Sharing a fun XP to Level 3 video about high-level D&D because it explains why he fudges HP when running D&D. It's understandable given the frustrating situation in the video. (FYI he's playing PF2 in the Eberron setting over at Arcane Arcade and has been enjoying it.) th-cam.com/video/aoPgHsu8j5w/w-d-xo.html I see some debate on the DM's post in the comments. I'll just summarize what I say in the video: -The main topic of the 1st part of this video was the DM's correct decision to have the lich fight to win, in the climactic fight of the campaign. The general tenor of the comments was you ONLY kill a PC in certain circumstances and this wasn't one of them; otherwise, hold back your monster. -Yes, the Facebook comments also had a more legitimate concern reacting to the tone of the DM's post. But here again I think the DM's intent was misconstrued. On a Facebook group for D&D memes, he was giving a lively and jocular take on the story, where he embodied an "evil" DM. I guessed that this reflected how he presents himself at the table (e.g., he might have roleplayed the lich), and that his group might enjoy his style. The majority of DMs are NOT petty or sadistic and want their groups to have fun. There was a reason this DM posted, which was to ask if he was too harsh and AITA. What he received was not a balanced response like "it's the climactic fight of the campaign, yes a lich might kill a PC, but it sounded like you rubbed it in their face? I don't know your group, but that wouldn't work with mine." Instead, most of what he got was vitriol. -As it turned out, his group agreed with the lich killing the PC and rather enjoyed the session, and enjoy him as a DM. Assuming the worst of the DM's intent just dramatizes the readiness of people to (1) pronounce judgment on a D&D DM and (2) pronounce judgment on the internet. I think the significant number of comments continuing to find fault with the DM reflects the community's tendency to identify with and side with players, and not with the DM who makes the game possible. It's important for people to understand this DM's point of view, which also was supported by HIS GROUP. And the 2nd half of the video focuses on the SITUATION not having to be this way: the outcome of fights in D&D 5e shouldn't be so dependent on DM fiat. I'm disappointed that I didn't spell out that there's a standard response when people who bring up a flaw in D&D: "The DM Can Fix it!" This not only absolves WOTC of responsibility and allows it to maintain its monopoly position as the game claiming to best serve all play styles; it also fosters a psychology among DMs (especially among less-experienced ones) of unfairly blaming themselves for problems that might actually be rooted in the rules or in their players.
Well you know what they say about assumption.. That also includes assuming the best. If a person's entire post reeks of trolling.... (and it does... It really does).
I have been preparing an essay on this topic for myself and my friends/play groups. I am running a survival and madness heavy game where my goal isn't necessarily to kill the players but to tax their characters and make them consider harder decisions. To that end, spells are not the convenient one-size-fits-all answers that we typically see. In exchange though, I make great efforts to reward players for using alternative utility spells to solve problems indirectly or to provide utility to circumvent some issues. Though I have also been strict on what spells I will allow, starting with an outright ban of the Wish spell (because a number of magic items which can have Wish could spiral into adventures in and of themselves). Goodberry has also been subtly nerfed by being a literal berry full of nutrients. Hunger will still hit the players, though they will not feel weakness from lack of food/water. That hunger, in turn, takes a toll on their sanity which is a mechanic I'm dredging up. I also reserve the right to remove, add, or adjust spells to help maintain the vibe of the game without robbing players of their ability to be powerful. The party knows that the combination of Sanity and emphasis on Exhaustion mechanics could lead to a death spiral, but this also feeds into the themes of facing unknowable horrors and old gods. There is a recovery method in the form of downtime actions. But here's the kicker, we all understand that 5e is not built for this kind of narrative experience. It's familiar, it's fun, but it largely caters to a power fantasy with very little to incentivise players to make narrative choices. And, of course, the culture is inundated with entitlement. Some bad DM stories are valid, there are bad DMs, but I agree that the role of the DM is now to cater to the player's whims.
I was just about to say much of this problem comes from 5E. The example on the video is great but the biggest by far is the whackamole effect even a slight access to healing creates (And considering even Bards can heal remotely almost at will this is a serious issue). I'm thinking about returning to 5E but my approach as a GM is going to be very different: Taking some queues from Dark Sun I'll take things on a similar yet different direction: Dungeons with no dragons: no supernatural or mythological monsters to be found, I'll just have access to the exact same character options players have for 100% of enemies in the game. I bet you'd see some really intense tactical gameplay as well as political intrigues and mysteries just trying to survive that environment.
@@dimitriid Honestly, why bother with 5e? What does it uniquely have that you can't bring to other, better, systems (say, systems with unionized workers, book PDFs, and freely available rules)?
"in this journey I'm just a humble narrator, I have the task to show you this world, for all that I say is and all that I don't say never was, all while you shape it with every decision, you are the ones who must write this tale with each action, which will have consequences and effects, glory and misfortune, but in this path we will walk it together, for one can't reach it's end without the other"
Ive been in an only war and I am in an imperium maledictum capaign with the same DM, where i get pretty stressed with how the DM can be quite mean in how they respond to players making stupid decisions. I'm kind of OK with some pretty mean decisions despite how stressful I get because they will do the opposite when we make sensible decisions to give us a chance to stay alive. The game i get most stressed with is my DnD game where the DM uses valid tactics to put players in danger, but not as if they are character in the game, but chess peices, so they follow the rules down the line, but it feels way more unfair than the game where if we do stupid things, we risk "rocks fall, everyone dies" it would take too long to explain why. Then my pathfinder game feels very balanced, the rules are followed, we still succeed despite feeling in danger. Its partly the DMs different personalities though, not just the rules. Personally i feel with this story the DM made himself sound petty, so wasnt judged on the choices, but the way he framed himself, while Ronald is super fair to him over the details of the choices he made, rather than focus on the framing.
Asking for the player's health was petty, but otherwise this is exactly what you'd expect from a Lich. Power Word: Kill is THE classic Lich spell-any Wizard worth their salt trying to fight a Lich should try to prevent the Lich from getting it off-counterspelling, breaking line of sight, etc.
I'm surprised how little people are bringing up the option of breaking line of sight, the wizard was being greedy by only being offensive and not trying to set up any defensive measures
@@auberry8613 exactly! a fight against a Lich will necessarily require you to either shut down/mitigate the Lich's casting, or die you're fighting the evil undead pinnacle of magic power, it's a terrible idea to just hope you win initiative and can burst down the Lich before they can do anything
It wasn't clear if the DM was decided to cast Power Word BECAUSE they answered under 100 or if he was asking just to describe the results of the spell. For example, if he has said 120hp, the DM could have said he cast a spell at you to no effect. I don't have an answer, just two ways to interpret the unknown.
@@alanthomasgramont I didn't think of the question being before or after deciding to cast the spell. Thankyou for pointing out there are multiple ways to read what happened.
If you do 1/2 my HP in damage in a single turn, you better believe I'm going to take you out ASAP. The wizard took a big risk and got a big reward. They did more damage than anyone else AND distracted the Lich for one turn, knowing they could die in the process.
I started a brand new group of D&D players two years ago. At the second session (remember all players were new to D&D) the kobold priest critically hit a player with Inflict Wounds. I rolled the damage and then stopped them. I explained the rules on critical hits and then announced the 32 points of damage the level 1 PC had taken. The entire table erupted in laughter and the new players described how their character’s body twisted and shriveled up into what looked like charred tree limbs. The rest of the party quickly retreated, not knowing what to do. This unfortunately led to the character failing their death saves and perishing. I had unintentionally set the expectations for those players that the game was dangerous and, because they were new, just accepted this as “normal.” The following year the Druid expected a hall was filled with hiding invisibility duergar but was unable to seek and find them. So on her final movement she leaped into the hallway in hopes of drawing them out. However, she thought there were three but there were actually 5 and they ended up ganging up on her, each getting to attack with advantage from stealth and dropped her to 0 hp. Her response was basically “I was so dumb to do that”. She didn’t blame me she knew she heard something, knew there were duergar near, knew they could be invisible but charged anyway. And now after two years the players still occasionally comment about both those deaths and learning lessons.
Big factor was that neither made them feel like you did it on purpose. Fist was clearly bad luck, second was clearly player's mistake. But I agree, having right expectations are biggest factor how players react into hitting snags, including character deaths.
I agree with giving players an early death. My first Campaign ever with a bunch of new players had a near TPK in the intro dungeon. He gave us an in game reason to let us try again but from then on we understood the assignment survival first, then victory.
@@valivali8104 "Big factor was that neither made them feel like you did it on purpose" I feel because we like Ronald we are going along with his interpretation and missing the reason the DM got people riled up was he made it sound like he did it on purpose, not like the character did it on purpose, but the GM did, out of some spite. I am not saying Ronald is wrong, but he seems to look at this instance of a DM painting himself as a villain and seeing the bigger picture, igoring that the reason people arent aware of the bigger picture is the DMs choice of words.
"Power word kill is reserved for a desperate attempt of the BBEG" Idk, i feel like "this guy took 60+ of my hitpoints in a single attack" might be grounds for a desperate counterattack
Lich: "They're eating her....and then they're going to eat me!......OH MY GOoOOoooooOD!!!", *casts power word kill*. One of the trolls dies. Can't really click anything else as ridiculous here.
Two more dynamics come to mind: 1) players don't know what they want, and will argue for undesirable outcomes; 2) the Internet makes for easier criticism based on less reality.
Oh, and loopholing an overused spell is fine, so long as you don't overdo the loophole. I have a rule that if a spell gets to be awesome twice in a short period, I put a hose for that ability either the third or fourth time I think it will come up. This is especially true if the hose wouldn't apply to an upgraded version that is otherwise not worthy. Like, if you use Leomund's Tiny Hut and get attacked from below, maybe you should seek out a copy of Leomund's Secure Shelter. DM abuse is bad for players, and I mean in terms of individual player experience, in the moment.
@@robinmohamedally7587 that's true in the sense that "not knowing what you really want" seems to approximate universality, but I think women make the same complaint about men.
I got yelled at by a player when I stated before hand that silvery barbs is a banned spell at my table. And they still tried to argue with me that because it was a wizards offical spell, that I couldn't ban it, and that he'd us it anyways. My problem with 5e is that it's very good at coddling players because they're the special one's in this world. It's literally a parent saying their kid is gifted and that they can do anything. when infact people have their own limitations that they must over come, and that the world isn't going to bend over to them because it was supposed to be funny.
@@1Orderchaos just make an enemy group full of casters with silvery barbs, every time someone crits or make a highroll, barbs then. They will learn very fast why this is an anti-fun spell.
If the sole source of tension in your game is character death You could be doing better If the sole source of failure in your game is party wipes You should be doing better
@hexidecimark they literally didnt even use the word death in their comment, nothing about it says the only way the players can lose is by dying. "You should be doing better" by actually reading the things you reply to.
@@hexidecimark no one said anything about "sole" except for you. Sounds like you built a strawman, because your feelings were hurt by the truth of what OP wrote.
@@SGWeberim having this problem right now with my dm and I am trying to figure out if it is me. It seems like every move I make is wrong. Did i hide because the ground is literally shaking? Stupid. Did I not hide from 2 (we have a 7 person party) humanoids on a trail and instead try to reach out to them to show we mean no harm? Stupid. Did we kill instead of talk to someone? Dumb. Did i talk instead of kill? Wrong. Did i move quietly and slowly? Wrong. Fast and loose? Wrong. On and on. An example, we go into a fallen castle full of enemies. Weve already been spoted by goblins. We need to save someone who is captured. I hear silence in one room and movement in another. I say we should deal with the movement sonwe dont get ambushed. I get pushback from the dm. But its not just this, its with everything. There is nothing that I can do that is right. Just wrong. Never the right option. Every choice is the wrong choice. Am I seeing things wrong? Am i missing questions I should be asking?
@@nananakesonwahhwahhwahh I'm a big baby and I NEED you to hold my hand! Wahhwahhwahh please don't use common sense when running combat, it's not FAIR
I’ve run my games like this: Most enemies are fighting to survive, just like you. That means sapient enemies will do things like surrender, take hostages, or flee when low on HP. Wounded animals will book it. If they have the power to go to the mat, they will. That sort of BBEG type character didn’t get there by pulling punches. I also tailor my difficulty to my players. If my players want a more casual, narrative story I have systems for that. If my players want a challenge, I can challenge. But I have different systems and tools for not just an alleged one size fits all system that really fits no one.
That's why WotC is trying to change that by marketing more to players and investing in AI DMs and getting that sweet sweet "recurring spending environment" going for the majority of players. I suspect their GM-hostile designs might even be informed by this. By making their game intolerable for flesh-and-blood DMs, it drives them away and shrinks the available pool for players, who they assume will then switch to their DMbots because they can't conceive of people switching to other systems.
Yes. I think it's a bit like declaring you have a player-driven video game, but the game only provides a world with objects and creatures you can destroy. Hey, if that's what players want, have at it! Murder-Hobo playground, right? Real GMs will still have more players than seats at their tables.
@@RottenRogerDM sounds like an exception, not the rule. in over 20 years of playing, virtually every single player i gamed with only bought the necessary stuff, nothing else
You hit the nail on the head, the way that everybody talks about being a DM sounds like "your fun doesn't matter, only the player's fun matter. Let them run around destroying your world, if you don't, you're railroading them"
Can easily flip that around - if every effort a PC makes to do something that makes sense but would destroy the shoddily prepared world why wouldn’t they sit around waiting to be entertained?
@@mogalixir It's almost like the situation isn't a simple binary and it's a non-sequitor to point out that flipping to the other extreme also has issues. To assume... Well, _anything_ has pitfalls. Assuming GM innocence unfairly rules out that the person is inexperienced or, indeed, bad at their job. But assuming GM guilt places an undue burden on them to be the magical fixer to *all* problems that arise. The solution is usually basic inquiry. Wild stuff tbh
Or the GM can't keep their game straight going so far to jump into other DMs game settings forgetting cooperation is vital. Would you want your setting ruined because they can't run their own game properly?
This is something I've noticed, at least before the switch away from 5e. There was definetly an expectation that the DM allows every option, even from non-core sourcebooks (looking at you, planeshift supplements). I don't think people fully get how much effort it can be to intergrate a player's backstory into the world, and when they're some bizzare race from an obscure source, it can be a lot of effort. But I would get flack for this! And I wasn't banning everything, just stuff like Leonin or Loxodon that i didn't want to include. These books really need to emphasise the fact these are optional, and not default.
That's why I like PF 2es rarity system: For one, archives of nethys exist, so the players can see everything that's possible. On the other hand, there's rarities and it is explicitly stated that, short of the weapon familiarity feats, it is up to the DM to allow or disallow the use of uncommon and rare things, short of ancestry weapon familiarity that gives access to uncommon weapons and only those. Interestingly, most things that are from what could be considered obscure source books and not the core rule books (or, in case of feats for ancestries and classes that aren't in those, stuff that's not from where this is introduced) as well as anything related to obscure mechanics like rituals, is marked as at least uncommon.
@@notrod5341 tbh I enjoy using the tools website. I still have the physical books (at least the ones I cared about) which I do read, but the sheer maximized ease and utility in which you can use that site to pull up anything about 5e is unparalleled It inspires me to wonder what a truly modern TTRPG would look like, where information devices are implemented seamlessly into the system so that the human element can shine at it's fullest
Not terribly new, though. The giant pile of sourcebooks with optional additional stuff goes way the hell back, and folks asking for things that could best be described as "significantly out of scope" probably right back to the instant they decided to work some story into their tabletop skirmish game. If not earlier.
I cannot emphasize enough how true the comment about wanting a challenge being the OPPOSITE of adversarial GMing is. I want my players to win without me pulling my punches. I don’t want to “beat” my players, but I do want my players to feel like they beat someone who was actually presenting them a real threat.
Exactly, and I tell my players this every time it comes up. I _want_ them to win, or the story ends. But I'm running their enemies who also want to win. They don't have to beat me, I'll help them with advice, or interpretation, or even fielding ideas of what might work, and trying to interpret their ideas as best I can to get the results they are looking for (or letting them know, when appropriate, that an idea will not do what they think it will). They _do_ have to beat their enemies, and I'm doing all the same things for those guys--it just so happens the one doing all their strategies is me, which should already be an advantage as there's one of me and a whole party of PCs--the difference though is that I'm okay with the enemies losing, cause it means the story goes on. And to be clear, the enemies don't want to die/lose. They want to win/kill the PCs. If I don't play em like that, they just become bas of hit points and card board cut outs for the PC's to smash through. And that doesn't make the magic of the PC's beating enemies that are a real threat.
For my table I offer a (admittedly VERY generous) retreat option. In my experience, I see few players actually retreat. This feeds the feedback loop of either steamroll enemy or TPK
@@danielswiner2907 yeah, i've gotten rid of attacks of opportunity on PC's who run from a fight, [and when it does not meet the qualification of a Withdraw] from my 3.5 game, just to give the players a chance. They're mostly new to it.
I sometimes just throw shit at my PCs that I think MIGHT be a bit much. Most of the time, I get demonstrated to me that there are 4-6 of them, and they can put their heads together and outsmart me most of the time.
Tiamat's Tavern is the worst group for DND advice ever. The majority of the people there are players and don't know anything about how to actually run a damn game.
This one time, way back when I started in first edition pathfinder, my character died from a phantasmal killer spell. I played a heavily armored tank fighter with a shield, and adamantine materials, massive health, huge fort save. My character had survived mountains collapsing on him; his name was Ambrose which even means immortal. My DM and the party were all mortified when I rolled a nat one of the fortitude part of the spell and instantly died even though I was at full hit points. The DM who said that he didn't think I was going to critically fail did this whole thing where he allowed our cleric to cast heal on my heart that had literally ruptured from fright. And the whole time I'm like "Guys, you don't have to do this. I failed the save, my character is dead. It's fine, I think it's fitting that a man who couldn't be beaten physically no matter how much damage seemed to be thrown at him died of fright." But they insisted, the DM said he made a mistake even using that spell. And I... Kinda feel like they stole my death from me. My character was Sir Cynric Ambrose The Immortal, leader of our party, champion of the arena, King of Cliff Side, and the Hero of Bovack. My character lived through so many adventures. And the idea of them exploring a dungeon only to return with their kings corpse on a stretcher would have been kinda epic. Who will lead us? What will we do now? What's going to happen? I felt robbed of my own story, and honestly, that campaign kinda fell apart after that.
I don't understand your DM's reasoning. Killing people is all that spell does. It's in the name. If he didn't want that effect to occur, why use the spell?
Yeah I mean plus if you're at the level where that stuff was in play couldn’t you just have gone through the RAW process of resurrection if you actually did want to come back
@@mrosskne I don't really get it either. There was a chance for the spell to only do like 3d6 or something like that, but you don't use things like that or power word kill, or finger of death if you don't want people to die. I'm not sure what was going through his head.
@@AngelOfDeath642 I think we were somewhere between level 8-10, but it's been like 9 years now. I think he had made a homebrew statement about not allowing resurrection to death scarier, but couldn't back it up when it finally happened. He was a new DM, and it was his first campaign. I'm not sure if he really knew what he wanted at the time.
I find it hard to believe that a 5e powergaming wizard didnt have counterspell prepared. I mean he still would have had to roll to counter the spell, but it would have felt a bit more fair.
Lich just counter-counter spells and doesn’t roll. Wizard was in all purposes dead the moment he didn’t kill the lich going first. Obviously, shutting down a high lvl caster is better then beating them up, since all it takes is one turn to completely gain a stranglehold of a fight
@@breyor1 Didn't RAW says that you can only use reactions out of your turn? so the lich couldn't do that. I know it's a common play but i seem to recall it doesn't work that way
Bruh it's the last session of the campaign and the wizard got to contribute one round to the combat before he was killed instantly and without a saving throw. If you don't see why that's bad DMing, I can't help you.
@@JD-wu5pf We don’t have enough context to call it bad dming. We don’t know how much the party knew about the lich, what opportunities they had to prepare, etc. You have to make assumptions for it to be really good or bad.
13:28 "Why are we rolling dice and dealing with so much math when we already know who's going to win?" You just put my entire last 3-4 years of thought around 5E into a single sentence.
did have a dm who insisted on doing their first time dming with us show up unprepared not knowing much of the dm side at all and it was a mess. the group forced her to watch the first twilight movie and threatened if they didn't do better next time we'd make her finish the franchise. next time they were prepared had read the dmg spent a while with the other dm in the group figuring out stuff and she's now our main dm. never had to make her watch another twilight movie. most bad dms are the players fault for not pulling out the big guns for motivation
I'm a Forever GM and one of my newer players wanted to learn to GM and ran the PF2e Beginner Box. For that game, I played a witch, and (spoilers) the final encounter of that adventure is a green dragon. It's a VERY dangerous encounter for level 2 characters, and she was reluctant to run it full tilt - but I encouraged her to run it as written and to try to kill us as hard as she could with all the tactics she could muster. The other two players were new, I was the only experienced player of us, and she (rightfully) targeted attacks on my character who was doing the healing. I went to Dying 3 and almost died - in fact, I only survived because (with a second character downed as well!) the rogue managed to down the dragon and get me stabilized with their third action. Without that, my character would have absolutely died. It was one of the best tabletop sessions I've ever played in because the GM trusted herself, played at her full ability, and we all played at our full ability, too. And that experience came from a first time GM! Sometimes losing can be fun, and *almost* losing and pulling victory from the jaws of defeat is the most satisfying thing you can have.
I’ve never wanted to stop DMing on the spot than last session when a player was hit by a BOSS one time. And he pauses for almost two minutes and I ask him what’s up after announcing the roll to hit, I know it’s higher than his AC and he responds with “I’m just trying to think of a reason to why that wouldn’t hit” and my brain shut down for a second cause people can’t stand any kind of consequences to the point where they actively try to logic-trapeze their way out of the rules applying to them.
"A man went up to a wall and tried pushing it down. He got angry started cussing till a crowd formed. No one stepped in till a young lad asked why the man was trying to push the wall down. The man responded "I walked this route all my life! And yesterday they built the wall! It's in my way!" Little did the man know, the wall was always there, he was just lost."
What? By how you describe it, it seems that he was either joking or trying to remember if he had some reaction defence. Are you trying to say that he just went "Nuh-uh" like a 5 year old?
Last session, a monster hit a PC and the player protested, "But I have an 18 AC!" I said, "I know. A roll of 19 hits you." He actually protested the hit, grumbled, and pouted for a while after. This player is 28 years old.
Dude, facts. I honestly got traumatized from one player reaction nearly a decade ago- where his druid ran off into the dark, alone, and fell into a Gelatinous Cube. The rogue was off alone fighting (and being eaten) by a giant toad. The Fighter was left alone to fight off a (formerly friendly) group of myconids. By time the fighter saved the rogue, and the duo got to the druid- they couldn't get him out of the cube in time; and he died. The druid player yelled at me for 10 minutes for being a "bad DM". I repaired the situation some back then. I wouldn't today. I'll never allow him back at my table today for that matter. My policy for a dnd type game is "you probably won't die if you don't do something stupid"; and while everyone jokes about me killing PCs, they know that's the case. Play like you want to live; and you won't die. Easy as that.
ALSO 5e is so hard to make suspenseful. In one campaign, I had to make huuuuge setpieces to even challenge my players. Double and triple deadly, even after previous encounters Go too far, and it could be a TPK. PF2 actually balances out. I love it for that.
