D&D Players, What's the worst ruling a DM ever made? #1

[@2Scarhand]

Man, killing the mayor's daughter could have been SUCH a great plot hook. A super basic escort mission suddenly turns into the party trying to clear their name and figure out what the end goal was for the mysterious assassin. But no, just a really shitty DM that can't roll with the punches.

[@flameofmage1099]

Yeah, I was rolling with it until they burned down their house

[@eugenecaudill5361]

What player hasn’t accidentally, or intentionally committed arson?

[@tennagon3822]

@@eugenecaudill5361 can confirm.

[@Allantitan]

@@flameofmage1099 ikr there’s so many ways you could go with that plot hook

[@battledummie5656]

@@eugenecaudill5361 its really a rite of passage at this point

[@ninjabreadman8166]

Dracolich DM sounds like a petty child and should be ignored as one. Seriously, that is the kind of person to leave behind and not look back on

[@SpicyMediaReal]

I would have made the game more fun and allowed the Dracolich to be talked to. Make my friend angry at losing his character to a Dracolich who has been given the full weakness list of the entire party out of pure spite to rival a revenant. All to then kick the other guy out for trying to force someone to quit.

[@ZoroarkLover98]

Yup

[@barbagianniv0lante107]

Should hear the full story tho, if they wanted him to quit the group maybe there was a good reason?

[@theknight1573]

@@barbagianniv0lante107 then just say so. This is a really bad way to handle a broken grouo dynamic. No matter what the guy might have done, this behaviour is just not right/fair/ what have you

[@InquisitorThomas]

@classic max Yeah, while what the DM did was definitely bad, the fact that he’s even able to admit it to his former friend shows he’s at least grown as person. We all make mistakes and I’ve made some pretty bad rulings as a GM and with the benefit of hindsight and improvement I’ve seen that those rulings were bad, but realizing those mistakes and making efforts to avoid them is how you improve.

[@TheGraveKnight]

It seems like alot of these rulings tend to be related to railroading or spite for players succeeding something too easily

[@Zulk_RS]

Yeah. Which is a TERRIBLE way to rule something.

[@TheBigEvil]

On the one campaign I did run the way I handled my players having easy of a Time is by making future encounters more difficult. Or adding in cut traps from a dungeon because I thought they would be too hard.

[@merevel436]

@@TheBigEvil This is the good way to handle it IMHO. That being said one game, players survived the hard encounters with ease and filler ones nearly whipped em every time.

[@astrid2432]

@@TheBigEvil I mean, if player having a easy time, how about... you spice things up a bit? not completly fu** their strategy up, but if you know, the group focus on fire dmg or on electric dmg, how about you add enemies/traps who are resistented or even immune to it. not all, but the level of difficulty approbiated. or other example: your group uses tricks to fly or so? how about give them enemies who have ranged attacks or even their own flying units. it should be all reasonable and known to the group. or the possibility to get that information. like: thought talking to some soldiers or people or thought notes you get the information, that the castle have one or various dragoon harpoons, who is a defensiv siege weapon on a tower who fires at air borne enemies the party would have a thread, if they go in the air, but if they manage to destroy them, they are back in the air

[@davidtherwhanger6795]

@@astrid2432 This is where I like some of the older editions. Take orcs from AD&D Monster Manual. In there they listed as percentages what different weapon combinations a group of orcs would have. Some would have axes, some sword and shield, some spear, some bow, etc. This gave you a different mix of weapons and AC for the different orcs in the group. And I know some DM's just like the straight "all of them are orcs so all of them are the same." I also like to mix things up by having things different for different surroundings. In this case take Goblins. Swamp Goblins will use different weapons and act differently than say cave Goblins or forest Goblins. Making the party learn what they are fighting at the time. But my favorite is Hobgoblins as they are professionals and employ tactics all the time. But I have the evolve their tactics over time, so the players have to keep adapting to how the enemy changes.

[@Calebgoblin]

I cheered for every instance of the player leaving their crappy DM

[@Allantitan]

Players don’t leave bad games but bad dms

[@TheBigEvil]

@@Allantitan nah I've left bad games before because the players are hostile and the DM is spineless.

[@Allantitan]

@@TheBigEvil sadly I haven’t had a chance to play. Had bought what I needed to play but….then Covid hit before I could find a game with an opening

[@Quel907]

You have to just to keep morons with a God complex out of charge.

[@jimmieloop8587]

​@@Allantitanoh man, sorry to hear dat.

[@FusterCluck678]

On the Dracolich one, drama aside, if one of my players went through a portal that led to a dracolich and the rest of the party bailed on them, I would have taken that player aside and asked how they'd feel if they sided with the dracolich and be a villain NPC instead of just killing them off

[@postomnis6134]

@Void Shade I can’t speak for other players but I can speak for my own group, we used to befriend enemies in order to just avoid combat because some of our number are painfully slow with their turns making a single combat last two sessions sometimes. However this usually backfires, since those same players insist we bring along every friend we made along the way to the big battles. This causes the combat to slow to three rounds in six hours with every single varied ally having their own actions and turn set. It’s an absolute slog and so we no longer make friends and take the slow combat at face rather than delaying it to torture during big planned encounters

[@Persholm1]

That's probably the best solution aside from retconning it.

[@dororo101]

I mean it was the dm’s plan to have him die so those options are out. Surprised that everyone decided to sell him out. Did everyone in the group want him gone?

[@jacktheripper7735]

Or just, give em the kill since he did kill it

[@emberdragon4248]

@@postomnis6134 You could just make it so the monsters you befriend are friendly to you but don't want to risk their own lives by joining them in combat.

[@homelessperson5455]

1:40 Electricity only travels through salt water, or other solutions with ions. Rain water would be very bad at conducting since it literally just fell and didn't have time to mix with the ground.

[@rockstarvolkov4256]

Was just about to comment this. The water isn't even connected either as its rain so they also still have to travel through the air.

[@TheGreatSquark]

Rainwater has plenty of salts and other stuff in it to conduct electricity. Lightning won't jump from drop to drop, but puddles could extend the ground current from the strike. But this is magic lightning under the control of a powerful Druid, so it should only strike where they say it should.

[@rockstarvolkov4256]

@@TheGreatSquark I like the idea of rain making it bigger, I think I'd allow the druid to increase the radius of each bolt *if they wanted* Even though it's not realistic it makes for a cool story moment. Lightning magic should be some of the most lethal as the voltage you need to break the insulation of air is very very high, but this is still a game.

[@kevynnf.6310]

@@TheGreatSquark But didn't he say that the bolts wouldn't land where they were supposed to?

[@astrid2432]

I mean, even if it would be true: they are fighting against a giant. Electricity always takes the way with the least amout of resistenc. so usual the lighting should focus on the giant in a certain radius

[@monikatelescope9311]

The magic arrow story *could* have been cool. It could have been the work of a big bad evil guy fucking with the party, or lead to a campaign where they have to escape with their lives and find the assassin. It *could* have been good.

[@SupremeViola]

There's *so* many ways the DM could have used that twist to create something interesting, particularly for a table that likes intrigue and puzzles. I just seriously wonder what the heck that DM was thinking with his approach. It's like he missed the memo that *the players should be able to win*, at least in most settings. Sure, things can be so easy they're not interesting, and losses can make for great story when handled well, but just up the difficulty next session!

[@DistendedPerinium]

Screw the assassin crap. Try this hook I pulled out of my ass in thirty seconds... Party enters the town as heroes. Big celebration. Mayor hands over the keys to the city, blah, blah, blah. Party wakes up the morning after to some rather angry and concerned town law enforcement. The Mayor has been murdered and the daughter is missing. They want to know every little detail of the "rescue". At some point someone should figure out the rescued daughter was some form of double. Luckily, the Mayor wasn't mutilated too badly, but the local priest can't resurrect him, saying the spirit is refusing to return without his true daughter there.

[@dojopar6574]

Dm: "Make a slight of hand check to cast you spell." Me: "why?" Dm: "Because you are trying to cast the spell quickly." Me: "But it's my turn in initiative and the spell has a casting time of 1 action." Dm: "Just roll the check or you can't cast the spell." Me: " ..." Dm: *Takes me aside after the session* "I'm going to remove you from the party because you were argumentative about your spells this session" This was in a session 1 that a friend invited me to with a Dm I hadn't met before when I tried to attack a elk with produce flame, and was the only thing I even had a slight argument about. Sometimes I don't understand people.

[@reson8]

I hope you left; that's a ridiculous ask from the dm.

[@NibbleMyKibble]

"I'm going to remove you-" "Don't bother, shit ruling like that I don't want to be a part of your party." Is hopefully in the ball park of how that transaction went

[@fftere]

Sometimes I can't sleep because I keep thinking how people like that exist. How they can function in society? These people are voting, raising children, etc. Braindead deranged people

[@oz_jones]

Whoo boy.

[@christophersanders3252]

Let me help you understand. He’s an idiot with a power fantasy.

[@DisorientatedNumbers]

A DM once added the rule "I'll be timing you guys so you need to finish your turn in 30 seconds or else were skipping you." We'd never had an issue with players taking too long, and I have an anxiety trigger with being rushed unecessarily. The DM was really rude when I told him about it, because this will ruin my fun. I ended up quitting after the next game.

[@Neceroe]

Timing turns in combat makes alot of sense to make combat not take 2 1/2 hours but personally I usually give people a minute. He also obliviously didn't need to get rude tho.

