or Third Party? Me: Official. DM: I look forward to checking them out.
Thanks for posting D&D content. I started playing back in 1978. I DM'd in a more storyteller manner. I used a lot of puzzles and "visual" clues. Before all the guides and rules, I found that it was more enjoyable to manage the game using my own judgement of the chance of success or failure of any action my players attempted. I wanted them to succeed but I wanted it to feel risky and that there was some consequence for their actions. More of reading a book that you were writing on the fly. The game flowed more organically and ran smoother. Players were more knowledgeable about their chances based on attributes and so we moved relatively quickly through scenarios. The rules have definitely made things more well defined so that you could easily move a character to different sessions but I still believe that the world you create is 'your' world and as DM you decide what is and what is not possible. Not that you tell the story but you do manage luck and chance as well as the physics of the game.
Gets to the end of the video, "unless you're watching this in the future, then have a good... April.." looks at date on my phone to see it's April 2nd..shit this episode was spooky
Oh dear... WOW that final case... almost makes me appreciate our party's rogue who mind you so far been consistently screwing with the group cuz he's "whimsical". It's gotten to the point where the remainder of the group have had to explicitly alter our playstyles to keep him "under control" (it's possible some members like how I as the ranger keep spotting him)...... but hey I guess he didn't try to sexually assault me... didn't think I'd ever say that as a positive... like ever.
Why not? What is wrong with your character? Is the character ugly? Did you try makeup? Perhaps you could like 'accidentally' lock your arms to something while wearing a short skirt, having 'forgotten' underwear. going "Oh no, I locked myself stuck, and I am now helpless. Hopefully nobody takes advantage of me." *wiggles butt* ... (The way I read that last bit makes it seem as if you would normally say "but hey I guess he didn't try to sexually assault me." in a sad and disappointed way. As if you wish he had.)
@@zhoupact8567 Nah, thinking back on that campaign that was relief not sadness, sexual assault is probably the only thing he didn't do (which I still can't believe is something I have to praise). Actually I think I wrote this before he got the Wizard and my pet killed. Only kind of embrace my "big titty anime elven girl" went for was after doing his thing at other character's expense and casually caused a near TPK.... I tried to stab his unconscious body for insulting dragons we were trying to bypass via negotiations. Party leader stopped my character, but the guy had to roll a new character along with the dead cuz leader in game said "your shenanigans give you 2 choices: gimme your stuff and leave now, or the elf is gonna murder you when she's done crying".
"I didn't mean to kill a kid."
Or in EA terms:
"It wasn't child murder, it was surprise collateral damage."
Oh great Kusuo
Now pay us 5.99 or it stays that way.
No, it's surprise late abortion
In corrupt USA political terms... *Acceptable Casualties*
Mace Nanoro or in betheasta terms:
It supposed to be like this, it’s a feature
When you're a forever DM and want to hear about shittier DMs than yourself to feel a little better about comparison.
Rubatano Oobledocker exactly
big mood
Pretty much
I relate to that on a spiritual level
Forever DM, or as i prefer to call myself, "cool character concept to NPC generator"
Imagine multiclassing Cleric and Celestial Warlock, and your patron is one of your Gods underlings. Your character arc is helping your patron get back in your god’s good graces after their major slip up, and helping reconcile their relationship by being a good friend to both.
I like this
Hip pity hoppity your character is my property
This is just Mushu and Mulan
I love this story I cry every time
#stolen
Better idea for the thieves guild one,
"I give false name,"
"Roll deception"
*roll and pass*
"Well, I know that ain't your name, but ya know what? You got yourself some skill, almost had me convinced for a second." And then play out the encounter like that was the first step of the player being scoped out.
That’s how you make a “false” skillcheck
HOLY SHIT I SAID THE SAME THING
That would be really interesting. The idea of the guild member being amazed by the PC skill is very immersive, and it would lead to a totally different, yet awesome, outcome to the encounter.
That way, they wouldn't feel like they failed or got cheated, they'd feel: "Woah, I impressed the thieves' guild! Dang I'm cool!"
That was the test my drow had for entering into a thieves guild.
I convinced my recruiter I was an high elf.
Black skin, white hair, purple eyes.
The guy went speaking to his superior, who told me to drop disguise self, and tried to dispell me when I told him I didn't have it on.
I got in.
I actually recognize the angel from the first story, her name is Vildeis, she's an angel empyreal lord from Pathfinder and would absolutely NOT try to strongarm someone into following her or damn them if they refused.
Thaaat just makes the DM just that little bit worse! Not just punishing a player for not playing a character they're not interested, but also blatantly misrepresenting an angel with lore.
i was thinking the same damned thing, i just couldn't remember the name of the angel
@@Dragonmoon98 exactly, also in dnd, aren't angels specifically not petty? I thought lesser devils and demons were, but not angels
@@mikedarin7681 Yeah, they basically get that they have to be patient since mortal beings are easily frightened and stuff and their job is to help mortals, ultimately. They can sometimes seem cold with how little hesitation they show, but they are doing the best they can to carry out a good god's wishes.
That "dont be pedantic" story got to me.
>Be level 6 sorcerer
>SBEG Casts silence on me
>I try to use subtle spell to cast fireball.
>DM: "Dude you can't use verbal components while in silence"
>Me: "Subtle spell makes it ignore vocal and somatic"
>Dm: "Dude quit trying to metagame."
>Cant cast spells that entire fight and am taken down in 3 turns.
>Party is taken down and all my shit is taken.
>Get yelled at by other player for talking back to dm.
Well, your character recognised the SBEG's spell as the silence spell I assume. If so, just don't roll another character for that DM ...
@@anticorrupcao5631 even if your character didn't recognize the spell as silence, literally anything that would normally make noise not making noise will alert you that something is off. Like when the barbarian starts charging in a rage, but without noise, you clearly know something is up.
@@novaiscool1 Nice point, I'd say that's the advanced thinking the DM failed to do, it wouldn't even bring up rules at all
wizard is so much better than sorcerer if you ignore meta magic what do they think the point of sorcerer is
it's this kind of situational stuff that makes sorcerer awesome and unique. people get to uppity about rules lawyer bs. sometimes people are just ignorant of how a class works and if you don't correct it you might as well be a commoner
On post #2
DM:”stop saying what your spell does and trying to use it it’s no faaaiiiir”
There's really no fairness between dm and players since the dm holds all the cards. That's why you DON'T want a petulent manchild as a DM. As a DM you can, at worst, begin punishing players' over reliance on something. My players just keep ganging up on the doors, and I can't really stop that. What I can do, is have the noise draw monsters to them. Problem solved
"Stop playing by the rules, it's about fun"
"Okay, I cast Power Word Kill with my level 4 character at the entire realm of the Abyss."
@@janelantestaverde2018 Don't forget that power word kill also creates a new realm with a size equal to 100 quintillion times the people you kill
@@nopewipe8900 While also getting 1 gold for every HP the dying targets had combined, yes.
Bro I hate it when your dm doesn’t let you pay mercenaries to do dirty deeds done for dirt cheap
Imagine just multiclassing every level into cleric just with a different diety each time until you run out of god options.
@sum body I don't think thats what he meant. As there are multiple gods that can be actually proven in d&d, just because he adopts his duties for another god, doesn't mean he no longer believes in or has a desire to serve another God. That being said, when a player who worships a gods starts worshiping another god of opposite beliefs, such as worshiping Tyr and Bhaal for example, thats when they would start having penalties to their magic abilities.
Cleric of Chaos Undivided
@sum body A new deity every level, but he keeps all previous deities. I mean, he didn't really specify so its up to interpretation, but I read it as worshiping multiple gods.
@Paul Roig -- This sounds suprisingly like a John Constantine D&D build(the movie version did something similar with Daemons)...
@@thorn249 eh. Because its just worshiping the whole pantheon. The only problem I'd ever have with it would be if they have gods that are at odds with one another. But even then I'd play his gods against one another in minor ways so that he has conflicts to either resolve or let fester.
"I search the dead body for loot."
"There is loot."
"What is the loot?"
"You don't know."
"Attune and find out" smiles evilly
I cast identify
“Yeah we’re gonna have to call somebody I’m upset” - identify spell
Obtained new item: "Loot"
Description: loot.
Bro the one dm I had was like this, we were freinds for a bit and he succckkkssss at being dm, i offered to do it once because I enjoy describing scenes and things but when ever I would dm or someone else he’d complain and blah blah blah… yeah it kinda sucked really turned me away from dnd and we didn’t even do dnd it was less involved because he “didn’t understand or like the rules”
Doss Lute?
I feel like the silence, trap guy was just waaaay to smart for his dm and the dm got annoyed by the fact that he got outsmarted in every encounter^^
I feel like this is EXACTLY what happened.
"I cast counterspell to counter his spell"
OMG STOP BEING A RULES LAWYER!
This is when as a DM you put your pride aside and reward your player's cleverness
This happens to me a lot as a player. It’s a DM vs Player mentality thing.
For instance: We found out a bunch of people in Orlane were brainwashed… so the party split up to start rounding them up. I went to the barracks at night and snuck in trying to NON LETHALLY knock out all of the guardsman while they slept one by one. I reasoned I should be able to do this seeing as I could dish out the necessary damage, and with Pass Without Trace I had a 27 stealth roll. Eventually I convinced the DM of my argument but in the process I was called every awful thing you can call a D&D player. “You’re a that guy” “You’re a rules lawyer” “You’re a murder hobo” etc
As the forever DM this happens to me a lot.
The party was raiding the base of a violent street gang. I planned for the leader to escape through a secret tunnel into the sewers and continue to cause problems for the party.
The party decided to kidnap one of the guards, disguise self the sorcerer to look like him, attack the base and have the sorcerer sneak in during the confusion and follow him through the escape tunnel.
Because of a backstory thing of the sorcerer being a criminal being redeemed the party could track him. Then they found the leader, and captured him.
I had to completely remake my plans for the next three sessions because of this, but god damn did the players love it. 100% worth it.