@@Inuvash255It's hard enough to knock a player down, and then they get up to 6 turns to still survive. Making the only way to actually kill a player intentionally stomping on them after they're downed. A move I've never seen players like, and even I as the DM hate. I don't like that 5e makes me be the bad guy just to bring some challenge to the table
The proper response to such a player is the same as it is in every single aspect of your life. Tell them to calm down or get the hell out of your house. Same thing if a boss, an employee, a friend, or anyone else considers it their right to scream at you. Don't take abuse from anyone
The popular notion that old school dnd was too “adversarial” has led to complete rejection of everything fun about the game. DMs are supposed to challenge their players and not let one tactic go unopposed for too long before loop holes are found
It was too adversarial, we literally have hundreds of forum posts and interviews of DMs from that era... talking like they're playing a wargame and their job is to "Win" D&D by crushing the players.
@@Seth9809the OG D&D was evolved from Wargames. The party was expected to die when the players had them do something fatally stupid. It encouraged smart play and planning becuase the players knew their characters could die. Of course back then just like today, we had arsehole DMs.
@@ehisey I've moved down from 5e to B/X and while I can't speak for back in the day, today many DMs that run old school D&D aren't adversarial at all. A along as you don't do something stupid you will live. And of course when the dice roll poorly they don't hold their punches, but in my experience old school DMs are fantastic. I've only experienced one DM who seemed to teeter between being fair and just being an asshole, but they run a pretty mudcore game so I guess it's to be expected.
@@ehisey It was a game evolved from a wargame, with a ton of combat mechanics... That basically forced you at gunpoint to avoid combat at all costs. Never made any sense to me at all. I spent years wondering how people levelled up if they had to fight huge monsters with tons of HP over and over just to level up once... Then I remembered that silver and gold was XP, and people weren't actually meant to fight anything at all. They were meant to avoid everything, if possible. If four players fought something that provided 1/4th the XP needed to get to level 2 for them all, at least one or two of them would die, on average.
I think this is your best ever video. In particular, almost nobody else calls out that every DND table plays differently, and that other TTRPGs can support each style of play better. I love OSR and P2E personally! Very different games, or good at different things.
“I know the DM is doing all the work while Im doing absolutely nothing, but I don’t care, I turn up once a week, flop down on my fat arse and demand to be entertained.” - 90% of D&D players in 2024
yep. You cannot believe how many groups i've had to dump because of that attitude. It's like, "BITCH. You are not paying me, why are you treating me like your servant???!?!" The sheer entitlement, man.
@@Seth9809 sounds like you're making something up to justify your bad behavior. Sure, there's DMs/situations like that, but you have absolutely no clue how common those are, and are just making something up because your feelings were hurt by his post.
@@Seth9809It’s obvious you’re not a DM. If you were you would know that RPing a “angry dwarf with a drinking problem” isn’t work. But nice try. This video definitely was about you 😂😂😂
Different groups appreciate different styles, and different GMs work differently. As a GM, I really enjoy creating big sandboxes and simulationy systems in the background. My players come into my sessions with the understanding that their actions have consequences, I will not fudge, if they go straight to the BBEG immediately then they will die. This means after many years of running different campaigns with a large pool of players coming in and out all with this understanding, they realize 2 important things about playing a character in my worlds: 1) They have to pay attention to details. There will be warnings about going into situations far too dangerous for them to handle, but they will be in the game. 2) Even the craziest plans might work, I will accommodate anything without any railroading and create houserules on the fly if necessary. This means they can be as creative as they want in problem-solving. This doesn't mean their crazy plan will definitely work, but I will allow them to try. Another balancing thing I do is that I'm open to ruling things in favor of the players if there's ambiguity, but anything the players get the enemies get too. This ropes my players into the balancing, because now instead of "This is good because it's stronger", they now have to consider "What if our enemies use this on us?" My players really like this style, which works for me because I wouldn't do it any other way. Also, separately, I'm very glad to have dropped DnD entirely during the OGL fiasco. I'm never touching that system ever again, it's so anti-GM in almost every aspect of the rules and resources.
Exactly, different players want different things out of the game. Almost all "problems" in D&D comes from the mismatch between what the players want and what the DM wants out of the game. It's why one should be careful about asking for advice from strangers who don't know your table. I can see it even within one of my tables, I'm fine with my character getting hurt or even dying if they do something risky, but one of the other players at the table gets really upset when my character gets hurt - far more than I am - or whenever the party isn't always succeeding.
The problem isn't necessarily a problem with DnD and entitlement, it is a more widespread cultural issue. Let's say the table wasn't onboard with what happened. The response should be to respectfully bring it up with the DM and perhaps not come to an agreement, but at least to an understanding and situation where everyone can still have a beer together without grievances. The modern social environment pushes people to dehumanise one another while radicalising stances and opinions, especially online. Are many DnD players entitled? Absolutely (try banning certain ancestries for the sake of world building, that's an instant shit storm.) But in this case, I think the underlying issue is the unwillingness to treat others in good faith (until proven otherwise) which pushes people to say things like "I would never play with you."
Except who gives a shit that they wouldn't play with you? There is a million players to pick from, maybe millions. Why should you just play with random people who have nothing in common with you in terms of playstyle or interests?
@@Seth9809 It kind of depends on if the DM is getting paid to DM. If I was getting decently paid by players to run the game, they can dictate whatever they want on how I run, they are customers at that point.
This is a problem with Internet discourse...the only people commenting are people with a bad DM experience translating it onto this conversation...it isn't evidence of the vast majority of the community that isn't engaging with these threads.
I'm not so sure of that. I started to GM for people who I didn't know a while back. I have a rather tiny group of friends and not all of them are gamers. During COVID I then switched to online. And of the 59 people I have GMd for, I had less than a third of that number be reasonable fun players. Most of them were entitled. In one case, despite asking for player feedback throughout the adventure (module) I received nothing from the players. At the end of the adventure I got pages of unsolicited comments about how I made it DM vs Player and not DM vs Environment. One particular player spoke about how they'd all been talking about it outside of game nights and how they couldn't wait for the adventure to end. Seriously, how is a GM meant to deal with that?!?! My method is simple to remove those players from the list of those I'd ever play with again. To try and work on constructive criticism. Honestly, though I do think for those of us GMing for strangers or aquaintences, I find that the comments online do seem to represent the majority of players encountered. Of course, it is entirely possible that these (often new to the hobby) players have been influenced by this stuff online and are bringing that to their expectations from the game. I've very much had players at session zero tell me that my list of what players can expect from me contain significant red flags (usually when I say actions are not without consequences and player character death occurs in my games). Of course, I'm just one GM. And it is only 59 people, 11 of whom I have GMd games for over two years at this point. So I do accept that I am a VERY small sample size.
@@knogleknuser Thanks for the kind words, but honestly...groups of five, six, or seven players for one shots or limited runs. It's not that much of a task. Especially when I know DMs and GMs who run groups in schools. As a teacher myself...they are the real impressive GMs!
Playing online with strangers is a really different social world than playing with people you know, and so much of the worst online discourse reflects the worst parts of that subgroup. Spending time together not playing D&D is one of the most important ways to prevent social problems at the table. I run an open table with a very large group of people, not all of whom know each other outside of the table. When there's conflict between PCs, it's almost always between people who don't know each other well outside the game. It's easier to look past game behaviors you don't like when you know there's more to the person than what happened in last week's session. I also wonder what percentage of players in online LFG groups end up there because they were kicked out of all the in person groups near them...
You can’t do almost half of the Liche’s health in damage and not expect the liche to hit back with a vengeance. I refuse to play with entitled players even when I’m not DMing, always expect that the villains are out to kill you.
Otherwise, why play with dice (the uncertainty/randomness factor of the game) at all and not just talk it all out if you just want to cruise to victory. Do these people also play their video games only on easy or very easy difficulty?
I know it’s a vastly different system in a vastly different genre, but this is something I’ve immediately noticed working much better in Vampire: The Masquerade. It is made abundantly clear throughout the rulebook that your character will have crippling weaknesses, and that any other vampire who knows what he’s doing (aka the Storyteller) will use those weaknesses against you. There are incredibly strong abilities, but also constant opportunities for failure, at every turn. It almost feels like character failure is a deliberate feature of the game, and one that can be as much of an entertaining obstacle as a literal enemy. In 5e, whether due to player culture or the system itself, character failure feels more like player failure, or at least a punishment for making the wrong choice.
@@MaxromekWroc There's a difference between "there's mechanics for it" and "it will happen in this game if you play wrong, or even right." This is definitely a thing that varies sufficiently between groups (because DnD is a skeleton used for many types of people and however they wanna have fun) to warrant always clarifying, and also UPDATING as the game is played. The rules are tools, not an indictment on how they must be used. The TTRPG space has exploded in recent years, and given DnD is the gateway, you will get all sorts that use it for different ends.
@@MaxromekWroc just because there’s rules for something doesn’t mean that those rules will be used. Especially with d&d5e since dms have to houserule almost everything.
@@_zurr don't strawman me mate, where did I say "it will happen"? The OP didn't even mention anything about a certainty of death, what are you on about?
@@valivali8104 nobody needs to hosuerule anything to run 5ed, you can and it may even be prudent to do so, but it's not necessary. And surely the onus should be on stating whatever rules won't be used? You start with the common (i.e., the actual rules of 5ed) and then list out exceptions, not the other way around.
This is why I quit DnD. I usually end up GMing and realized that I basically rewrote virtually every rule in 5E because nothing worked as written. It's so unbalanced.
I would say it goes beyond balance, it hits me in the "we will help the DM as little as possible" category. Give me some ground to base my decisions on and everybody will be more resonable when we need to discuss rulings.
I remember taking up 5e for the first time and i ended up as a DM. Ecery session started with a new houserules and it was a drag to DM, since everything is a bear with bite and 2 claws
@@docnecrotic Yes but it is very popular, very common (many players know how to play it), and there is a ton of content for it (expansion books, campaign books, settings, video games, movies, tv, novels). So there are large advantages to playing it over other titles. That said I'm a firm believer in changing the game however you like to make it more to your liking, and trying other game systems as well. Personally I think DnD is crap, but there are a TON of advantages to playing it.
@@Zaszz1I’d argue a big part of the problem with 5e is that around half the players don’t actually know how to play it and never intend to learn because the culture of the game says the DM will do that for them.
you attract the audience you design the game for. 5e is a game made for players to thoughtessly steamroll everything and DMs to hold everything from collapsing constantly. thus the playerbase is thoughtless and DMs are tired.
What's interesting is in 2014 they designed it BOTH for people you describe (hence the Revivify spell, Healing Word as written) AND they tried to cater to the OSR crowd by catering to older traditions of Level 1-2 being deadly and having classic spells like Power Word Kill mostly unchanged in the game. The first module HOTDQ showed some of this philosophy. But the huge growth of the audience since 2014 has prompted them to cater to the audience you're talking about, so much so that 5.5e is basically a bunch of new toys for PCs to disable and kill monsters better than they already are.
This. It's why I dislike 5e, it doesn't give me as a player a challenge nor me as a dM any satisfaction to run. What few advantages it gives, others provide or excel in. I really want to look into Fabula Ultima soon for me and my players.
every other edition and msot games have a rules encyclopedia to give rulings on things missed and to clarify rulings... 5e doesnt have that... it still doesnt make sense, the NEW 5e is even more confusing as HIDDEN players, stealthing out of sight... are called INVISIBLE
@@improvgm8663 My stance is: Prepare as long as you need to, no more, no less. Target 0:1 (though you won't reach it), but start with as much time as you need, the time someone put into writing a module included. If you want to do 3:1 prep using a module assume it took at least 1 ½ hours to write an hour worth of that module, and take the time you need to understand what's written, in homebrew feel free to add that time to draw maps and come up with npcs if you need it, but reduce the amount of prep work per hour over your time as a DM gradually.
So many people hate to determine themselves and think fun only comes from "being free to do anything", when in reality the freedom to pick only comes to fruition in the act of picking.
What dummy party goes into a fight with a lich without getting death ward on the whole party? Pay a city cleric for the 4th level spells and be on with it
This predicament is made worse by 5e's various failings. PWK is an awfully designed spell, both too uncompromising and too easily countered (either literally, in the form of Counterspell, or figuratively, in the form of Revivify - hell, if the revivifier went before the wizard's next turn, the wizard wouldn't even skip a beat). That's kinda what 5e's high-level sandbox devolves into - a playground slapfight where every kid is casting giga-kill while keeping their everything-shield up. Moreover, a CR 21 monster vs. a level 13 party is ×1.5 their Deadly threshold - in other words, a PF2e Moderate encounter. In my experience, any boss encounter that hopes to be climactic at the double-digit levels should be in the Deadly×2 to Deadly×4 range (which, of course, isn't even mentioned in the encounter-building guidelines). Naturally, we're talking a fully rested party; if you're trying to account for resource attrition at the end of a more traditional adventuring day, _good luck;_ the rules give no indication what you should be aiming for. Is a party running on fumes performing at half maximum capacity? One fifth? Man is not meant to know. And even if the encounter building guidelines were worth anything, the lich is a badly put together statblock which doesn't match its CR, except for its access to stupid I-win gimmicks like PKW.
It doesn't fall to "every kid casting a giga-kill while keeping their everything-proof shield." You forgot martials. Half of the classes))))) Damn dnd doesn't like martials
Liches ni 5e only get 1, maybe 2 turns. They are so squishy in 5e if used as a solo boss that its not uncommon for an optimized character to nearly oenshot them.
Well of course the DM can choose to defeat the players or let them win at any time. Because he is designing the encounters. Are they facing 3 ogres or 9 storm giants?
I've had players tell me that I wasn't entertaining enough or providing enough interesting things for them to do, as if my interest in worldbuilding and having stories unfold at the table was an excuse to just passively be entertained and not actually play the game. One time, a party of mine stupidly walked into an obvious ambush and pressed the attack, despite many opportunities to back down or regroup. They did not and the party was wiped. I calmly explained that if they had bothered roleplaying in even the most superficial way, like asking themselves what they would do in their character's shoes, they would have survived. They didn't like that, and many of them no longer play with me. This attitude that my job as a GM is to adjust the story to enable any stupid decision to magically work out has made me want to just give up trying to make fun for these friends on more than one occasion.
This is why I have taken to always doing two things: 1. Have the players make large portions of the world. 2. Have the players take an MTG color pie word association test to figure out the PC's motivations. What you're putting forward likely just doesn't really interest them, or challenge their motivation. Drop throwaway hooks. Rather than going with a "story" from outset, have the party set some goals and build towards them, then have big setpiece scenes that happen and chuck 'em in as needed.
This is exactly why i burned out so hard on 5e after running 2 campaigns in it I tried so hard to make it fun for the party that it was sucking all the fun out of it for mr
That DM did nothing wrong. However, that situation screams of bad system design when a GM needs to have such a powerful creature at the combat in order to challenge the players... Which it probably even wouldn't be a challenge, since the Wizard took half the HP by themselves and the other characters were likely going to kill it with its measly 135HP. PW:Kill was perfectly valid in that scenario, specially how cheap reviving characters is in DnD5e.
Agree 100% the Lich should be able to wipe out an entire party of 13th level players. I’m sorry but they shouldn’t stand a chance. Same with a lot of the monsters in 5e. I.E Tiamat, in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign is supposed to be beaten by 15th level characters. Please they shouldn’t even be in the same room with a GOD until they are level 20 if not higher.
@@crazyscotsman9327 The whooping 13 to 21 level difference in PF2e would mean an absolutely impossible fight. The Lich could even just say "I don't even need to use Magic" and proceed to manhandle all the PCs.
the lich used to be powerful but WOTC nerfed them pretty hard as earlier editions were apparently *too* strong as their stat spread along with their gimmick of having a shit ton of traps, minions and high level magic items made it rather hard. So they decided to basically just butcher the character sheet and give him spells as a replacement. The only issue is, is that a fighter with a bow can probably kill him in a turn if they get lucky enough, making lich's BITCHES in the game. They are insanely weak other then their few spell casts
there's a number of other TTRPGs that don't have the D&D name that present tactical combat and are much more balanced than 5e, that aren't as heavy and still make sure that martials and casters feel different
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG I think they were referring to 4th edition. I have a huge collection of 4e books that I inherited. I've not played 4e but have read the books, and while I found the rules seemed to carry a fair bit of clunkiness (given there was intention to have a "companion" site that would handle much of the stacked modifier maths for you before some controversy with the creators), the thumbing-through of books there's a lot to really like. There's so much well written lore, but my favourite part is the modules give advice on NPC tactics and behaviour and how to make combat feel dynamic instead of just "eh, here's some stat blocks, go stand next to each other and hit until dead" that 5e presents. I've been writing my own PF2e stuff, and I've borrowed a lot of ideas from the 4e books.
Players building characters designed around bad faith rules and loopholes is the definition of adversarial. We need to talk about **Adversarial Players**.
Wow that really puts something’s into perspective that I as DM, did not realize. I felt totally responsible for the party to win at all times otherwise there would be conflict at the table. I was doing the entertainment act but it became unfun to worry if a wayward roll would kill/inconvenience a player
Try to think of it this way. Would you keep watching a show if the characters never failed? Where would the drama actually come from? Even something as mundane as a teen romance series has moments when the characters say the wrong thing, and end up breaking up. If you were watching a show about characters fighting monsters, wouldn't you expect that occasionally, the monsters would win? Even if only temporarily, requiring the heroes to retreat and regroup? When I run a game, my role may be as the referee, and the guy telling the overall narrative, but for me, the fun comes in watching the outcomes that I can't control. Just like a TV show.
I think the problem is D&D doesn't let you break an arm or something minor like that, which you can recover from in a few sessions or so. "It's just a scratch" or you're dead. In my game (5e but modern), when people should die, instead they have to sell their souls or they get a cybernetic implant and deal with lasting physical/emotional consequences. And before almost dying, there are all kinds of minor wounds that people play well to avoid.
And that's part of the problem with the mindset of the players. It wasn't the DM who killed the PC. The Lich killed the PC. What the Lich did was a 100% accurate representation of what a Lich would do in that scenario. The DM didn't manipulate the situation. The DM didn't fudge the rules. The DM didn't do something "out of character" for the Lich. If the players look at it as "the DM made this happen", then they aren't experiencing the game in a way that makes sense to me. To enjoy the game, you need to immerse yourself into the game. You aren't "making" your character do something and the DM isn't "making" things happen in response. Everyone is describing what the *characters* and NPC want to do (based on their in-game knowledge, personality and motivations), and the dice take care of the results.
I read that as part of the tongue-in-cheek tone of the post. He opened with "Heartless DM here." Bottom line was he was asking if he was too harsh and AITA I also took it as a lively, humorous, and self-aware way to tell the story. The joke being that the DM was thinking and feeling like the VILLAIN he was responsible for roleplaying. A completely valid style of DMing that some tables (including his) enjoyed.
The DM in his post is being clear HE killed the Wizard. We can justify why the lich would target the wizard and it would be true but thats not the DMs motivation. The DM got mad his toy got broke and wanted to wipe the smile off the wizard players face. Its petty, toxic, and is DM vs Players. People seem to have forgotten that just because some people are sensitive to character death that doesn’t mean the game isn’t a collaboration with Players and the GM.
You are putting your own spin on this no one other than you and your fans are seeing. He was intentionally being toxic and petty and he used the spell for the wrong reasons. Your justification makes sense but it is still just a justification. Thats not what the DMs motives were. They DM was quite clear. I wish you had really considered this video more carefully.
@@madhippy3 Nothing "toxic" or "petty" or reminding the player that "this is how the game works". The DM probably should have dealt with this issue earlier, and in a more subtle way. If the DM historically kept playing opponents dumb, and set a precedent of "If you take on any challenge you won't die"... and then suddenly without warning decided "now I'm going to have the enemy play smart"... that wouldn't be fair, since the DM *enabled* the bad behavior in the first place. We don't have enough context to know for sure what lead up to this scenario. But when in doubt, I side with the DM because they have invested way more into the game than the players.
Agree 100%. I think the OP would not have gotten crap if he was apologetic, like, "I did what I thought the lich would do but feel bad about it. AITA?" But because he said he reveled in it, he got blowback. They felt he was being arbitrary and petty. While I understand the emotional impulse that motivated those responses, I disagree with them. He played the lich correctly and should not be chastised for it.
I think what the comments are saying is that the DM let his personal feeling dictate the decision. A neutral DM killing a pc because the enemy perceives a pc as a threat is one thing, but when the DM is saying that they personally felt some kind of way because of a player's actions sounds like retaliation instead of because of the narrative. If that makes sense.
Right? I agree with the lich casting PWK on the wizard, it is a hyper-intelligent creature, and that is an obvious tactic... but the description of events he gives makes it feel grosser than it should.
Plus, it was final session. Being killed by such boring way in first round; how is that going to be fun for anyone? Edit: why use that kind of monster in final session?
Advice to (anyone, including DMs) that they "fudge their rolls" or "pull punches" is so contrary to the mindset I'm used to in RPing that I wonder how things got to such a sorry state. _The mind wobbles._
It's not a story state. You haven't actually conducted roleplay, you've played RPGs, but not roleplayed. Roleplayed is what happens if you remove the "game part". In which case it's improvised acting. Yes, it's like the stuff that happens in the bedroom. Having a story and having competition are completely at odds with each other. Boxing is competitive. The result is that boxing often is years or decades of matches being boring because either the top champs refuse to fight each other to pad their win rates, or the champ is so good everyone gets knocked out very fast. This is literally why Professional Wrestling is fake. If you want competition, play a wargame. - The vast majority of video games allow reloading the same save 50 times, OR they deliberately make it impossible to randomly get shot in the head out of nowhere. Their are hundreds of games where you can basically do a crit success, but the enemy never can. OR, they can only crit you when you're at full health, and their luck gets worse as you get more and more messed up.
@@Seth9809 You don't have to remove the game to roleplay, there are plenty of games that do not do as you say - where saves cannot be reloaded and you can die to completely random chance, that and you've clearly never LASO'd Halo 2... Those sniper jackals haunt my waking dreams. Pulling punches and fudging dice are not required for a story to occur, it just makes the story into one that the GM is telling as opposed to one that all the players at the table are playing. Nothing wrong with that of course but it isn't to everyone's taste.
@@Seth9809 If you are right, and fudging dice is necessary in this system for roleplaying to survive, does that not indicate that the system itself is flawed?
@@Seth9809 Role playing is _both_ - what you talk about is just play-acting or improv. Roleplayting is *both* mechanics (the game) and the assuming of character roles. You are projecting your own perspective on "how to do it rite" onto others in a condecending way and one that is, frankly, narrow and likely part of the problem R.L. is analyizing in his video: you think it's just storytime so the dice and mechanics should (for all intents and purposes) be removed, but this is not roleplay gaming (note it is a hybrid term and always has been).