[@tekakiuluy3221]

I've seen a video on a guy that ruled exactly like that, and asked other DMs to do the same. Maybe he influenced your DM

[@leatcanned]

@@tekakiuluy3221 Hey, As a dm, Ive found that telling players that they can talk during combat to discuss tactics and moves is allowed and encouraged, but to always give prefrence( verbally at least) to the current person moving. It might seem like a small thing but sometimes players feel unable to do anything and/ot puppeted by other players/dm intentions.

[@DisorientatedNumbers]

@Necero yeah I can see how timed turns could be beneficial. In this case all players found it odd because we weren't having an issue with combat slogging. DM added a macro that counted down and would give you a hard cut-off at 30 seconds and I've got some weird mental stuff going on where sometimes I struggle to think straight and need a bit more time. Just a bit of background info. @Tekakiu Luy I'd be interested in seeing this video.@@tekakiuluy3221 this is a great point. In some games I've been in, I can feel disconnected from my character / from the encounter if the Dm doesn't allow a bit of talking between turns. It feels more real and immersive. Fun fun.

[@quackmcduck6646]

@@tekakiuluy3221 I've seen that video myself and use that ruling, if km not mistaking the video for another, but I use it only for my more experienced players, new players can take their time. The ruling is basically you get like 30 seconds to decide what you're gonna do on your turn or you take the dodge action. My tables combats usually take like, an hour or so because we have to look up rules and spells and stuff when things we don't know comes up. So reducing the time it takes for players to decide what to do really helps, I think.

[@timothyurban4876]

We were in the Tomb of Horrors. DM: Before you stands a mithral door... PC: A what door? DM: A mithral door, you... PC: A *WHAT* door? DM: A mith... fuck. PC: Is it solid mithral? DM: I'll give it a 1% chance of being... [rolls 00/1] FUCK! It's solid mithral. PC: I'm taking that door. DM: How are you getting it out? It's literally tons of mithral. PC: Marvelous Pigments. A hole has a zero gold piece value, I'll paint lines of empty space on it to break it up into bricks and we can stash them in our Bags of Holding. There was also an Adamantine door that got the same treatment.

[@charlescourtwright2229]

i like the fact that he knew what was going to happen, i have a character in pathfinder who sheer raw strength would be enough to take said door at higher levels, a "light" load will be 12.8klbs, path finder numbers get crazy if you build right

[@Tree_-wp5zn]

Good dm right there.

[@joeykiz]

Granted, it was my buddy's very first time GM'ing, but he allowed another player to insta-kill my character without me getting any attempt to save myself. We were playing Rifts Chaos Earth and my character was a Chaos Mage. One of the other players was playing a character with super powers from Heroes Unlimited, most notably for the purposes of this story: Energy Expulsion in the form of laser eye blasts. Long story short, the other player was a "that guy" who was ALWAYS at odds with the group. That Guy starts a fight with the rest of the group because he *surprise* didn't want to go with the group to go rescue our group's NPC friend. The party is in a van type vehicle sitting shoulder to shoulder. Driver is another NPC. That Guy demands to be let out of the van so he can go do whatever dimwitted solo stuff he wanted to do away from the group. Driver very reasonably says, "i am not stopping and opening the vehicle to let you out when we are in a hostile zone." So That Guy does what any reasonable person would and decides to use his MEGA DAMAGE eye beams to blow the driver's SDC head off his body. That Guy rolls a 1, so instead of hitting his intended target, he re-enacts the Marvin scene from Pulp Fiction with my (also squishy) SDC character's head standing in for Marvin's. It was apparently all rolled at random by the GM and he didn't give me any chance to save myself because in his view, it "is more realistic" to just kill my character. The rest of the party killed That Guy's character and then no one came back for the campaign afterward.

[@huntercraft5674]

I fear commiting the same mistakes as dudes like him... cuz i can see myself dming like that... With campaign killing mistakes....

[@zacheryeckard3051]

@@huntercraft5674 Don't do anything permanent to a character without player input. If death is on the table, that needs to be clear. Death should usually serve a satisfying narrative purpose, too.

[@huntercraft5674]

@@zacheryeckard3051 that is a fact! This is why session 0 is important af xd Its just that i fear not being able to put all the theory in practice in the heat of the actual moment... (Also as a player, i was what you would call a... Lawful Stupid Paladin)

[@ーテイル]

Im just amazed as how their mental gimnastics work, like "So, yeah, he failed to shoot a laser against his partner, so I'm making him kill another PC" How's that more realistic?!

[@huntercraft5674]

@@ーテイル ig he was like "well, that has to hit SOMETHING...", but i really do wonder what were the contents of the table he rolled to see what it hit... because if it had a chance of shooting nothing lower than 50% it would be a quite complicated do argue in that guy's defense, even more on the no reaction, instakill thingy

[@adamwoolston253]

Kind of interesting how nearly all of these seem to stem from a “DM vs Player” mentality. I’ve made some bad rulings in my time, but I always admit when I’m wrong and give the players something nice as an apology (depending on the severity of the mistake, anything ranging from a bit of gold to a magic item to gaining a level). But even then I can confidently say that none of my bad rulings were out of pettiness or “you did that thing too easy so now this thing is gonna be hard.” Heck, I was running Curse of Strahd and my players killed Strahd WAY too soon in the campaign. I didn’t pull any BS out of my butt to save him. I just narrated his death and went into the epilogue. Then we started a new campaign. Went back and realized some tactical mistakes I made running Strahd. I’m a better DM as a result, and I didn’t take the earned victory away from my players

[@Zalied]

I think a lot of it is also a we are playing my way mentality. So if the party does something different they don't know how to handle it and just force the players

[@Soriokeink]

I was playing rogue for the first time, inquisitive subclass. "Before i do anything else, I'm using my insightful fighting feature. The ghost must roll a deception higher then my insight otherwise i get to add sneak attack damage to my rolls without needing to hide fir 10 rounds." "Okay. btw, roll a wisdom save" "What? why?" "Just do it" *rolls low* "You hear voices in the back of your mind. You are now cursed and you lose your turn" Well F me for wanting to use my class features. I was later told that 'Sorry but i had to because lore i can't expose yet' M8 you put that thing there and punished me for using my class abilities without any warning that what would happen would happen. That was just one of many annoying things that happened in litteraly the first session but that one was just a predominate one in my mind.

[@y2kafka472]

Player: *Looks at enemy* DM: "Noooo! You're ruining the plot."

[@janshmat8363]

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree here that that wasn't a bad ruling, but it was a bad execution.

[@edamommy]

Was playing an Arcane Trickster and interrogating a mercenary for the location of her Elder Brain boss. Gave a solid little speech and rolled a Nat 20 (30 with expertise and +2 CHA), DM said "Nah, there's no way she'll tell you that" and ended the session. First thing next session, our Archfey quartermaster tells us the location of the Elder Brain without us even asking.

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

I feel like you didn't give the whole story here. Did you roll before the DM asked? If an NPC just wouldn't do something, then it doesn't matter what you roll.

[@edamommy]

@@louiesatterwhite3885 Asked to make the Persuasion check for the locarion beforehand, don't worry! It annoys the hell out of me when a player blurts out "I seduce the lich, nat 20 😋". In fact, the mission was to take her alive to find the location of the Elder Brain. I also get that sometimes info needs to held back for plot reasons, maybe to start a new investigation mission. But again, the info was immediately dropped on us by DMPC

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

@@edamommy damn okay then. Dm shouldn't have asked for a check if it was outright impossible

[@Przemko27Z]

I don't know the DM, so I could be way off. I think this could be them trying to make the merc utterly unwilling to share the location for flavour (I mean, Elder Brains specialise in mind fuckery, so they may have been outright unable to share that information), letting you roll to drive the point home or only really realising that's what they wanted to do in the process. Simply telling you the location afterwards could be just them kinda clunkily trying to get the story back on track after the fact.

[@SupremeViola]

That to me screams that the DM didn't know the location of the Elder Brain and didn't have a more elegant way to stall for time.

[@raicantgame6634]

Ah, one of my current DMs has had quite a few bad rulings... we try to cut him some slack because he's very new to the game (played in one pre-written adventure then decided he wanted to DM his own homebrew game) 1. Wouldn't let my level 10 Artillerist start with proficiency with guns, with the reasoning that they are a new and rare technology. Already annoyed because I'm a mid-level ARTILLERIST, but fine, whatever. But then like, almost every named NPC we've met (and even some unnamed ones), from high level enemies to a random farmer, have had guns, some even described as family heirlooms. And when we called him out, he insisted they were still rare and not EVERYONE had them. But I argued it seemed like they were common enough that someone who's meant to be at the forefront of technological advancement and whose subclass revolves around cannons and firearms, should at least know how to use one! 2. Later in the same campaign, playing as a different character (we have a few that we switch between), some bandits (all with guns of course) held us up. We tried to reason with them, offering them SOME coin and supplies with no fight, but they just said "Nope, all of it." No chance of persuasion, but that's whatever I guess. The rogue and I both had guns to our heads. We also both have Misty Step, and decided in unison to try to Misty Step away to try to turn things around. DM declared we both got shot in the head, no rolls of any kind, auto-hit, auto-crit. And no Misty Step. We were then tackled and held to the ground. Again with no rolls. The entire table called him out that there should be some dice rolling happening here. Rolls to hit, grapple, etc? He refused, insisting that this "just made sense" to him. 3. Not exactly a ruling, but a very bad DM habit that kind of goes along with the rest of it: He's been very bad about making changes to our backstories without telling us and then dropping said changes in our laps mid-game. Suddenly the rogue is being pursued by some assassins because when they were kids he'd made a promise to them and didn't keep it and now they're out for revenge. He had no idea who these characters were, and pointed out that such a promise was totally out of character for him. Too late, it's canon now. When the barbarian worked with the DM to make his character, it was agreed that he was the son of the village chief, and some time in the campaign he would take on the role of chief. Well, that moment came, only for the DM to be like "Well actually your village doesn't have a chief, it's an oligarchy lead by the village elders. But you've earned their respect." And then my character has an antagonist in his backstory who basically tortured him until he broke and turned him into who he is now. Character shows up in game only to be completely different from how I described him, and the DM basically tried to pull a Zootopia Gideon Gray, "I was going through a hard time and took it out on you, but no hard feelings right?" and claimed he didn't even realize that he was the reason my character ran away. DM reasoning? "Most bullies have a hard home life and end up taking it out on others, it's more realistic." But you know, I feel like a grown man putting another grown man through electric torture via shocking grasp (on someone who was basically a commoner at the time) goes a little beyond typical bullying. But again, he wouldn't back down, insisting that it "made more sense." And I won't go into all the details cause this is too long already, but he basically threw out everything I gave him about that character and made him into something unrecognizable, which ended up making my character's behavior seem much less reasonable.