Jacob: If you have trouble throwing traps at your players because they're way to smart.
Me to player: You see a pressure plate on the floor.
Player: I step on it.
Me: OK then...
jblades123 😂 so true!
Me as a Rogue: Lockpick Kit
Barbarian: I kick down the door. Fails strength check and damages hand.
Ranger: I shoot the door, breaks arrow.
Other Barbarian: I throw the gnome though the door.
DM: OKAAAAY, so you said you wanted to Lockpick?
@@Endershock1678 Oml, yes. Absolutely this.
An exchange from my group:
DM: "While searching the cave you're exploring, you find what looks like a string 3 inches above the ground."
Pc1: "How should we get over this?"
PC2: "I try to yeet PC1 over the tripwire."
PC1: "What? No! I try to test PC2 over the wire!"
DM: "You guys could take damage for recklessly trying to shot-put each other."
(PC1 and PC3 bickering over who gets thrown over.)
Me: "Can I inspect the wire further?"
DM: "Yep. On closer inspection, it is a small spider web spanning the width of the cave."
Me: "Can I cut the web with my sword?"
DM: "Sure."
(Cuts web)
DM: "HEY, LOOK! THE WEB IS GONE!
@@neog8029 I guess here's the full story with mine, and I messed up some details so I'm correcting those real quick.
I've played as a Rogue with massive lockpicking proficiency (I have Expertise in it and a Dex Modifier of +5), and we got a Barbarian and Monk trying to break it down (it had a DC strength check of 20), a Paladin who really wanted to screw us all over with Thunderous Smite (lawful good btw), which, funny story, once awakened a Terrasque and got the party (I wasn't in this one) killed, and a Ranger who wanted to shoot the door and then Yeet our gnome through the door, all of this while the Bard was ready to help with both the others and me with Bardic Inspiration, and I was just sitting there watching these idiots while the two other competent people (a cyborg warlock and sorcerer gnome) in our party kept suggesting the Rogue (me) pick the lock. And this night, we were all rolling super low for some reason, so this entire interaction gave us two critical failures and caused two people to take damage as well as wasting a Bardic Inspiration. It was fun.
The pressure plate revealed magical healing fire
roll perception to figure out if the room is trapped
it is but you don't know where the traps are...
I just imagine they notice a sign on the far wall that reads "this room is trapped"
the sign itself is the trap. like having a beware of dog sign yet have no dog XD
You have to have a sign announcing traps, it's a OSHA thing...
@@tbmin3d Lmao
Realistically it could just be noticing where some of the traps are, but the ribbon not identifying any of the triggers.
Like noticing some small holes in a wall or the ceiling, but if the traps are pressure plate triggered, and they are perfectly level with the rest of the floor, the ribbon wouldn't change elevation to identify any of the pressure plates. Or maybe it just didn't land on any.
Someone cast find traps lol "yup theres traps in this room. Some will spike ya, some will squish ya, one turns you into a kitty cat, in a barrel of acid."
So where are they?
NO no no, you just sense the presence of these traps...read the spell that's literally what it does. I hate that spell.
That angel of self-harm story
I feel it would have actually been a really cool event wholesale if the DM wasn't a wuss about it and accepted "screw you" as an actual answer, instigating a quest to find whatever's causing the creepy vision and curse and destroy it.
It could have become some sort of personal nemesis for the human fighter character, giving him some development without forcing a different playstyle on him.
Heriarka Alternatively, allowing him to wake up the other players in order to have a chance at defeating a Solar (a CR 21 creature), and thus have enough XP among those who survive to defeat the main campaign enemies.
@@evannibbe9375 A little bit of a pipe dream with the whole CR 21 creature (most parties don't get to the level to fight one of those lol) but a good idea nonetheless.
It was entirely the player's fault for not playing out the situation in-character. Metagaming can be so trash sometimes.
@@kooldudematt1 Wrong, and good job liking your own reply.
What was witnessed in that story was railroading and calling it anything else is both insane and inaccurate. If the player doesn't want to roleplay it or be forced into a different playstyle or have their class changed, they shouldn't have to. It's only wrong and fun-ruining to force something on someone anyways, not to mention killing their character because they said no.
@@failtronic2646 _It is metagaming _*_by definition_*_ to allow your thoughts as a player about the overall state of the game to interfere with your characters' journeys within it._ When you sit down at session 0 to a campaign it is _always_ made abundantly clear that _you. Are. In. The. Dungeon. Master's. World. He. Is. "God". Here._ There are a figuratively infinite number of ways to deal with the situation that was mentioned in the video and we both know it (well, assuming you have any sort of RPG experience). With regards to being _IN CHARACTER_ it is damn near impossible to logically explain (as a player) how it is that your little PC is somehow totally immune to the presence of a deity. That shows a complete and total disregard for the game itself. Look throughout REAL WORLD HISTORICAL TEXTS about what happens when _anyone_ meets a deity or some otherworldly power that they previously did not believe in or did not have knowledge of. TERROR. FEAR. RESPECT. and COWERING are the results in 99.9% of all cases. If for SOME reason your character is able to shrug this type of encounter off as no big deal then you had better have a _DAMNED GOOD_ backstory inclusion about why. Forcing someone to multiclass is nigh impossible to do within the confines of the rules (yeah, as the DM you could technically say in session 0 "no, you're not playing 'x' as only the following 'a, b, c…' will be allowed in this campaign" but that is a different scenario entirely). The problem is that the player simply _LET_ it happen. D&D is not a "safe" game for your characters. Weird shit happens at the DM's (and RNG's) discretion. Divine encounters in D&D don't just randomly make someone a paladin. That is _one possible outcome_ but you will not get _any_ [good] possible outcome if you simply roll over in character and let fate have its way with you. If I was the DM in that campaign (well, first of all the player would not have died but let's just assume they did for argument's sake), the player could still play that character _after death_ in an effort to get their body back and it would even open up a path to having that deity as an endgame BBEG whom that player's character could eventually enact vengeance upon for what they did to them. It's pure ridiculousness to just blame the DM for pushing a story point. Straight up _DO NOT PLAY RPG GAMES IF YOU REFUSE TO LISTEN TO THE GAME MASTER. IT LITERALLY GETS PLAYERS KICKED FROM TABLES. DO NOT BE A FOOL AND FOLLOW THE RULES._
I can't stress enough how important it is to cast away the "Player Vs. DM" mindset as early as possible.
It's one of the reasons I never started playing D&D, but soon realized, through my girlfriend, that Player and DM are a team.
DM's usually want you to win as much as you do. Fun DM's will occasionally use their screens to cheat FOR you, even.
The first and most important use of the DM's screens is actually to allow him/her to cheat on the dice to balance the party, most of the time in favour of the players (if in defavour it's usually to create more challenge so more fun).
one campaign where my brother was the DM, my sorcerer ass for reasons I can't even remember decided to check if a dragon was still near our inn by peeking his head out. Cue breath attack to the face & barely surviving because my brother was nice & cheated the already nerfed dragon stats to use that as a warning shot.
Unless your group enjoys DM vs. Players! Honestly sometimes it can be really fun to have a DM that desperately wants to stop you from doing shenanigans and is totally failing lol
Boo cheating. Cheating for the players cheats the players.
"Stop being pedantic it's about fun not playing by the rules"...
Fine I turn into Superman and fly away.
Exactly rules are good guidelines to help as long as they dont hinder the party to the point where its funner to play without the more restrictive ones, like how a lot of games dont care to much about item dimensions, but still use carrying capacity to still give them freedom, and instead of the main worry be spacial dimensions, its basic math that can be remedied by having like a mule or something, same with food just as the dm either create a character with the outlander background, or encourage a player to do it, and dont be picky about food/ fresh water unless your basically in a wasteland/desert.
"Stop being pedantic it's about fun."
"I agree, and it's not fun for my spell to not do one of the things it _specifically says it's supposed to do_ just because you felt like it."
Remind me of @jocat
"I commit seppuku from the realisation that I would die anyways,"
@@jdmc9538 what did joe do ?
The story with the traps be like:
"I check the bus schedule."
"Okay. The bus schedule says 'there are buses.'"
"When are the buses coming?"
"You don't know."
okay in reference to jake's comment about creative solutions; i usually throw a trap into a dungeon that is almost guaranteed to hit an unaware character.
the story: our half-orc fighter, wood elf druid, and shifter barbarian are checking out a dungeon, entering the puzzle room section. fighter figures out the pressure plate puzzle's solution, then enters a new room-- Bang, gets hit with an acid coated dart. the other party members start looking for other traps in the room. druid sees holes in next room, decides to wild shape into spider, and trigger the traps and dodging the darts. manages to avoid a gout of flame trap with a nat 20. i let the flame trap go off without any harm to spoder-druid. druid procedes to disarm everything else in the puzzle maze. i was proud of the druid's rolls and idea, so i give her inspiration. combat rolls up and barbar gets inspiration. then the countdown room (think lost) swings by and fighter gets brilliant idea to let the counter go off. inspiration. my players all got inspiration from amazing plays. they were 6th level and used a sphere of annihilation to decimate a neothilid worm as they ran away in the same session. if they didn't get inspiration prior they all would have gotten it from the sphere of annihilation trap they used on that bastard.
that's me though. I have no idea how to read that shit
For real, that DM sounds like someone who is completely uncreative and didn't have backups ready to "wear the party down" when they inevitably outsmarted him, so he just forced them to get hit with the traps. Your players aren't going to want to play if all they're doing is rolling dice for zero reason, just so you can tell a linear story where player agency has no meaning.
I died when I watched that part holy jesus
"You don't know, check the bus schedule."
The GM made my neutral Druid evil through head trauma so I spent every session killing, plotting, and using magic to give the towns and cities back to nature. The rest of the players tried to stop me and after six towns and two cities he was be headed in front of his mushroom army.
This was my murder hobo story but, it was very controlled and with general agreement from the group that it was ok for me to be the main villain
that legit sounds like a blast lol
The crucial point is that it was agreed upon by the participants. And not plotual assault.