My two cents: a lich using its own powers to fight off a bunch of adventurers and prioritizing the character who just caused it a lot of damage is a perfectly reasonable interaction. It’s logical for things to go this way and there is a problem on the PCs side because they didn’t prepare any defenses against death magic (at that level they probably had ample access to the stuff, and if you fight powerful undead a modicum of preparedness should be expected). That said there is a problem on the GM’s side too: intent. The DM admits he felt annoyed at the wizard for causing the lich so much damage and, AS A CONSEQUENCE, singled him out. In most modern GDRs that’s a bad attitude to have from a DM. In most modern games players and DMs should work together to craft and exciting and rewarding tale. If the DM reacts badly to one of his critters (that are in fact infinite btw) then he’s taking an adversarial stance towards the players and that’s not conductive to the “work together” part. Note that everything depends on the social contract between the players and the DM. Everyone should know beforehand what kind of game they are playing, so they know what to expect and how to interact with the world. Originally D&D was all about trying to beat dungeons that were supposed to be deadly simulations. Players knew they were very likely to die and were encouraged to have spare characters on the ready. The “social contract” was fulfilled. Not so if you are supposedly playing a narrative campaign and you, as a DM, suddenly decide to “put a PC in his place”. That’s not even a matter of respecting the social contract, it’s a matter of psychology
@@FrostSpike If he was channelling the lich, then fair. But the way the post was written it wasn't the the Lich was angry at the wizard, it was the DM was annoyed by the Player of the wizard. The former is perfectly fine, the latter is something that needs to be nipped in the bud.
I agree. Framing and presentation matters from a player perspective, and at least from the story as presented BY the DM, they did not present it from the perspective of the Lich, but from themselves, the DM. Getting "rubbed the wrong way" as a DM should not be the motivation for the villain's actions.
Eh, it's bad form as a DM to "how many hitpoints do you have?" Then use power word kill. But it sounds more like he had already decided the Lich was gonna cast the spell either way and was confirming. If you're fighting a Lich. It's gonna try and kill ya. It's not going to kill you nicely.
Honestly, I think it's kinda' wild as a DM/GM not to have copies of the PCs character sheets. If the BBEG has had as much time to study the PCs as they have had to study the BBEG, the Lich should be completely prepared for all the PCs abilities and tactics.
I was just thinking this, too. Yeah, the order of things was off-putting, but I believe the GM would've cast the spell anyway. The group made it to the last session, I don't know how long that was but I assume it was more than one or two sessions worth. They all stuck around to see it to the end, meaning the table should've known what tolerance level is needed with each other. A slight change in order of things shouldn't undermine whatever adventure they had up to this point.
In D&D, players should never be coddled. If they choose to face a lich, knowing full well it’s a lich, and they die, that’s on them. The DM did the right thing by playing the lich correctly. The DM’s role isn’t to entertain or coddle players but to set up scenarios and arbitrate interactions. If players make poor decisions, they must face the consequences. I’ve dealt with entitled players before and always call it out. A DM can introduce overpowered characters to deter players from certain areas until they’re ready. Players can always withdraw from encounters, but they often don’t. As a GM for over 34 years, I’ve seen many players think they’re invincible, which usually gets them into trouble. If a player gets upset because of their own poor choices, I ask them to leave my table. I don’t let that toxicity fester. The DM’s job is to be the final arbiter of the rules. Liches are intelligent creatures with far more life experience than the characters. If players can’t handle the heat, they should stay out of the kitchen. Danger is part of the game. Without it, you might as well play computer games where you can reload characters instead of being smart about situations in the first place.
Yes, I remember discussing exactly this one year ago on The Rules Lawyer 's discord, ranting channel! faulty system => dm determines everything, players don't control anything in combat
Except this was literally always the case for D&D, and even worse for the first 2 editions. This is because since there was barely any rules for something, if something was possible enough was entirely up to the whims of the DM that given day. Something could be incredibly easy, but because the DM was having a bad day or you switched tables, suddenly it was impossible. You couldn't just look at the rules and do a combo... You had to describe something very complex, and then have the DM believe what you said was a good idea. Statistically, you don't have the top 49% of IQ/EQs and your DM doesn't either. This means there is a 75% chance you won't have a brilliant idea and even if you did, the DM is too immature or ill-informed to know what good ideas are.
Slightly adjacent to the topic, but one thing I've noticed is that Pathfinder 2e is SO much more enjoyable when you're just willing to have an honest, up front discussion of your desired difficulty as a player. The game gives you so many tools to actually build encounters to your desired difficulty, and lots of variant rules (dual class, FA, ect.) that you can stack to make things as gonzo as you want. You just need to open up and say 'actually I would like to play an easier game' and find a group that matches. So many people get hung up on making encounters as hard as possible because they think it's 'tough'... it's like only doing CBT in the bedroom because you want to be 'hardcore' despite not actually enjoying it 😂
I won't get into detail, but I'm a new-ish D&D 5e DM. Currently at the end of our LMoP game. I've tried to be a neutral DM and have tried to let the chips fall where they may. There have been two or three occasions where my players either died outright or should have died and I prevented it. One occasion a player pulled a large mob of ghouls in Wave Echo Cave and ran away and I had them collide with the bugbears and fight each other. This made time between turns take a little longer, but the PC didn't die as they probably should have for venturing through a hostile dungeon on their own. This story was relayed to someone outside the table so they got the info second hand from the player I "saved" and they were told by the person not at my table that they would "leave if they were in that game" because I took to long to have the ghouls and bugbears fight each other (both parties of monsters wanted each other dead in the story and part of the BBEG reason for confronting the players is he's stuck fighting the monsters in the dungeon and can't get to the forge of spells). My players also rarely work together and so to keep track of turns I had to make people take turns if we were on a map regardless if we were in combat or not, I know this isn't standard but the standard for most games is that a party of 3 or 4 would mostly stick together... mine do not. I was told by ANOTHER person outside of our game that they would "leave if they were in that game" which is amazing because this person doesn't even play D&D or TTRPGS. This person does however watch D&D podcasts / livestreams and frequently shares "D&D horror stories" like content in our Discord. They have no desire to actually play the game and I've tried to get them into our games several times. None of the players at my table have actually left or stated a desire to leave my table. I wouldn't call it abuse but each of them at some point has harrassed me about the way that I'm doing something. This player wants the game to focus on NPC interactions and doesn't care for combat and thinks I'm putting too much emphasis on that and that I'm a slave to the rules. This other player is the total opposite and thinks I spend too much time letting the PCs interact with NPCs and that we should focus more on tactics and combat, murder hoboing and power playing any chance they can get. Another player just wants to see the world burn and initiates conflict and escalates situations to the point of hostilities with NPCs, literally destroying some of the world in the process. All of them want something different from the game and I'm doing my best to give that to them but it will never be good enough because it isn't a single player game that I can tailor make just for them. I've had to talk to these people who are all in their early 30s and that I consider my peers as if they were children. I've had to explain that I'm running the game for multiple people and have to consider others and that they should try to get along and play nice in the sandbox. Another player with all the money in the world is upset at me for not wanting to update to the 2024 rules or the 3D VTT. I feel like an adult baby sitter more than a DM. At one point I had a mental breakdown and told my partner that, "this is not fun for me, I don't want to do this anymore." I can't be an objective neutral referee and a biased movie director tailor making everyone's experiences at the same time and a life coach and a therapist and a punching bag for when dice don't go well for a player that night. After we finish Lost Mine I'm probably done for a long time. There is zero love, support, or empathy for DMs from the players, D&D / Wizards itself, or the community that demands and begs for them. If anything it's outright hostility and aggression. If I were at my table I guess I'd leave too lol
I'm so sorry to hear that. And as long as what you are writing is true: Your DMing is the smallest issue here. It seems like you have to accomodate players that actually can't play at the same table together. I understand the feeling. One always thinks "yeah, I can reconcile these vastly contradictory playstyles", when in practice no one can. You gotta stand your ground more, man. You're better than letting "friends" walk all over you for their enjoyment without anyone taking each other into consideration. This sounds as if they are just using you to be honest.
I'm a DM and have been for like seven years, and I will tell you, you're generally supposed to speed up any combat that the players don't see... because they don't care about it. Unless they need to know how it went round by round... Why not just roll a single dice and have it be over? It's not like they're going to go CSI on it afterward, are they? Also, there is no reason to bring up the second person who said they would leave. Your description of this is uncalled for and reads as very salty. Also they're right. It's super toxic to play at a table that wants to be and should be two tables.
" At one point I had a mental breakdown and told my partner that, "this is not fun for me, I don't want to do this anymore." I can't be an objective neutral referee and a biased movie director tailor making everyone's experiences at the same time and a life coach and a therapist and a punching bag for when dice don't go well for a player that night. After we finish Lost Mine I'm probably done for a long time. There is zero love, support, or empathy for DMs from the players, D&D / Wizards itself, or the community that demands and begs for them. If anything it's outright hostility and aggression. If I were at my table I guess I'd leave too lol" I literally play a system that barely anyone knows about and I have a full 4 players that play the game just fine. You can certainly get what you need with 5e, a system at least a million people play. Nuke anyone you don't like, and put the listing back up. I have had hundreds of players (People can be flaky or sign up for stuff and not show) and less than 5% of people who ever joined a campaign with me are as bad as any of the players at your table. "and a life coach and a therapist and a punching bag for when dice don't go well for a player that night." And the fact you even tried to do this makes you sound like you're 20. Again, press the red button. You could literally replace all of these people 19 times and every single time get better players.
@@Seth9809 "you're generally supposed to speed up any combat that the players don't see" one player was in the room with them and used a flying potion to take shots at the two groups of monsters from afar
@@Seth9809 the issue of replacing players is that we're all friends and know each other and hang out IRL. I wouldn't be interested in DMing at all if it were with randoms even if that might fix some of the problems. It would defeat the purpose of playing for our group. My group was D&D curious so we played D&D (and one was switching from Pathfinder and very interested in playing everything by the book to learn it). After this we're thinking of switching to something completely differen't like Call of Cthulhu that hopefully is less stressful and doesn't have the problems that I've experienced and that Rules Lawyer laid out in the video. I'm in my early 30s if that matters or makes any difference to your perception of the problem. If it sounded like I'm salty it's because I am lol
Swingy combat is one of 5e's top three problems. As a DM I always dream of having each arc end with a climactic, nail-bitingly close fight, but 5e as a system works directly against that. The action economy is so fragile that it's incredibly difficult for either side to recover once they're behind. The impact of individual spells is so large that one Hypnotic Pattern can determine an encounter, but balance around that and the party might simply TPK if the monsters roll good saves. This wouldn't be as big of a problem if there were rules for when the PCs decide that they're losing and need to run for their lives, or rules for consequences in combat that are bad *but less bad than death*.
What you are describing sounds like it would be an issue in older D&D, and also tons of other systems. I do agree about your second paragraph. I have consequences like becoming a cyborg and... having to sell your soul to come back to the land of the living.
@@Seth9809 lol, that sounds absolutely terrible. Also, no, it's definitely a 5e problem. It CAN be a problem in older editions, but it's clear you've never played any of them if you think 5e doesn't have what he describes in spades. Like, that's the system. Your feelings notwithstanding, that's 5e, for certain.
Wow. A fight with a Lich (the 2014 core one) was what started us down the path to moving to another system too. 9th level party ambushed a Lich that had the 'average' hit-points and utterly destroyed the thing with no deaths. One character went down instantly due to a legendary action, but weren't killed outright. The blender of a fighter used two magical weapons, was hasted, and proceeded to crit four times doing an unholy amount of damage. I remember we were bewildered that it was that easy with some preparation beforehand to take down something that was supposedly a challenge to a group of 20th level characters, we decided there was zero point in going on. When there's no challenge in it, what's the point? It becomes Skyrim with godmode enabled. Sure, fun for a while, until you simply walk through everything in the bestiary. 5th edition is what got us to stop over 30 years of gaming with D&D. We're old hat, know tricks and tactics from years of experience, and we just gave up after that. There were many instances of just overpowering encounters with broken spells in that campaign (Frost giants polymorphed and hurled hundreds of feet in the air, then spell-canceled plummeting to the earth, Tempest Barbarians practically resistant to everything, etc). It felt like an edition that was terrified of serving up a real challenge, and as pointed out in the video, I had to do a LOT of song-and-dance to make things seem otherwise. I try to be clear with anyone new I run Pathfinder for: Expect that there will be PC deaths. It happens, it's part of the game. We aren't writing a Movie, we aren't writing an episodic TV show, we aren't writing a novel, it's a game and I always try to be fair. It's why I also ask that new characters can be summed up in a paragraph or two, and I don't get 3 page novels of backstory, because that's a lot of work on a character that might get yeeted by a lucky kobold. Player's who scolded that DM for his decision seem to have forgotten it's a game. Or are ascribing their own preferences onto his and his table's experiences. I'm certainly not saying that it's wrong to want to play games where characters don't die, but I think D&D seems to have made that an unwritten expectation too. There are far better storyteller story-first game systems out there for it, rather than wasting time rolling dice with an illusion of challenge on top. At many tables, monsters are run intelligently if they aren't mindless. Even stupid creatures learn survival, and an ogre knows how to keep itself going just by it's harsh upbringing. It's any wonder there's a hemorrhage of DM's from the system. Prep time, for games that I ran at least, would take hours and hours, and even practice runs solo to get challenges right with the goofy numbers provided. If you aren't happy to just keep adding hp to a monster behind he scenes, I don't see how it could be appealing, admittedly. And Indeed, there's a huge lean towards "Look at how powerful the PC's are now! Yay!" with the latest books. The DMG was given a nominal video, as if it was more of a side-note than anything. No solid playtesting, no questionnaires to DM's about how they could improve things for them. Just "This book is organized better". Part of me is happy, though, despite missing the vibe of D&D, and the excitement of those early years of 5e. I was jarred out of my comfort zone to try several new systems, and I've loved the journey. My fantasy main is now PF2e, with other systems filling in for other genres. And even if the modern game is digitized and live-serviced, I still have many older editions to pull off the shelf when I'd like to.
I am so confused as to why these people play D&D. Every gaming group needs to come to some social consensus on what they're expecting, but a very large part of that consensus is contained within the game you choose to play from the start. D&D is a combat simulator, with hard edged rules about everything, and a very clear game experience within its pages. But people are playing it expecting the DM to serve as their fairy god mother, saving them from the consequences of their own actions, and violating everything in the rulebook so that they can pretend to be playing a combat simulation game on hard mode, while in actuality doing nothing of the sort. I doubt many of these Redditors ever actually play anything.
As a DM I feel like a lot of these problems just don’t apply to a lot of tables. Like 99% of tables aren’t rules pinching. You can find some hilariously busted stuff if all you focus towards is min maxing vague phrases but if you are already playing with those players or DM you have probably already lost the chance of a fun game unless all of you fit that category. I tell my players to let me know if there is some jank they are going to try to exploit then we talk it out. I could design a dungeon with zero monsters in it that could wipe almost any low tier party but I can do that in any game system. If my boss gets cheesed it happens we laugh about it. If a player does something incredibly dumb and or rolls poorly they die. My lich would use power word kill and if my players ran at him in the open at level 13 or whatever they die. Dnd isn’t a perfect game far from it but it’s still fun to run with a good group of players. No rules system will fix a bad table.
Ronald, please make some videos on the OSR philosophy and how it can be integrated into PF2e, if it can be done at all! I just started playing Old School Essentials with my wife, having previously only played PF2e, and I find OSR so cool, so refreshing. It feels like this is how things should be, if you know what I mean. You are a nobody and the world around you is brutal and unforgiving, and you get a real sense of accomplishment from surviving and thriving in it.
It's a topic I've wanted to cover! But I feel like I need to actually try it out before speaking on it, to see how it actually works out. (I actually have a set of houserules that I worked out from a few years ago)
Seconding this request. I personally feel PF2e falls on the other side of the table than OSR, being purposefully designed to enable the very antithesis of OSR play, but I'd enjoy watching another opinion about this. (My own might be biased, since I enjoy PF2e and am not a big fan of OSR.)
@@JoniWan77 For someone who's run both, I would tend to disagree that PF2 is the antithesis, but I will concede they are distinctly different animals. Where the similarity seems to lie is that PF2 monsters of the appropriate CR are genuine threats, so much so that one monster two CR levels above the parties level is often capable of giving at least one player a trip to the morgue. This isn't always the case, since it depends on the composition of the party, and the type of creature, as well as the "map" itself which can lend an advantage to either side if taken full advantage of. A party well equipped to handle one type of monster might not struggle, while another party with a glaring absence of counters for that monster's particular flavor of bullshit might fail miserably. What becomes the litmus test for me, is when you compare the same outcomes between a certain monster that is somewhat universal between PF2e, OSE, and D&D 5e, against character classes/races/roles in the party that the three systems share in the same tactical circumstance. In D&D 5e, the results of a balanced fight rarely result in anyone even going to zero hit points. In OSE, there is always a chance for a TPK, and in PF2e, death of one character is a distinct possibility. At least in my experience. Obviously, due to all the variables, it's never a 1 for 1 comparison if for no other reason than dice rolls, and the added advantage that critical hits and "hero points/inspiration" can create. I would also add an interesting sidenote. When given a party of players who loved 5e, the majority disliked OSE because of both the pacing, the difficulty level, and the lack of options in combat. Many of those same players adored PF2e, once they started to grok it. On the flipside, they grasped OSE within a single session, which is a distinct advantage for the person running the game. Less parts means less to explain, character creation being the only exception. THACO, if used, is just harder for modern TTRPG players to grasp, the one player at my table who had played with it before being the only one to not struggle with it. That OSE does the math for you, allowing you to swap it out for the modern variant, is a huge blessing.
Consumerism. The latest batch of players from 5e are mostly horrible it seems. I DM’d 5e for 8 years and I have been DMing/playing since 79. 5e is the only edition I actually burned out on.
The thing with the dice fudge reminds me of XP to Level 3's thing that don't track the monster's HP, just let everyone have 2-3 things thrown at the enemy and then they die. Pisses me off to no end to this day that someone with such large audience just throw out something like that. If any of my DMs would have do that, I would have been out of the game in no time, like why do we even have combat encounters then? The other thing that I think a lot of people are simply unable to appreciate that the death of a player character can dramatically turn the story around and it can lead to more amazing story moments. Sure, for this, you need a GM who is willing to put time into writing such things, but just as an anecdotal scenario from my own experience: at the end of the Fall of Plaguestone, the wizard character died. Instead of getting pissed at me, the players not only accepted it, they weaved this event into their characters' motivations and personality, and now, we are on a "Plaguestone Extended" campaign with the same characters, embarking on a quest to resurrect the wizard. Wizard player brought a bard and we are all having and absolute blast. Couldn't ask for better players.
@@JD-wu5pf because we discuss combat encounters and numbers after certain sessions and the numbers always checks out. There are also 2 players in the group where I play who are always tracking monster HP as we deal damage to them. Plus it's the general expectation with the people I play with.
Yea, I stopped watching his videos after he started making "hot take" videos where he would say one thing, then try to explain it but kept convincing himself of the opposite and that it's not actually a good idea.
I'm not arbitrarily determining how long a fight goes, but to ensure we can get through larger fights in a single game session I absolutely file off some of the numbers. Little guys get a s9ngle digit number of hitpoints and a damage threshold (every x amount of damage past x damage = 1 more hitpoint lost) and I round damage for the big guys up to the nearest tens place and drop the ones place to make damage tracking cleaner and easier to track without having to right down tons of math. This frees my mental load enough that I then get to add in a lot more cool setpiece moments and a lot less "I swing my sword/cast my spell it does x damage the end" turns. Never had a player notice or complain.
It’s all about expectations and communication. I have one campaign I’m running where if I killed a player they would get mad at me and we would have to have a long conversation and they would ask me to retcon or not do that in the future. I have a different campaign with the EXACT same party where we had 8 or 9 character deaths over 3 hours, but they loved it becuase they knew exactly what they were getting into.
30:20 3 hours of prep per hour for 5e is insane. As a former dnd 5e dm, i believe it, but damn. 4e was so much nicer to DM and Pathfinder 2e isn't too bad
I've been GMing for 45 years and I still get players who have barely sat at a table before trying to "correct" me. It's sometimes funny, but usually just annoying. PC deaths are almost always 1) dumb move by the character or 2) bad luck on the dice, or both.
Except sorry dude you are wrong and experience doesn’t equal infallibility. You demonstrated it just now. What mistake did the wizard make? What bad roll dis he make? The wizard’s “mistake” was being a wizard against an overtuned monster well above their CR which has a spell which kills you without a save. If it isn’t clear this isn’t a mistake. The wizard never had a chance. He could have had a loaded dice which only rolled twenties, and nothing would change because there is nothing a level 13 wizard can do against PWK. That spell should not have been on this lich’s spell list. Its a DM mistake and worse he used it in anger at a player not for Ronald’s justification. Be humble.
@@madhippy3 Exept sorry dude, you don't know if they knew whether or not they were going to fight a lich beforehand. There's TONS of ways a 13th level party can prepare for that. And a 13th level party taken by surprise by a lich STILL has means of bringing that character back. So, sounds like a skill issue on both yours and the players in the story's parts.
His mistake was drawing its ire too fast without having a way to deal with its own counterstroke. If you're going to chunk something that powerful that badly, you'd best be ready for the crackback, and he was NOT.
@@robinmohamedally7587 I don't but the group has more problems to worry about than a douchebag GM is the final fight of the campaign is a random ass lich they never see coming. You are out of your gourd if you think you can prepare a revive which takes 1 round. They are level 13 they do not have Wish. And Counterspell? Maybe on a lucky night! You can Counterspell Counterspells so if the Wizard can get a 15 on the Ability Check he Counterspells, but then the Lich gets to Counterspell with a Level 3 Counterspell which he can Counterspell the Counterspell with a 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12 (admittedly I cannot guess what level The Wizard cast their Counterspell so it is a range of numbers). After that it is the will of the dice, but the odds were dicey at the first Counterspell and you really got to hope that Lich is only rolling a 7 for his spell. But sure, Dude. Tell me what the Party could do.
My only quibble when you compare this to a PC is that if the PC wizard asked "How much HP does the lich have?" he would get told to guess and that is metagaming. But if a PC told the DM that he is not required to disclose his hitpoints the Dm would be upset. I think it is fair for a lich to cast a blind PWK and maybe down the wizard and maybe do nothing with his 9th level spell slot. But to do it only after using your position as DM to get perfect information from your lich is poor form.
Also back in the day the DM by definition could never be a "rules lawyer looking for loopholes" because the DM was a rules judge/legislator (though a compact was the DM should make consistent rulings, clear ones, and if something had to be changed after it was found to not be working out, announce & discuss that). So yeah the mindset has shifted quite a lot, to put it mildly. Once again: _the mind wobbles_
I once saw a post from a newage player who played a very modern "dating sim" style of dnd where all the party members just kinda made out and effortlessly won combat. She then joined a game that her older family member was a part of (uncle, or dad or something), and had the audacity to say that they were playing the game wrong when it was a very numbers crunchy combat heavy "war game" style of dnd. All that to say there is a serious issue of what people think dnd is. Most importantly: EVERY TABLE IS DIFFERENT!! Thats why session 0 and expectation setting is one of, if not the most important part of dnd imo.
As a DM, i agree that combat in 5e is EXTREMELY boring for me to run because i know the outcome of the fight is going to be, "And the PCs win the day again." or else im a bad DM. However in terms of balance i thought about instead of using Stat blocks for at least humanoid npcs why not use Player Character sheets instead. That way all the op spells and combos are able to be done by both players and DMs. It is a bit more work but it makes it a bit more fair and interesting to play.