[@reson8]

I would have left. If the DM is that unco-operative there is little hope.

[@helgenlane]

Just leave? No d&d is better than bad d&d. Also, it would teach your DM a lesson that players' fun is more important than his own rules.

[@rogerwilco2]

Sounds like a DM that isn't just inexperienced at the game, but also lacks life experience or common sense. Or he is not good at remembering things and very defensive about decisions already made. Not good traits to be a DM and not likely to improve quickly.

[@firstnamelastname7244]

Changing player backstories without asking is a _huge_ no-no.

[@raicantgame6634]

@@firstnamelastname7244 Yeah, that game and our friendship with him ended up falling apart not long after this post was made. He kept going on about "Cutting out people who were toxic and didn't treat him right" which translated to anyone who disagreed with him and didn't stroke his ego.

[@Salad_Pickle]

Concentration on spells automatically drop if you cast any other spell, including non Concentration spells. Ruined my caster. Had to hit people with a stick half the time.

[@phelps6205]

No... You can cast non-concentration spells and still maintaining concentration.

[@AshersAesera]

@@phelps6205 I believe Salad's presenting that as a ruling one of his DM's made once upon a time

[@Rockzilla1122]

Bruh

[@chaoticdetectivepeach]

bruuhhhh I had something similar happen a few days ago, I was fighting this dude entirely alone, and not only did they phase through a gate (there was no super power they were a regular person the gate just ceased to exist as soon as it became inconvenient for the DM) BUT ALSO they tried to shock me by putting a shock pad on my stomach, that they had pulled out of their ass ig, cuz their hands were empty, and the 5 on the floor were already used, and they did all this dispite being pinned to the ground, AND the electricity didn't conduct through my METAL arm apparently, because "they were wearing a shirt" that's just not how electricity works

[@CodaBlairLucarioEmperor]

That one person did not understand what con saves are meant for. They're for stuff like being in cold, heat, or being poisoned. It's literally for what your body can handle before starting to be affected megatively

[@hellfrozenphoenix13]

This. I get a con save after failing another check, I suppose. Like if rocks fell and you failed a reflex, I can see a con to prevent the character from being dazed. But otherwise, Con saves are meant to represent bodily resilience.

[@gamebrainjagras4193]

Please let Brian call out the shit more often, it helps demonstrate the absurdity of these bad rulings. And the comment at the end of the video is perfect, let the players have fun, ask what type of game/campaign they want. It’s so important.

[@leugjeeo292]

One time played with a DM who let his friend's PC roll to rape another PC, who was being played by a woman. When she privately asked him if he could please not allow that to happen, he basically said "not my problem, it's up to the dice". Neither of us came back after that session

[@BlueTressym]

"It's up to the dice," is a lousy cop-out, even without considering the nature of what he was choosing to allow while trying to use that excuse to avoid being held responsible for it.

[@lynxknyght7300]

Charisma doesn't work. A campaign I've played in, and well, we ended up going the murder hobo route admittedly as nothing but crashing and smashing ever seemed to work. The worst offender though was with charisma. Early on, tried socially engineering our way into a goblin fort. Now, I rolled a 25. I'm not expecting charisma to be all powerful, but that should have been enough to get them to let through. Our DM's excuse is I 'didn't convince him' now, I lack the social skills, so I certainly don't stand a chance at getting past it. This kept on, other examples I can remember. Charisma going up as we go from level, ASI's those books that let you go past 20 UA feats and some homebrew. 27 to haggle, prices goes up. And finally 35 to talk our way past a door bouncer and it failing. Now, we just have the barbarian with a belt of storm giant strength turn all our obstacles into pretzels...kind of...I don't know, makes me wonder about the bad D&d vs no D&d conundrum. Not gonna pretend we're the best players in the world, but the only thing we can succeed at is murder hoboing and building up our arsenal of murderhoboing mastering gear.

[@adamhayden4455]

That sounds awful. I'm guessing the DM just wanted to deliver some fights instead of a game

[@reaperpeeper513]

Few general rules I’ve found work well as a DM. 1.Set up a fluff encounter after a level up. Your players feel cool and this will reinforce the feeling of growth, especially if it’s something that gave them a hard time a couple of levels ago 2. Consumable items are great, and really let your players feel clever when they use them 3. Unless it really doesn’t make sense, I generally let players do what they want. For instance a blinded player got put to sleep by a breath attack, he woke up and I ruled that both statuses had ended. (I couldn’t find rules regarding it, but probably didn’t look too well) doing things like this will make it feel more fair when the villain is difficult. 4. Let your players powergame if they want and lean into your style of dming while complementing theirs. Example- if you’re a narrative guy like me, and your power player is smoking your encounters then simply have the BBEG be smart enough to have studied and have a counter measure against their strat. Key to this is that you CANNOT do it much, and if the player outsmarts your outsmarting then you GOTTA let them have the win.

[@reaperpeeper513]

@@bull420840 Not at all what I think I said, but yeah sure I agree.

[@reaperpeeper513]

@@bull420840 Ok sorry, I see where you’re coming from. Yeah moderation is important when dealing with difficultly scaling and the “why” is also important. I guess I woke up and chose my offended pants today. My bad

[@trueblade39]

Another player in my group wanted to stuff a summoning gem down a villain's throat in combat so that the elemental that appeared would come out of the bad guy like a chestburster. He did not run this idea by the DM first. I sacrificed my turn to restrain the bad guy so that the other player could do what he needed to do. But the DM ruled that he could not do what he wanted as there was no mechanic for it. He then allowed the player to redo his turn. I asked if I could have my turn back since it had happened almost right before the other player's, but the DM refused. So effectively, I was punished for my teammate's inability to check the feasibility of his plan with the DM before doing it

[@alexiavya722]

I get the frustration, but I think the dm just wanted the combat to move forward rather than go back and redo 10 minutes of combat

[@bloodfiredrake7259]

Maybe you should have confirmed it with the DM.

[@destructor3152]

That sounds awesome sucks it wasn't allowed.

[@donb7519]

@@chrisstoltz3648 tbf there is a mechanic the mechanic is it doesnt work in 5e since all the summoning items say it has to be an unoccupied space

[@ilovethelegend]

I mean, you still had the monster restrained. Maybe not the most optimal thing to do with your turn, but it's not like you wasted it.

[@AntisocialclubSJ]

Just had a similar issue to the inanimate object making a dex save last session. A tree got to roll dex against fireball and somehow saved…

[@roningfroggy]

Damn, the Lorax really powered up

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

Rules as written objects auto fail strength and dex saves and are immune to effects that target the others.

[@YesThatWasa]

It went to war

[@Tree_-wp5zn]

Trees are great with there dex. I rarely need to worry about going first in combat

[@davidtherwhanger6795]

Sorry but if the tree makes a DEX save then I am (as a player) killing the "Tree". Because we all know it is really a big Mimic.

[@Atma_Weapon]

the only enemies you should have are the ones on the map. if your enemies are sitting at the table, then GTFO. FAST.

[@kmegabyte34]

Have a buddy who throughout the game managed to get his characters persuasion up high enough so that it was always a minimum 19 before the dice is rolled. Despite 30+ persuasion counts the DM would say "persuade me" despite him not being persuadable when his mind was already set

[@Przemko27Z]

I'm generally against DMs expecting players to be as persuasive as their characters, but also, getting your persuasion to +19 doesn't mean you can cast Dominate Person as a cantrip.

[@gilemal1469]

@@Przemko27Z I normally ask for the players to tell me what they say to persuade NPCs. If their argument is really good, they succeed without rolling. If their argument is completely unreasonable, that is auto fail. It puts more weight to their actions and words. Of course, if they don't have much, then just roll normally.