That’s a fucking awesome way to deal with a murder hobo.
No D&D is better than bad D&D. Trust me, i learned this the hard way. My first ever group was a very toxic 3.5 game. Ill spare the whole story for now, but it involves someone yelling at me for being new and "not playing my character correctly", the pcs threatining to kill my pc if i don't do something obviously dangerous, and then the dm calling me stupid for doing so. The group peer pressuring me into playing classes i didn't want to play. Also, i found out one year later that the of the players bullied someone as a revenge plan. That person commits suicide because of the bullying.
Edit: things are MUCH better now ever since i moved past that one game. I've been palying 5e for about 5 years at this point
Those people sound more like sociopaths and probably only played due to a desire to live out fantasies of control and violence. It’s people like that who give the nut job moral panic bitches ammo
I had one of the PC's in my group assassinate my character because he could not kill anyone else anywhere to become an assassin... And the DM was like. Sure that's fair.
@@redholm god, that's annoying.
@@asher8754 no offense, but that last sentence made no sense.
Damn! Those people are absolute pure jerks! The dm agreeing with them makes everything worse! I swear that people like this peer pressure some people so badly that they forget what d and d is about! Having FUN! Not bullying a newbie who’s just gotten into the hobby! Fuck them
The deception one could’ve been cool if the person said “that was an impressive lie, but we knew who you were shortly after you stepped foot inside the city”
Eh accept he rolled a 32 so the guy would then question his intelligence gathering officers about why they got his name wrong. With a 32 you could convince your own mother that your name is not what she thinks it is.
@@NinjaSushi2 not in my table, but you do you.
Context: even if i would make the player roll, it would be pointless, since the thieves guild literally has eyes everywhere, this would just be a "test"
You shouldn't ask for a roll if you already planned the outcome. Some things are just not possible no matter how skilled you are. "I roll persuasion to get the mayor to give me their house and title. I rolled a 30" That's not gonna fly.
A better outcome would have been to allow them to tell the lie without a roll. If the guild already knew who the player was, they could have went along with the lie to make the PC think that they succeeded with the deception to add drama to the reveal later. Or have the guild member cut them off mid-sentence with something like "yeah sure protect your identity and all that, but give us some credit. We didn't get this big without learning who else was playing the game. We've had eyes on you since you got here" (reveal some random dude stepping out of the masses and waving before fading back into the crowd)
“That’s our John, always coming up with surprisingly convincing lies”
"Make a Deception check."
32.
"He easily sees through your lie and calls you by name."
....
"And in local news, a man was found dead in his basement, with a bag of dice and a DM screen lodged in his rectum."
See, this could be a fantastic bluff, with the guard saying something like "Oh, I'm sorry, you look just like someone else I know. Do you have a twin?" to basically tell them that if they don't have more creative thinking, they'll still be recognized inside the hideout.
1 thing about the deception roll: even if they know you, lying as a pro will still somewhat earn you thieves' respect. Doing bad lying however might have negative consequences.
An interesting twist to create paranoia.
Roll deception "Ok, got a 30 (or whatever)
Now roll perception "Ok, got a 15"
"The representative seems to accept your story."
!!!!!!!!
@@chrishubbard64 i mean in 5e that'd be insight not perception but that's certainly a way to make your party frustratingly paranoid
it might have also just been a 'roll a nat 20 or auto fail' thing
@@zacherytobin6434 Sure, but I take the DM guide for DC difficulty (30 being "near impossible") as my guide. For myself, my "roll a nat 20 moments" pop up when I've set a DC and the character can't possibly make the DC due to negative bonuses, penalties, etc.. I feel like if my players roll anything over a 30, it's successful. Easily, the DM could've written a note in a moment of silence after that interaction and said, "He slowly nods" and resume the conversation, all the while having that seed mistrust - or possibly even respect - for that PC within the guild because the guy he has just lied to already knows the PC's real name. So it was a success and the player gets the satisfaction of rolling over a 30, but also circumstances arise because he expertly lied to people that already know his name.
Honestly i wouldnt call for a roll, if you, someone i dont know, tell me your name is John Deeandee for all I fucking know it might as well be, thats the point of a name.
However; as a GM make a note of the name they give and if they slip up give them full consequences.
I once nuked an entire cult and their hostages before they could escape through a portal with a magic arrow
and I'm still the most moral and good aligned player at my table
Now I just want to hear the horrible exploits of this group
Paul Roig I DM’ed a home brew campaign where the party was supposed to defuse a magical nuke, but instead they opted to trigger it before it was teleported to the material plane, saving the world and taking a chunk out of the Feywild. They all died of course, but it was the finale and everyone had a blast.
@@paulroig469 I mean, it wasn't literally a nuke, but a 60ft sphere explosion of radiant damage, the hostages were mages and the big bad's wife was taking them to do lord knows what in Shadowfell while we slaughtered him and his knights/mercs. We've had players come and go but have a 'main three cast', one of whom doesn't like to make huge decisions, but will do dirty work for good or bad decisions either way. The other, started off as a slightly sex mad halfling who would seduce anything that moved until he got an STD (which he recovered from), now he's a power/science mad cleric who will kill anything who opposes him, or kill for 'science'. For instance, when we defeated an entire company of Kobold mercs, we discovered they had haphazardly placed a hatchery next to the main gate, I suggested taking the eggs back to a village they devastated, so that the young could be raised in a safe place and help the populace return to normal faster, this guy wanted to throw them into the shadowfell to see what happened. He managed to steal one of the 9 hatchlings, throwing it in, it died, but then he brought it back out of some 'remorse'... Let's just say he's trying(?) to be a better guy since he got a wife and his adopted kobold experiment... But now we have a conundrum where after killing the Big Bad, we've secured a godkiller weapon, he and another player want to keep it for ourselves, while I and another want to "cast it into the fire, destroy it". We aren't purely bad, but sometimes the campaign calls for really hard choices, and I have to wrangle everyone from going the crazy route with our halfling friend and then talk him off the ledge... But this problem might end with our group yeeting each other into lava depending... My personal best moment was single handedly stopping a major war between two kingdoms, compared to his worst moment, demanding we keep a portal door to the shadowfell, bring it into a major city, then the Big Bad uses it to lay waste to the city and we get blamed.
Honestly, this is a fairly "Lawful Good Paladin Done Right" moment, where you chose the good of the many over the safety of the few. If the cult was allowed to get away, they likely would have caused more casualties than you had by killing all that were there. If you WERE a paladin or cleric of Lawful Good, that's the kind of act that I'd state your character may get a few nightmares over before their god told them they were correct to act as they did and give you a boon for being willing to make that choice so someone else didn't have to.
@@MaximEyes this plan sounds DavvyChappy approved lmao
12:30 you probably should not sexually assault someone out of character either...
Just sexually assault the player while you character sexually assaults theirs for maximum roleplay.
Lmao
Errybody fuckin'.
Hey man, don't bring outside issues like "he raped me" to the table, we're trying to have fun here!
@@phelps6205 Also, if you ever roll a nat 1 on combat and stab your teammate...
Well, just do maximum roleplay!
It sounds like OP #1 already made their human fighter interesting. I could tell by the way that they wrote that he was a fun character, and I woulda loved to have him in my game. Shame the DM couldn't see that.
Gee, I wonder how someone could actually think, "I'm going to play a collaborative storytelling game with my friends. You know what those friends really would think is cool and would make them want to keep playing? For me to commit sex crimes against them."
DnD Horror Stories:
DM'd a session where my party slammed a Roc's head into a stun warded door at level 6.
This happened repetitively till they permanently blinded, clipped, and murdered it. This was my own fault. They leveled up.
Maxord this sounds fucking awesome.
Rocs aren't animals trying to survive.
They're monstrosities with sadistic intentions.
Is a Roc a big bird?
@@meris8486 A really big bird. Gargantuan in fact.
@@meris8486 Rocs are like Big Bird, but gargantuan, with enormous wings and on steroids
Once upon a time, I was in a D&D game which was a homebrew version of the Rise of Tiamat campaign.
3 sessions in, we were in a temple and was asked by a wizard to take one of the eggs of Tiamat to a safe place. The players were set upon by a group of cultists and Kobolds. So, we received the egg, dealt with the cultists and kobolds, then escaped through some tunnels. We made it out safe, everyone is okay, and then the start of the next session, we start discussing the egg, and the DM tells us 'you don't know where the egg is'. And we as a group collectively thought 'we must've gotten pickpocketed or dropped it', so we retraced our steps. And retraced. And retraced. This went on for nearly 5 hours. Ultimately, we got fed up with the DM and demanded him tell us what happened to the egg that we KNEW we had taken off the wizard. And because we explored absolutely EVERY option we could. After 5 hours of this, we were all pissed. Except one player. It was revealed, that this ENTIRE TIME, this player and the DM had been in cahoots, and the player's character had been 'hiding' the egg from everyone. The DM literally railroaded us into not finding the egg for the s**ts and gigs of a joke that wasted 5 hours of player's time. I didn't finish the session which had about an hour left, I just left it. I have a sense of humour, I can appreciate a good D&D prank, but this was a deliberate and sadistic waste of 5 players time.
The "ha ha! you got us!" aspect was lost after the first 10 or 20 minutes. Then it just became "That DM was an asshole"
Wow, what the fuck. I can respect the idea, but 5 hours of that is at _least_ 4 hours and 30 minutes too long to let it go on. DM should've thrown you a bone after the first half hour at _most._
30 minutes tops or it stops being funny. I’d have gone for 5-10 minutes before revealing the prank
reminds me of a story i saw in a different video:
the party has been hired to help with a peace treaty with a band of orcs.
part of the treaty involved giving the orc leader a fancy jeweled dagger.
the Paladin player took several precautions to prevent the party Thief from stealing it, including storing it inside his armor.
BUT...when they arrive at the orc camp and start negotiations, the dagger is gone.