@@elgatochurro I've been playing more rules light stuff. Like Cy_borg and shadowdark. I've been having a really good time. Though soon I might give pathfinder a try
@@Iron_Halls SWADE Pathfinder maybe... Swade I love, it's one ruleset, simple ruling and conditions usually Not very complicated and I can ignore or homebrew whatever I want usually without much issue And they've a companion of Pathfinder and swords and sorcery
I'm on the DM's side for the lich story. The party is going to face the established final challenge of the campaign, and they should be prepared for potential deaths. Now a part of this could be an issue of how the DM flavored the lich's action. "The lich reals back against your magic assault before regaining his composure. 'INSOLENT WELP. SUCH PETTY MAGIC OF A VILE MORTAL IS NOTHING COMPARED TO TRUE POWER. YOUR KIND SHALL KNOW THIS POWER.' The lich then casts. Power. Word. Kill."
It would have been better form to cast power word kill first, then ask if the character is below 100 hp. Feels less like you decided to kill them no matter what and more like you expected to waste that spell slot, then realised they took on that lich way too early.
Having all of my rolls be open and in front of the players has been the best rule I have implemented as a DM. With it, the players know there is no way for me to pull punches, so when things get tense, they know there is no thumb on the scale that will save them. To get the best results from this, you have to make sure your players always have a feeling of how dangerous things are -- I never want them to feel cheated with the difficulty. Instead they should feel like they are taking a risk of their own free will, and the dice will decide their fate. Each challenge I design as the DM will never be made easier, only harder if I believe the fun of the game demands it (and this rarely happens). If the players prepare well and steam roll the encounter as a result, that's fine -- they've earned it. But if they bumble into the dragon's maw like fools and meet a bloody end, they've earned that too. They've earned it because I know I would have telegraphed that the dragon is very dangerous and clever. They would know that it has killed adventurers stronger than them several times before, that it studies potential adversaries and plans accordingly, and that it takes great joy in hunting those who think they are hunting it. The problem is clearly presented to the players and, if they are brave enough, I let them try to solve it.
A lot of people don't understand that tabletop systems like D&D are closer to "game engines" with optional libraries of models, scripts, spells, etc, for sale separately. These systems need a lot of effort to turn into actual, playable, games with areas to explore, allies, enemies, items, so on and so on. Unlike say Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, the Arkham Horror LCG, Chess, etc, a DM/GM/ST is required to actually make the game from the pieces sold by WotC, even if they're using a purchased adventure as a base. Often, they have to make completely new content.
TTRPGs are certainly not "game engines". They are largely developed rule systems. In spirit, the work a GM has to do is more akin to a map designer in an RTS game than someone using a game engine. One puts assets into place and let's the players play on the map. What the players bring to the map and how players interact with it is adjudicated by the rule system. Obviously the GM can alter the rule system as they see fit and in the end develop a MOBA or Tower Defense, but that's not expected work. What you probably meant is that DnD 5e and DnD 5e specifically pretends to be a game engine, since it was developed in a way, in which it consists of rule subsystems that you can match together how you'd like, while simultaneously not being developed enough to actually work with each other. The fact that 5e makes GMs necessarily game designers, when most other TTRPGs leave that choice up to the GM, is pretty much the problem here. Yes, in a weak sense TTRPGs may be somewhat close to a game engine, but they are definitely still closer to a developed game. The expectation should not be to balance the movement of chess figures but to just make the damn chess board.
@@JoniWan77 > the work a GM has to do is more akin to a map designer in an RTS game than someone using a game engine. Not at all. Good GMs are actively making changes to more than just the playmat. They're creating new NPCs, items, skills, spells, monsters, classes, modifying existing creatures, updating older materials to get rid of racist/hateful nonsense, and more. Even if they're running a published adventure as is, the GM is still the one deciding where and how actions are made, making impromptu rulings on the fly as needed, and determining how players are enabled or limited far beyond what even the most robust published adventure prepares for. >What the players bring to the map and how players interact with it is adjudicated by the rule system. This is just wrong. The rule system is only one layer, and the GM in the vast majority of games has final say on how players interact with anything at their table, including what they try to bring to play. Good GMs regularly review player character sheets for unapproved content, offensive notes about other characters/players, and general cheating. Published rule systems are also very shallow, even the crunchier ones. They regularly fail to outline how specific situations should be handled, putting the burden of that onto the GM. Ultimately, the GM makes rulings and rules as they see fit in order to create the game experience they want. >What you probably meant No, I meant exactly what I said. I don't care if you disagree or don't understand. >it consists of rule subsystems that you can match together how you'd like This is true of every TTRPG that honors rule zero, which is the vast majority of them. GURPS, Savage Worlds, Storyteller, FATE, ORE, d20, the OSRs, all contain optional sub-systems and lean heavily on the GM to create and enforce custom sub-systems as needed in order for the games to function well. TTRPGs wouldn't be able to effectively handle the massive number of role playing possibilities otherwise. Even action priority outside of combat is left up to the GM in the majority of TTRPGs. Practically zero games dictate which player gets to speak with the barkeep first, or which one gets to make a check first. That order is left up to the GM. Even if they roll at the same time, the results of those rolls aren't handled at once, the GM must consider each individually to account for appropriate modifiers. Sometimes the GM even has to determine the order in which actions and reactions are handled in combat, especially in games that fail to assign speeds/rates/priorities to countless spells, powers, etc, while allowing players to hold or ready their actions in order to interrupt an undesirable event. Which is the majority of games, not just D&D 5e. TTRPGs are *laughably* incomplete. Which is fine; they're tool kits, engines, GMs buy to build complete games upon. Always have been. They're nowhere near comparable to complete table-top games like MtG, or the Arkham Horror LCG, or Kingdom Death, which restrict players to an established set of rules and order of operations, very rarely relying on referee rulings outside of tournaments. This is a consequence of the open nature of TTRPGs: you need someone willing to build and manage a real game atop of the engine provided. >just make the damn chess board. Good GMs that enjoy GMing are always going to want to do more than just "make maps" and "follow these step-by-step instructions to determine and execute this NPCs combat behaviors". They're going to improvise, adapt, adjust, and customize. As the lifeblood of the hobby, they deserve the tools to do it. Imagine how boring it would be to fight a dozen goblins that all have the exact same equipment, abilities, personalities; it'd be a waste of everyone's time.
@@NRSIckiss001 What I mostly wanted to argue against was the metaphor. I still disagree about calling TTRPGs game engines, since most game engines are pretty complex tools with little determination on what games are made with it. In contrast, TTRPGs are much less complex and intuitive. A TTRPG is at best comparable to the RPG maker and even that engine expects a lot more from its user and enables a lot more different kind of games. Game engines also seldomly dictate or supply comprehensive rule systems. I do agree with most of what you want to say now that I better understand it, especially that creating NPCs, monsters, rulings etc. is more than just creating a map. What I still don't agree with are some of your points about being a good GM. I am completely onboard with the technical stuff, but I think there is an overemphasis on the GM in your points. Regularly checking player character sheets for offensive language and cheating seems to be pretty controlling behaviour if you ask me. That may be par for the course when playing with randoms or being a GM for hire, but is pretty weird for the standard friend group most people still play in. I also heavily disagree with "Ultimately, the GM makes rulings and rules as they see fit in order to create the game experience they want." That is probably just phrasing, but in my opinion the GM should never decide on this alone. How the game is gonna be played is as much the players' responsibility as it is the GMs. Sort of the key point I am getting at is that I firmly believe GMing should not be gatekept by big expectations. Obviously GMing is an art, in which one can become really proficient and deserves all the recognition and tools. However, there always needs to be a way to be a passable GM from the start. And for that we need more than just a complex "game engine". We need thought out and developed rule systems, good prewritten adventures that can be run without much fiddling, as much assets for monsters and NPCs as possible. In short there needs to be the base you call a waste of time. And just for the record: Playing is as much a form of art as GMing. A room full of copypasted goblins can still be made a fun encounter and a memorable experience by good players. It's not all the GM. Neither should the GM make all the decisions (they are an arbiter) nor should only the GM be expected to put in all the work.
I warn my players that I run difficult games and I don't balance encounters. You see a large red dragon about to fly down and eat some people in a village you're just about to visit? Better stay away, or you'll be killed too. I let them know the danger beforehand, but even still, a random encounter could be too dangerous.
I feel like dying should always be a threat. A fellow PC and I both made backup characters because our current PCs are being the typical front line characters, fighter and armor inventor (other PCs are a sorcerer and a bow focused ranger) and going down more than we were comfortable with, it was really exciting while playing though. We have good out of battle healing but in battle we have 4 non potion/elixir sources, 1 cast of soothe, searing restoration, lay on hands(which will harm the fighter since they're a dhampir), and battle medicine. We have survived so far and stocked up on consumables. My PC is starting to focus on medicine and related feats. Edit: we are playing P2e
I quit playing because most DMs do this curated approach. They create a false illusion of danger which isn't really there but at the same time they will block you from doing anything too clever that will trivialize their encounter. The outcomes are all more or less scripted for the players to win but with some false sense of risk. Ultimately your choices don't really matter because if you do really well they are going to increase the encounter and if you make terrible choices they will reduce the danger to match. It is more damaging to the verisimilitude of your game to take away the gravity of their choices than one encounter being trivialized or wiping the party occupational. I stop trying to think of good ideas or what my character might do and start wondering, what will the GM allow or what it is they want me to do, and that isn't much fun.
I am an active DM for 30 years now. I never liked the concept of OSR of pointless (sometimes) dungeoncrawl in which life is too cheap and the players must have two or three characters as a backup because they could die a petty death. Having said that, Death is always and MUST on the table... If you are fighting a Lich you must be prepaired to die. Power word kill is in the stats of the Lich for a good reason. Be prepaired and don't go in guns blazing, that ain't how that works. A Lich is not a match for a prepaired party of 13th level characters, the CRs of the 2014 MM are a joke.
Yeah, OSR has been done better in videogames nowadays, they're really just better described as "analog videogames" and doesn't really touches on the roleplaying novelty (which won't be topped digitally until AI NPCs/DMs really takes off) part of the hobby more often than not.
@@valivali8104 possible to win, yes, but why not expect to die? its the final session if there is any session I would expect to die its that one, even in a narrative driven game, dying in the final battle against the bbeg is climactic
@@valivali8104 maybe one of the many things I wrote in my reply to your other post complaining about what else to do in the final session? Cant find it anymore, but the list was something like this: "give tactical advise, enjoy the fight, cheer for the others, ask the gm if your wizard could be a ghost/spirit and you can cheer in character for them, play potential minions of the gm, plan out your resurrection scene, plan the reaction of the wizards friends and family" Do you only have fun while its your turn?
That's really on the wizard Liches in 5th edition have A single strong thing And that's power word kill, outside of that they're literally fucking garbage, how do you get hit by the one thing that a lich has as a wizard player
I blame Critical Role. The fudging of dice rolls, lack of a commited story, and the catering to the party, all make the game worse and they are all problems in CR.
I do also blame them to a certain degree, but I also put the blame on those who think it accurately reflects real-life TTRPG experience. It's like watching reality shows and thinking they are real.
PREACH!!!! Every campaign finale I have ever run starts with a warning that "PCs may die"!!! I say this because if there was ever a time that it was narratively appropriate for a PC to die, it's at the hands of the BBEG. Getting killed in some random encounter sucks, sure. But getting killed in an epic fight with some epic BBEG, that is something you should remember fondly. As a DM of 5e of several years, I totally relate with everything said here. I have had some amazing players (and friends) who have made the struggles to run 5e worthwhile. But 5e is a struggle. It completely sucks having to create fun encounters in a system designed exclusively for the players and where no support is shown to the DMs meant to run games. Having seen the light of better games, I am done fixing WotC products!!!
Fantastic video! Thanks for making it. To add to your points, another conflict I’ve run into which lays underneath the umbrella of the “Illusion of Difficulty” is that players will act out vile schemes and expect for them to go largely unpunished. This could be anything from stealing from shops to murdering people in the streets they don’t like for one reason or another. A lenient DM would allow this nature. Meanwhile a harsher DM-if not a simply realistic DM-will sick the guards on them, or any form of retaining a semblance of halfway-realistic order. It is almost expected that, should the players get themselves into trouble, there will be a way out of it. It’s as if the players want to steal and kill without any of the punishments. The DM must cow their legal systems to suit the fancy of any mischievous player. Should the DM not, they are called, as you’ve rightly alluded, an adversarial DM.
Bad choices get made with bad consequences and sometimes everything just goes wrong but then for some odd reason a lot of players don’t choose run away…
I have been in combats like that where it's not feasible to run, either because the enemy does too much damage to make escape a good option, or because they can handily outrun the group, etc. and then the DM will ask why we didn't run at the end and we'll just go "it didn't make any sense to do so".
I have both played (as recently as yesterday) and DMed 5e and this is exactly correct. I was running a D&D adventure club scenario for my kids and my wife (our forever DM) got worried that I let their characters die/fall unconscious, even though that was written into the scenario. It's pervasive, and not as fun as pf2 for me, which is why I'm running 2e for my cousins.
i don't see a difference honestly. Why would you be worried about a scripted scenario of a character dying or falling unconscious in your 5e game but not 2e?
i was in a similar position to the DM at the beginning of the video recently. As written, the final encounter of a module i was running includes a CR 15 magic user with a spell that acted like an AoE power word kill, but which only killed when the target's HP was below 20. The party was six level 5 characters. the level of difficulty wasn't of concern to me - CR is a joke, and even if it wasn't, i tended to run a very similationist style of combat in that campaign. The players already knew the spellcaster's power from a brief run-in, and they were planning accordingly, with around a month of sessions dedicated to preparing for this encounter - planting spies within the enemy's ranks, beseeching allied NPCs and organizations to fight alongside them, researching the sorts of creatures they'd be fighting, etc. This whole campaign was focused more on getting what you want through negotiation and clever problem solving than sheer combat, so it seemed fitting that the last combat encounter would draw on every ally and favor the party had gained to eke out a narrow victory against an absurdly powerful foe. even so, going into that session, that one instakill spell was still irking me. i don't like the concept in general of a feature which can instantly kill a creature with no counterplay. counterspell existed, yes, but it was a roll of the die on if they could make the check against the very high level spell, and there were so many other important spells for the PCs to focus on countering that combat, including an earthquake spell that threatened to crush everyone under the weight of the combat arena's roof, and besides, the caster had counterspell too. furthermore, there was little that could be done to prepare for it: i saw no reasonable way for the party to learn the caster's whole spell list, especially since the book and spell list leave it vague if the caster's power is divine or arcane in nature. in the end, it didn't matter, as the party forced him to use that slot on a heal spell before their healths were whittled down enough to capitalize on it, but even if he had the chance, i am unsure i would let the enemy cast it. for what it's worth, i would hesitate to let a player gain access to either of these instakill spells as well, and i do not bemoan the OP for using power work kill. we have very different styles of games, and where i focus on narrative and characters (to the point where i kinda like fabula ultima's "you can only die in a heroic sacrifice" system), it seems his game was closer to an OSR style. I just think this all speaks to your point about "adversarial" DMs wanting to create combat encounters that feel like the fate of the PCs and the outcomes of battle are dictated by their choices, not the choices of the DM. To me, instakill features feel like killing a character by a handwave, like "rocks fall, everyone dies." the fact that such options are one of the few ways to challenge the world-bending casters of 5e is a deep disappointment to me, and it's partially why I am looking towards system like pf2e, fabula ultima, and the various world of darkness games for my next campaigns.
Hey buddy I got half way through your novel and read "I bemoan the other DM having power word kill on a lich' and stopped reading and started chuckling, thank you
This is one reason I like the Harm spell over Power Word Kill or Disintigrate for a big scary spell. It can't kill the player. But it can reduce them to 1 HP and lower their max HP temporarily and put the fear of the gods into them. The party can then coordinate to keep that player safe etc.
A DM should NEVER EVER kill a PLAYER. Absolutely not. Killing the player's characters is just fine, but killing players tends to end badly. After all, you rarely get a good RPG experience in prison. Plus you have to get rid of the bodies. (BTW chain-link fencing and a deep body of water) As a DM my goal is that the characters are dragging themselves out of the last encounter with single hp and no spells left. Yes, this means that sometimes characters die and sometimes they are in decent shape. But it's rarely a TPK.
My job is not to entertain my players. My role is to crunch the numbers of a living world and make changes based on player decisions. I present conundrums that challenge the character's collective abilities. My players love my DM style.
Eh...while I don't plan TPK, they do happen. This is in 2nd edition days, but I had a moment when players entered a room in a dungeon where a medusa was. No prep, no prior knowledge, but, I really thought MAYBE one or two characters would fail their save but the remaining three characters should be able to bring her down. Well...they all failed their saves. Every single character, so, poof, everybody was turned to stone. It happens. If players want to throw a fit, cool with me, I pack up and leave.
I ran a session where a goblin with a deck of illusions. It conjured a medusa. Most of the players ran away, and one player died because of the goblins and bugbears caught up with him. The player quit, and by the next session the campaign fell apart. All because of a fake medusa.
@@josephpurdy8390 Yep. I mean, I have had campaigns fail for all kinds of reasons. This one starts dating that one but used to go out with the other one...bang goes the group. Someone doesn't like a game ruling and (yes, really) threatens to SUE me over it, bang goes the group, and on, and on. So, if the group is going to collapse. Cool. Bye?
I grew up with a killer DM but we all enjoyed it. Having a good death is part of the adventure sometimes. STORY TIME: I was playing at a pathfinder society table and we fought water drakes on a ship and we barely survived… except my monk whose efforts saved the party. One drake left everyone’s just hanging on. It comes aboard and provokes from me. I hit and it actually fails the stunning fist save and I stop its assault. I happen to be next and then manage to trip it!! The party jumps it and we won! However as the party collects from their near death encounter they see the monk collapsed to his knees dead; continuing to melt from the drakes’ acid. I was pumped! However The DM accidentally ran the encounter at too high a lvl for the party and wasn’t going to kill my character for it. They were very surprised at my dismay when I said “what? don’t take that from me that was awesome!” And retired the character anyway
During my time as a 3.5 ed player we (players and DM) had a solid understanding that character's death is a possibility and that sometime we had to flee with bits of our fallen comrade to resurrect them later. As a matter of fact I was probably the PC who died the most during the campaign beginning to lag two level behind the party due to XP loss, I remember being vaporized instantly by a dragon's breath once. Yet I never felt wronged because it always made sense how and why I died, nor the level difference made me feel irrelevant because our DM was able to strike a good balance of fight, intrigue and exploration and would make entertaining even our worst demise. I try very hard to be as good a DM as he was when I run now, because I always remember this campaign fondly.
As a GM I tell my players up front "I'm not trying to kill you but adventuring is dangerous business and you need to be ready for bad things to happen."
Sharing a fun XP to Level 3 video about high-level D&D because it explains why he fudges HP when running D&D. It's understandable given the frustrating situation in the video. (FYI he's playing PF2 in the Eberron setting over at Arcane Arcade and has been enjoying it.) th-cam.com/video/aoPgHsu8j5w/w-d-xo.html
I see some debate on the DM's post in the comments. I'll just summarize what I say in the video:
-The main topic of the 1st part of this video was the DM's correct decision to have the lich fight to win, in the climactic fight of the campaign. The general tenor of the comments was you ONLY kill a PC in certain circumstances and this wasn't one of them; otherwise, hold back your monster.
-Yes, the Facebook comments also had a more legitimate concern reacting to the tone of the DM's post. But here again I think the DM's intent was misconstrued. On a Facebook group for D&D memes, he was giving a lively and jocular take on the story, where he embodied an "evil" DM. I guessed that this reflected how he presents himself at the table (e.g., he might have roleplayed the lich), and that his group might enjoy his style. The majority of DMs are NOT petty or sadistic and want their groups to have fun. There was a reason this DM posted, which was to ask if he was too harsh and AITA. What he received was not a balanced response like "it's the climactic fight of the campaign, yes a lich might kill a PC, but it sounded like you rubbed it in their face? I don't know your group, but that wouldn't work with mine." Instead, most of what he got was vitriol.
-As it turned out, his group agreed with the lich killing the PC and rather enjoyed the session, and enjoy him as a DM.
Assuming the worst of the DM's intent just dramatizes the readiness of people to (1) pronounce judgment on a D&D DM and (2) pronounce judgment on the internet. I think the significant number of comments continuing to find fault with the DM reflects the community's tendency to identify with and side with players, and not with the DM who makes the game possible. It's important for people to understand this DM's point of view, which also was supported by HIS GROUP.
And the 2nd half of the video focuses on the SITUATION not having to be this way: the outcome of fights in D&D 5e shouldn't be so dependent on DM fiat.
I'm disappointed that I didn't spell out that there's a standard response when people who bring up a flaw in D&D: "The DM Can Fix it!" This not only absolves WOTC of responsibility and allows it to maintain its monopoly position as the game claiming to best serve all play styles; it also fosters a psychology among DMs (especially among less-experienced ones) of unfairly blaming themselves for problems that might actually be rooted in the rules or in their players.
Well you know what they say about assumption.. That also includes assuming the best. If a person's entire post reeks of trolling.... (and it does... It really does).
I have been preparing an essay on this topic for myself and my friends/play groups. I am running a survival and madness heavy game where my goal isn't necessarily to kill the players but to tax their characters and make them consider harder decisions. To that end, spells are not the convenient one-size-fits-all answers that we typically see. In exchange though, I make great efforts to reward players for using alternative utility spells to solve problems indirectly or to provide utility to circumvent some issues.
Though I have also been strict on what spells I will allow, starting with an outright ban of the Wish spell (because a number of magic items which can have Wish could spiral into adventures in and of themselves).
Goodberry has also been subtly nerfed by being a literal berry full of nutrients. Hunger will still hit the players, though they will not feel weakness from lack of food/water. That hunger, in turn, takes a toll on their sanity which is a mechanic I'm dredging up. I also reserve the right to remove, add, or adjust spells to help maintain the vibe of the game without robbing players of their ability to be powerful.
The party knows that the combination of Sanity and emphasis on Exhaustion mechanics could lead to a death spiral, but this also feeds into the themes of facing unknowable horrors and old gods. There is a recovery method in the form of downtime actions. But here's the kicker, we all understand that 5e is not built for this kind of narrative experience. It's familiar, it's fun, but it largely caters to a power fantasy with very little to incentivise players to make narrative choices. And, of course, the culture is inundated with entitlement. Some bad DM stories are valid, there are bad DMs, but I agree that the role of the DM is now to cater to the player's whims.
I was just about to say much of this problem comes from 5E. The example on the video is great but the biggest by far is the whackamole effect even a slight access to healing creates (And considering even Bards can heal remotely almost at will this is a serious issue).
I'm thinking about returning to 5E but my approach as a GM is going to be very different: Taking some queues from Dark Sun I'll take things on a similar yet different direction: Dungeons with no dragons: no supernatural or mythological monsters to be found, I'll just have access to the exact same character options players have for 100% of enemies in the game. I bet you'd see some really intense tactical gameplay as well as political intrigues and mysteries just trying to survive that environment.