[@havardmellgren9284]

A series of unfortunate events and DM rulings led to the death of the most beloved character I ever played. We were playing in a homebrew campaign where the world was a magical version of Earth set far into the future, where several world wars had plunged had plunged the races of the world back into the dark ages. It was very much a fantasy setting, but played on the bones of a more advanced civilization. Anyway, we were doing a dungeon crawl, and came across a honest to god nuclear missile silo far underground. It was not supposed to still be active after all this time, but I was playing a College of Lore Bard/Mastermind Rogue multiclass character with proficiency and/or expertise in all skills except for animal handling and religion. After some stellar rolls in History and investigation, and a nat 20 on a tinkers tools check, I managed to restore power to the Silo. Another nat 20 allowed me to actually arm a couple of warheads and launch two nuclear missiles, one at the castle of the BBEG, and one at the palace of the other main antagonist we were battling at the time. The DM rolled for damage. I have no idea what table he used, but he rolled high. Really high. He ruled that not only were the two strongholds blasted to bits, but the surrounding countryside, containing towns, villages and hamlets got obliterated in the blast. DM ruled I had killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and that my alignment thereby had shifted from chaotic good to chaotic evil. You can say it was a bit of a blow. My now C/E character continued his travels for a while, and we battled a new BBEG. He had a sword with an ability like the Ghost's Horrifying Visage feature, only that it could not be cured with Greater Restoration. A failed Wisdom save later my 19 year old character had been aged to a 59 year old man. The BBEG escaped, and Chaotic Evil me was not happy. I swore revenge on the BBEG for Stealing my youth, and started seeking out ways to prolong my life to make sure I would live to see revenge. By this time, the DM was getting annoyed with me, but I felt I was playing the cards I had been dealt, and stayed in character. After some weeks of planning, cashing in some favors from the guild I was a part of and some good rolls, I managed to seek out and strike a deal with a Vampire who agreed to turn me. I got some new abilities and a better strength score, and alignment shifted once more. I was now Lawful Evil, but more importantly, I would no longer die from old age. Lawful Evil Vampire me was probably not a part of the DM's vision for this campaign, but I met any obstacles that were placed before me, and I and the party soldiered on. The culmination of months of play took us to the new BBEG's castle, and a battle that lasted for two full sessions. It was mayhem, but we ended up victorious. As the dust of the battle settled, the DM suddenly looks up, points to me and says; Wait, OP is a vampire, they have the Forbiddance Weakness, and OP was never invited into the castle! He looks at the rest of the party, and starts to narrate how my character suddenly get's a look of shock on his face, before he slowly starts to turn to dust before the party's eyes, leaving nothing but an empty armor behind on the flagstones. I was retcon-killed because of a weakness we had both forgotten about. No amount of protest could change his mind, he had finally found a way to get rid of my character. It's been a while, but I'm still salty about that ending. TLDR: DM rules that my character kills thousands and changes my alignment to C/E. I get magically aged, and turn myself into a vampire to postpone death. Not happy DM then retcon-kills me after the BBEG fight because of Forbiddance, a weakness we had both forgotten about to get rid of the character.

[@chaonis24601]

this was such an avoidable situation that it just hurts. who on earth puts nuclear missiles in their game without having planned properly for the consequences in the first place.

[@viniciusg.5519]

Honestly, i feel the nuclear thing was really cool, i mean they where several nuclear warheads after all, and your characters from what i assume had no idea how powerful nukes could be, so it makes sense and made a good character arc, everything was really cool until that ending, what a bummer, if the dm was less of a asshat that souds like it would a be stellar camping all things considered.

[@andrewbondarenko5849]

The DM wasn't just a jerk but a complete idiot. 1) Intentions make morality, a mistake isn't evil. That's like saying all medieval doctors are evil for bloodletting their patients. 2) You have just make a chaotic evil character part of the party, who the other members like, so they're staying. Most DM's don't allow chaotic evil PC's for a reason. Them making deals with evil creatures is part of it. Also, if you force-age or permanently hurt a PC, they're going to go crazy for revenge regardless of alignment. Also, what were you supposed to do? If he didn't want you using the missiles he should say no. You hear, "You accidentally killed thousands," and what you do nothing. The DM started it, the party should have ended it by throwing him out.

[@pleaserespond3984]

The first bit is on you (you really should have known the blast radius of those nukes), but the rest is definitely DM fuckery.

[@havardmellgren9284]

@@pleaserespond3984 I think It's a question of meta-gaming really. While I as a player know that nukes have a pretty big blast radius, I'm not sure if a boy raised in what can only be described as a medieval setting would know.

[@Sambrostar]

I have been listening to some of these stories and I thought I might share mine. This was my first experience as a DnD player, my brother was the DM. I started out as a level 1 ranger. I picked the worst class sadly, but at the time, I was really into archers and bows. Our group was playing the pre-written LMoP. Eventually, at one point, I came across a wolf, and after rolling a Nat 20 for Animal Handling, I successfully tamed the wolf and it fought by my side. This was really cool, and I named the wolf after one of our family dogs that had died due to an accident. Originally, I was intending to go for the Hunter subclass, but now that I had tamed a wolf, I became divided between Beastmaster and Hunter. During one particular session, my brother the DM tells me that my wolf cannot enter with me into a cave we had just come across. I asked him "Why not?". He gave me a "Just because" and I just allowed it. I later asked him why this was, and he told me that myself and another character, a Fighter, were too OP, and it didn't allow for the other PCs to shine. I could not understand how I was OP at the time, since I literally only had my weapons that I was using, but I guess thinking about it now, my wolf companion might have been doing a lot for my character. So with this in mind, I decided I wanted to have full control of my wolf companion, so I chose Beastmaster. Sadly, I gave up the wolf having his own initiative count and had to use one of my own actions to make the wolf attack. Of course I knew this, but after it played out in the campaign, I felt that this subclass really wasn’t worth it. I spoke again to my brother, saying how unrealistic it was that my wolf just stood there while there were enemies right in front of him, and I said I didn’t realise how bad this subclass was. I wanted to change to Hunter, or at least have the same control of the wolf as I did originally. My brother said "nope, you have made your choice, so stick with it". He said he was the DM, and his decision was final. Eventually we rocked up to another cave, and he told me once again “Your wolf does not follow you into the cave”. I. LOST. IT. I told him I picked the Beastmaster subclass so I could have my wolf with me wherever I went, I even was happy to continue to play as my subclass because he was the DM and he gets the final say. What made this worse was the fact that he wasn’t taking away any class options from any of the other characters at this point (Even the other fighter who he mentioned was OP). Anyway, in our final session of the campaign (surprise surprise, we didn’t actually finish the campaign) we returned to the mayor after completing one of the quests. The same fighter mentioned above decided that as part of his backstory, he was actually a crazed lunatic and decided now was the time to straight-up murder the mayor. I was lawful good, so my character was not okay with this, and after a few minutes the villagers decided to attack our party. I didn’t want any of the villagers to be hurt, so I had to try and knock out as many of them as I could with non-tipped arrows so that I could save them from the maniac of the fighter and the rest of the party that, for no good reason, just decided that they would follow him and murder the village. The NPC Sildar Hallwinter then saw the situation, and decided that he was going to tell on us (yeah, like a 5 year old tells on us at school). I wanted to chase him down, not to hurt him, but to just allow myself to explain the situation. Sildar began to run, but I was able to chase him down, as the wolf had 40 feet of movement. My wolf could also trip Sildar, making him prone, which I pulled off successfully. He could not get away from my wolf without provoking a opportunity attack, so it meant that Sildar was as good as captured. My brother said that after some time, Sildar just gets away. No explanation, no nothing. I was absolutely shocked. My Beastmaster class was at that point literally worthless, and I was what felt like the only person taking this campaign seriously. The campaign ended after that session. It still annoys me so much that my brother was an a-hole about this (tbf he is an a-hole most of the time, but you know, what can you do?) TL;DR: Couldn't bring a wolf I had tamed into a cave because apparently I was too OP as a ranger, decided to become a beastmaster at level 3 so I could have control of my wolf, couldn't bring a wolf with me into another cave because the DM said that because he is the DM he can basically do whatever he wants.

[@Dragon359]

I can understand the reasoning behind the lightning on wet surfaces story, but I would have kept stuff like that out of the game. 'Realism' is usually something I would want to keep out of games, or to a bare minimum at least.

[@backonlazer791]

Imagine enforcing realism on a *_magic_* spell that literally says how it works.

[@backonlazer791]

@UCr9dkzmWBULRyOWS0ezH2cA Fun fact, fresh water isn't a super good conductor. Definitely better than no water, but salt water is much more effective. Why am I saying this? Because adding realism can quickly become overwhelming since the players will start expecting that it's the standard. That being said, I do love sprinkling in realism and rewarding players for coming up with cool stuff using physics and whatnot (if their characters can feasibly know about it) but always make sure that the players are aware where you draw the line as a DM.

[@shingoke4637]

The realism statement for that moment doesn’t work really due to lightning not coming down from the sky, but up from the ground, leaving through the highest point to travel quicker. So if it had really been about being realistic the giant they had been fighting would have gotten fried by almost every bolt called

[@backonlazer791]

@@shingoke4637 That's a good point! It's the same reason why you shouldn't stand under a tree or hold an umbrella during thunderstorms. Although it's more accurate to say that it travels through the path of least resistance, height and conductivity are definitely the biggest factors. The second most likely target after the giant would've been a fighter wearing metal armor and/or swinging a metal weapon.

[@homelessperson5455]

It's not even realistic. Rainwater is fresh and wouldn't conduct electricity unless it had time to mix with salts and minerals in the ground.

[@Racicot]

In a recent game, a golem that was able to cast Magic Missile in Tomb of Annihilation, my DM added the golem's INT modifier that dealt more damage. when I said that you don't add the modifier to damage, he proclaimed that's how he's doing it, but not for us or he's really trying to kill us. I shut my mouth so not to cause a commotion but it did irk me, later that same game, his brother nearly caused us to fight a red dragon in disguise, he stabbed it because it was being sassy at him. I yelled at him for doing that and yes I'm aware that you can do anything you want, but when they clearly admit that the red dragon flies around these part and don't mind being there, it kind of gave it away that it was disguised or a very powerful subordinate.