SOMEHOW, the thief stole it, without even ROLLING for it, with the DM's help.
the orcs become enraged, and are about to kill the entire party, INCLUDING the thief...
the Paladin manages to buy some time with a good Diplomacy roll, and demands that the thief return the dagger.
the thief refuses, which makes no sense, since he already has several better weapons.
so then the Paladin says, "i attack the thief."
the thief player looks nervous, and the DM blurts out, "you're a lawful good Paladin, you CAN'T attack your own teammate!"
so, the Paladin player picked up his stuff and immediately walked out without another word.
and the rest of the players (except the thief) did the same.
@@ericb3157 Oh gods. Somehow this "lawful stupid" meme just refuses to die.
Did somebody at least tell the DM that attacking (arresting) a thief that is about to rekindle a war is 1. good 2. lawful and third: sensible.
And even if it wasn't alignments are not ironclad fae contracts, it should never restrict player agency. (Although that agency may change the alignment, with corresponding consequences)
DnD horror stories :
Spencer *starts talking about the Sunder game*
o o f
I never watched it. Was it bad? Did they have an Orion in their group or something?
@@CaronDriel it was uh. A game.
(Just boring.)
What campaign/podcast was this from?
About rewarding your players for smart ways to get past traps, in a recent session I did just that. There was a 80ft long room, and every 10 feet there was a pressure plate that released a puff of gas from the nearest wall when stepped on. Fighter just runs across room, lots of damage but not downed. Everyone else followed suit, except for the bard. He was thinking. He asked how wide the holes where, and I said there was one every 10 feet that was about the size of a fist. He grabbed a rock with mage hand, plugged the first hole, and stepped on the pressure plate. No damage. He did this for the entire length of the room, and got across completely unharmed, while everyone else needed a short rest to patch up their wounds.
Thanks for that content warning!! I'm not sensitive to that stuff, but I was at the table eating dinner with my kids at the time. Got to pause it and watch the rest afterwards without any awkward ass explanations that I wasn't expecting to do at the dinner table haha cheers!
"Your fun doesn't trump other players fun" really important thing for players to remember.
Yes, and vice versa
Hey Jacob or the editor, I just wanted to thank you for the content warning. It means alot and I just wanted to make sure you knew that it was appreciated!
I am not too sensitive about that, but I obviously see it is some fecked up shite. My sister and niece were both touched by some gross demonic bastard when they were kids, so I understand how it feels like for people who are sensitive about rape to hear jokes about something that can't be joked about.
I also appreciated that they warned everyone about the topic.
Worst D and D group I have been in is when I was playing one of my first game. I played as a rogue monk and was always in the back as the druid was the group leader and the person in charge as a shapeshifter with the third member as a fighter. We played a few session before the DM who I was friends with IRL told me that I should be more interactive and be more creative. I have social anxiety and did not know my other players that well but I enjoy roleplaying so I took his advice and became more creative and started to take point in combat and started being creative and going first. I then got yelled at for doing stupid stuff every time if the party's plan failed as they all blamed me, including the DM for things going wrong even when I was not the one coming up with the plan I went back to taking the rear and letting them plan and got yelled at again for not engaging in conversation again by the DM. I told him how I felt and I left stopped playing. I have not talked to the DM since even though we were good friends IRL since.
yeahhhh. i've fallen into that DM trap before by asking your players to " PLAY MORE"
typically you get what you give.
Can we address something about the bard story, by the way? He rolled a 32. That’s a high enough skill check to bluff gods!
You’d think a roll like that would make the thieves guild guy actually question if they knew their name. Like even if it was an old childhood friend maybe a lie that good would make them second guess themselves and wonder if you’re just a look-alike or even a Döppleganger.
Yeah, well if someone already knew his name/who he was, then it'd be impossible to pass yourself off as someone else to that person, and therefore, the member would still know who he was.
30+ is _almost_ impossible. So it only works if bluffing gods is _supposed_ to be possible.
If it is, and you pull off, that's rad as fuck and should be allowed to happen.
@@reloadpsi in response to this I belive gods have been tricked before several times so it's technically possible
The DM in that game called for a roll when they shouldn't have. Yes, a 32 is stupidly high. However, if they already knew who the player was, they would know how good of a liar they are and would likely be predisposed to disbelieve anything that they said. In this instance the proper thing would be to not call for a roll because success is impossible and allowing them to roll and fail with a 32 just leads to bad feels and metagaming.
The only reason I would ask for a roll in a situation like this was if I knew the player would normally succeed if not for the special circumstance. That way the player knows something is amiss because they're positive they didn't screw up the deception attempt.
The first guy could have given the “generic” character another option. Like, how does he avoid following the angel? How does the party get the angel to leave him alone? That could be a plot hook. It could be interesting, and spice him up while also playing the character he wants.
4:39 that's literally what happened to my first character, although the dm didn't care about my domain I just accidentally prayed to Odin instead of pelor and started a God war. Started as a life cleric died as a war cleric with lycanthropy.
...That escalated.
Pray to both gods
@@king_archfiend5311 IIIIINFINITE POWEEERRRRRRRR
“I cast magic missile at it.”
“It’s a gazebo. It has no effect.”
“OH MY GOD!”
Is that an IT reference?
@@commonflax4947 its a classic
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_and_the_Dread_Gazebo
reminds me of a fan-story where someone actually tried to negotiate with the Living Gazebo...
NAT 20.
her first good roll of the game!
the Gazebo actually joined the party and stayed with them until the BBEG "killed" it with a "dispel magic" that turned it onto an ordinary gazebo.
"Tyler, not my fiance, maybe"
-xptolevel3 2019
Probably his husband already.
Talking about attempting rape, I had to deal with that on my first time dming for anyone outside my family. It was all new people, we met through Facebook and they seemed cool enough. The person I want to talk about was playing a wizard and he was a murder hobo, which always ended on him nearly dying since he had a really shitty HP pool.
I had my issues with him and I spoke to the party because I wanted to kick him out, he was disruptive and annoying (both as a character and irl), but the rest of the party out voted me, so I gave him a second and third chance. On that third, however, what he did shocked all of us.
First of all, he had hinted up to this point he was an "incell" (which I didn't know the meaning of until after this happened). That aside, the party was fighting the redbrand ruffians at their hideout and one of them fell prone with his ass up (i did it for comedic purposes), which he seemed to take particular interest in. On his turn he asked me if he could move up to the prone ruffian, I counted the squares and he had 5 ft to spare, so I said yes. He then declared he was going to pull the guy's pants down and rape him.
I said no, obviously, fuck no, but he started arguing that he wanted to, so the whole party jumped in to defuse the situation.
In the end I kicked him out, but I couldn't believe it.
Yeah that is not ok. That kind of shit needs to be ‘okayed’ by everyone before the opportunity arises. Even if just one person is absolutely not ok about the idea of RAPE as a joke or otherwise in the game, then that’s it, it ain’t happening. That shouldn’t even be a majority vote. Glad you booted his sorry ass
@@JThom529 needs to be played with everyone to see who gets first ride on the train 🚂
Bud, you're the GM, you're the arbiter. Even if the party wanted him to stay, you kick him. It's your table. Either he goes or you at that point.
"the gods watching the party squint their eye, fix their glasses, mutter something under their breath and break out the emergency divine smite"
@@AttilaVoicesit's his table but it's everyone's game
For the first story.
Make an EVEN more generic character for the same game. Make it a paladin. But play them as the most boring, lawful stupid character in existence
I would've been even more petty and just changed the name of my original character and said it was my twin lol
"It's about fun" *proceeds to kill any fun*
Replace that dm immediately
6:12
One minute is 10 rounds, so I imagine that's what she had in her head
I played with a group that said that my Half-Elf Thief was useless, because I chose to focus on having high skills, instead of combat.
I play Shadowrun now.
The Turdinator Skill monkeys are awesome. Just not in combat so much. Though in 5e, they still get sneak attack regardless.
There's a lot of Dex based skills, how was your character not at least decent in combat? Did they just get mad at you for not taking combat focused feats as you leveled up? Fault on them. If you just refused to attack, even with a ranged weapon, than the fault may have been on you. If you want to play a technical pacifist, make sure you're a class that can do something else useful when their turn comes up in battle.
Shalakor An abjuration Wizard would be a great pacifist. Their spells are of protection generally
in pathfinder, one of my players is a spy, non combat oriented, and gets by by having ranged disarm reactions, and a feat that lets you not only use slight of hand instead of disarm (which is usually an attack) but also run up and take whatever was stolen (subverting any restrictions like say having their hands full) so he literally just steals every enemies weapons and just kerps doing diplomacy lmao. not a strict non combat build (im a big fan of non combat games) but it is so effective because it just takes all the combat and tells it to be quiet while the adults are role playing lol
I remember having the Bard's Handbook (AD&D 2ndE), and the general consensus was that all the kits (oldschool subclasses) were garbage except for the single one that could give a +1 to attack. And I was like: but skalds are cool *storywise!*
Anyway, I like the balanced mix 5E has going on with most classes. You can go either way and never be totally useless.
"then have yourself a good april"
*dramatically looks up from my drawing back at the screen* how-
"I hate when a DM makes you have to roll for everything."
Some of my best games ever of fun and hilarious situations, used that house rule.
Example:
Paladin, opens door, failed.
The Paladin takes the handle of the door, and swings it open, and with his 18/92 str, the massive force shatters the door, sending splinters and pieces of the door flying!
The Paladin has to do a Con save. Rolls a Nat1, unlucky for the Paladin, one of the Splinters of the door, flies and pierces his eye, roll damage 1d2.
The Paladin takes 2 damage, and lost sight in his Right eye.
This Paladin, was played by Me, his name was Rolf Akimir, this was a 2e game, so not pathfinder stuff.
The game had many hilarious situations that had lasting impact. It is how you use it, that determines how fun, or how frustrating it can be.