@@dimitriidand very complex combats you can't even run as DM due to info overload
@@dimitriid Honestly, why bother with 5e? What does it uniquely have that you can't bring to other, better, systems (say, systems with unionized workers, book PDFs, and freely available rules)?
A good player enhances the game they’re in. A bad player waits to be entertained.
Thank you
"in this journey I'm just a humble narrator, I have the task to show you this world, for all that I say is and all that I don't say never was, all while you shape it with every decision, you are the ones who must write this tale with each action, which will have consequences and effects, glory and misfortune, but in this path we will walk it together, for one can't reach it's end without the other"
Ive been in an only war and I am in an imperium maledictum capaign with the same DM, where i get pretty stressed with how the DM can be quite mean in how they respond to players making stupid decisions. I'm kind of OK with some pretty mean decisions despite how stressful I get because they will do the opposite when we make sensible decisions to give us a chance to stay alive.
The game i get most stressed with is my DnD game where the DM uses valid tactics to put players in danger, but not as if they are character in the game, but chess peices, so they follow the rules down the line, but it feels way more unfair than the game where if we do stupid things, we risk "rocks fall, everyone dies" it would take too long to explain why.
Then my pathfinder game feels very balanced, the rules are followed, we still succeed despite feeling in danger. Its partly the DMs different personalities though, not just the rules.
Personally i feel with this story the DM made himself sound petty, so wasnt judged on the choices, but the way he framed himself, while Ronald is super fair to him over the details of the choices he made, rather than focus on the framing.
ty
Damn, I've not had a good player in over a decade then.
7:49 I believe it was Sans Undertale who said "always wondered why people never use their strongest attack first."
Wait... That horrible first attack... Did sans open with PW: Kill and we dodge it?
@@PizzaMineKing yeah he did
Wise words from a wise Skeleton
Imagine Lady Yunalesca open up with Megadeth..
that was exactly what i thought of at that part lol
Asking for the player's health was petty, but otherwise this is exactly what you'd expect from a Lich. Power Word: Kill is THE classic Lich spell-any Wizard worth their salt trying to fight a Lich should try to prevent the Lich from getting it off-counterspelling, breaking line of sight, etc.
I'm surprised how little people are bringing up the option of breaking line of sight, the wizard was being greedy by only being offensive and not trying to set up any defensive measures
@@auberry8613 exactly!
a fight against a Lich will necessarily require you to either shut down/mitigate the Lich's casting, or die
you're fighting the evil undead pinnacle of magic power, it's a terrible idea to just hope you win initiative and can burst down the Lich before they can do anything
It wasn't clear if the DM was decided to cast Power Word BECAUSE they answered under 100 or if he was asking just to describe the results of the spell. For example, if he has said 120hp, the DM could have said he cast a spell at you to no effect. I don't have an answer, just two ways to interpret the unknown.
@@alanthomasgramont I didn't think of the question being before or after deciding to cast the spell. Thankyou for pointing out there are multiple ways to read what happened.
If you do 1/2 my HP in damage in a single turn, you better believe I'm going to take you out ASAP. The wizard took a big risk and got a big reward. They did more damage than anyone else AND distracted the Lich for one turn, knowing they could die in the process.
I started a brand new group of D&D players two years ago. At the second session (remember all players were new to D&D) the kobold priest critically hit a player with Inflict Wounds. I rolled the damage and then stopped them. I explained the rules on critical hits and then announced the 32 points of damage the level 1 PC had taken. The entire table erupted in laughter and the new players described how their character’s body twisted and shriveled up into what looked like charred tree limbs. The rest of the party quickly retreated, not knowing what to do. This unfortunately led to the character failing their death saves and perishing. I had unintentionally set the expectations for those players that the game was dangerous and, because they were new, just accepted this as “normal.” The following year the Druid expected a hall was filled with hiding invisibility duergar but was unable to seek and find them. So on her final movement she leaped into the hallway in hopes of drawing them out. However, she thought there were three but there were actually 5 and they ended up ganging up on her, each getting to attack with advantage from stealth and dropped her to 0 hp. Her response was basically “I was so dumb to do that”. She didn’t blame me she knew she heard something, knew there were duergar near, knew they could be invisible but charged anyway. And now after two years the players still occasionally comment about both those deaths and learning lessons.
Big factor was that neither made them feel like you did it on purpose. Fist was clearly bad luck, second was clearly player's mistake. But I agree, having right expectations are biggest factor how players react into hitting snags, including character deaths.
I agree with giving players an early death. My first Campaign ever with a bunch of new players had a near TPK in the intro dungeon. He gave us an in game reason to let us try again but from then on we understood the assignment survival first, then victory.
@@mariop8852 But would you give them an early death just to prove a point, rather than justcreating a possible challenge they failed?
I appreciate your players. A lot.
@@valivali8104 "Big factor was that neither made them feel like you did it on purpose" I feel because we like Ronald we are going along with his interpretation and missing the reason the DM got people riled up was he made it sound like he did it on purpose, not like the character did it on purpose, but the GM did, out of some spite.
I am not saying Ronald is wrong, but he seems to look at this instance of a DM painting himself as a villain and seeing the bigger picture, igoring that the reason people arent aware of the bigger picture is the DMs choice of words.
Every person at the table is responsible for making the game fun.
And fun for everyone, including the DM.
fuck DMs
^This.
where's the "Super mega thumbs up" button????
"Power word kill is reserved for a desperate attempt of the BBEG"
Idk, i feel like "this guy took 60+ of my hitpoints in a single attack" might be grounds for a desperate counterattack
Yep. "Oh shit, the spellcaster just chunked out HALF MY HEALTH... he dies now... I hope."
Lich: "They're eating her....and then they're going to eat me!......OH MY GOoOOoooooOD!!!", *casts power word kill*. One of the trolls dies.
Can't really click anything else as ridiculous here.
Two more dynamics come to mind:
1) players don't know what they want, and will argue for undesirable outcomes;
2) the Internet makes for easier criticism based on less reality.
Oh, and loopholing an overused spell is fine, so long as you don't overdo the loophole. I have a rule that if a spell gets to be awesome twice in a short period, I put a hose for that ability either the third or fourth time I think it will come up.
This is especially true if the hose wouldn't apply to an upgraded version that is otherwise not worthy. Like, if you use Leomund's Tiny Hut and get attacked from below, maybe you should seek out a copy of Leomund's Secure Shelter.
DM abuse is bad for players, and I mean in terms of individual player experience, in the moment.
Players are like modern women
@@robinmohamedally7587 that's true in the sense that "not knowing what you really want" seems to approximate universality, but I think women make the same complaint about men.
I got yelled at by a player when I stated before hand that silvery barbs is a banned spell at my table. And they still tried to argue with me that because it was a wizards offical spell, that I couldn't ban it, and that he'd us it anyways. My problem with 5e is that it's very good at coddling players because they're the special one's in this world. It's literally a parent saying their kid is gifted and that they can do anything. when infact people have their own limitations that they must over come, and that the world isn't going to bend over to them because it was supposed to be funny.
@@1Orderchaos just make an enemy group full of casters with silvery barbs, every time someone crits or make a highroll, barbs then. They will learn very fast why this is an anti-fun spell.
As a DM my stance is "if you cannot lose, you cannot really win". For victory to matter the players need the 'chance' to lose
this is definitely an important part of it.
If the sole source of tension in your game is character death
You could be doing better
If the sole source of failure in your game is party wipes
You should be doing better
@hexidecimark they literally didnt even use the word death in their comment, nothing about it says the only way the players can lose is by dying. "You should be doing better" by actually reading the things you reply to.
Death adds stakes and therefore meaning imo
@@hexidecimark no one said anything about "sole" except for you. Sounds like you built a strawman, because your feelings were hurt by the truth of what OP wrote.
9:30 he's not being an adversarial DM, the Lich is being an adversarial lich
Exactly! Adversarial DMs bend the rules to make you fail. Monsters trying to win within their rules is just normal gameplay
He asked for the max HP also there's better ways of making an adversarial lich
@@SGWeberim having this problem right now with my dm and I am trying to figure out if it is me.
It seems like every move I make is wrong. Did i hide because the ground is literally shaking? Stupid. Did I not hide from 2 (we have a 7 person party) humanoids on a trail and instead try to reach out to them to show we mean no harm? Stupid. Did we kill instead of talk to someone? Dumb. Did i talk instead of kill? Wrong. Did i move quietly and slowly? Wrong. Fast and loose? Wrong. On and on.
An example, we go into a fallen castle full of enemies. Weve already been spoted by goblins. We need to save someone who is captured. I hear silence in one room and movement in another. I say we should deal with the movement sonwe dont get ambushed. I get pushback from the dm. But its not just this, its with everything.
There is nothing that I can do that is right. Just wrong. Never the right option. Every choice is the wrong choice. Am I seeing things wrong? Am i missing questions I should be asking?
@@nananakesonwahhwahhwahh I'm a big baby and I NEED you to hold my hand! Wahhwahhwahh please don't use common sense when running combat, it's not FAIR
@@pigsplayinggames You seem like a fun DM
I’ve run my games like this: Most enemies are fighting to survive, just like you. That means sapient enemies will do things like surrender, take hostages, or flee when low on HP. Wounded animals will book it. If they have the power to go to the mat, they will. That sort of BBEG type character didn’t get there by pulling punches.
I also tailor my difficulty to my players. If my players want a more casual, narrative story I have systems for that. If my players want a challenge, I can challenge. But I have different systems and tools for not just an alleged one size fits all system that really fits no one.
"Getting rid of the DM" is such a bad business call, DMs are the majority of the paying customer base, not players.
Not once D&D 2024 goes live online in Project Sigil. They'll be having to pay their monthly subs and buying all those sweet virtual minis and add-ons.
That's why WotC is trying to change that by marketing more to players and investing in AI DMs and getting that sweet sweet "recurring spending environment" going for the majority of players. I suspect their GM-hostile designs might even be informed by this. By making their game intolerable for flesh-and-blood DMs, it drives them away and shrinks the available pool for players, who they assume will then switch to their DMbots because they can't conceive of people switching to other systems.
Yes. I think it's a bit like declaring you have a player-driven video game, but the game only provides a world with objects and creatures you can destroy. Hey, if that's what players want, have at it! Murder-Hobo playground, right? Real GMs will still have more players than seats at their tables.
No, over half my players still buy everything WOTC sells. Even back in 1E we all bought all the books, and most of the adventures.
@@RottenRogerDM sounds like an exception, not the rule. in over 20 years of playing, virtually every single player i gamed with only bought the necessary stuff, nothing else
You hit the nail on the head, the way that everybody talks about being a DM sounds like "your fun doesn't matter, only the player's fun matter. Let them run around destroying your world, if you don't, you're railroading them"
Can easily flip that around - if every effort a PC makes to do something that makes sense but would destroy the shoddily prepared world why wouldn’t they sit around waiting to be entertained?
@@mogalixir It's almost like the situation isn't a simple binary and it's a non-sequitor to point out that flipping to the other extreme also has issues. To assume... Well, _anything_ has pitfalls. Assuming GM innocence unfairly rules out that the person is inexperienced or, indeed, bad at their job. But assuming GM guilt places an undue burden on them to be the magical fixer to *all* problems that arise. The solution is usually basic inquiry. Wild stuff tbh
Or the GM can't keep their game straight going so far to jump into other DMs game settings forgetting cooperation is vital.
Would you want your setting ruined because they can't run their own game properly?
The amount of times I had to say, "I don't work for WotC. I'm a fellow player at this table." Never again.
@@mogalixir sounds like a rarely occurring scenario. You flipped around nothing. Just the strawman.
This is something I've noticed, at least before the switch away from 5e. There was definetly an expectation that the DM allows every option, even from non-core sourcebooks (looking at you, planeshift supplements). I don't think people fully get how much effort it can be to intergrate a player's backstory into the world, and when they're some bizzare race from an obscure source, it can be a lot of effort. But I would get flack for this! And I wasn't banning everything, just stuff like Leonin or Loxodon that i didn't want to include. These books really need to emphasise the fact these are optional, and not default.
That's why I like PF 2es rarity system: For one, archives of nethys exist, so the players can see everything that's possible. On the other hand, there's rarities and it is explicitly stated that, short of the weapon familiarity feats, it is up to the DM to allow or disallow the use of uncommon and rare things, short of ancestry weapon familiarity that gives access to uncommon weapons and only those. Interestingly, most things that are from what could be considered obscure source books and not the core rule books (or, in case of feats for ancestries and classes that aren't in those, stuff that's not from where this is introduced) as well as anything related to obscure mechanics like rituals, is marked as at least uncommon.
If people even buy and read the books anymore
@@ZarHakkar You can find the information on... select... websites. I suspect that's part of the problem, as the sites make everything seem equivalent.
@@notrod5341 tbh I enjoy using the tools website. I still have the physical books (at least the ones I cared about) which I do read, but the sheer maximized ease and utility in which you can use that site to pull up anything about 5e is unparalleled
It inspires me to wonder what a truly modern TTRPG would look like, where information devices are implemented seamlessly into the system so that the human element can shine at it's fullest
Not terribly new, though. The giant pile of sourcebooks with optional additional stuff goes way the hell back, and folks asking for things that could best be described as "significantly out of scope" probably right back to the instant they decided to work some story into their tabletop skirmish game. If not earlier.
I cannot emphasize enough how true the comment about wanting a challenge being the OPPOSITE of adversarial GMing is.
I want my players to win without me pulling my punches. I don’t want to “beat” my players, but I do want my players to feel like they beat someone who was actually presenting them a real threat.
I want my players to surprise me!
Exactly, and I tell my players this every time it comes up. I _want_ them to win, or the story ends. But I'm running their enemies who also want to win. They don't have to beat me, I'll help them with advice, or interpretation, or even fielding ideas of what might work, and trying to interpret their ideas as best I can to get the results they are looking for (or letting them know, when appropriate, that an idea will not do what they think it will). They _do_ have to beat their enemies, and I'm doing all the same things for those guys--it just so happens the one doing all their strategies is me, which should already be an advantage as there's one of me and a whole party of PCs--the difference though is that I'm okay with the enemies losing, cause it means the story goes on.
And to be clear, the enemies don't want to die/lose. They want to win/kill the PCs. If I don't play em like that, they just become bas of hit points and card board cut outs for the PC's to smash through. And that doesn't make the magic of the PC's beating enemies that are a real threat.
For my table I offer a (admittedly VERY generous) retreat option. In my experience, I see few players actually retreat. This feeds the feedback loop of either steamroll enemy or TPK
@@danielswiner2907 yeah, i've gotten rid of attacks of opportunity on PC's who run from a fight, [and when it does not meet the qualification of a Withdraw] from my 3.5 game, just to give the players a chance. They're mostly new to it.
I sometimes just throw shit at my PCs that I think MIGHT be a bit much. Most of the time, I get demonstrated to me that there are 4-6 of them, and they can put their heads together and outsmart me most of the time.
Tiamat's Tavern is the worst group for DND advice ever. The majority of the people there are players and don't know anything about how to actually run a damn game.
This one time, way back when I started in first edition pathfinder, my character died from a phantasmal killer spell. I played a heavily armored tank fighter with a shield, and adamantine materials, massive health, huge fort save. My character had survived mountains collapsing on him; his name was Ambrose which even means immortal. My DM and the party were all mortified when I rolled a nat one of the fortitude part of the spell and instantly died even though I was at full hit points. The DM who said that he didn't think I was going to critically fail did this whole thing where he allowed our cleric to cast heal on my heart that had literally ruptured from fright. And the whole time I'm like "Guys, you don't have to do this. I failed the save, my character is dead. It's fine, I think it's fitting that a man who couldn't be beaten physically no matter how much damage seemed to be thrown at him died of fright." But they insisted, the DM said he made a mistake even using that spell. And I... Kinda feel like they stole my death from me. My character was Sir Cynric Ambrose The Immortal, leader of our party, champion of the arena, King of Cliff Side, and the Hero of Bovack. My character lived through so many adventures. And the idea of them exploring a dungeon only to return with their kings corpse on a stretcher would have been kinda epic. Who will lead us? What will we do now? What's going to happen? I felt robbed of my own story, and honestly, that campaign kinda fell apart after that.
This here is the right perspective. There is a certain beauty in the legacy of a hero living on as the character dies.
I don't understand your DM's reasoning. Killing people is all that spell does. It's in the name. If he didn't want that effect to occur, why use the spell?
Yeah I mean plus if you're at the level where that stuff was in play couldn’t you just have gone through the RAW process of resurrection if you actually did want to come back
@@mrosskne I don't really get it either. There was a chance for the spell to only do like 3d6 or something like that, but you don't use things like that or power word kill, or finger of death if you don't want people to die. I'm not sure what was going through his head.
@@AngelOfDeath642 I think we were somewhere between level 8-10, but it's been like 9 years now. I think he had made a homebrew statement about not allowing resurrection to death scarier, but couldn't back it up when it finally happened. He was a new DM, and it was his first campaign. I'm not sure if he really knew what he wanted at the time.
I find it hard to believe that a 5e powergaming wizard didnt have counterspell prepared. I mean he still would have had to roll to counter the spell, but it would have felt a bit more fair.
Lich just counter-counter spells and doesn’t roll. Wizard was in all purposes dead the moment he didn’t kill the lich going first. Obviously, shutting down a high lvl caster is better then beating them up, since all it takes is one turn to completely gain a stranglehold of a fight
@@breyor1 Didn't RAW says that you can only use reactions out of your turn? so the lich couldn't do that. I know it's a common play but i seem to recall it doesn't work that way
@@MaindexOmega Nope, you can use counterspell in your turn to protect your spells.
There could be 1000 different reasons why counterspell wouldnt land, this isnt a perfect white room scenario.
The real question is - did the Lich know who the wizard was just from a glance? If so - that’s on the wizard.
Bruh, they're level 13. They can easely ressurect a character after the fight with the amout of gold they should have.
Yeah, disintegrate is scary. PWK is not scary to a level 13 party.
This only works if the DM doesn't forget to give the players money.
Bruh it's the last session of the campaign and the wizard got to contribute one round to the combat before he was killed instantly and without a saving throw. If you don't see why that's bad DMing, I can't help you.
@@JD-wu5pf We don’t have enough context to call it bad dming. We don’t know how much the party knew about the lich, what opportunities they had to prepare, etc. You have to make assumptions for it to be really good or bad.
It was final session, it was supposed to be climatic battle of entire campaing. Is dying in first round in that boring way fun for anyone?
13:28 "Why are we rolling dice and dealing with so much math when we already know who's going to win?"
You just put my entire last 3-4 years of thought around 5E into a single sentence.
"thats a dumb decision"
"im sorry, if you like ill issue you a refund"
"i didnt pay anything for this game"
"EXACTLY"!
-actual conversation
did have a dm who insisted on doing their first time dming with us show up unprepared not knowing much of the dm side at all and it was a mess. the group forced her to watch the first twilight movie and threatened if they didn't do better next time we'd make her finish the franchise. next time they were prepared had read the dmg spent a while with the other dm in the group figuring out stuff and she's now our main dm. never had to make her watch another twilight movie. most bad dms are the players fault for not pulling out the big guns for motivation
Finally! A channel that speaks for the DM! So many channels favor heavily the player, when it’s the DM’s who keep the game alive!
The DM who power word kill'd the wizard is unfathomably based.
I'm a Forever GM and one of my newer players wanted to learn to GM and ran the PF2e Beginner Box. For that game, I played a witch, and (spoilers) the final encounter of that adventure is a green dragon. It's a VERY dangerous encounter for level 2 characters, and she was reluctant to run it full tilt - but I encouraged her to run it as written and to try to kill us as hard as she could with all the tactics she could muster.
The other two players were new, I was the only experienced player of us, and she (rightfully) targeted attacks on my character who was doing the healing. I went to Dying 3 and almost died - in fact, I only survived because (with a second character downed as well!) the rogue managed to down the dragon and get me stabilized with their third action. Without that, my character would have absolutely died.
It was one of the best tabletop sessions I've ever played in because the GM trusted herself, played at her full ability, and we all played at our full ability, too. And that experience came from a first time GM! Sometimes losing can be fun, and *almost* losing and pulling victory from the jaws of defeat is the most satisfying thing you can have.
I’ve never wanted to stop DMing on the spot than last session when a player was hit by a BOSS one time. And he pauses for almost two minutes and I ask him what’s up after announcing the roll to hit, I know it’s higher than his AC and he responds with “I’m just trying to think of a reason to why that wouldn’t hit” and my brain shut down for a second cause people can’t stand any kind of consequences to the point where they actively try to logic-trapeze their way out of the rules applying to them.
"A man went up to a wall and tried pushing it down. He got angry started cussing till a crowd formed. No one stepped in till a young lad asked why the man was trying to push the wall down. The man responded "I walked this route all my life! And yesterday they built the wall! It's in my way!" Little did the man know, the wall was always there, he was just lost."
What? By how you describe it, it seems that he was either joking or trying to remember if he had some reaction defence. Are you trying to say that he just went "Nuh-uh" like a 5 year old?
I couldn't imagine playing with people I hate that much, judging from the contempt seeping out of your commnet
Last session, a monster hit a PC and the player protested, "But I have an 18 AC!" I said, "I know. A roll of 19 hits you." He actually protested the hit, grumbled, and pouted for a while after. This player is 28 years old.
@@Sina-dv1eg sounds like you're projecting those feelings onto him, because he hit a sore spot with you
When you start to feel more scrutiny about how you're doing in your hobby than at your job, you know it's becoming a toxic environment.
Dude, facts.
I honestly got traumatized from one player reaction nearly a decade ago- where his druid ran off into the dark, alone, and fell into a Gelatinous Cube.
The rogue was off alone fighting (and being eaten) by a giant toad.
The Fighter was left alone to fight off a (formerly friendly) group of myconids.
By time the fighter saved the rogue, and the duo got to the druid- they couldn't get him out of the cube in time; and he died.
The druid player yelled at me for 10 minutes for being a "bad DM".
I repaired the situation some back then. I wouldn't today.
I'll never allow him back at my table today for that matter.
My policy for a dnd type game is "you probably won't die if you don't do something stupid"; and while everyone jokes about me killing PCs, they know that's the case. Play like you want to live; and you won't die. Easy as that.
ALSO
5e is so hard to make suspenseful.
In one campaign, I had to make huuuuge setpieces to even challenge my players. Double and triple deadly, even after previous encounters
Go too far, and it could be a TPK.
PF2 actually balances out. I love it for that.
@@Inuvash255It's hard enough to knock a player down, and then they get up to 6 turns to still survive.
Making the only way to actually kill a player intentionally stomping on them after they're downed. A move I've never seen players like, and even I as the DM hate. I don't like that 5e makes me be the bad guy just to bring some challenge to the table
@@hmnhntr I've only ever done that with real bastard enemies; and it never feels good
The proper response to such a player is the same as it is in every single aspect of your life. Tell them to calm down or get the hell out of your house. Same thing if a boss, an employee, a friend, or anyone else considers it their right to scream at you. Don't take abuse from anyone
@@orionstokesweiss2344 it was online, but I know that better now lol
The popular notion that old school dnd was too “adversarial” has led to complete rejection of everything fun about the game. DMs are supposed to challenge their players and not let one tactic go unopposed for too long before loop holes are found
It was too adversarial, we literally have hundreds of forum posts and interviews of DMs from that era... talking like they're playing a wargame and their job is to "Win" D&D by crushing the players.