[@Kobe379]

Was playing a level 10 monk, immune to poison. DM ruled I still took poison damage but was immune to the poisoned condition

[@thekenyonsquad5672]

3:10 to be fair to the DM, this is likely admitting a fault of his own that he did a few years ago and not something he would do today. not really something to burn a bridge over since things seem to have changed.

[@Zalied]

That's a real dick move. There's I made a mistake and I actively was against you. You can agree someone's changed while also disagree on forgivness

[@theonetheycallheadspace2899]

That's what I was thinking

[@The4teller]

The druid animal story was weird, like if a fireball is being used to hit my animals and not the party that is really good value, if the boss takes 2 of its turns to hit my animal and not any players that's good value, tbh when the animals last a couple of rounds the spell becomes borderline broken once they start grappling and all attacking at once silly things begin to happen you suddenly get ridiculous value out of the spell for the spell level

[@jarrodlloyd8726]

I was playing an abjuration wizard in "out of the abyss" after my first PC was killed. In the final fight of the campaign, the DM gave the BBEG a boon that gave him access to the spell "blade of disaster" to make it a harder encounter. Once the BBEG cast the spell, my character cast counterspell on it (it was the only time in the entire campaign as we fought no spell casters for 8 levels of play after changing characters). Based of the rules the DC would have been 19, he asked me to roll and I got a 27. He then ruled the spell still works because it came from a boon.

[@RobertPatrician]

The DM made us roll investigation to loot any slain foe, and we had to get above a 20 to loot anything. Foe was just attacking you with a bow, then pulled out a longsword and shield for close combat? Sorry, a 19 is not high enough to loot those things. After three sessions we had killed about twenty enemies and been able to loot two of them. Best we can figure, the DM was going for MMO-style "random loot drops" where a quest sends you to collect 12 zebra hooves and 20 zebras later you have four hooves.

[@gpgordon12]

My current DM is making us use real coins he bought to track our money. One of our players lost some coins, to their child, and the dm has decided the player lost a large majority of their purse due to a new dm created hole in their coin purse. Who would have thought that a 5 year old likes shiny gold coins.

[@Apeiron242]

I had a Storyteller in Vampire decide that my character not knowing to not turn around was punishable by gang rape and torture.

[@infamousXsniper055]

For the Druid player with their summons getting killed, while losing their summons is annoying, it isn't that bad. If the enemies are all wasting their turns and spells on attacking the summons, the player's are likely doing really well during that combat. If one player can spend one turn to occupy two of the boss's turns, that's really powerful. It sucks that the summons don't get to do much but at least the enemies aren't either.

[@helgenlane]

The spell is busted anyway. Just spam a horde of 24 wolves or giant constrictor snakes and watch your DM go mad. This spell is really just a way to waste enemies' actions.

[@ArCSelkie37]

Was gonna say... an enemy seeing a horde of enemies appearing and deciding to cast an AoE spell makes perfect sense too. Not really sure what they expected?

[@funnyblog100]

Put a 10'000 gold bounty on my character and made it so even if I was resurrected the contract would still be up because it was on my soul. He did this because one of the players a friend of his was being a jerk to my character and starting fights. He couldn't even take my character's sarcastic responses. Granted he was a member of a guild but he should have been kicked out because he was starting fights in taverns but no instead the guild leader put a bounty on my character and he kept getting rewarded for his awful behavior. It was blatant favoritism.

[@aeonise]

Not technically a ruling (more a "can't be bothered to know the rules" thing) and only D&D-adjacent (Pathfinder 1e), but I think it still counts: I had a DM decide that the "Cure: 3 consecutive saves" part of a Chaos Beast's Amorphous Body curse meant you have to make the save 3 times in a row to avoid being cursed and there is no way to remove the curse other than magic. Magic he knew we didn't have because we weren't high enough level for that spell yet. The curse is one that gradually drains you to 1 Wisdom and turns you into an amorphous blob that can barely move, cannot use any spells or items, and "attacks blindly, unable to distinguish friend from foe". Basically your character is no longer a PC until you get cured. We were halfway through a dungeon on an island 3 days away from any civilization when he had us encounter a Chaos Beast. Our Rogue got hit twice in the battle and actually made 5 of the 6 saves... and then was a useless blob within the hour. The DM just said it was our fault for not buying scrolls earlier despite no indications we would be encountering curses before anyone could remove them. For those curious and not familiar with PF1e affliction rules, the curse actually just has 1 save to avoid being affected, and then you have a different, easier save each round to prevent the Wisdom drain and delay the curse for a minute. If you make that easier save 3 times in a row, you are cured of the curse. We had plenty of things we could have done to help him make those later saves if the DM had run it right. Of course, this is a DM who had a town refuse to allow any consequences against a cult that was literally run by a lady and her fiend partner. Not even a secret partnership, like the cult's higher members all knew she was partners with a creature that lives to manipulate mortals. The town's officials threatened to outlaw *us* if we insisted on any consequences for the cult after we saved the town from monsters, uncovered murder by a cult member, found them messing with a deadly artifact, and revealed the fiend being there. No, the town officials weren't enthralled or anything; the DM just kept saying "You have no proof" despite the actual dead fiend. And then there was the time he made it so painfully obvious who the thief was in a shipboard whodunnit scenario that we all immediately figured it out without going through any of the clues. So he just decided the ship's captain (who was described as just a step above an actual pirate) was the Lawfullest Lawful Who Ever Lawfulled and would not allow anyone to search the very obvious thief's quarters without already having absolute proof they did it. And he decided to make identifying a creature a standard action. In the middle of a serious fight. After telling me the results of the identification so he could declare my action used. And he finally admitted that he wanted every combat to have a decent chance of PC death because "It's not any fun for me when you guys win all the time". A day later, I was private chatting with a couple of the other players about probably quitting (I liked them quite a bit and felt bad about leaving them in the lurch) when the DM abruptly kicked me from the discord server with a message that I "don't fit in with the group". A couple of the others quit shortly after.

[@TheSinisterSquid13]

Deciding to go HARD rules-as-written for Eldritch Blast, only allowing our warlocks to cast it targeting a CREATURE. No blasting the chandelier to trap a monster, no wildly firing into the air in celebration, no RP target practice; if there was no creature, there was no Eldritch Blast. Feels like such a small thing, but it, in my opinion, it took so much away from the warlock out of combat. Before THAT player pointed this wording out to the DM and insisted that it be that way, our warlocks were always using EB in roleplay scenarios, and it was never broken or misused. Such a needless nerf. Edit: I got back at with this by playing a warlock and targeting every object in his dungeon with the spell, only to have him say "it doesn't work" over and over. Until I targeted the door to the treasure room, which I found to be a mimic from 50 feet away when my EB suddenly WORKED.

[@charliehershberger8803]

4:50 A druid discovers Conjure animals and expects it to be an automatic win. The DM has a wizard cast a third level spell, exactly the same level as the player spell, to counter it. The level 3 cast had value because it wasted an enemy wizard's turn and ensured the party doesn't get hit by the fireball. Then they make a stronger monster who distracts the main boss for two turns letting the party get in free hits. The druid decides because his conjures aren't immortal they must be useless and the DM is screwing him over by attacking them. The player doesn't realize that the DM is actually playing the wizard as dumb. If you fireball the druid, then the druid goes down or probably loses concentration, giving damage against the druid and stopping the summons. The player decides that even though the DM is going easy on them, they are actually going to hard on them, and leaves. In their next game they will be surprised to find that their new DM also enforces basic D&D rules.

[@korvincarry3268]

Seriously. Just once i want to employ genuine intelligence and tactics to a fight against my players and see how quickly they crumble. It wont even be a high level wizard or gang of beefy beasts. Just a half dozen goblins or kobolds with well-timed traps and tactics.

[@Badartist888]

@@korvincarry3268 I will often have lines (melee, ranged, casters) for enemy combatants. Some players struggle even with that. But thankfully people fairly quickly get used to putting in minimal thought.

[@InzeDev]

My own personal worst ruling was after my players had just proven victorious in a series of arena matches. With the final fight being a giant homebrew boss monster inspired by monster hunter, since we were all really into the series at the time. It went great, everyone had fun, and the ended with our rouge stabbing its eyes out, effectively blinding it because the rule of cool, and the barbarian killing it with a headshot when they rolled a crit. My initial plan was to have the sub-par weapons they were given in the arena get stolen as I was about to introduce them to a kindly blacksmith character who was going to give them some upgrades for free. Problem was that for whatever reason I didn't have them roll perception or give them time to react in anyway at all. This IMMENSELY upset the players and even after they got their new and improved weapons the salt could still be felt, turning what was a very enjoyable session into the most stressful I've ever run. After that I learned how to more enjoyably handle thievery by turning it into a contest or puzzle that rewards creative solutions, rather than just telling them they lost something for absolutely no reason. Moral of the story: don't just avoid taking player agency, ACTIVELY GIVE IT TO THEM.

[@yojimarusilverfang]

The rolling Arcana (or Religion for Divine spells) checks on spell casting is something I could see working if your character doesn't know the spell, and they're essentially trying to cobble it together on the fly.

[@charlescourtwright2229]

especially for non prepared casters, but wizards and clerics technically know ALL of their spells, they just dont remember the fine details(wizards) or they beseech their god(cleric)

[@yojimarusilverfang]

@@charlescourtwright2229 Divine Casters specifically "know" their entire class list by default. Wizards have to research or buy spell scrolls to add to their spellbook.

