The "bitch about your GM" thread

4th edition Dungeons and Dragons that runs at 8:00 EST until 12:00 EST. I torture my players with jumping and chemistry puzzles, because I'm just that evil of a DM.

Amazing no one but myself has bitched about me in this thread <3

Ahhh, I was hooping it was L 5 R

Sorry, Asiatasticness is only 1/6th of this campaign, not 5/6ths :P

Our DM wants us to be a little more subtle, rather then simply finding whoever is responsible for the crap in town and beat the shit out of them. Well, that would be fine and dandy if the sneaky and/or more subtle options ever led to anything.

Last session, while trying to figure out a sinister plot, we spend hours on stakeouts, interrogations, burglary and other not hacky-slashy stuff. Even though we pretty much aced all of that, it didn't give us any vital clues or leads towards anything in particular. At all. The only real clue we got came from a completely random ambush that would have happened anyway*

, and the time where we simply killed a bunch of dudes that didn't like us snooping around.

So yeah, I play a Paladin of Avandra and a Lawful Good Warlord. With results like that, you can bet your ass that I'm going to be as heroically as I can possibly get. F*ck subtlety when killing the right dudes solves all problems.

If anime has taught me one thing, it's that idiotic street punks will ALWAYS pick a fight with the wildly more powerful protagonist.

So, the Saturday game I'm in, we're insanely OP. We had yet another ridiculous fight. This one lasted 2.5 rounds, and took two hours or so.

The damage values are insane. It's annoying, because I'm nominally a controller, but because nothing is nerfed, it feels like there's no option other than DPR: DPR is the only thing that's even meaningful. It's just kind of soulcrushing.

Granted, on the one turn I took to actually deal damage, I did about 300 damage (out of the 1500 damage the enemy sustained) so I'm definitely pulling my weight, but still.

Same campaign

Mistake 1: using the old AC values for 4E soldiers. AC 40? really? WTF.

Mistake 2: "Hit: at the start of the target's next turn, the target and each ally within 6 squares suffers damage equal to the target's maximum hit points."

Huh.

But he.

You can't.

Love, hate, clouds. [THUD]

Seriously, who would even think of a power reading "on a hit, you kill the end boss and half your friends"?

edited 23rd Oct '11 12:38:06 PM by CountDorku

No no no. It's an enemy power. It kills the PARTY.

Oh.

Wow. Just...I mean...wow.

I thought it was just misreading a character power. Actually pointing that at the party? Where were you adventuring, the Tomb Of Horrors?!

...that makes even LESS sense!

I guess... Maybe if a party member had that one Demigod epic destiny power that keyed off of "the first time you die every day..." And they had less hit points than anyone else in the party...

It would still be bullshit, though, because 4E doesn't have heal-to-max spells like 3E Heal, does it? There's no good way to recover.

edited 23rd Oct '11 12:58:23 PM by Aldheim

We're 17th level.

This is the DM's way of compensating for the fact that the party-except my character at the moment (new build long story)-is insanely optimized.

Why isn't he just throwing higher level opponents at you? I mean, you and I both know I'm a 3E man, so I'm coming to this from that point of view, but when my players got too powerful in my games, I'd throw higher challenge ratings at them. I don't see why you can't do that in 4E...

That power is just the equivalent of "and it's actually a collosal red dragon, you all lose."

Because then we can't hit the damned thing's defenses. Which is even MORE boring.

So! Here's today's session.

TWO of those "You suffer damage equal to your max HP as does everyone in 6!" enemies. Fortunately, they missed every time.

Also: The solo they're coupled with, summons one every time it suffers 200 damage (or gets to the next 200 HP increment point). And, it splits into six copies. Each copy only has 1 HP, but due to the size of the battle map, it's impossible to kill them all with one shot.

The fight has been going on for hours, we're basically out of heals. It's getting on everyone's nerves. And to top it all off, the boss heals 100 HP per adjacent enemy (that'd be P Cs) whenever it hits with an attack.

Another player was OK'd to use Nightmare Tongue Dust-which prevents the healing-but that's an item I explicitly asked if it was okay for me to use (and he said no).

Wait, wait. Insta-kill dudes are the SIDEKICKS?

This sounds like the most arbitrary bullshit fight I can think of. I sure don't see the narrative here.

To be fair, the sidekicks have low HP. It would actually be MORE deadly in the hands of the boss.

I know the name of the thread, but dude? Get out of that game. Now. Get a DM who's actually fair.

Eh, he apologized and realized that he made a mistake-he's super duper overworked and shit, so when Cy (the other player) bugs him about things, he's likely to give inconsistent answers.

And we DID somehow beat the fight without anyone dying. It's just that it's a ridiculous numbers inflation game.

Now a fellow player (the one who used the aforementioned item) is bitching at me for ruining the game for everyone by doing "rules lawyer stuff during the session."

edited 23rd Oct '11 6:31:47 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

Followup: So, as I suspected, the reason he uses One Hit KO type enemies is largely to challenge the party. But now at least three (and possibly four) players have expressed doubt about the game, so he's doing some rebalancing now that he actually has time. Yaaay.

Let's hope I'm not the one most heavily hit!

FINALLY had one of the golems hit in yesterday's encounter. However, she used her "I get 100 THP" consumable boon. But hey, I was nearby, so I suffered 120ish damage.

Good thing MME recently introduced +3 versions of Periapts of Wound Closure. Ridiculously overpowered item that. Oiy vey.

The boss had only 300 HP (though we didn't know that), but whenever she was hit, BAM! Petrified (Save Ends: Aftereffect: You are petrified (Save ends).

Next fight has over 3000 HP, and whenever a ranged attack hits it, its next attack is an automatic critical hit.

To be fair to my DM, it's pretty obvious that the fight is going to have spawning enemies, that deal damage when they drop to 0 HP, so the archer won't be totally useless.

Sounds like World Of Warcraft/Rifts raiding to me. Why not just cut the crap and do that?

When you remember that we are all mad, all questions disappear and life stands explained.

I don't much care for World Of Warcraft.

You're sticking with a DM that turns all of your encounters into crappy World Of Warcraft raiding boss fights.

Sounds to me like you'd enjoy it just fine.

When you remember that we are all mad, all questions disappear and life stands explained.

I don't like real time gaming.

TURN BASED FOR LIFE, FOO'

edited 28th Oct '11 4:13:42 PM by TheyCallMeTomu