@@Seth9809the OG D&D was evolved from Wargames. The party was expected to die when the players had them do something fatally stupid. It encouraged smart play and planning becuase the players knew their characters could die. Of course back then just like today, we had arsehole DMs.
@@ehisey I've moved down from 5e to B/X and while I can't speak for back in the day, today many DMs that run old school D&D aren't adversarial at all. A along as you don't do something stupid you will live. And of course when the dice roll poorly they don't hold their punches, but in my experience old school DMs are fantastic.
I've only experienced one DM who seemed to teeter between being fair and just being an asshole, but they run a pretty mudcore game so I guess it's to be expected.
@@Seth9809 And a bunch more stories where the DMs are putting up challenges for players and aren't so adversarial.
@@ehisey It was a game evolved from a wargame, with a ton of combat mechanics... That basically forced you at gunpoint to avoid combat at all costs.
Never made any sense to me at all. I spent years wondering how people levelled up if they had to fight huge monsters with tons of HP over and over just to level up once... Then I remembered that silver and gold was XP, and people weren't actually meant to fight anything at all.
They were meant to avoid everything, if possible.
If four players fought something that provided 1/4th the XP needed to get to level 2 for them all, at least one or two of them would die, on average.
I think this is your best ever video. In particular, almost nobody else calls out that every DND table plays differently, and that other TTRPGs can support each style of play better. I love OSR and P2E personally! Very different games, or good at different things.
“I know the DM is doing all the work while Im doing absolutely nothing, but I don’t care, I turn up once a week, flop down on my fat arse and demand to be entertained.”
- 90% of D&D players in 2024
yep. You cannot believe how many groups i've had to dump because of that attitude. It's like, "BITCH. You are not paying me, why are you treating me like your servant???!?!" The sheer entitlement, man.
Except the players are doing half or more of the roleplaying, and they have to deal with the DM's statistically god-awful lore.
If this is you as a DM speaking
Just let them do more
have *them* worldbuild, make *them* pick out the campaign type they wanna run, etc.
@@Seth9809 sounds like you're making something up to justify your bad behavior. Sure, there's DMs/situations like that, but you have absolutely no clue how common those are, and are just making something up because your feelings were hurt by his post.
@@Seth9809It’s obvious you’re not a DM. If you were you would know that RPing a “angry dwarf with a drinking problem” isn’t work. But nice try. This video definitely was about you 😂😂😂
Different groups appreciate different styles, and different GMs work differently. As a GM, I really enjoy creating big sandboxes and simulationy systems in the background. My players come into my sessions with the understanding that their actions have consequences, I will not fudge, if they go straight to the BBEG immediately then they will die. This means after many years of running different campaigns with a large pool of players coming in and out all with this understanding, they realize 2 important things about playing a character in my worlds:
1) They have to pay attention to details. There will be warnings about going into situations far too dangerous for them to handle, but they will be in the game.
2) Even the craziest plans might work, I will accommodate anything without any railroading and create houserules on the fly if necessary. This means they can be as creative as they want in problem-solving. This doesn't mean their crazy plan will definitely work, but I will allow them to try.
Another balancing thing I do is that I'm open to ruling things in favor of the players if there's ambiguity, but anything the players get the enemies get too. This ropes my players into the balancing, because now instead of "This is good because it's stronger", they now have to consider "What if our enemies use this on us?"
My players really like this style, which works for me because I wouldn't do it any other way.
Also, separately, I'm very glad to have dropped DnD entirely during the OGL fiasco. I'm never touching that system ever again, it's so anti-GM in almost every aspect of the rules and resources.
Exactly, different players want different things out of the game. Almost all "problems" in D&D comes from the mismatch between what the players want and what the DM wants out of the game. It's why one should be careful about asking for advice from strangers who don't know your table. I can see it even within one of my tables, I'm fine with my character getting hurt or even dying if they do something risky, but one of the other players at the table gets really upset when my character gets hurt - far more than I am - or whenever the party isn't always succeeding.
The problem isn't necessarily a problem with DnD and entitlement, it is a more widespread cultural issue. Let's say the table wasn't onboard with what happened. The response should be to respectfully bring it up with the DM and perhaps not come to an agreement, but at least to an understanding and situation where everyone can still have a beer together without grievances.
The modern social environment pushes people to dehumanise one another while radicalising stances and opinions, especially online. Are many DnD players entitled? Absolutely (try banning certain ancestries for the sake of world building, that's an instant shit storm.) But in this case, I think the underlying issue is the unwillingness to treat others in good faith (until proven otherwise) which pushes people to say things like "I would never play with you."
Except who gives a shit that they wouldn't play with you?
There is a million players to pick from, maybe millions.
Why should you just play with random people who have nothing in common with you in terms of playstyle or interests?
@@Seth9809 It kind of depends on if the DM is getting paid to DM. If I was getting decently paid by players to run the game, they can dictate whatever they want on how I run, they are customers at that point.
This is a problem with Internet discourse...the only people commenting are people with a bad DM experience translating it onto this conversation...it isn't evidence of the vast majority of the community that isn't engaging with these threads.
Yeah I will concede that this thread disproportionately reflects a sentiment in the player base because Internet being Internet
I'm not so sure of that. I started to GM for people who I didn't know a while back. I have a rather tiny group of friends and not all of them are gamers. During COVID I then switched to online. And of the 59 people I have GMd for, I had less than a third of that number be reasonable fun players. Most of them were entitled. In one case, despite asking for player feedback throughout the adventure (module) I received nothing from the players. At the end of the adventure I got pages of unsolicited comments about how I made it DM vs Player and not DM vs Environment. One particular player spoke about how they'd all been talking about it outside of game nights and how they couldn't wait for the adventure to end. Seriously, how is a GM meant to deal with that?!?!
My method is simple to remove those players from the list of those I'd ever play with again. To try and work on constructive criticism. Honestly, though I do think for those of us GMing for strangers or aquaintences, I find that the comments online do seem to represent the majority of players encountered. Of course, it is entirely possible that these (often new to the hobby) players have been influenced by this stuff online and are bringing that to their expectations from the game. I've very much had players at session zero tell me that my list of what players can expect from me contain significant red flags (usually when I say actions are not without consequences and player character death occurs in my games).
Of course, I'm just one GM. And it is only 59 people, 11 of whom I have GMd games for over two years at this point. So I do accept that I am a VERY small sample size.
@@MartinNelson
I honestly find those numbers very impressive.
What a battle. You should be proud of yourself.
@@knogleknuser Thanks for the kind words, but honestly...groups of five, six, or seven players for one shots or limited runs. It's not that much of a task. Especially when I know DMs and GMs who run groups in schools. As a teacher myself...they are the real impressive GMs!
Playing online with strangers is a really different social world than playing with people you know, and so much of the worst online discourse reflects the worst parts of that subgroup. Spending time together not playing D&D is one of the most important ways to prevent social problems at the table. I run an open table with a very large group of people, not all of whom know each other outside of the table. When there's conflict between PCs, it's almost always between people who don't know each other well outside the game. It's easier to look past game behaviors you don't like when you know there's more to the person than what happened in last week's session.
I also wonder what percentage of players in online LFG groups end up there because they were kicked out of all the in person groups near them...
You can’t do almost half of the Liche’s health in damage and not expect the liche to hit back with a vengeance. I refuse to play with entitled players even when I’m not DMing, always expect that the villains are out to kill you.
Otherwise, why play with dice (the uncertainty/randomness factor of the game) at all and not just talk it all out if you just want to cruise to victory.
Do these people also play their video games only on easy or very easy difficulty?
I know it’s a vastly different system in a vastly different genre, but this is something I’ve immediately noticed working much better in Vampire: The Masquerade. It is made abundantly clear throughout the rulebook that your character will have crippling weaknesses, and that any other vampire who knows what he’s doing (aka the Storyteller) will use those weaknesses against you. There are incredibly strong abilities, but also constant opportunities for failure, at every turn.
It almost feels like character failure is a deliberate feature of the game, and one that can be as much of an entertaining obstacle as a literal enemy. In 5e, whether due to player culture or the system itself, character failure feels more like player failure, or at least a punishment for making the wrong choice.
And that's what makes VTM so fun. I accidentally made a vampire who, due to minmaxing, was afraid of the dark, and it was amazing.
@@yurisei6732 That sounds hilariously awesome... and I wonder how badass your character was when in the light.
A statement should be given in session 0; "death of a PC is always a possibility, without risk victory is meaningless".
The existence of hit points and death save rolls literally means that death is a possibility, you don't need to state what's clearly stated already 😂
@@MaxromekWroc There's a difference between "there's mechanics for it" and "it will happen in this game if you play wrong, or even right."
This is definitely a thing that varies sufficiently between groups (because DnD is a skeleton used for many types of people and however they wanna have fun) to warrant always clarifying, and also UPDATING as the game is played. The rules are tools, not an indictment on how they must be used. The TTRPG space has exploded in recent years, and given DnD is the gateway, you will get all sorts that use it for different ends.
@@MaxromekWroc just because there’s rules for something doesn’t mean that those rules will be used. Especially with d&d5e since dms have to houserule almost everything.
@@_zurr don't strawman me mate, where did I say "it will happen"? The OP didn't even mention anything about a certainty of death, what are you on about?
@@valivali8104 nobody needs to hosuerule anything to run 5ed, you can and it may even be prudent to do so, but it's not necessary. And surely the onus should be on stating whatever rules won't be used? You start with the common (i.e., the actual rules of 5ed) and then list out exceptions, not the other way around.
This is why I quit DnD.
I usually end up GMing and realized that I basically rewrote virtually every rule in 5E because nothing worked as written. It's so unbalanced.
I would say it goes beyond balance, it hits me in the "we will help the DM as little as possible" category. Give me some ground to base my decisions on and everybody will be more resonable when we need to discuss rulings.
It's a mediocre slop game. There are so many other choices out there that just work better, depending on what you need.
I remember taking up 5e for the first time and i ended up as a DM. Ecery session started with a new houserules and it was a drag to DM, since everything is a bear with bite and 2 claws
@@docnecrotic Yes but it is very popular, very common (many players know how to play it), and there is a ton of content for it (expansion books, campaign books, settings, video games, movies, tv, novels). So there are large advantages to playing it over other titles. That said I'm a firm believer in changing the game however you like to make it more to your liking, and trying other game systems as well. Personally I think DnD is crap, but there are a TON of advantages to playing it.
@@Zaszz1I’d argue a big part of the problem with 5e is that around half the players don’t actually know how to play it and never intend to learn because the culture of the game says the DM will do that for them.
"Because it was a FUCKING LICH"
you attract the audience you design the game for.
5e is a game made for players to thoughtessly steamroll everything and DMs to hold everything from collapsing constantly.
thus the playerbase is thoughtless and DMs are tired.
What's interesting is in 2014 they designed it BOTH for people you describe (hence the Revivify spell, Healing Word as written) AND they tried to cater to the OSR crowd by catering to older traditions of Level 1-2 being deadly and having classic spells like Power Word Kill mostly unchanged in the game. The first module HOTDQ showed some of this philosophy. But the huge growth of the audience since 2014 has prompted them to cater to the audience you're talking about, so much so that 5.5e is basically a bunch of new toys for PCs to disable and kill monsters better than they already are.
YEP its why I cannot stand nor run 5E its complete trash.
This. It's why I dislike 5e, it doesn't give me as a player a challenge nor me as a dM any satisfaction to run. What few advantages it gives, others provide or excel in. I really want to look into Fabula Ultima soon for me and my players.
every other edition and msot games have a rules encyclopedia to give rulings on things missed and to clarify rulings...
5e doesnt have that... it still doesnt make sense, the NEW 5e is even more confusing as HIDDEN players, stealthing out of sight... are called INVISIBLE
I am basically a pathfinder 1st e or bust at this point when it comes to “dnd” cuz I know pathfinder isn’t “dnd” technically
I think so many people would have more fun if they either played a game that did what they wanted or played the actual game they were playing.
And anyone who thinks you should prep 3 hours for 1 hour of game is either a bad prepper or has an awful game
@@improvgm8663 My stance is: Prepare as long as you need to, no more, no less. Target 0:1 (though you won't reach it), but start with as much time as you need, the time someone put into writing a module included. If you want to do 3:1 prep using a module assume it took at least 1 ½ hours to write an hour worth of that module, and take the time you need to understand what's written, in homebrew feel free to add that time to draw maps and come up with npcs if you need it, but reduce the amount of prep work per hour over your time as a DM gradually.
So many people hate to determine themselves and think fun only comes from "being free to do anything", when in reality the freedom to pick only comes to fruition in the act of picking.
What dummy party goes into a fight with a lich without getting death ward on the whole party? Pay a city cleric for the 4th level spells and be on with it
THANK YOU
Really depends how foreshadowed it was. A lot of campaigns these days have kind of ended up "you turn a corner and see a lich" type games.
This predicament is made worse by 5e's various failings. PWK is an awfully designed spell, both too uncompromising and too easily countered (either literally, in the form of Counterspell, or figuratively, in the form of Revivify - hell, if the revivifier went before the wizard's next turn, the wizard wouldn't even skip a beat). That's kinda what 5e's high-level sandbox devolves into - a playground slapfight where every kid is casting giga-kill while keeping their everything-shield up.
Moreover, a CR 21 monster vs. a level 13 party is ×1.5 their Deadly threshold - in other words, a PF2e Moderate encounter. In my experience, any boss encounter that hopes to be climactic at the double-digit levels should be in the Deadly×2 to Deadly×4 range (which, of course, isn't even mentioned in the encounter-building guidelines). Naturally, we're talking a fully rested party; if you're trying to account for resource attrition at the end of a more traditional adventuring day, _good luck;_ the rules give no indication what you should be aiming for. Is a party running on fumes performing at half maximum capacity? One fifth? Man is not meant to know.
And even if the encounter building guidelines were worth anything, the lich is a badly put together statblock which doesn't match its CR, except for its access to stupid I-win gimmicks like PKW.
It doesn't fall to "every kid casting a giga-kill while keeping their everything-proof shield."
You forgot martials.
Half of the classes)))))
Damn dnd doesn't like martials
Liches ni 5e only get 1, maybe 2 turns. They are so squishy in 5e if used as a solo boss that its not uncommon for an optimized character to nearly oenshot them.
PWK doesn't trigger Counterspell
@@silentdrew7636 it does. It has a voice component so you can see it being casted.
Well of course the DM can choose to defeat the players or let them win at any time. Because he is designing the encounters. Are they facing 3 ogres or 9 storm giants?
I've had players tell me that I wasn't entertaining enough or providing enough interesting things for them to do, as if my interest in worldbuilding and having stories unfold at the table was an excuse to just passively be entertained and not actually play the game. One time, a party of mine stupidly walked into an obvious ambush and pressed the attack, despite many opportunities to back down or regroup. They did not and the party was wiped. I calmly explained that if they had bothered roleplaying in even the most superficial way, like asking themselves what they would do in their character's shoes, they would have survived. They didn't like that, and many of them no longer play with me. This attitude that my job as a GM is to adjust the story to enable any stupid decision to magically work out has made me want to just give up trying to make fun for these friends on more than one occasion.
This is why I have taken to always doing two things:
1. Have the players make large portions of the world.
2. Have the players take an MTG color pie word association test to figure out the PC's motivations.
What you're putting forward likely just doesn't really interest them, or challenge their motivation. Drop throwaway hooks. Rather than going with a "story" from outset, have the party set some goals and build towards them, then have big setpiece scenes that happen and chuck 'em in as needed.
This is exactly why i burned out so hard on 5e after running 2 campaigns in it
I tried so hard to make it fun for the party that it was sucking all the fun out of it for mr
That DM did nothing wrong. However, that situation screams of bad system design when a GM needs to have such a powerful creature at the combat in order to challenge the players... Which it probably even wouldn't be a challenge, since the Wizard took half the HP by themselves and the other characters were likely going to kill it with its measly 135HP. PW:Kill was perfectly valid in that scenario, specially how cheap reviving characters is in DnD5e.
Agree 100% the Lich should be able to wipe out an entire party of 13th level players. I’m sorry but they shouldn’t stand a chance.
Same with a lot of the monsters in 5e. I.E Tiamat, in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign is supposed to be beaten by 15th level characters. Please they shouldn’t even be in the same room with a GOD until they are level 20 if not higher.
@@crazyscotsman9327 The whooping 13 to 21 level difference in PF2e would mean an absolutely impossible fight. The Lich could even just say "I don't even need to use Magic" and proceed to manhandle all the PCs.
the lich used to be powerful but WOTC nerfed them pretty hard as earlier editions were apparently *too* strong as their stat spread along with their gimmick of having a shit ton of traps, minions and high level magic items made it rather hard. So they decided to basically just butcher the character sheet and give him spells as a replacement. The only issue is, is that a fighter with a bow can probably kill him in a turn if they get lucky enough, making lich's BITCHES in the game. They are insanely weak other then their few spell casts
Threw out balance? D&D has only ever really had one edition that had any semblance of balance. And that edition is the one that everyone hates.
The best edition. I'll die on this hill.
Correction: some people used to hate it, nowadays people are looking back at it fondly because it had tactical combat
there's a number of other TTRPGs that don't have the D&D name that present tactical combat and are much more balanced than 5e, that aren't as heavy and still make sure that martials and casters feel different
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG I think they were referring to 4th edition. I have a huge collection of 4e books that I inherited. I've not played 4e but have read the books, and while I found the rules seemed to carry a fair bit of clunkiness (given there was intention to have a "companion" site that would handle much of the stacked modifier maths for you before some controversy with the creators), the thumbing-through of books there's a lot to really like. There's so much well written lore, but my favourite part is the modules give advice on NPC tactics and behaviour and how to make combat feel dynamic instead of just "eh, here's some stat blocks, go stand next to each other and hit until dead" that 5e presents. I've been writing my own PF2e stuff, and I've borrowed a lot of ideas from the 4e books.
Didn't a great wyrm dragon deal 20 damage with its beeath attack on 4e?
Players building characters designed around bad faith rules and loopholes is the definition of adversarial. We need to talk about **Adversarial Players**.
Wow that really puts something’s into perspective that I as DM, did not realize. I felt totally responsible for the party to win at all times otherwise there would be conflict at the table. I was doing the entertainment act but it became unfun to worry if a wayward roll would kill/inconvenience a player
Try to think of it this way. Would you keep watching a show if the characters never failed? Where would the drama actually come from? Even something as mundane as a teen romance series has moments when the characters say the wrong thing, and end up breaking up. If you were watching a show about characters fighting monsters, wouldn't you expect that occasionally, the monsters would win? Even if only temporarily, requiring the heroes to retreat and regroup? When I run a game, my role may be as the referee, and the guy telling the overall narrative, but for me, the fun comes in watching the outcomes that I can't control. Just like a TV show.
I think the problem is D&D doesn't let you break an arm or something minor like that, which you can recover from in a few sessions or so.
"It's just a scratch" or you're dead.
In my game (5e but modern), when people should die, instead they have to sell their souls or they get a cybernetic implant and deal with lasting physical/emotional consequences.
And before almost dying, there are all kinds of minor wounds that people play well to avoid.
@@Seth9809 lol, that sounds fucking awful
the forum was focusing on the "rubbed me the wrong way, so i killed the wizard because he was so powerful"
And that's part of the problem with the mindset of the players.
It wasn't the DM who killed the PC. The Lich killed the PC.
What the Lich did was a 100% accurate representation of what a Lich would do in that scenario. The DM didn't manipulate the situation. The DM didn't fudge the rules. The DM didn't do something "out of character" for the Lich.
If the players look at it as "the DM made this happen", then they aren't experiencing the game in a way that makes sense to me. To enjoy the game, you need to immerse yourself into the game. You aren't "making" your character do something and the DM isn't "making" things happen in response. Everyone is describing what the *characters* and NPC want to do (based on their in-game knowledge, personality and motivations), and the dice take care of the results.
I read that as part of the tongue-in-cheek tone of the post. He opened with "Heartless DM here." Bottom line was he was asking if he was too harsh and AITA
I also took it as a lively, humorous, and self-aware way to tell the story. The joke being that the DM was thinking and feeling like the VILLAIN he was responsible for roleplaying. A completely valid style of DMing that some tables (including his) enjoyed.
The DM in his post is being clear HE killed the Wizard. We can justify why the lich would target the wizard and it would be true but thats not the DMs motivation. The DM got mad his toy got broke and wanted to wipe the smile off the wizard players face. Its petty, toxic, and is DM vs Players. People seem to have forgotten that just because some people are sensitive to character death that doesn’t mean the game isn’t a collaboration with Players and the GM.
You are putting your own spin on this no one other than you and your fans are seeing. He was intentionally being toxic and petty and he used the spell for the wrong reasons. Your justification makes sense but it is still just a justification. Thats not what the DMs motives were. They DM was quite clear.
I wish you had really considered this video more carefully.
@@madhippy3
Nothing "toxic" or "petty" or reminding the player that "this is how the game works".
The DM probably should have dealt with this issue earlier, and in a more subtle way.
If the DM historically kept playing opponents dumb, and set a precedent of "If you take on any challenge you won't die"... and then suddenly without warning decided "now I'm going to have the enemy play smart"... that wouldn't be fair, since the DM *enabled* the bad behavior in the first place.
We don't have enough context to know for sure what lead up to this scenario. But when in doubt, I side with the DM because they have invested way more into the game than the players.
Agree 100%. I think the OP would not have gotten crap if he was apologetic, like, "I did what I thought the lich would do but feel bad about it. AITA?" But because he said he reveled in it, he got blowback. They felt he was being arbitrary and petty. While I understand the emotional impulse that motivated those responses, I disagree with them. He played the lich correctly and should not be chastised for it.
I think what the comments are saying is that the DM let his personal feeling dictate the decision. A neutral DM killing a pc because the enemy perceives a pc as a threat is one thing, but when the DM is saying that they personally felt some kind of way because of a player's actions sounds like retaliation instead of because of the narrative. If that makes sense.
Right? I agree with the lich casting PWK on the wizard, it is a hyper-intelligent creature, and that is an obvious tactic... but the description of events he gives makes it feel grosser than it should.
Plus, it was final session. Being killed by such boring way in first round; how is that going to be fun for anyone?
Edit: why use that kind of monster in final session?
@valivali8104 i agree 5e monster design needs work. Half of the abilities on monster ruin player experience.
You also need to be careful as a DM that you don’t metagame your players with information their environment or nemesis should not know.
bruh the wizard is under 100 hp... the players would do the same "whats his hp? oh hes in power word kill range!"
Advice to (anyone, including DMs) that they "fudge their rolls" or "pull punches" is so contrary to the mindset I'm used to in RPing that I wonder how things got to such a sorry state. _The mind wobbles._
It's not a story state. You haven't actually conducted roleplay, you've played RPGs, but not roleplayed. Roleplayed is what happens if you remove the "game part".
In which case it's improvised acting. Yes, it's like the stuff that happens in the bedroom.
Having a story and having competition are completely at odds with each other. Boxing is competitive. The result is that boxing often is years or decades of matches being boring because either the top champs refuse to fight each other to pad their win rates, or the champ is so good everyone gets knocked out very fast.