[@DistendedPerinium]

I could see it to set a save DC as an alternate rule, but not to simply cast the spell...

[@mifigor1935]

Well there's an uncommon item (mizzum aperatus) that allows you to cast an unprepared spell if you succeed on arcana check

[@pleaserespond3984]

Remember: prep is never wasted. Players evaded literally every trap in the dungeon by rolling 6 20s in a row? Just copy-paste them in the next dungeon. They won't be so lucky next time. They never went to the side town with the deeply involved side story about the werewolf hunter, who turns out to be a scam artist trying to repay his debt by moonlighting as a werewolf hunter (he would hunt himself in a wolf costume... until he contracted actual lycanthropy)? Free town for next campaign.

[@xreaperxiii]

Had a DM once decide that sneak attack was too strong and ruled that it doesn't do any additional damage. He didn't like the swashbuckler rogue doing more damage than the champion fighter.

[@reaperpeeper513]

The creaky door/Drow thing would be ok in my opinion if the DM had made a point of how rusty the hinges were and shown that they make noise previously

[@adammaher403]

I really appreciated that message at the end. Always nice to put a positive spin on things.

[@jaydeleon8094]

From a friend: First, “you didn’t say you took a breath before hitting the water, you are now drowning” Second “salmon can’t swim up stream” Third “yeah, the sprite insta-kills you”(without any saves, wisps I think was the enemy?) Fourth “oh your character isn’t ready? Too bad, you characters been caught by goblins after traveling alone and the party has to save you” 5th, his story was what mattered not the players

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

6:41 "Oh no, the primary weakness of my spell was used by the enemy to counter my spell" Just don't cast conjure animals then? The whole thing about animals is they are frail. Hell, 19 on a fireball is below average damage even. Fireball on average deals 28. 8x3.5

[@The4teller]

its not even a loss if someone fireball the animals and doesn't hit your party thats a win, its one of the most powerful spells in the game it not hitting you is worth more than your spellslot almost always.

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

@@The4teller I didn't address that here, but yes you are correct. Worst case scenario it's effectively a counterspell (which is the same level slot) against fireball

[@Mike-mm8gg]

That's what I was thinking, like you wasted 4 of the enemy turns in total? That's still huge value

[@Praegressus1]

With what you said at the end there, I sum it up to “plan for both outcomes of any encounter, whether they fail or succeed” both outcomes can be very interesting to a story. Say a party fails a puzzle, perhaps they can get the local wizard to come solve it? Then it turns into an escort / defence mission which could be cool even if unexpected

[@Abyssinian654]

During 2020-21, working as an overnight security guard (area was basically dead after 10pm, so we got away with it). Partner wanted to play a modified 2E game (yes, dreaded THaCo) that he was DM'ing. On my B-day, has me do some rolls for a "Birthday Item." Well, I ended up rolling the red orb of the "Orbs of the Serpent" (essentially turns you into a Half-Dragon). Only used it once, and that was the initial "touch-n-be-turned-into-a-half-dragon" use. Never abused it, because I believed in the idea that if I have something THAT powerful, I should only use it in dire situations (and even told him that). VERY NEXT SESSION (the next week), this s'umbitch purposely set up a situation to where he intended to take said item away from my fighter. Knowing full-well that I'm going to choose the "Good" path, purposely set it up for me to fail this "test of power," and have the orb stripped from my fighter. He then proceeds to contradict himself THREE times in a row, trying to justify his reasoning, eventually admitting that he hates Good-aligned characters (my fighter being Chaotic-Good), and spouts off about how, "no one likes a hero, that's why they continually get shit on." Granted, this dumb-ass tried acting like he was "Mr. 48 Rules of Power," yet was eventually ousted as DM in another game he DM'd in, because of his stupidity. He later shows me the item page for the cursed Bag of Holding, called "Bob the Bag," and quipped about how had I not quit, he was going to try to force that item onto my fighter with NO means of getting rid of it.

[@rogerwilco2]

Sounds like a psychopath. Stay away from people like that.

[@Abyssinian654]

@@rogerwilco2 Don't worry. About two months later, I contracted Covid, and ended up quitting that company. So, I never have to deal with that shitbag ever again.

[@merevel436]

I have seen a few but the one that really had us confused was where a gm said running is only possible in a cardinal direction.

[@Tree_-wp5zn]

Fine! We run north north east then switch to east north east

[@JacksonMunro-y9i]

I am still playing in this campaign but the dm (my best friend) and a party of other friends who are all level 2 were just playing through the lost mines of phandelver. I got annoyed that combat could get kind of boring, so I used my nerd brain to come up with an idea, a frag grenade made from thermite (it burns at 2000 degrees Celsius). The plan was to get ceramic pots and split them into three layers, the bottom layer would have thermite (made from rust and aluminium powder), the middle layer would have water and the top would have ball bearings (essentially bullets). After igniting the thermite, the water would be pretty much instantly vaporized and two things would happen, one there would be a large cloud of steam dealing fire damage and 2 the ball bearings would shoot out and deal a ridiculous amount of damage. The part wouldn't take damage by placing it using mage hand and lighting it using prestidigitation. You know what the dm said, Aluminium costs 25000 gold pieces an ounce, we are level two.

[@ozzie1778]

We had a party with mostly neutral/evil characters, but there was one lawful good paladin. He didn't like necromancy but despite 2(?) Of our players using spells that involve necromancy, there was never a big issue in the party. Couple weeks later another player, a monk, joins and makes a talking undead meat golem with a bunch of spare body parts, and the paladin immediately tries to smite it. DM gets pissed at the paladin because he's "ruining the monk's fun". The thing that made this really stupid was that the monk was an old friend of the DM, paladin was not. It made perfect sense in character for the paladin to do that since he hated necromancy and the monk wasn't even mad at all

[@simonkennedy6116]

I made a bad move a while ago - I had made a dungeon from old modules and had included a classic gender swap trap with a body lying on a plynth. It was made clear that there was magic all over the place. The elf wizard was overly obsessed with it and kept trying to prode it with his dagger or a statue - No magic mind you. After the fourth or fifth attempt, and know that he wasn't going to stop, he rolled a nine and I triggered the effect. The elf disappeared and the human woman sat up. The player didn't mind so much about the swap but was more annoyed that I ruled the nine as a fail and he was right. If he hadn't kept trying to trigger the trap while thinking he was outsmarting me, I would have dropped it to a natural one or waited until he touched the body with his bare hand

[@sillyking1991]

to be fair to the DM for that druid. 1. fireball has an average damage of 28,a nd bears have a shit dex save....and AoE spells are like..the way to handle 'the extra firepower a druid can bring to the table'. 2. its not that surprising for a boss in a lvl 5 + fight to be able to kill a sabertooth in 2 rounds. thats only an average of 26dpr. which is really not that crazy, also thats 2 rounds this boss wasn't attacking a permanent ally, thats literally the purpose of those spells. sounds like OP there was overreacting and as for the wizard doing double concentration: thats perfectly fine, so long as the DM is equally nice to everyone. obviously if its a situation of favoritism, thats different.

[@michaelmoran9020]

The guy at 6:10 nor his GM seem to understand that summoning a bunch of monsters then having them deleted on the big bads turn is a GOOD thing for the party, your action was equivalent to a stun, you're back where you started at the top of the round and they didnt attack the party.

[@dumbghost3109]

"you cant control where the call lightning lands" is the dumbest ruling ever.

[@peterlee6195]

I was a bard in a mutual friend's campaign, it was his first time but I was intrigued by the setting. We would be exploring an archipelago that had lost touch with it's gods but the gods still lived among them. The first session was a little wonky but that was expected, but there was one sign that I should have jumped ship. I was playing a bard, one that I actually loved the story for (she is an assimar who was descended from the god of wisdom and knowledge but ended up on the street performing for money), so when I tried conning a king out of money and rolled a nat 20+3, the DM said, "Um actually, theking is the strongest being in this campaign and you must roll a 30 or higher to even tempt him." That should have been a large enough red flag but I stuck with it. The second session was when things went seriously wrong. DM described a large abandoned city with three large temples and this gorgeous fountain in the town square with writing carved into the stone. The party wanted to inspect the fountain (obviously) but none of us knew the language apparently, it had no bottom (we tried everything from rappelling down to dropping a match to gage distance) and we also couldn't write the inscription on paper or take the stone with us for "magical" reasons. All of the doors in the city were locked and out of the three temples, one was empty, one had a single weak enemy and the third had story related plot points. Still upset about that campaign, I didn't even talk about him ghosting us mid-session for 45 minutes (it was online). I haven't played with him since.