I agree! In the very first game I ran for 5e, our low intelligence monk went to try a locked tavern door. Jiggled the handle, nothing happened, so he tried to kick the door. I asked him to roll what I intended to be a strength check against the door, and he rolled a nat 1 and stubbed his big toe, taking a couple hitpoints in damage! The whole table had a good laugh over that and we've had many other laughs like it. It's definitely all in how you use it.
Sure, but that was a house rule, as in everyone knew and agreed it would work that way. The situation they were discussing wasn't that.
@@NoriMori1992 What is said, is that it sucks no matter how it is played out, if the DM asks you to roll for things that you normally don't roll for, then it sucks. That is literally their stance, I literally came with a counter argument for this. And by Session 0 you should already know what Rules the DM has, if you don't like it, then why are you in it?
And the example they have, has very little context. Like what if the Thieves guild has kept track on them, maybe they have spied on you (Which is literally a thing they do), what if the person he speaks too is an old acquaintance?
So lets make a scenario;
A level 15 Bard, dresses up and uses minor illusion to make himself look like a Noble.
And when he goes to speak to the Royal Guard Captain of the city, to get some information, the DM asks to roll for Deception.
Unknown to the Player, the Noble he disguised himself at, has turned up dead, the Royal Guard Captain knows this, because he has literally seen the corpse himself.
So no matter how high the bard rolls for Deception, the Royal Guard Captain *will* see through it, because he knows the guy standing in front of him, is dead, and someone is guised as him.
So what do we learn from this context? Context matters.
It is like when a player has disguised themselves as the guard captain, or officer, and then runs into them. No matter what you roll for deception, they know you are not a mirror and that you are not them. So into the slammer you go.
Similar thing in one of my games. Shot at a glass statue as a "f you" kind of thing, and my DM made me roll for damage. "Weird," I thought.
Turns out, with the highass damage I rolled, shards of glass flew in all directions and everyone in the party had to make a Dex saving throw to avoid damage. Funniest shit man.
@@DraconiusDragora Then just don't have them roll if it's an automatic fail
Dm: is there to create a story for the players to overcome, but not too easy nor not too hard
Player: is meant to be there to help other players and be helped by other players to overcome a challenge
I was literally watching how to be a good DM with Matt Mercer.
It's kinda long, and probably not as interesting as the ones in the video, but I've got a story to share:
> Very first time playing D&D ever. We're doing 3.5e, which in hindsight, is not great for people new to TTRPGs.
> I have two characters ready, a Neutral Good half-elf ranger and a Lawful Evil tiefling fighter (supposed to be a blackguard/anti-paladin, but I didn't know those existed yet, so I settled for fighter).
> Consult DM on which character would be better for the campaign. She tells me to play the tiefling fighter because it'll be "interesting".
> Fast-forward to first session.
> There is another DM that I didn't know about. This barely matters, because the second DM ends up being the only one for all but two of the sessions anyway.
> Almost the entire party is Chaotic Good. I can already tell that playing a Lawful Evil character with this party won't go well.
> Beginning of the story is full of events where my character either gets hurt or has to leave the area because of blinding, holy light. I accept this because I'm playing what, as far as I'm concerned, is a literal demon, so at the time I think this makes sense.
> 2nd session ends with my character and another party member being ambushed by *35 Lv1 kenkus* because the 2nd DM kept ignoring us and wanted to punish us for "not paying attention to the game". The DM fudges the rolls super hard to make us lose the fight.
> 3rd session begins with our characters being stripped of their gear and sold into slavery. Nobody else in the party realizes we're gone.
> This is the beginning of where the campaign really falls apart, because the DMs decided their GMPCs mattered more than us.
> One of the GMPCs appears from nowhere and single-handedly saves my character and the other kidnapped party member, repeatedly calling us idiots the entire time. We later reunite with the party by sheer coincidence.
> 4th session begins with half the party waking up to being torn apart by fiends. We try to fight back, but are severely outmatched, and lose pretty badly.
> I should mention that, before the campaign started, the DM told us that it'll be a beginner-friendly game and "nobody will die".
> This turns out to be either an illusion or shared dream, and has no importance to the later story whatsoever.
> Campaign continues for several sessions with most events just being the party having to run away from kaijus that the GPMCs are able to fend off single-handedly.
> Final session begins with a literal god of evil approaching the party and demanding they kill me. He also rips off my right arm, so I can't use my greatsword anymore.
> By this point, I've long since caught on to the fact that the DMs didn't like either me or just my character, and wanted him dead.
> Play along and make up some BS about how I was a double agent, waiting for the right time to kill everyone and steal their stuff to give my god an advantage in a Ragnarok-esque war.
> Half-heartedly PvP the other players and lose even more badly than I normally would have, because I'm reduced to using a broken bastard sword with my left arm.
> Party wins, takes my stuff, god of evil vanishes, everyone moves on like nothing happened.
> Around 2/3rds through the session, party fights some slavers and releases their captives.
> DM casually asks me to reveal my next character. Suspect they didn't expect me to have more than one prepared. Joke's on them, I made a replacement after the 3rd session.
> Dual-wielding Chaotic Good human barbarian. Trying to leave my "greatsword and plate armor" comfort zone a little, but don't really know what I'm doing.
> Reveal that my character is the adopted brother of the dwarf cleric, exposit other small bits of backstory to justify this.
> DM actually kind of likes my character because it reminds him of his favourite game. Players like him because of the mental image of a human who grew up thinking he was just a really tall dwarf.
> Party rests at nearby town. One of the other players, a dragonborn fighter who got a divine sword that my tiefling character was openly jealous of, goes to a shop.
> The player never really took the game very seriously, would pretty much go along with anything he thought was funny.
> Lightbulb moment. Say that the ghost of my tiefling character is haunting the dragonborn, and he hears his voice in his head constantly, like an almost literal shoulder devil.
> Dragonborn player thinks this is hilarious and makes it canon.
> The game eventually ends on an underwhelming cliffhanger, and the DMs never hold another session with this group again.
I wish there had been more to this campaign.
Glad you stuck it through instead of bailing when you realized they wanted your Tiefling gone.
Nicely written, too.
@@DeetotheDubs Looking back, I think I might not have stayed interested in D&D if I didn't see it through to the end, so I'm glad I took it all in stride at the time, despite gradually realizing that it wasn't a very good way to play the game.
@@TheHellspawnHero Your a stronger person then me, also, a better writer. RIP your hard work
@@TheHellspawnHero I know this is a late comment but did you get better experiences after that? I hate it when people hate D&D because of one bad experience.
@@christianholbrook2686 Oh yeah, definitely. A couple months later, I moved onto a new group DM'd by one of the other players in my first group, who was a lot more okay with letting the players play basically whoever you want, as long as you weren't outright disruptive, annoying, etc.
Technically, we mostly played Pathfinder (though we've done a handful of 5e one-offs and a campaign that ended with a TPK only three sessions in, which was mostly my fault), and we didn't actually finish that many campaigns because our then-regular DM tends to get fixated on new campaign ideas and often wanted to do them right away instead of finishing what we were still in the middle of, but overall, it'd been a much more pleasant experience not having to deal with anyone acting like they secretly hate someone. Even if my first experience with tabletop RPGs was a poor one, I'm still grateful it happened, since I don't think I'd have gotten into D&D if I weren't there.
Bad DM: "It's about fun so stop being a rules lawyer!"
Response: "I'm trying to have fun by using my abilities and you're ruining it by ignoring them. You're a sad excuse for a DM. I'm leaving."
this sounds like one of those text dialogues from the sims 2
@@gagne6928 I’m deadddd 💀💀
Yes! This is the correct response to a situation like this!
I accidentally walked out on a bad DM about three or four years ago citing work obligations.
It was technically true, but the work obligations didn't last the twelve months I was expecting them to (in that they found somebody else to work Tuesday nights to cover that person's maternity leave and I just got the extra hours elsewhere.) I'm told he was seething pretty hard when I showed back up at the same club six weeks later playing different stuff with somebody else there I'd befriended in the meantime, and harder still when I showed up the week of Halloween dressed as my character for the other guy's table.
@@Dragonmoon98 Honestly I'd argue it's not the best response. Absolutely better than not doing anything, but I'd go with a much softer one at first and try to convince them to improve rather than come out of the gate with "I'm leaving". Plus, adding an insult makes it more likely that the person you're talking to will just get defensive and end up basically ignoring the feedback entirely.
Now if they *don't* improve and aren't receptive at all, THAT'S when you pull out the "I'm leaving".
"Have a good October, unless you're watching in the future. Then have a good April."
[Watching this in April] *Choke on drink* Damn... he is a Wizard!
I'm watching this in the _next_ October…
Yes.... fireballs...
@@NoriMori1992 too bad im watching this in the NEXT november
@@BobOrKlausi’m watching this in the next september
Earlier this year, our GM made the king of a nation essentially be untouchable and hold an annual tournament to try and hit him. Fighter rolled a nat 20, spent superiority die and was blessed.. total 37 to hit.. MISS
Natural 20's are auto hits your dm railed you fellas I'd be pissed
Good Job Hero agreed. Once you allow your player to roll, you’re now granted them agency in whatever happens next.
If you want to make someone hard to hit, things like blur and displacement with a moderately high AC. Add Percentile miss chance to the mix, instead of bending the rules to your story
As a minigame that's actually not a bad idea though. Give some dude an AC of 35 and see if the players can stock up on bonuses until they hit him, then win a prize. I might use that :p
less its AC was like 50 or some stupid high number that was near impossible to ever roll
my horror story:
"ok, we found this super rare egg. who carries it?"
"i think is should!"
"Oh Oh, Me Me Me"
My Character being ignored: "uuhh i got floating disc... mage hands... unseen servant... i can hold things guys..."
"ok ok, i think i know who should hold it... THE TINY HALFLING MONK WHO LITERALLY ALMOST GOT US KILLED A MINUTE AGO!!!"
This, but IRL. Fuck me man fuck me
@@silent04_ please touch me with your invisible hands
Not marrying Tyler is an affront to his honor Jacob. Shame!
lol lol
Polyamorous relationships can be highly beneficial.