This is literally why Professional Wrestling is fake.
If you want competition, play a wargame.
-
The vast majority of video games allow reloading the same save 50 times, OR they deliberately make it impossible to randomly get shot in the head out of nowhere. Their are hundreds of games where you can basically do a crit success, but the enemy never can. OR, they can only crit you when you're at full health, and their luck gets worse as you get more and more messed up.
@@Seth9809 You don't have to remove the game to roleplay, there are plenty of games that do not do as you say - where saves cannot be reloaded and you can die to completely random chance, that and you've clearly never LASO'd Halo 2... Those sniper jackals haunt my waking dreams.
Pulling punches and fudging dice are not required for a story to occur, it just makes the story into one that the GM is telling as opposed to one that all the players at the table are playing. Nothing wrong with that of course but it isn't to everyone's taste.
@@Seth9809 If you are right, and fudging dice is necessary in this system for roleplaying to survive, does that not indicate that the system itself is flawed?
@@nobodyinteresting5311 DnD 5e is pretty flawed, yep! ;)
@@Seth9809 Role playing is _both_ - what you talk about is just play-acting or improv.
Roleplayting is *both* mechanics (the game) and the assuming of character roles. You are projecting your own perspective on "how to do it rite" onto others in a condecending way and one that is, frankly, narrow and likely part of the problem R.L. is analyizing in his video: you think it's just storytime so the dice and mechanics should (for all intents and purposes) be removed, but this is not roleplay gaming (note it is a hybrid term and always has been).
My two cents: a lich using its own powers to fight off a bunch of adventurers and prioritizing the character who just caused it a lot of damage is a perfectly reasonable interaction. It’s logical for things to go this way and there is a problem on the PCs side because they didn’t prepare any defenses against death magic (at that level they probably had ample access to the stuff, and if you fight powerful undead a modicum of preparedness should be expected).
That said there is a problem on the GM’s side too: intent. The DM admits he felt annoyed at the wizard for causing the lich so much damage and, AS A CONSEQUENCE, singled him out. In most modern GDRs that’s a bad attitude to have from a DM. In most modern games players and DMs should work together to craft and exciting and rewarding tale. If the DM reacts badly to one of his critters (that are in fact infinite btw) then he’s taking an adversarial stance towards the players and that’s not conductive to the “work together” part.
Note that everything depends on the social contract between the players and the DM. Everyone should know beforehand what kind of game they are playing, so they know what to expect and how to interact with the world. Originally D&D was all about trying to beat dungeons that were supposed to be deadly simulations. Players knew they were very likely to die and were encouraged to have spare characters on the ready. The “social contract” was fulfilled. Not so if you are supposedly playing a narrative campaign and you, as a DM, suddenly decide to “put a PC in his place”. That’s not even a matter of respecting the social contract, it’s a matter of psychology
Sounds to me like the DM was just channelling the lich, who'd be fairly annoyed at the wizard too.
One of the best summaries of the situation I've seen in the comments here!
@@FrostSpike If he was channelling the lich, then fair. But the way the post was written it wasn't the the Lich was angry at the wizard, it was the DM was annoyed by the Player of the wizard. The former is perfectly fine, the latter is something that needs to be nipped in the bud.
That DM did the right thing for the wrong reason. He should have used PWK on the wizard but not because it rubbed him the wrong way.
I agree. Framing and presentation matters from a player perspective, and at least from the story as presented BY the DM, they did not present it from the perspective of the Lich, but from themselves, the DM. Getting "rubbed the wrong way" as a DM should not be the motivation for the villain's actions.
Drawing the final boss' ultimate move after burning half his health in one turn is a such a badass way to go, I'd love it!
Eh, it's bad form as a DM to "how many hitpoints do you have?" Then use power word kill. But it sounds more like he had already decided the Lich was gonna cast the spell either way and was confirming.
If you're fighting a Lich. It's gonna try and kill ya. It's not going to kill you nicely.
Honestly, I think it's kinda' wild as a DM/GM not to have copies of the PCs character sheets.
If the BBEG has had as much time to study the PCs as they have had to study the BBEG, the Lich should be completely prepared for all the PCs abilities and tactics.
I was just thinking this, too. Yeah, the order of things was off-putting, but I believe the GM would've cast the spell anyway. The group made it to the last session, I don't know how long that was but I assume it was more than one or two sessions worth. They all stuck around to see it to the end, meaning the table should've known what tolerance level is needed with each other. A slight change in order of things shouldn't undermine whatever adventure they had up to this point.
It was final session. Why use over-powered enemy who kills in boring way? How is that fun for anyone?
@@valivali8104 mh, they came into the lich's hideout. I guess it's on them that the combat was "boring".
@@CathrineMacNiel what were they supposed to do? It was final session.
In D&D, players should never be coddled. If they choose to face a lich, knowing full well it’s a lich, and they die, that’s on them. The DM did the right thing by playing the lich correctly. The DM’s role isn’t to entertain or coddle players but to set up scenarios and arbitrate interactions. If players make poor decisions, they must face the consequences.
I’ve dealt with entitled players before and always call it out. A DM can introduce overpowered characters to deter players from certain areas until they’re ready. Players can always withdraw from encounters, but they often don’t. As a GM for over 34 years, I’ve seen many players think they’re invincible, which usually gets them into trouble. If a player gets upset because of their own poor choices, I ask them to leave my table. I don’t let that toxicity fester.
The DM’s job is to be the final arbiter of the rules. Liches are intelligent creatures with far more life experience than the characters. If players can’t handle the heat, they should stay out of the kitchen. Danger is part of the game. Without it, you might as well play computer games where you can reload characters instead of being smart about situations in the first place.
Yes, I remember discussing exactly this one year ago on The Rules Lawyer 's discord, ranting channel!
faulty system => dm determines everything, players don't control anything in combat
Except this was literally always the case for D&D, and even worse for the first 2 editions.
This is because since there was barely any rules for something, if something was possible enough was entirely up to the whims of the DM that given day.
Something could be incredibly easy, but because the DM was having a bad day or you switched tables, suddenly it was impossible.
You couldn't just look at the rules and do a combo... You had to describe something very complex, and then have the DM believe what you said was a good idea.
Statistically, you don't have the top 49% of IQ/EQs and your DM doesn't either. This means there is a 75% chance you won't have a brilliant idea and even if you did, the DM is too immature or ill-informed to know what good ideas are.
@@Seth9809 none of that is true. Sounds like you're making shit up to soothe your hurt butt.
Slightly adjacent to the topic, but one thing I've noticed is that Pathfinder 2e is SO much more enjoyable when you're just willing to have an honest, up front discussion of your desired difficulty as a player. The game gives you so many tools to actually build encounters to your desired difficulty, and lots of variant rules (dual class, FA, ect.) that you can stack to make things as gonzo as you want. You just need to open up and say 'actually I would like to play an easier game' and find a group that matches. So many people get hung up on making encounters as hard as possible because they think it's 'tough'... it's like only doing CBT in the bedroom because you want to be 'hardcore' despite not actually enjoying it 😂
I won't get into detail, but I'm a new-ish D&D 5e DM. Currently at the end of our LMoP game. I've tried to be a neutral DM and have tried to let the chips fall where they may. There have been two or three occasions where my players either died outright or should have died and I prevented it.
One occasion a player pulled a large mob of ghouls in Wave Echo Cave and ran away and I had them collide with the bugbears and fight each other. This made time between turns take a little longer, but the PC didn't die as they probably should have for venturing through a hostile dungeon on their own. This story was relayed to someone outside the table so they got the info second hand from the player I "saved" and they were told by the person not at my table that they would "leave if they were in that game" because I took to long to have the ghouls and bugbears fight each other (both parties of monsters wanted each other dead in the story and part of the BBEG reason for confronting the players is he's stuck fighting the monsters in the dungeon and can't get to the forge of spells).
My players also rarely work together and so to keep track of turns I had to make people take turns if we were on a map regardless if we were in combat or not, I know this isn't standard but the standard for most games is that a party of 3 or 4 would mostly stick together... mine do not. I was told by ANOTHER person outside of our game that they would "leave if they were in that game" which is amazing because this person doesn't even play D&D or TTRPGS. This person does however watch D&D podcasts / livestreams and frequently shares "D&D horror stories" like content in our Discord. They have no desire to actually play the game and I've tried to get them into our games several times.
None of the players at my table have actually left or stated a desire to leave my table. I wouldn't call it abuse but each of them at some point has harrassed me about the way that I'm doing something. This player wants the game to focus on NPC interactions and doesn't care for combat and thinks I'm putting too much emphasis on that and that I'm a slave to the rules. This other player is the total opposite and thinks I spend too much time letting the PCs interact with NPCs and that we should focus more on tactics and combat, murder hoboing and power playing any chance they can get. Another player just wants to see the world burn and initiates conflict and escalates situations to the point of hostilities with NPCs, literally destroying some of the world in the process. All of them want something different from the game and I'm doing my best to give that to them but it will never be good enough because it isn't a single player game that I can tailor make just for them.
I've had to talk to these people who are all in their early 30s and that I consider my peers as if they were children. I've had to explain that I'm running the game for multiple people and have to consider others and that they should try to get along and play nice in the sandbox. Another player with all the money in the world is upset at me for not wanting to update to the 2024 rules or the 3D VTT. I feel like an adult baby sitter more than a DM. At one point I had a mental breakdown and told my partner that, "this is not fun for me, I don't want to do this anymore." I can't be an objective neutral referee and a biased movie director tailor making everyone's experiences at the same time and a life coach and a therapist and a punching bag for when dice don't go well for a player that night. After we finish Lost Mine I'm probably done for a long time. There is zero love, support, or empathy for DMs from the players, D&D / Wizards itself, or the community that demands and begs for them. If anything it's outright hostility and aggression. If I were at my table I guess I'd leave too lol
I'm so sorry to hear that. And as long as what you are writing is true: Your DMing is the smallest issue here. It seems like you have to accomodate players that actually can't play at the same table together. I understand the feeling. One always thinks "yeah, I can reconcile these vastly contradictory playstyles", when in practice no one can.
You gotta stand your ground more, man. You're better than letting "friends" walk all over you for their enjoyment without anyone taking each other into consideration. This sounds as if they are just using you to be honest.
I'm a DM and have been for like seven years, and I will tell you, you're generally supposed to speed up any combat that the players don't see... because they don't care about it. Unless they need to know how it went round by round... Why not just roll a single dice and have it be over?
It's not like they're going to go CSI on it afterward, are they?
Also, there is no reason to bring up the second person who said they would leave. Your description of this is uncalled for and reads as very salty.
Also they're right. It's super toxic to play at a table that wants to be and should be two tables.
" At one point I had a mental breakdown and told my partner that, "this is not fun for me, I don't want to do this anymore." I can't be an objective neutral referee and a biased movie director tailor making everyone's experiences at the same time and a life coach and a therapist and a punching bag for when dice don't go well for a player that night. After we finish Lost Mine I'm probably done for a long time. There is zero love, support, or empathy for DMs from the players, D&D / Wizards itself, or the community that demands and begs for them. If anything it's outright hostility and aggression. If I were at my table I guess I'd leave too lol"
I literally play a system that barely anyone knows about and I have a full 4 players that play the game just fine.
You can certainly get what you need with 5e, a system at least a million people play.
Nuke anyone you don't like, and put the listing back up.
I have had hundreds of players (People can be flaky or sign up for stuff and not show) and less than 5% of people who ever joined a campaign with me are as bad as any of the players at your table.
"and a life coach and a therapist and a punching bag for when dice don't go well for a player that night."
And the fact you even tried to do this makes you sound like you're 20. Again, press the red button.
You could literally replace all of these people 19 times and every single time get better players.
@@Seth9809
"you're generally supposed to speed up any combat that the players don't see"
one player was in the room with them and used a flying potion to take shots at the two groups of monsters from afar
@@Seth9809 the issue of replacing players is that we're all friends and know each other and hang out IRL. I wouldn't be interested in DMing at all if it were with randoms even if that might fix some of the problems. It would defeat the purpose of playing for our group. My group was D&D curious so we played D&D (and one was switching from Pathfinder and very interested in playing everything by the book to learn it). After this we're thinking of switching to something completely differen't like Call of Cthulhu that hopefully is less stressful and doesn't have the problems that I've experienced and that Rules Lawyer laid out in the video. I'm in my early 30s if that matters or makes any difference to your perception of the problem. If it sounded like I'm salty it's because I am lol
Swingy combat is one of 5e's top three problems. As a DM I always dream of having each arc end with a climactic, nail-bitingly close fight, but 5e as a system works directly against that. The action economy is so fragile that it's incredibly difficult for either side to recover once they're behind. The impact of individual spells is so large that one Hypnotic Pattern can determine an encounter, but balance around that and the party might simply TPK if the monsters roll good saves.
This wouldn't be as big of a problem if there were rules for when the PCs decide that they're losing and need to run for their lives, or rules for consequences in combat that are bad *but less bad than death*.
What you are describing sounds like it would be an issue in older D&D, and also tons of other systems.
I do agree about your second paragraph. I have consequences like becoming a cyborg and... having to sell your soul to come back to the land of the living.
@@Seth9809 lol, that sounds absolutely terrible. Also, no, it's definitely a 5e problem. It CAN be a problem in older editions, but it's clear you've never played any of them if you think 5e doesn't have what he describes in spades. Like, that's the system. Your feelings notwithstanding, that's 5e, for certain.
@@Seth9809 This could happen in 3.5 D&D, but the monsters weren't as squishy like in 5E back then.
Wow. A fight with a Lich (the 2014 core one) was what started us down the path to moving to another system too. 9th level party ambushed a Lich that had the 'average' hit-points and utterly destroyed the thing with no deaths. One character went down instantly due to a legendary action, but weren't killed outright. The blender of a fighter used two magical weapons, was hasted, and proceeded to crit four times doing an unholy amount of damage. I remember we were bewildered that it was that easy with some preparation beforehand to take down something that was supposedly a challenge to a group of 20th level characters, we decided there was zero point in going on. When there's no challenge in it, what's the point? It becomes Skyrim with godmode enabled. Sure, fun for a while, until you simply walk through everything in the bestiary.
5th edition is what got us to stop over 30 years of gaming with D&D. We're old hat, know tricks and tactics from years of experience, and we just gave up after that. There were many instances of just overpowering encounters with broken spells in that campaign (Frost giants polymorphed and hurled hundreds of feet in the air, then spell-canceled plummeting to the earth, Tempest Barbarians practically resistant to everything, etc). It felt like an edition that was terrified of serving up a real challenge, and as pointed out in the video, I had to do a LOT of song-and-dance to make things seem otherwise.
I try to be clear with anyone new I run Pathfinder for: Expect that there will be PC deaths. It happens, it's part of the game. We aren't writing a Movie, we aren't writing an episodic TV show, we aren't writing a novel, it's a game and I always try to be fair. It's why I also ask that new characters can be summed up in a paragraph or two, and I don't get 3 page novels of backstory, because that's a lot of work on a character that might get yeeted by a lucky kobold.
Player's who scolded that DM for his decision seem to have forgotten it's a game. Or are ascribing their own preferences onto his and his table's experiences. I'm certainly not saying that it's wrong to want to play games where characters don't die, but I think D&D seems to have made that an unwritten expectation too. There are far better storyteller story-first game systems out there for it, rather than wasting time rolling dice with an illusion of challenge on top. At many tables, monsters are run intelligently if they aren't mindless. Even stupid creatures learn survival, and an ogre knows how to keep itself going just by it's harsh upbringing.
It's any wonder there's a hemorrhage of DM's from the system. Prep time, for games that I ran at least, would take hours and hours, and even practice runs solo to get challenges right with the goofy numbers provided. If you aren't happy to just keep adding hp to a monster behind he scenes, I don't see how it could be appealing, admittedly. And Indeed, there's a huge lean towards "Look at how powerful the PC's are now! Yay!" with the latest books. The DMG was given a nominal video, as if it was more of a side-note than anything. No solid playtesting, no questionnaires to DM's about how they could improve things for them. Just "This book is organized better".
Part of me is happy, though, despite missing the vibe of D&D, and the excitement of those early years of 5e. I was jarred out of my comfort zone to try several new systems, and I've loved the journey. My fantasy main is now PF2e, with other systems filling in for other genres. And even if the modern game is digitized and live-serviced, I still have many older editions to pull off the shelf when I'd like to.
Hey, I'd love to know what the other systems you use in other genres are.
I am so confused as to why these people play D&D. Every gaming group needs to come to some social consensus on what they're expecting, but a very large part of that consensus is contained within the game you choose to play from the start.
D&D is a combat simulator, with hard edged rules about everything, and a very clear game experience within its pages. But people are playing it expecting the DM to serve as their fairy god mother, saving them from the consequences of their own actions, and violating everything in the rulebook so that they can pretend to be playing a combat simulation game on hard mode, while in actuality doing nothing of the sort. I doubt many of these Redditors ever actually play anything.
As a DM I feel like a lot of these problems just don’t apply to a lot of tables. Like 99% of tables aren’t rules pinching. You can find some hilariously busted stuff if all you focus towards is min maxing vague phrases but if you are already playing with those players or DM you have probably already lost the chance of a fun game unless all of you fit that category. I tell my players to let me know if there is some jank they are going to try to exploit then we talk it out. I could design a dungeon with zero monsters in it that could wipe almost any low tier party but I can do that in any game system.
If my boss gets cheesed it happens we laugh about it. If a player does something incredibly dumb and or rolls poorly they die. My lich would use power word kill and if my players ran at him in the open at level 13 or whatever they die.
Dnd isn’t a perfect game far from it but it’s still fun to run with a good group of players. No rules system will fix a bad table.
100% this
That first lich story reminds me how bad dnd 5e is. Wizard instantly takes off half the lich’s health, lich responds with a OHK with no save.
Ronald, please make some videos on the OSR philosophy and how it can be integrated into PF2e, if it can be done at all!
I just started playing Old School Essentials with my wife, having previously only played PF2e, and I find OSR so cool, so refreshing. It feels like this is how things should be, if you know what I mean. You are a nobody and the world around you is brutal and unforgiving, and you get a real sense of accomplishment from surviving and thriving in it.
It's a topic I've wanted to cover! But I feel like I need to actually try it out before speaking on it, to see how it actually works out. (I actually have a set of houserules that I worked out from a few years ago)
Seconding this request. I personally feel PF2e falls on the other side of the table than OSR, being purposefully designed to enable the very antithesis of OSR play, but I'd enjoy watching another opinion about this. (My own might be biased, since I enjoy PF2e and am not a big fan of OSR.)
@@JoniWan77 For someone who's run both, I would tend to disagree that PF2 is the antithesis, but I will concede they are distinctly different animals. Where the similarity seems to lie is that PF2 monsters of the appropriate CR are genuine threats, so much so that one monster two CR levels above the parties level is often capable of giving at least one player a trip to the morgue. This isn't always the case, since it depends on the composition of the party, and the type of creature, as well as the "map" itself which can lend an advantage to either side if taken full advantage of. A party well equipped to handle one type of monster might not struggle, while another party with a glaring absence of counters for that monster's particular flavor of bullshit might fail miserably. What becomes the litmus test for me, is when you compare the same outcomes between a certain monster that is somewhat universal between PF2e, OSE, and D&D 5e, against character classes/races/roles in the party that the three systems share in the same tactical circumstance. In D&D 5e, the results of a balanced fight rarely result in anyone even going to zero hit points. In OSE, there is always a chance for a TPK, and in PF2e, death of one character is a distinct possibility. At least in my experience. Obviously, due to all the variables, it's never a 1 for 1 comparison if for no other reason than dice rolls, and the added advantage that critical hits and "hero points/inspiration" can create. I would also add an interesting sidenote. When given a party of players who loved 5e, the majority disliked OSE because of both the pacing, the difficulty level, and the lack of options in combat. Many of those same players adored PF2e, once they started to grok it. On the flipside, they grasped OSE within a single session, which is a distinct advantage for the person running the game. Less parts means less to explain, character creation being the only exception. THACO, if used, is just harder for modern TTRPG players to grasp, the one player at my table who had played with it before being the only one to not struggle with it. That OSE does the math for you, allowing you to swap it out for the modern variant, is a huge blessing.
@@tubebubereboot6873 Thanks for the insights!
Consumerism. The latest batch of players from 5e are mostly horrible it seems. I DM’d 5e for 8 years and I have been DMing/playing since 79. 5e is the only edition I actually burned out on.
In this particular case, the DM had the right of "I'm not trying to kill you, the lich is trying to kill you "… until he asked for the wizard's HP.
In my group we have a running joke of asking "whats your fire resistance?" which is thier way if saying they are casting fireball.
I would really love more of this.
There are SO MANY commonly-used TERRIBLE arguments defending 5e. I would watch you react to reddit posts all day!
The thing with the dice fudge reminds me of XP to Level 3's thing that don't track the monster's HP, just let everyone have 2-3 things thrown at the enemy and then they die. Pisses me off to no end to this day that someone with such large audience just throw out something like that. If any of my DMs would have do that, I would have been out of the game in no time, like why do we even have combat encounters then?
The other thing that I think a lot of people are simply unable to appreciate that the death of a player character can dramatically turn the story around and it can lead to more amazing story moments. Sure, for this, you need a GM who is willing to put time into writing such things, but just as an anecdotal scenario from my own experience: at the end of the Fall of Plaguestone, the wizard character died. Instead of getting pissed at me, the players not only accepted it, they weaved this event into their characters' motivations and personality, and now, we are on a "Plaguestone Extended" campaign with the same characters, embarking on a quest to resurrect the wizard. Wizard player brought a bard and we are all having and absolute blast. Couldn't ask for better players.
How would you know your DM is doing it? How do you know your favorite DMs don't already do it?
@@JD-wu5pf because we discuss combat encounters and numbers after certain sessions and the numbers always checks out. There are also 2 players in the group where I play who are always tracking monster HP as we deal damage to them. Plus it's the general expectation with the people I play with.
Yea, I stopped watching his videos after he started making "hot take" videos where he would say one thing, then try to explain it but kept convincing himself of the opposite and that it's not actually a good idea.
I'm not arbitrarily determining how long a fight goes, but to ensure we can get through larger fights in a single game session I absolutely file off some of the numbers. Little guys get a s9ngle digit number of hitpoints and a damage threshold (every x amount of damage past x damage = 1 more hitpoint lost) and I round damage for the big guys up to the nearest tens place and drop the ones place to make damage tracking cleaner and easier to track without having to right down tons of math. This frees my mental load enough that I then get to add in a lot more cool setpiece moments and a lot less "I swing my sword/cast my spell it does x damage the end" turns. Never had a player notice or complain.
then again, xp to level 3 himself has stated that he isn't very smart.
going there for game design isn't exactly the best idea.
It’s all about expectations and communication. I have one campaign I’m running where if I killed a player they would get mad at me and we would have to have a long conversation and they would ask me to retcon or not do that in the future. I have a different campaign with the EXACT same party where we had 8 or 9 character deaths over 3 hours, but they loved it becuase they knew exactly what they were getting into.