[@SakraIgor0qNomoko]

Was a brand new player to an OSRIC game (blended 1st and 2nd ed. DnD). For context to those who know AD&D, the rules we were using did not include the 1E Wilderness Survival Guide. Made a fighter who was a dirt-broke bandit with a loyal crew (followers were a 1st and 2nd ed. thing where a small following of npcs obey orders and such) who all slept in their armor, always prepared for the worst. I role played how he uncomfortably drifted off to sleep and his morning grumpy demeanor from sleeping in his armor all night. Spent gold on getting better armor. DM nerfed it, saying the blacksmith did a poor job. Still, I rp'd sleeping in the armor. We did encounters at night, in the daytime, no problem. We were expecting an attack, so I had set a watch of dwarves (who had darkvision) to catch anyone sneaking into camp. Next night encounter, not only had a weak, clumsy wizard snuck up to the camp undetected, but he had cast a spell to climb over the wall we had built, walked over the wall into the camp, opened a set of barred, heavy gates BEHIND A SPIKED PIT we had dug WITHOUT MAKING A SINGLE NOISE, and climbed back over the wall without anyone noticing, especially the group of DWARVES with DARKVISION. When the expected army began to charge through the open gates, the DM said the whole party had taken off their armor during the night to sleep. But when I brought up how my character literally never took their armor off, he gave me -2 to everything (attacks, checks, saves) for sleeping in my armor! Shortly after, the DM ended the campaign and declared they were starting a new one. On the same exact island where I had started and never left the entire campaign. Or the other players, who had played the last 6 campaigns on this island. At the start of the next campaign I rolled fantastic stats, 3d6, in a row, everything 12 or higher with a couple 15's. I thought better of it. I left without saying a word.

[@dexterity494]

the lightning strike call was complete BS. If they were fighting a giant, the giant should have been hit, since it's closer to the clouds. DM just "um actually"-ed his way into screwing himself over

[@shawnh675]

I tried joining a campaign at one of the local shops and the DM did so many things badly, firstly we were told that spell slots only recover weekly in-game, which screwed over my druid, or you could use this limited item to get 1 spell slot back and get a point of exhaustion. The other thing I remember is that a temple was being sacked by the BBEG's minions and the temple let us grab as much money we could, but only another player and I opted to since it slowed us down carrying a chest of gold each, and with everyone fighting our way through we escaped to safety, however, some party members wanted us to split the gold and the 2 of us declined saying that they could have taken gold themselves, but if they needed gold for an important purchase we could help out but the DM ruled against us... and split the gold very unevenly, I got 7 gold and the other guy got 15 while the other 4 people got around 20 to 30 gold each... needless to say I quit after that session.

[@firstnamelastname7244]

Sounds like that DM just hates casters. I don't get why DM's who hate magic run DND when like 10 of the 13 classes use magic in some way, and 2 of the remaining 3 have subclasses that use magic.

[@EnsignEpic]

I had a GM rule that the thorny bramble my ranger brought forth with his magic & which required his concentration to maintain, was not magic for the purpose of stopping werewolves. Dude was chasing us down with an entire pack first thing into the one-shot, and I reasonably thought that spending a second-level spell slot on Spike Growth would CC the oncoming pack (outnumbered us like 3-to-1 or someshit). They just broke on through, taking no damage, not even getting difficult terrain penalties, & mauled my Ranger; that is what finally made me leave this group, lol.

[@liquidwood4064]

DM ruled that everytime you rolled a nat 1 in combat, your character would loose a limb (which you could heal later through magic). this was especially fun because my character was using a two handed weapon and got essentially useless after getting one arm chopped off :)

[@cassandraguan4531]

Disclaimer this DM was new to the whole DMing thing so yeah... I had a DM that ruled that when tense situations arise in game, players have to roll a check to see how they react. RIP roleplay. In a role playing game.

[@viggoblavarg856]

Honestly I’m on the dms side in the druid story. A. summoning 8 anything is annoying as hell unless the player is very good at handling their summons, and b. Like casting a fireball or spending 2 turns to beat up some summons seems like really good value for a summoning spell.

[@rainfyre2694]

DM decided to add a critical fumble to both martials and spellcasters. If it wasn’t for the fact I played a celestial warlock another player would be a steaming pile of ash, but Celestial Warlocks had a bonus action heal. (I meant to attack an enemy caster, but apparently nat 1 means I have to attack an ally halfway across the battlefield)

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

Only times a nat 1 should mean hitting an ally is either A. Attempting to attack through an allies space with a reach weapon, or B. Attempting to attack a creature that an ally is currently grappling.

[@firstnamelastname7244]

@@louiesatterwhite3885 b-but it's "funny" when time and space bends around you for the sole purpose of killing an ally with a ranged attack who is behind you...

[@minmaxoptimized405]

This is much more terrifying than dnd horror stories

[@jigsaw924]

The roll Arcana to cast thing is a holdover from 3.5 You had to roll a d20 but it was just, on a 1 the spell would fizzle (faerun lore explains why, the weave was less stable back then yadda yadda) It has no place in 5e, but thats a problem alot of 3.5 players have with 5e. Casters have it SO easy. In 3.5, you had to prep specific numbers of specific spells, spell substitution was only for clerics and I think one other class, and any caster could use metamagic. Also, getting damaged could break your concentration, but concentration wasn't used to maintain a spell effect, only to cast a new spell the round directly after the damage was taken. On the other hand, there was no limit to how many buffs you could cast, so a competent wizard could turn the fighter into an invincible middle finger to everything as long as the party had time to prep before the fight. Also no attunement slots, you could fill every slot with a magic item. And you usually did, since the magic item pricing and creation systems were actually present, and they worked WELL. Shopping for items or getting them commissioned could be a whole session of calculators and book sharing. It was grand. 3.5 is an excellent system, it's just not the easiest system in the world to learn. 5e's great, just very, very limited. Don't believe me? Look up a 3.5 sheet and look at the skills. Yes, there are that many. Yes, we'd use almost all of them regularly.

[@apileofratz4131]

Was playing a storm cleric and the dm had us fight a dragon turtle on land (was an arena fight, but he forgot to add water to the map) I cast ice storm, normally this would turn the affected area into difficult terrain with 1000's of ice pellets, he decided that because it was ice the dragon turtle (a huge creature weighting about 100 tons) could 'swim' on the ice.

[@korvincarry3268]

Personally, idve just made it inneffective at making the terrain difficult for it. I mean, its a MASSIVE beast, its just got to find some footing simply because of its weight and sheer size/spread. No swim speed, just whatever speed it was at before. Thats what would make sense to me, personally. Now, that also has a caveat of this: if you cast it maybe once or twice more, THEN id make it difficult terrain as enough ice has accumulated to account for the immense weight and size of the beast. But thats just me.

[@Hive-Mind-BBX]

Had a new DM for a WH40K based D&D home-brew we were testing out (basically D&D but using the models and 40K style combat with some D&D influences), at some point in testing we ended up with our "squad" in combat with a Chaos Lord wielding The Black Mace (a ludicrously overpowered melee weapon) played by one of the more experienced WH40K player's. After about 4 turns running around getting lucky to not be hit by this essentially insta-kill mace with wound aoe, it was suggested by the DM that since we were all basically screwed, that we should search for something that might help us. So while I'm away from Mr. Chaos Lord of big smashy murder, I start searching, I see a bunch of sand and pebbles on the floor due to a failed roll, I use my second action to search again, get a terrible roll, but the DM, feeling mischievous and wanting to bring EVEN MORE CHAOS to our one-shot, tells everyone to wait while he goes to get something from up-stairs. Low and behold, somehow, I FOUND A PREDATOR TANK ARMED WITH AN AUTOCANNON AND TWO LAS-CANNONS UNDER A FUCKING PEBBLE!!!! Hilarity ensues, as my friends all pile in on the Chaos Lord while I order the tank's machine spirit to kill the guy so any survivors can escape. We all died and the tank eventually blew up, terrible decision, but absolutely hilarious at the same time. Would absolutely make an actual campaign based on the playstyle though, as it did work pretty damn well and was definitely fun.

[@darkjackl999]

Had a *very* railroady dm in a 4E homebrew campaign Anytime our wizard tried to cast dimension door bam some random bs negates it >Makes boss fight cave where we can see the exit from the entrance 'the uh crystals interfere with your spell negating it' >City with giant flaming skulls as cops, we accidentally blow up a bad guy tower causing the skulls to come after us so we gotta run 'i cast dimension door to the other side of the area' "The skulls negate your spell because they had time to prepare"

[@1.21jiggawatts2]

I had one DM that was extremely against his players and wanted to see them fail. Stuff that normally would only require 1 check from any other DM, he would require multiple check using different abilities. Oh you want to shut down the power in the building? Roll a Perception Check to see which switch to pull in the breaker box, then make an Intelligence check to see if you know how to use it, then make a Slight of Hand check to make sure you flip the right now. Nobody was allowed to “help” him and when he failed the Slight of Hand check, the DM said, “The Jukebox in the other room roars to life and a giant hoard of zombies rushes towards the building.” (This was a modern, Zombie survival campaign.) I was playing a Sniper like character and had +4 Wisdom and Expertise in Perception. After I began rolling high in the first session, HE NEVER ASKED FOR A PERCEPTION CHECK AGAIN. Instead he would required an Investigation check for everything and completely ignored passive perception. I only had a +1 Investigation so I was useless

[@intoHeck1964]

Party of 3 people. DM was letting us buy any magic items we wanted. Asked multiple times if it was ok to get a Horn of Valhalla. He said its fine go ahead. Proceeded to make an invincible dmpc whose sole purpose was to swoop in and destroy it. Like wtf if you didnt want me to have it just say no and ill get something else.

[@thexlonewolf671]

Nat 1 is a fumble for martials. Needless to say, I did not finish that two-shot.

[@whitefox3189]

If you can't handle an ability, strategy or as in this case extra hands on deck a Druid can bring, negotiate with the players. Don't put them down for playing. If you're a new DM the players will understand, maybe give them a magic item or some useful homebrew ability as thanks.