Am I the only DM who revels in the moment the players foil my plans?
Like I love that they are being creative and engaging with my adventure! I feel validated whenever someone cares enough about our game to put extra effort into their actions!
Me: I'm playing a reformed thief.
DM: So... Rouge who will be taking a few levels in cleric?
Me: Cleric with a criminal background.
DM: WTF?
At least that makes sense. It's a background, meaning that's how they were raised. That still technically have the skills learned, and maybe the know some informants or how to duck and weave through cities.
They just reformed after learning all of that.
@@Reapor234 yes, thank you! At least someone understands
I don't like DMs trying to force players to do something different.
"Alright. Everyone make human fighter champions cause magic is confusing"
"Hey, you're alignment is lawful good, you can't spare that (quarter blood) vampire 's life because vampires are evil".
For context, my character was a divine soul sorcerer. Mother dearest is a goddess of healing and I'm a pacifist and try my best to help people around me.
Unless they are say... Zombies and skeletons and don't really have the ability to form thought, I will try not to kill them, with few exceptions.
I found a quarter blood vampire with with most of her limbs sliced off and bleeding out on a table, so I panic casted cure wounds on her and was essentially trying to protect her, since she looked like she was suffering and my caring nature couldn't leave her alone, and for some reason, half the party didn't understand that "Lawful Good" doesn't mean "Slay all 'Evil' beings".
And what makes this so much worse is that she is only 1/4th vampire and at this point has committed no evil deeds... WE HAVE A HALF ORC IN OUR PARTY! He was the one most willing to kill her because she was 1/4th vampire, because he didn't trust someone who is part monster.
Long story short, I stayed with her for a long rest (partially to protect her, partially because I was out of spell slots and Sorcery Points. They fought a construct, rogue got downed, I had to heal them, and then we went into the lady fight. I left the vampire girl in the room I found her, but tied the door and left my familiar in it (so I didn't have my familiar for the lady fight).
Afterwards, we all talked it out and agreed I was in the right, and wrote a new set of table rules so this doesn't happen again.
@@nebs6888 I mean, if the DM has problems with the magic system because they are rather new as a DM they can always communicate to the players before the adventure that it would be cool if they wouldn't necessarily pick heavy spell casters until the DM got into the system. That's at least how a good role playing group would handle it.
I like the name "Concept Police" for these kinds of DMs. They punish players for playing a character concept they personally don't like. Sometimes they even entirely ban races and classes from every game they run because some annoying player from years ago soured them to it.
When you invite players into your game, it stops being "your" game. It's theirs too. Back off.
@@Joe-sr6de Should call him a lazy schmuck and find another group.
I use unseen servant to run into traps.
My group uses the halfling Warlock with invisibility at will. It is almost the same.
I used Find Familiar, since I prefer that. At least I would, but we have a Goliath and Dragonborn who has a penchant for running in headfirst.
And yet somehow, I'm the one who dies the most because all crits land on me.
Just FYI they grow up to be Invisible Stalkers and have grudges.
You monster.
Are Unseen Servants alive, I don't know...
summon puppies. it is the only way ;)
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?
Its not a story the Jedi would tell you...
Yes
Heard it? I read it. Pretty good book.
Tell me
No
Little homebrew rule that I use as a DM: You can see your Mage Hand, even in darkness. It gives off a mystical blue glow in a 1 ft diameter sphere.
I have been DMing for about 16 years now and I have never had a truly horrible game experience however I have noticed I have caused problems in the past.
> A Player has a pet bunny that is precious to her
> I want to make a dramatic moment
> I have her wake up to find her bunny has been killed, mutilated, and become posssessed by an evil spirit
> Player is forced to kill her precious bunny
>I think that was swell storytelling
> Later find out that my player (which we were both 12 at the time) went home and cried over her rabbit.
> I try and tell her she's just being ridiculous and that she's just trying to make me feel bad.
Frankly I feel like all of these stories have a common denominator. A lack of respect for the other people in the group. In my case I like to hide behind the fact I was 12 at the time and "didn't know better" but frankly I did. I wanted a knee jerk reaction out of my players and doing that was plucking low hanging fruit. To this day that player has never lived that down (not because I took away her bunny but because it deeply hurt her... and I didn't it completely flippantly and then tried to make her look like she was somehow being mean to me for trying to make me feel bad)... a few years back I invoked that storyline again by introducing the spirit of the rabbit as a patron saint of pets that protected woodland critters and household pets from the depredations of all kinds of ill intent. Every single non-combat pet that has been in my games are protected from malevolent intent (as in I won't kill them off screen or in ways that aren't somehow directly caused by the player)... I have since evolved to find more moving and effective ways of using beloved pets to create tension in a storyline without brutalizing in extreme detail something a player cares about.
It was a serious dick move on my part and it kills me that I was ever that immature... even if I was immature at the time.
At my table, there is understanding that any rolls made without the dm's request are imaginary and do not count.
My table rule is the person has to declare what the roll is for, then I acknowledge in some way, then they roll. And due to one player, we now have a "let the dice lie until the result is determined" rule, to prevent creative number generation.
I like the idea that rolls that aren't requested/declared are imaginary and don't exist, but I also think that a player doing a purely personal roll to determine reaction/restraint without mentioning what it's for is perfectly fine, so long as rolling for such works within the character, as it adds a bit of surprise to particular situations that could make things interesting
I was playing that artificer and tinkered and made a vile smell like the best damn meat these winter wolves have smelled he said roll to see If you deceive them I got a 25 "The wolves watch as you throw the fake vile and immediately attacked me" Tf is that bs
Wargamer dm
A DC25 is considered "very hard"... _how was distracting wolves with a meat smell considered "very hard"_
If these wolves were *completely* unfazed by the smell of the tastiest meat possible, then I don’t think you even fought actual wolves.
Isn’t it lovely when DMs railroad?
Im a year late, but arent winter wolves smart? Even if they smelled the best meat ever coming from the broken vial that contains no meat, wouldnt they still probs go for the player?
@@myminion74 That depends on how you play their motivations. There's arguably a bit of wiggle room for a DM and the group to decide how enemy motives work in their campaign. If enemies are essentially cartoon punching bags, the wolves might be after the players for no particular reason but evil. On the other hand, if enemies are motivated by ration self-gain, then the wolves would probably go after the easier food source unless ordered to attack by a superior. Also a possibility is that monstrosities might be relentless forces of evil, in which case they probably would be going after the players. However, the fact that it was stated as a failed deception rather than a nonstarter suggests that they were in fact searching for food, in which case they would go after the easier food source and attempt to avoid unnecessary confrontation by intimidating potential threats into leaving. Thus, the wolves ignoring food would have been a possibility, but the DM seemed to hinge their behaviour not on what they would attack, but by what would deceive them.
That's not even getting into why that would be a deception roll. It would have little to do with facial expression and more to do with the quality of the vile. That should have been an arcana check, imo, if even a check at all.
tl;dr Depends on what type of campaign is being run. That DM seemed to agree the wolves would have gone for it if the deception had worked.
I know this is really late but I would of had the dc be 5 for one wolf and every 5 over that is an additional wolf who goes for the vile. Then had the wolves do an intellegence check vs spell dc (with advantage) to determine its not real food. This could of given you some wiggle room in the fight without you just getting out scott free.
I love how wholesome this video was in the end. Normally DM horror stories just leave me with a taste of bitterness :|
Especially when it's one of these "And then I got my revenge" player stories where they deal with real life problems in game 😖
Two of the worst examples from my passed DMs were fudging rules to kill players and waiting until a player was pounding a wooden stake through a vampire's heart with a nat 20 to decide he "wouldn't allow it"
My favorite character (a Great Old One Warlock called Splish-Splash Eldritch-Blast as a nickname) became less and less connected with humanity as he became closer to the Great Old One, and eventually became unable to tell good from bad, I killed 3 people I could of healed because they said "help me" and he saw that as end suffering and thus death... God I miss him...
15:15
Your backstory doesn't need to be an epic fable
Just remember there's other people at the table
17:05 I was playing a barbarian human who had some grieving issues that he never really came to terms with. Little did I know this characters ...recklessness, was causing issues outside of the table for 2 other players (5 players, 1 dm) Noone told me FOR A YEAR+ until the literally day after that campaign ended ....it's been 3 years and change since that campaign ended and it still fucks with me
Lesson: talk shit out with your group ...if you cant, get a new group.
Explain if you would kindly?
@@Monarch_Crown_Security The character was a very ...ideal based character. Stubborn, never broke a promise, rescued his friends no matter the opposition, etc (a bit cliche looking back on it now) And that often got him into a lot of trouble. At the table it was all laughs and fun and i even checked in a few times, yknow, to make sure i wasnt being too chaotic.
The story comes to a close after some time and we have a talk about what we did and didnt like (so we can plan for the next campaign together) and 2 others explicitly stated my character to be a horrid example of a pc and that they hated it immensly. There we a scene where the wish spell came into play. My character, not knowing what we possessed, wanted to become strong (+2 str mechanically) and thus got said unlock.. which is where i think part of the hate comes from (dm let me roll 1d100 and on a 100 i got wish and on any other roll something bad (or nothing would happen)
you can guess what i rolled. It was a mix of not communicating and being angry with me over a dice roll. I was still brand new to d&d at the time (3rd character EVER) and it fucked with me for a long-time after that... still makes me 2nd guess my characters even today, 5 years later.
Hopefully that provided context, will try to answer questions if you have any
Eugh, as someone who can personally relate to this kind of story, I feel that. I’m sorry you had to deal with the knowledge that your character bothered people for over a year, I hope you can eventually get over that and not have to worry about it in future characters.