30:20 3 hours of prep per hour for 5e is insane. As a former dnd 5e dm, i believe it, but damn. 4e was so much nicer to DM and Pathfinder 2e isn't too bad
I've been GMing for 45 years and I still get players who have barely sat at a table before trying to "correct" me. It's sometimes funny, but usually just annoying. PC deaths are almost always 1) dumb move by the character or 2) bad luck on the dice, or both.
Except sorry dude you are wrong and experience doesn’t equal infallibility. You demonstrated it just now. What mistake did the wizard make? What bad roll dis he make? The wizard’s “mistake” was being a wizard against an overtuned monster well above their CR which has a spell which kills you without a save.
If it isn’t clear this isn’t a mistake. The wizard never had a chance. He could have had a loaded dice which only rolled twenties, and nothing would change because there is nothing a level 13 wizard can do against PWK. That spell should not have been on this lich’s spell list. Its a DM mistake and worse he used it in anger at a player not for Ronald’s justification.
Be humble.
@@madhippy3 Exept sorry dude, you don't know if they knew whether or not they were going to fight a lich beforehand. There's TONS of ways a 13th level party can prepare for that. And a 13th level party taken by surprise by a lich STILL has means of bringing that character back. So, sounds like a skill issue on both yours and the players in the story's parts.
His mistake was drawing its ire too fast without having a way to deal with its own counterstroke. If you're going to chunk something that powerful that badly, you'd best be ready for the crackback, and he was NOT.
@@robinmohamedally7587 I don't but the group has more problems to worry about than a douchebag GM is the final fight of the campaign is a random ass lich they never see coming.
You are out of your gourd if you think you can prepare a revive which takes 1 round. They are level 13 they do not have Wish. And Counterspell? Maybe on a lucky night! You can Counterspell Counterspells so if the Wizard can get a 15 on the Ability Check he Counterspells, but then the Lich gets to Counterspell with a Level 3 Counterspell which he can Counterspell the Counterspell with a 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12 (admittedly I cannot guess what level The Wizard cast their Counterspell so it is a range of numbers). After that it is the will of the dice, but the odds were dicey at the first Counterspell and you really got to hope that Lich is only rolling a 7 for his spell.
But sure, Dude. Tell me what the Party could do.
Your wrong and stupid opinion has been noted and then ignored.
My only quibble when you compare this to a PC is that if the PC wizard asked "How much HP does the lich have?" he would get told to guess and that is metagaming. But if a PC told the DM that he is not required to disclose his hitpoints the Dm would be upset.
I think it is fair for a lich to cast a blind PWK and maybe down the wizard and maybe do nothing with his 9th level spell slot. But to do it only after using your position as DM to get perfect information from your lich is poor form.
Also back in the day the DM by definition could never be a "rules lawyer looking for loopholes" because the DM was a rules judge/legislator (though a compact was the DM should make consistent rulings, clear ones, and if something had to be changed after it was found to not be working out, announce & discuss that).
So yeah the mindset has shifted quite a lot, to put it mildly. Once again: _the mind wobbles_
I once saw a post from a newage player who played a very modern "dating sim" style of dnd where all the party members just kinda made out and effortlessly won combat. She then joined a game that her older family member was a part of (uncle, or dad or something), and had the audacity to say that they were playing the game wrong when it was a very numbers crunchy combat heavy "war game" style of dnd. All that to say there is a serious issue of what people think dnd is. Most importantly: EVERY TABLE IS DIFFERENT!! Thats why session 0 and expectation setting is one of, if not the most important part of dnd imo.
As a DM, i agree that combat in 5e is EXTREMELY boring for me to run because i know the outcome of the fight is going to be, "And the PCs win the day again." or else im a bad DM.
However in terms of balance i thought about instead of using Stat blocks for at least humanoid npcs why not use Player Character sheets instead. That way all the op spells and combos are able to be done by both players and DMs. It is a bit more work but it makes it a bit more fair and interesting to play.
leaving DnD was the best thing I ever did. I fell in love with TTRPGs all over again and I'm never going back.
whatre you palying now? I play SWADE
@@elgatochurro I've been playing more rules light stuff. Like Cy_borg and shadowdark. I've been having a really good time. Though soon I might give pathfinder a try
@@Iron_Halls SWADE Pathfinder maybe... Swade I love, it's one ruleset, simple ruling and conditions usually
Not very complicated and I can ignore or homebrew whatever I want usually without much issue
And they've a companion of Pathfinder and swords and sorcery
I'm on the DM's side for the lich story. The party is going to face the established final challenge of the campaign, and they should be prepared for potential deaths.
Now a part of this could be an issue of how the DM flavored the lich's action.
"The lich reals back against your magic assault before regaining his composure.
'INSOLENT WELP. SUCH PETTY MAGIC OF A VILE MORTAL IS NOTHING COMPARED TO TRUE POWER. YOUR KIND SHALL KNOW THIS POWER.'
The lich then casts. Power. Word. Kill."
It would have been better form to cast power word kill first, then ask if the character is below 100 hp. Feels less like you decided to kill them no matter what and more like you expected to waste that spell slot, then realised they took on that lich way too early.
Having all of my rolls be open and in front of the players has been the best rule I have implemented as a DM. With it, the players know there is no way for me to pull punches, so when things get tense, they know there is no thumb on the scale that will save them. To get the best results from this, you have to make sure your players always have a feeling of how dangerous things are -- I never want them to feel cheated with the difficulty. Instead they should feel like they are taking a risk of their own free will, and the dice will decide their fate.
Each challenge I design as the DM will never be made easier, only harder if I believe the fun of the game demands it (and this rarely happens). If the players prepare well and steam roll the encounter as a result, that's fine -- they've earned it. But if they bumble into the dragon's maw like fools and meet a bloody end, they've earned that too. They've earned it because I know I would have telegraphed that the dragon is very dangerous and clever. They would know that it has killed adventurers stronger than them several times before, that it studies potential adversaries and plans accordingly, and that it takes great joy in hunting those who think they are hunting it. The problem is clearly presented to the players and, if they are brave enough, I let them try to solve it.
A lot of people don't understand that tabletop systems like D&D are closer to "game engines" with optional libraries of models, scripts, spells, etc, for sale separately. These systems need a lot of effort to turn into actual, playable, games with areas to explore, allies, enemies, items, so on and so on. Unlike say Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, the Arkham Horror LCG, Chess, etc, a DM/GM/ST is required to actually make the game from the pieces sold by WotC, even if they're using a purchased adventure as a base. Often, they have to make completely new content.
TTRPGs are certainly not "game engines". They are largely developed rule systems. In spirit, the work a GM has to do is more akin to a map designer in an RTS game than someone using a game engine. One puts assets into place and let's the players play on the map. What the players bring to the map and how players interact with it is adjudicated by the rule system. Obviously the GM can alter the rule system as they see fit and in the end develop a MOBA or Tower Defense, but that's not expected work.
What you probably meant is that DnD 5e and DnD 5e specifically pretends to be a game engine, since it was developed in a way, in which it consists of rule subsystems that you can match together how you'd like, while simultaneously not being developed enough to actually work with each other. The fact that 5e makes GMs necessarily game designers, when most other TTRPGs leave that choice up to the GM, is pretty much the problem here.
Yes, in a weak sense TTRPGs may be somewhat close to a game engine, but they are definitely still closer to a developed game. The expectation should not be to balance the movement of chess figures but to just make the damn chess board.
@@JoniWan77 > the work a GM has to do is more akin to a map designer in an RTS game than someone using a game engine.
Not at all. Good GMs are actively making changes to more than just the playmat. They're creating new NPCs, items, skills, spells, monsters, classes, modifying existing creatures, updating older materials to get rid of racist/hateful nonsense, and more. Even if they're running a published adventure as is, the GM is still the one deciding where and how actions are made, making impromptu rulings on the fly as needed, and determining how players are enabled or limited far beyond what even the most robust published adventure prepares for.
>What the players bring to the map and how players interact with it is adjudicated by the rule system.
This is just wrong. The rule system is only one layer, and the GM in the vast majority of games has final say on how players interact with anything at their table, including what they try to bring to play. Good GMs regularly review player character sheets for unapproved content, offensive notes about other characters/players, and general cheating. Published rule systems are also very shallow, even the crunchier ones. They regularly fail to outline how specific situations should be handled, putting the burden of that onto the GM. Ultimately, the GM makes rulings and rules as they see fit in order to create the game experience they want.
>What you probably meant
No, I meant exactly what I said. I don't care if you disagree or don't understand.
>it consists of rule subsystems that you can match together how you'd like
This is true of every TTRPG that honors rule zero, which is the vast majority of them. GURPS, Savage Worlds, Storyteller, FATE, ORE, d20, the OSRs, all contain optional sub-systems and lean heavily on the GM to create and enforce custom sub-systems as needed in order for the games to function well. TTRPGs wouldn't be able to effectively handle the massive number of role playing possibilities otherwise.
Even action priority outside of combat is left up to the GM in the majority of TTRPGs. Practically zero games dictate which player gets to speak with the barkeep first, or which one gets to make a check first. That order is left up to the GM. Even if they roll at the same time, the results of those rolls aren't handled at once, the GM must consider each individually to account for appropriate modifiers. Sometimes the GM even has to determine the order in which actions and reactions are handled in combat, especially in games that fail to assign speeds/rates/priorities to countless spells, powers, etc, while allowing players to hold or ready their actions in order to interrupt an undesirable event. Which is the majority of games, not just D&D 5e.
TTRPGs are *laughably* incomplete. Which is fine; they're tool kits, engines, GMs buy to build complete games upon. Always have been. They're nowhere near comparable to complete table-top games like MtG, or the Arkham Horror LCG, or Kingdom Death, which restrict players to an established set of rules and order of operations, very rarely relying on referee rulings outside of tournaments. This is a consequence of the open nature of TTRPGs: you need someone willing to build and manage a real game atop of the engine provided.
>just make the damn chess board.
Good GMs that enjoy GMing are always going to want to do more than just "make maps" and "follow these step-by-step instructions to determine and execute this NPCs combat behaviors". They're going to improvise, adapt, adjust, and customize. As the lifeblood of the hobby, they deserve the tools to do it. Imagine how boring it would be to fight a dozen goblins that all have the exact same equipment, abilities, personalities; it'd be a waste of everyone's time.
@@NRSIckiss001 What I mostly wanted to argue against was the metaphor. I still disagree about calling TTRPGs game engines, since most game engines are pretty complex tools with little determination on what games are made with it. In contrast, TTRPGs are much less complex and intuitive. A TTRPG is at best comparable to the RPG maker and even that engine expects a lot more from its user and enables a lot more different kind of games. Game engines also seldomly dictate or supply comprehensive rule systems.
I do agree with most of what you want to say now that I better understand it, especially that creating NPCs, monsters, rulings etc. is more than just creating a map.
What I still don't agree with are some of your points about being a good GM. I am completely onboard with the technical stuff, but I think there is an overemphasis on the GM in your points. Regularly checking player character sheets for offensive language and cheating seems to be pretty controlling behaviour if you ask me. That may be par for the course when playing with randoms or being a GM for hire, but is pretty weird for the standard friend group most people still play in. I also heavily disagree with "Ultimately, the GM makes rulings and rules as they see fit in order to create the game experience they want." That is probably just phrasing, but in my opinion the GM should never decide on this alone. How the game is gonna be played is as much the players' responsibility as it is the GMs.
Sort of the key point I am getting at is that I firmly believe GMing should not be gatekept by big expectations. Obviously GMing is an art, in which one can become really proficient and deserves all the recognition and tools. However, there always needs to be a way to be a passable GM from the start. And for that we need more than just a complex "game engine". We need thought out and developed rule systems, good prewritten adventures that can be run without much fiddling, as much assets for monsters and NPCs as possible. In short there needs to be the base you call a waste of time. And just for the record: Playing is as much a form of art as GMing. A room full of copypasted goblins can still be made a fun encounter and a memorable experience by good players. It's not all the GM. Neither should the GM make all the decisions (they are an arbiter) nor should only the GM be expected to put in all the work.
I warn my players that I run difficult games and I don't balance encounters. You see a large red dragon about to fly down and eat some people in a village you're just about to visit? Better stay away, or you'll be killed too. I let them know the danger beforehand, but even still, a random encounter could be too dangerous.
I feel like dying should always be a threat. A fellow PC and I both made backup characters because our current PCs are being the typical front line characters, fighter and armor inventor (other PCs are a sorcerer and a bow focused ranger) and going down more than we were comfortable with, it was really exciting while playing though. We have good out of battle healing but in battle we have 4 non potion/elixir sources, 1 cast of soothe, searing restoration, lay on hands(which will harm the fighter since they're a dhampir), and battle medicine. We have survived so far and stocked up on consumables. My PC is starting to focus on medicine and related feats.
Edit: we are playing P2e
I quit playing because most DMs do this curated approach. They create a false illusion of danger which isn't really there but at the same time they will block you from doing anything too clever that will trivialize their encounter. The outcomes are all more or less scripted for the players to win but with some false sense of risk. Ultimately your choices don't really matter because if you do really well they are going to increase the encounter and if you make terrible choices they will reduce the danger to match.
It is more damaging to the verisimilitude of your game to take away the gravity of their choices than one encounter being trivialized or wiping the party occupational. I stop trying to think of good ideas or what my character might do and start wondering, what will the GM allow or what it is they want me to do, and that isn't much fun.
I am an active DM for 30 years now. I never liked the concept of OSR of pointless (sometimes) dungeoncrawl in which life is too cheap and the players must have two or three characters as a backup because they could die a petty death. Having said that, Death is always and MUST on the table... If you are fighting a Lich you must be prepaired to die. Power word kill is in the stats of the Lich for a good reason. Be prepaired and don't go in guns blazing, that ain't how that works. A Lich is not a match for a prepaired party of 13th level characters, the CRs of the 2014 MM are a joke.
Yeah, OSR has been done better in videogames nowadays, they're really just better described as "analog videogames" and doesn't really touches on the roleplaying novelty (which won't be topped digitally until AI NPCs/DMs really takes off) part of the hobby more often than not.
It was final session. Who wouldn’t expect final fight to be possible to win and not die in boring way during first round?
@@valivali8104 possible to win, yes, but why not expect to die? its the final session if there is any session I would expect to die its that one, even in a narrative driven game, dying in the final battle against the bbeg is climactic
@@tamadesthi156 problem isn’t dying but dying in boring way during first round. What can player do rest of *final* session? Sit quietly?
@@valivali8104 maybe one of the many things I wrote in my reply to your other post complaining about what else to do in the final session? Cant find it anymore, but the list was something like this: "give tactical advise, enjoy the fight, cheer for the others, ask the gm if your wizard could be a ghost/spirit and you can cheer in character for them, play potential minions of the gm, plan out your resurrection scene, plan the reaction of the wizards friends and family" Do you only have fun while its your turn?
That's really on the wizard
Liches in 5th edition have A single strong thing And that's power word kill, outside of that they're literally fucking garbage, how do you get hit by the one thing that a lich has as a wizard player
I blame Critical Role. The fudging of dice rolls, lack of a commited story, and the catering to the party, all make the game worse and they are all problems in CR.
I do also blame them to a certain degree, but I also put the blame on those who think it accurately reflects real-life TTRPG experience.
It's like watching reality shows and thinking they are real.
PREACH!!!!
Every campaign finale I have ever run starts with a warning that "PCs may die"!!! I say this because if there was ever a time that it was narratively appropriate for a PC to die, it's at the hands of the BBEG. Getting killed in some random encounter sucks, sure. But getting killed in an epic fight with some epic BBEG, that is something you should remember fondly.
As a DM of 5e of several years, I totally relate with everything said here. I have had some amazing players (and friends) who have made the struggles to run 5e worthwhile. But 5e is a struggle. It completely sucks having to create fun encounters in a system designed exclusively for the players and where no support is shown to the DMs meant to run games. Having seen the light of better games, I am done fixing WotC products!!!
Fantastic video! Thanks for making it.
To add to your points, another conflict I’ve run into which lays underneath the umbrella of the “Illusion of Difficulty” is that players will act out vile schemes and expect for them to go largely unpunished. This could be anything from stealing from shops to murdering people in the streets they don’t like for one reason or another. A lenient DM would allow this nature. Meanwhile a harsher DM-if not a simply realistic DM-will sick the guards on them, or any form of retaining a semblance of halfway-realistic order. It is almost expected that, should the players get themselves into trouble, there will be a way out of it. It’s as if the players want to steal and kill without any of the punishments. The DM must cow their legal systems to suit the fancy of any mischievous player. Should the DM not, they are called, as you’ve rightly alluded, an adversarial DM.
Bad choices get made with bad consequences and sometimes everything just goes wrong but then for some odd reason a lot of players don’t choose run away…
I have been in combats like that where it's not feasible to run, either because the enemy does too much damage to make escape a good option, or because they can handily outrun the group, etc. and then the DM will ask why we didn't run at the end and we'll just go "it didn't make any sense to do so".
@@hexidecimark yes that can happen
I have both played (as recently as yesterday) and DMed 5e and this is exactly correct. I was running a D&D adventure club scenario for my kids and my wife (our forever DM) got worried that I let their characters die/fall unconscious, even though that was written into the scenario.
It's pervasive, and not as fun as pf2 for me, which is why I'm running 2e for my cousins.
i don't see a difference honestly. Why would you be worried about a scripted scenario of a character dying or falling unconscious in your 5e game but not 2e?
@@CL-jq1xs different games, different systems, different players - "my kids" in 5e and "my cousins" in PF2.
i was in a similar position to the DM at the beginning of the video recently. As written, the final encounter of a module i was running includes a CR 15 magic user with a spell that acted like an AoE power word kill, but which only killed when the target's HP was below 20. The party was six level 5 characters. the level of difficulty wasn't of concern to me - CR is a joke, and even if it wasn't, i tended to run a very similationist style of combat in that campaign. The players already knew the spellcaster's power from a brief run-in, and they were planning accordingly, with around a month of sessions dedicated to preparing for this encounter - planting spies within the enemy's ranks, beseeching allied NPCs and organizations to fight alongside them, researching the sorts of creatures they'd be fighting, etc. This whole campaign was focused more on getting what you want through negotiation and clever problem solving than sheer combat, so it seemed fitting that the last combat encounter would draw on every ally and favor the party had gained to eke out a narrow victory against an absurdly powerful foe.
even so, going into that session, that one instakill spell was still irking me. i don't like the concept in general of a feature which can instantly kill a creature with no counterplay. counterspell existed, yes, but it was a roll of the die on if they could make the check against the very high level spell, and there were so many other important spells for the PCs to focus on countering that combat, including an earthquake spell that threatened to crush everyone under the weight of the combat arena's roof, and besides, the caster had counterspell too. furthermore, there was little that could be done to prepare for it: i saw no reasonable way for the party to learn the caster's whole spell list, especially since the book and spell list leave it vague if the caster's power is divine or arcane in nature. in the end, it didn't matter, as the party forced him to use that slot on a heal spell before their healths were whittled down enough to capitalize on it, but even if he had the chance, i am unsure i would let the enemy cast it.
for what it's worth, i would hesitate to let a player gain access to either of these instakill spells as well, and i do not bemoan the OP for using power work kill. we have very different styles of games, and where i focus on narrative and characters (to the point where i kinda like fabula ultima's "you can only die in a heroic sacrifice" system), it seems his game was closer to an OSR style. I just think this all speaks to your point about "adversarial" DMs wanting to create combat encounters that feel like the fate of the PCs and the outcomes of battle are dictated by their choices, not the choices of the DM. To me, instakill features feel like killing a character by a handwave, like "rocks fall, everyone dies." the fact that such options are one of the few ways to challenge the world-bending casters of 5e is a deep disappointment to me, and it's partially why I am looking towards system like pf2e, fabula ultima, and the various world of darkness games for my next campaigns.
Hey buddy I got half way through your novel and read "I bemoan the other DM having power word kill on a lich' and stopped reading and started chuckling, thank you
@@stinkystink9830 So you missed "do not" in the sentence and stopped to pat yourself on the back. I'm sure it was fun
This is one reason I like the Harm spell over Power Word Kill or Disintigrate for a big scary spell. It can't kill the player. But it can reduce them to 1 HP and lower their max HP temporarily and put the fear of the gods into them. The party can then coordinate to keep that player safe etc.
A DM should NEVER EVER kill a PLAYER. Absolutely not. Killing the player's characters is just fine, but killing players tends to end badly. After all, you rarely get a good RPG experience in prison. Plus you have to get rid of the bodies. (BTW chain-link fencing and a deep body of water)
As a DM my goal is that the characters are dragging themselves out of the last encounter with single hp and no spells left. Yes, this means that sometimes characters die and sometimes they are in decent shape. But it's rarely a TPK.
Hearing/reading the community's response to this DM's action reminded me why I quit D&D.
there's two or three of those fucking morons in this very comment section.
My job is not to entertain my players. My role is to crunch the numbers of a living world and make changes based on player decisions. I present conundrums that challenge the character's collective abilities. My players love my DM style.
Eh...while I don't plan TPK, they do happen. This is in 2nd edition days, but I had a moment when players entered a room in a dungeon where a medusa was. No prep, no prior knowledge, but, I really thought MAYBE one or two characters would fail their save but the remaining three characters should be able to bring her down. Well...they all failed their saves. Every single character, so, poof, everybody was turned to stone. It happens. If players want to throw a fit, cool with me, I pack up and leave.
I ran a session where a goblin with a deck of illusions. It conjured a medusa. Most of the players ran away, and one player died because of the goblins and bugbears caught up with him. The player quit, and by the next session the campaign fell apart. All because of a fake medusa.
@@josephpurdy8390 Yep. I mean, I have had campaigns fail for all kinds of reasons. This one starts dating that one but used to go out with the other one...bang goes the group. Someone doesn't like a game ruling and (yes, really) threatens to SUE me over it, bang goes the group, and on, and on. So, if the group is going to collapse. Cool. Bye?
I grew up with a killer DM but we all enjoyed it. Having a good death is part of the adventure sometimes. STORY TIME:
I was playing at a pathfinder society table and we fought water drakes on a ship and we barely survived… except my monk whose efforts saved the party. One drake left everyone’s just hanging on. It comes aboard and provokes from me. I hit and it actually fails the stunning fist save and I stop its assault. I happen to be next and then manage to trip it!! The party jumps it and we won! However as the party collects from their near death encounter they see the monk collapsed to his knees dead; continuing to melt from the drakes’ acid. I was pumped!
However The DM accidentally ran the encounter at too high a lvl for the party and wasn’t going to kill my character for it. They were very surprised at my dismay when I said “what? don’t take that from me that was awesome!” And retired the character anyway
During my time as a 3.5 ed player we (players and DM) had a solid understanding that character's death is a possibility and that sometime we had to flee with bits of our fallen comrade to resurrect them later. As a matter of fact I was probably the PC who died the most during the campaign beginning to lag two level behind the party due to XP loss, I remember being vaporized instantly by a dragon's breath once. Yet I never felt wronged because it always made sense how and why I died, nor the level difference made me feel irrelevant because our DM was able to strike a good balance of fight, intrigue and exploration and would make entertaining even our worst demise. I try very hard to be as good a DM as he was when I run now, because I always remember this campaign fondly.
As a GM I tell my players up front "I'm not trying to kill you but adventuring is dangerous business and you need to be ready for bad things to happen."