I was *blessed in my first ever foray into D&D* Unbeknownst to me, my brother *has been DMing for veterans & new players online, since he was 10 years old*
To counteract the bad vibes, I'd like to tell a story about my DM, who did _not_ railroad or punish us when we did something so unexpected that it even surprised _us._
We've been playing this campaign for two years. We've spent the better part of those two years hunting down a cult. Recently, we finally made it to their lair, our goal being first and foremost to find and assassinate the leader - a decapitation strike - and then to deal with his underlings. The first infiltration went very poorly and we were forced to retreat, but fortunately we had found a teleportation circle inside one of the leader's sitting rooms, so we could return at any time.
We spent the next few days repairing one of our magic items, doing research, copying spells, and so on. And every night, we scried on the leader to see what he was up to. The night before we planned to go back, we saw him in the same room that had the teleportation circle. And out of nowhere, one of us said, "Let's just attack him now!" We weren't mentally prepared, and the army unit that was standing by to help us mop up after the assassination was expecting the attack tomorrow. But it didn't matter. This opportunity to catch him by surprise, with our full health and abilities, was too good to pass up.
Our wizard immediately cast Teleportation Circle. During the minute it took to cast, we hastily gathered our equipment; and three of us chugged Potions of Speed, including the monk, who also took a Potion of Enlargement. And then we teleported directly into this guy's room.
This was not our DM's intention or expectation in the slightest. We caught her completely by surprise. But you know what? She let us do it. The spell took a minute to cast, so she could have had the leader leave his room by the time we got there. But she didn't. She let us have our crazy off-the-cuff attack. Not only that, but she even let us level up before we went, because she had been planning to level us up at the end of the session anyways.
Her only condition was that if we wanted to get a surprise round, we had to stay late and do it now, because she wasn't going to give us a week to think about what we would do for this surprise attack that our characters had decided on literally one minute ago. So it was a longer session than usual, but it was completely worth it. The monk stunned the leader on her first turn. My turn was after that, so he automatically failed his DEX save when I cast Disintegrate. I had _just_ taken this spell - my first-ever 6th level spell - upon levelling up. I had been planning to use it either way, but I knew it was risky because it doesn't do _any_ damage if they make their save. But thanks to the monk, I didn't have to worry about that this time, and I did 76 damage on my first turn. It was a great way to inaugurate my brand new spell.
We continued the fight next session, and proceeded to obliterate him. Even with lair actions that plunged us into magical darkness and then filled the room with poison gas, we killed him in less than three rounds without him getting a chance to attack even once - the monk stunned him again on her second turn. It was _beautiful._
Our struggle with the cult isn't wrapped up yet, but this fight represented everything we've been working towards for two years, and the DM let us cheese the hell out of it in a fun and exciting way.
Man, one of the DMs I was with ages ago played favorites with characters. They'd never let me have anything, ever. First, they told me that the stats I rolled, even though they were worse than point buy average or a standard array, were permanent outside ASI or magical items to improve it. They said my dwarf character had to have the strength to wear the heavy armor they were proficient in despite the racial trait, said clerics could slot as many spells as they have slots, and never hashed out the backstory with me to get a character that fit the world.
very late i know but i suppose the implication is that your dm allowed rerolls for players except for you? if it was just you rolling for your stats and the dm doesn't give you ability increases beyond the asis or magic items then that's kinda just the point of rolling for stats, isn't it? like if you wanted to be on par with point buy then use point buy, right?
Does anyone know if Jacob has a fiance? I feel like he's mentioned it before but cant say for sure.
he h a s
sorry for being a grammar stickler, but if the person is female it's spelled fiancee (two "e"s)
@@BookWyrmOnAString If a person is male or female, they should spell sorry with (two "r"s).
@@TH-camShortsAreTheDevil my mistake. Big oof
I played D&D for the first time freshman year in high school. I don’t think it was 5E but idk what edition it was. We find a locked chest. Rogue fails to pick it. I offer to break the lock with my ax. Critical 1. Ax comes back and hits me. Roll for damage. Damage somehow kills me. DM just killed my character and I couldn’t play for the rest of the day. Made me hate D&D until a few weeks or months ago when a good friend of mine had me watch critical role. Now I’m in a campaign with a great DM and I’m having a great time
Glad you found your way back.
@Hamza Ali anyone that puts their expectations for their DnD sessions as high as Critical Role, you're likely gonna be very disappointed. Matt and his friends have been playing together for literally nearly a decade, and he has the time, money, and energy to put all of the effort he has into the games he runs along with having good friends to play with.
Critical Role should never be what you think of when you walk into Dnd sessions.
W H E R E I S Y O P A R E N T S I think what me meant by that was that is that Critical Role got him back into D&D. He doesn’t expect all games to be like that. He even said that he’s loving his current game. Which, objectively, I doubt is better than Critical Role.
W H E R E I S Y O P A R E N T S Critical role got me back into D&D since freshman year of high school was over 10 years ago and the show didn’t exist at the time. I’m enjoying my current campaign and I know it’s not going to be like critical role.
@@butcanyoudothis3320 Well, Matthew Mercer has been DMing and playing for over a decade, Marisha Ray and Taliesin Jaffe have been playing with him for almost as long. Travis, Laura, Sam, Liam and Ashley played their first game for campaign 1 in Pathfinder two years before the show started to stream, so not quite a decade for them.
18:04 Time to set an event on my calendar for April 1st with a link to this video, have me completely forget what the link was to, rewatch the entire video, only to remember at the very end :D
Committed trolling is the best trolling. And that... is some committed self-trolling
Well did you have a good April?
This reminds me of the time I was a monk, and tried to break open a chest with my quarter staff, because I thought it was a mimic. The DM said, "The mimic bites and breaks your quarter staff."
breaking the staff aside because yeah that part just sucks, the mimic having the reaction to at least stop the attack is clever on the DM's part.
The guild master starts feeling extremely awkward because he thought he knew your name but now you made him second guess himself
already can tell from the defeated faces, that this is gonna be a juicy video.
13:00 There are some tables where sexual assaults, rapes, and other "Mature"-rated activities occur with the *consent of all players* that these things are possible (or likely) occurrences. The problem here is the character's backstory. If this character was visited by Bahamut in the manner that he so described, the appropriate response by the DM (again, assuming that the campaign is M or X-rated) is to have the deity wreak vengeance upon the character and take the player through a very serious chain of events that will alter the way that they play moving forward.
The story as told here happened at an Adventure League table. Depending on the age of the player and other players at the table reasonable responses start at their removal from that game and move rapidly up to banning them from the establishment. Players like that are why we can't have nice things.
@@briankeeler2508 Yeah, being at an Adventure League was a big flag for me. Those tables should be kept PG-13 at the worst.
Exactly. Role-play games do not need to be nice and fluffy. But there is a time and a space for everything. Clearly this was not it.
@@briankeeler2508 knowing that makes it honestly a thousand times worse. I get being the shit gremlin, though never to *that* level, but I also exclusively played homebrews. Adventure Leagues are... a whole other barrel of fish for why that's a fucked up set of behaviors. Just.. don't do that. Ever.
I just like that killing people for no reason is considered kind of bad but still just harmless fun, but rape is the unspeakable crime that cannot be named. The people making the video are on the verge of tears talking about rape, but laughing at the murder of innocents and children. Just seems silly to me.
The thing is, I've played a criminal type character, and honestly, it's really fun.
It's just like, don't act like a spree killer, ffs. You can handle your objectives in a harsh, callous manner, or you can pickpocket or steal certain things to help your party out. Just little stuff here and there that says like "this guy is shady, and maybe not someone to cross" or "he believes the ends justify the means".
My dude would like, make reckless decisions, break into places to get information for the party (which often went really well because the DM let me be a goblin rogue), and I used my underworld connections to get us in whenever we arrived somewhere new. It was a lot of fun being a character that was willing to do unsavory things to help advance the party. That doesn't require you to be an actual psychopath lol.
I've played so few games of D&D due to scheduling shit and general inaccessibility from where I live so I thankfully only have one really bad DM story. We were fighting a gang of goblins or something (it's been a year or two, I can't really remember all the exact details) and I decided to try and throw my scimitar at one of them. Literally right after I said that the DM chimed in with "you're relatively new to the game, why don't you just stick to straightforward attacks and not do anything crazy?"
Completely killed my investment in the campaign.
One of the most important things any new DM needs to be taught is that you need to be prepared with characters, locations, connections, etc but also for the eventuality that none of that will come up. That the players will never ask about them or choose to follow any threads associated with them.
I've seen so many DMs who are super excited about what they've created and proceed to tell the characters all about what they've missed out on. But, from my perspective, it's important to not tell them anything about what they missed out on. You can hint that they've missed out on something but you should never give specifics. Partly because it means you can potentially reuse that idea later but, more importantly, it encourages players to explore. Finding out cool things is their reward for asking the questions, challenging inconsistencies presented, talking to the strange character, etc.
One way I see DMs fall foul of this is when a character has a secret and they just explain all of those secrets neatly in an unattended journal belonging to them. It's usually better to leave a trail of hints that players may or may not follow. Learning the secret/truth is the reward for noticing and following the trail. Reveals often have a muted impact if they're not built up or earned. You need the player to be invested in knowing the answer.
If players missed something cool, my next thought would be "Did they miss it forever or should I play into this much later down the line? Not in a way that directly punishes them or is mean-spirited but maybe one where something happens because of it and the players are reminded of some of the clues they disregarded. They are left to come to the realisation that their choices created this outcome." I think this sort of thing helps the world come more alive. What the players don't do is just as important as what they do do.
"That's the end of the video"
From experience, I did not actually expect it to be the end of the video
I got quite upset once because the dm got my character raped when he was unconsious and couldn't do anything. The other players seemed to find it funny (as it didn't happen to their character) so i just kept silent about the discomfort. i told my self to not be so attached to my character, but watching this video really made me aknowledge how not cool it actually was. Just in general, you don't joke with rape
Bad GMs. My greatest fear ; - ;
Not bad as Good Dm with a bad habit which make him a bad dm
My DM makes us roll perception to know if a thing is magic instead arcana
@sum body Doesn't matter if they're poorly defined, anyone with a brain can still work out the difference. It's not like perception vs investigation or nature vs survival.
@sum body You didn't say that, but I did.
@@Joe-sr6de Ah the Dunning-Kruger effect. Classic.
Worst DM-moments that happened to myself:
Me and the only other female were rail-roaded into goinf to an art exhibit by ourselves. We get knocked out with no save while there. Had to spend the rest of the night waiting for the guys to rescue us. At our repeated questions if we could save ourselves, we just got "nos". Nothing we did would help apparently. Mind you, I was maxed out on strangth and she was a magic user. Can't remember what the guys did to get out of the stone casts we were in (don't ask, something about turning women into statues), but both of our nerves snapped when one of the guys complained about us not "properly" thanking them. Seriously?! We were the tank and the healer! We are not your damsel-NPCs but part of your group and have saved you loads of times. I was really tempted to let the next enemy get his skinny, glass-canon, elven ass. Sadly, my character wouldn't do that, so I ate that damage as usual.
Another time, my character got impregnated magically very much against her will and again with no other way out. I was told it didn't matter, because the hag that did it would collect the baby anyway. Erm... No? If I have to carry that demon spawn for nine months, it's my char's. If you want a big bad, push it out of your own vagina.
PS.: I wonder why so few women play pnps? To be fair the later dm apologized for that later. He copied that from somewhere supposedly.
Later DM got that shit from Dragon Age
@@the_birthday_skeleton Nah. I've played that game and would have certainly remembered that sort of weirdass, soft-core scene. Additionally, he has never played Dragon Age. (I know, because I keep on bugging him about it. He grew up to be an awesome DM and player. No weirdness left from his early days. 👍)
7:57 At this point in the game... After the dm has told me not to stop and debate rules and its about fun not playing by the rules... I no longer have a reason to track my characters remaining health. It is now infinite, because its about fun not playing by the rules, and well not being prone in the dying state is more fun.
You see, as a GM, I feel it is my duty to make sure the players feel as accomplished as possible. To give them a vague direction into the story, but making sure there is enough freedom for them to surprise me because that’s very fun as well
The idea of the red-thread was excellent. I will have to use that in the future.
When the murder hobo character tried to assault one of the PC's, the DM should have had Bahamut come down and give him the "Or Else" as in the original deal, "Change your ways or else"
No, what??
it’s gone past the game. You can’t belittle it by continuing to play with that person’s character.
You don’t roleplay the consequences of the attempted rape. You throw them out of the game immediately.
@@joearnold6881 tbh I'd have it be a both/and. "Bahamut swoops down and eats you. Get out, don't come back, have a nice life or whatever." Then let the remaining players decide, do we continue on or rewind time and play through again without that character?
Because yeah, 100% agree that the player needs to be booted immediately. But for the sake of the other players, you need to figure out what happens in-universe.
But honestly, based on how the story was told the DM should have intervened long before that moment. I'm all for player agency, but actively destroying the game and world the DM built (which is what it sounds like as described) means being invited to go play Skyrim instead.
I just watched this 3yr old video for the first time today, and when he said "Have yourself a good April", it made me rewind to make sure I heard it correctly lol
When I first got into dnd I joined a toxic group and they basically were all murder hobos so I thought it was normal and then I branched out and joined a few other campaigns eventually getting kicked out due to my wicked ways. Over time I learned from my mistakes and basically went to rehab so I could enjoy dnd and prevent others from not enjoying it. Luckily one of the dms understood that and eventually let me back in after experiencing how I had grown as a player.
Well, about the "in game sexual assalt"
Once happened in one of my games, I was dming. I guess it was also my fault for not thinking about something like "and lights out" when a murder hobo PC walked into a brothel. It was a very dark scene, but another PC got in the room. The first guy, after a brutal scene, tried to transform two women into werewolves (he got the curse about 10 days before). The second one... sees the scene and asks to be transformed too.
The PCs, or rather the players I would say, were debating about giving the curse to the second PC. That was the last session of that campaign, not strictly because of what happened, but it was a little awful from there on.
Taught me a lot about dming though.
In a sense, you are a factor in my Horror Story with my DM, because I had watched your Class Videos, including the one on the Warlock, and I had heard about the Celestial Warlock as a result.
Some background - started playing D&D in August, but I didn't have any of the books (understandable), but the DM and other players did (okay). I try to learn the rules, and I watch your videos - very funny by the way, had to laugh, and I hope that you do updated versions of them to talk about the additional subclasses - and I heard about the Celestial Warlock. By the point I've watched your Class videos, the DM is taking a break in his campaign due to Creativity Block, and one of the others is acting as a Substitute DM and we're playing Lost Mines of Phalandover until the DM can figure out certain aspects of his homebrewed story. As a result, DM is playing as a Paladin (very important). Also, I have a notebook, where I jot down ideas for random characters, most of which I'll probably never play anyways.
Onto the story. I get idea about a Holy Priest being a Warlock. I bring up idea to my DM.
DM: While a cult leader might worship their patron, I don't see a Holy Priest doing that. Patrons tend to be very jelous.
Me: What if the patron was one of those Holy beings - um, a Celestial?
DM: I've never heard of such a thing.
Me: I heard about it on TH-cam.
DM: Is it Official Wizards of the Coast material? (He doesn't want third-party stuff.)
Me: I'm sure it is.
DM: Well I've never heard of it, and unless you have it in a book or a PDF, it's not Official. (To be fair, he only had the Core books at the time.)
Me: You sure?
DM: I've got 20 years of experience while you've got less than two months. I would know. (Also to note, the guy was in the Marines and he had a look in his eyes that said "Now would be a good time to shut up!")
Me: Okay. (Mentally.) Game On.
Turns out, a book I had picked up at the library, Xanathar's, held the answer to my problem - over on page 54. The next week, when I went back, I noticed that one of the other players had a copy.
Me: Hey, Other Player, could you show DM page 54?
DM: What for?
Me: Remember last week? I found a warlock a Holy Priest could be.
DM: (Decides to be a good sport.) Other Player, mind if I borrow your book?
Other Player: Sure.
DM: (Reads, and we all laugh at the idea of unicorn knights. Then he reads about the Level one abilities, and freezes.) Two healing spells in one turn? (Fails Wisdom Save.)
Sub-DM: (No one has ever seen the DM like this.) I think you broke him.
DM: (After 30, or so, seconds, Makes his Wisdom Save.) That just invalidates the reason to play Paladin! (remember, he was playing as one for the LMoP campaign.) (He gives me a look that basically says "I'm impressed!")
After this, he got his own copy of Xanathar's, and we've added a few new characters in based off of it and Volo's.
Of course, due to what's been going on, haven't played for a few weeks. During this time, picked up most off the player-based books I don't own, including Wildemount - this has the Hollow One Template, which allows one to play as the Unded, like a reverent - which is useful as one of our group became a member of the Undead due to a deal with the God of Death in order to be cured of a serious sickness. So, I told my DM over the phone.
DM: Official Wizards of the Coast books or Third Party?
Me: Official.
DM: I look forward to checking them out.
I'd love to see more of these kind of videos. Your content is great as always, and so is the cast. You and your friends are good on camera.
Thanks for posting D&D content. I started playing back in 1978. I DM'd in a more storyteller manner. I used a lot of puzzles and "visual" clues. Before all the guides and rules, I found that it was more enjoyable to manage the game using my own judgement of the chance of success or failure of any action my players attempted. I wanted them to succeed but I wanted it to feel risky and that there was some consequence for their actions. More of reading a book that you were writing on the fly. The game flowed more organically and ran smoother. Players were more knowledgeable about their chances based on attributes and so we moved relatively quickly through scenarios. The rules have definitely made things more well defined so that you could easily move a character to different sessions but I still believe that the world you create is 'your' world and as DM you decide what is and what is not possible. Not that you tell the story but you do manage luck and chance as well as the physics of the game.
Gets to the end of the video, "unless you're watching this in the future, then have a good... April.." looks at date on my phone to see it's April 2nd..shit this episode was spooky
1 in 11 chance. Bit like how a horoscope is supposed to apply to 1/12th of that city's population.
I loved this, I would definitely like to see more DnD Horror stories.
There are plenty of youtube channels that do readings of reddit et al and some specailize in DnD stuff. I reccomend SkyDieRay
I thought about calling the 1-800 number at the beginning, just to see if it was a real number... But I'm at work, and I like my job.
Successful wisdom check
Oh dear... WOW that final case... almost makes me appreciate our party's rogue who mind you so far been consistently screwing with the group cuz he's "whimsical". It's gotten to the point where the remainder of the group have had to explicitly alter our playstyles to keep him "under control" (it's possible some members like how I as the ranger keep spotting him)...... but hey I guess he didn't try to sexually assault me... didn't think I'd ever say that as a positive... like ever.
Why not? What is wrong with your character? Is the character ugly? Did you try makeup? Perhaps you could like 'accidentally' lock your arms to something while wearing a short skirt, having 'forgotten' underwear. going "Oh no, I locked myself stuck, and I am now helpless. Hopefully nobody takes advantage of me." *wiggles butt* ... (The way I read that last bit makes it seem as if you would normally say "but hey I guess he didn't try to sexually assault me." in a sad and disappointed way. As if you wish he had.)
@@zhoupact8567 Nah, thinking back on that campaign that was relief not sadness, sexual assault is probably the only thing he didn't do (which I still can't believe is something I have to praise). Actually I think I wrote this before he got the Wizard and my pet killed. Only kind of embrace my "big titty anime elven girl" went for was after doing his thing at other character's expense and casually caused a near TPK.... I tried to stab his unconscious body for insulting dragons we were trying to bypass via negotiations. Party leader stopped my character, but the guy had to roll a new character along with the dead cuz leader in game said "your shenanigans give you 2 choices: gimme your stuff and leave now, or the elf is gonna murder you when she's done crying".
That bit where Spencer hands over her ring in the beginning got me really good. Thanks for that☺
“Have a good April” Jesus I had to do a double take! 😂 3 years later and he got me 😂😂