[@admpandora91]

I've been looking at what I want to do as a DM (haven't tried my hand yet) and listening to these videos, I'm convinced that DMs don't actually write stories. DMs are given the job of outlining the setting and encounters within it, but the story is written by the players. That's the whole point of, "you encounter X. what do you do?" Oh sure, you write encounters and even make adjustments as needed, but the story arc itself isn't in any one person's hands, not even those of the DM.

[@ditto9174]

Well i write

[@lordhellstrande7188]

The best way to put it is the DM can make the adventure a heist but the characters determine the music to that campaign

[@stefandiebel8775]

I think we do write, or at least I do, I just write a general vibe of an arc we are having, I write the kind of social encounters we get, the themes and the set pieces, but my characters 100% determine how we get to the things I've written & why.

[@ntfoperative9432]

@@stefandiebel8775 basically, you write the setting, the beginning, and the end

[@ShadowThatMusicGuy]

Context: We were fighting a Giant and our Fighter was down, and inorder to get some time to get him back up I cast Crown of Madness so we could back up and he can waste a turn attacking nothing. The Giant Fails The save for the crown of madness, Time passes to another casters turn as they attempt to cast another spell on them. The Giant Rolled a Natural 20 on the Giants Save and at a moments notice Decided "He Succeeded so much that he breaks the crown of madness" As most people know this doesnt happen unless I lose concentration or the effect is dispelled through other means. This immediately sparked my "Thats not cool" alarms and made me upset, considering at the time this was Level 5 characters against a Giant. There would be no logical reason other then a spell caster who we didn't see. After the crown was 'broken' I questioned him how he was able to do that. And the explanation he gave was "He saved on the other spell so I decided to break your spell as well." So I decided to leave that game because I had a feeling I wasn't going to enjoy the game if this is how the fights are going to go.

[@thecrocco5572]

TLDR: DM let a cheater make the ruling for him. Long version: Had a new DM learning the ropes, with the help of myself and another experienced DM. He'd encouraged the party, and especially the two of us, to go all out, so he could learn the ins and outs. Eventually, the PCs of myself and the other assisting DM ascended to full-on godhood, with salient divine abilities and everything. Our characters were broken, but entirely by the book. That said, we knew they were too powerful for PCs, and so we started prepping to pull the characters in favor of new, mortal, much-less-broken PCs. Cue the new player. Right off the bat, he starts talking about how he can blow up the whole city with a single spell, how he knows all the game-breaking exploits, and that he wants to play an artificer. Immediately, me and the other assisting DM have alarm bells going off in our heads. Even without the bragging, artificer is a really rules-heavy class. Worse, the new DM, despite being advised repeatedly to read through anything your players offer, because we're sneaky fucks, didn't even bother to look at the artificer class. After a number of fairly hostile encounters, full of lies, aggression, and behind-the-scenes manipulation, the artificer found himself pitted against the two deity PCs...and revealed himself to be completely immune to any and all divine abilities, and was wearing a full suite of relics and artifacts that he'd built on his own. When my PC used one his salient divine abilities to simply end the artificer's existence, it was apparently ineffective. At this point, I was...fairly annoyed, and I finally asked the DM to give a ruling. Instead of the DM talking, the artificer's player declared that my god's abilities were ineffective. The DM not only didnt say anything, but flat-out refused to answer, just went absolutely quiet and shut down. I ended up quitting the game. I know its petty, but Im not okay with playing in a game where the DM is incapable of telling one particular player no. There was never an official DM ruling.

[@caolanochearnaigh9804]

Worst ruling ever made? That because my character was female, she got a permanent minus 2 to Strength, and a plus 4 to Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom... Now, normally, I'd have loved these buffs. But he was a sexist neckbeard creep, so... (Damn you, Steve!)

[@raicantgame6634]

Ugh, gross.

[@caolanochearnaigh9804]

@@raicantgame6634 IKR?

[@reson8]

What was your characters' class? Strength is a dump-stat for many classes so he was actually giving you some hefty buffs.

[@caolanochearnaigh9804]

@@reson8 She was a Fighter. Normally, I would've loved these buffs. However, he was a massive sexist prick. And I shit you not, the first thing to come out of his mouth was, "Why is she a fighter? Shouldn't she be in a kitchen?" Absolute scumbag. -1/10, would never let him DM again.

[@darkfyre9597]

I remind everyone, don’t make your players roll for somthing you don’t want them to succeed on. I don’t mean like “no I want you to fail this des save so you get hit by the explosion” I mean in the “this is a scripted event and you don’t really have an option” way

[@lucasfonseca1428]

I had a DM who ruled that since concentration spells require concentration to cast you can’t cast other spells cause then you wouldn’t be concentrating, even cantrips.

[@gamebrainjagras4193]

Yikes that railroading of the door peeking.

[@leoblessinger7913]

The tiefling druid story just sounds like someone got upset that the enemy wizard cast a fireball

[@sergeanthattie9822]

that electricity one would be enough to never play with that DM ever again

[@AnInsaneOstrich]

Anything that mentioned people having to make a save after an attack had to make the save, regardless of if the attack hit. A particular example was we were fighting a giant boar along with a few ordinary boars, and it charged our Paladin. It rolled low and missed entirely, but the Paladin still had to make a Strength save to not get knocked over, which he failed. It was the DM's first time DMing, so when me (who had DM'd the campaign before this) and another person (who was planning a campaign) along with the Paladin (who looked it up) pointed out that it's not how that worked, the DM said "No, that's how it's written." Paladin pointed out that it isn't, and he just replied with the tried and true "well I'm the DM and what I say goes." He also threated to kick me if I kept trying to "tell him how to DM." The campaign didn't go longer than 3 sessions, he just stopped updating us on when the next session was. The campaign was fun and I did intend on continuing to play, until either things got much worse or the campaign ended.

[@sebastianmarrano5608]

Also if you want to nerf conjure animals as a DM DONT change the rules, and I’m not saying anyone should do this, but you do get to pick which beasts are summoned. So, 8 pamthers? Nah, 8 Seahorses

[@phobiawitch835]

I have a few situations like this. One: A dm was in the middle of fighting the party that quickly became a near tpk. I was a fire cleric who managed to stop it with a Wall of Fire. The dm then had the boss of the fight, a Skald with a great axe, come up to me, use the most busted magic item ever (take 1d4 con damage that is easily fixed at that level to fill the jar. Use the jar to give yourself a +8 to Strength for a round). This equates to an extra +4 to hit, and +6 to damage, which was absolutely insane. The dm had just tricked me into a new archetype of cleric too, meaning I had next to no AC. Meaning on anything but a nat 1, I was hit. And because he gave the undead GUNS, to shoot me since I was flying (new spell I was using for the first time ever), I was low hp. One shot and I was dead. Do I just take an axe to the back and go down? Nope. He described in explicit detail BEHEADING ME! Let’s just say I was upset. I still get queasy thinking about it because I had been attached to the character (he was both my longest running, and the first I ever played). Another dm went complete different route. He’d shown that fire damage made the undead in the cemetery we were in Explode cuz they ate some explosive gems. We had ti stop session and the party planned to use this to help us get our rogue out of danger, as he was at the bottom of a cliff. Our plan- Druid would Entangle the undead. I’d go dwon and help Rogue up from prone and give him a boost (8ft tall goliath monk and the bottom of a 15-20 ft cliff). The Warlock with Sacred Flame and other spells that had already exploded undead would then blow up the undead using the technique we already saw work. Next session comes around, everything goes smoothly, until the Warlock. Zombies failed their save and- no boom. The dm, having seen our plan, CHANGED THE ENTIRE CEMETERY. Because NO MORE UNDEAD EXPLODED! Which led to them swarming my monk before I could climb the cliff and going down basically the entire session save for 3 turns really. And what’s worse? He had these undead ripping into my unconscious body as a form of character torture. Did I fail any death saves? NOPE! Instead, it was a way for him to just stack massive Injury Penalties on me that he was using in the game. I was the only person ever being imposed with these, as a note. And I think he just hated tall characters for that matter, actually, as early on, 3 of us were infiltrating a mine. There was a tunnel that medium sized creatures can squeeze through at 1/4 speed. I’m medium, but count as large for the purpose of carrying and movjng stuff. Can I fit through like the others? Nope, too big. We newd a Reduce spell just to get my nimble Goliath monk into this place. And we were knly given a skngke scroll. Meaning as we were inside, soell wore off. Meaning while the others could escape when trouble came, I was literally abandoned, blind in the darkness, and invisible cuz of magic dust I had on me. All because the dm ruled that beinf 2 feet taller than the half orc rogue meant I couldn’t even attempt to squeeze through this tunnel.

[@calemr]

It's minor, but the stubbornness of this DM was awful: A cart is easier to move if it doesn't have wheels. You can double your drag rate if you have something to make it easier. The books didn't define any examples of this, but I'd made the (I thought quite reasonable) assumption that my low Str character could move stuff using a little cart. He said no, that doesn't count for making it easier to drag things. I pointed out that by that logic, chopping the wheels off would make it lighter, so it would be easier to move. And without missing a beat, he just... Agreed with that absurdity. This DM also got in a similar argument with me about fall damage based on which floor we are on, which led to him declaring that stepping off a pavement deals 1d6 damage.

[@generalsour1221]

0:25 homie straight up added fizzling from wizard101

[@jaenotjae6147]

I feel like after that there needs to be some good stories so here's one. My character is a beast keeper so he will always try to tame anything, on an adventure the party found a Griffin so he decided to give it food, way long before this session we found a lady who let you reach into her bag for a random item and I got a dumpling from her and held onto it, that dumpling was given to the Griffin and turned it into a panda, we took it to a school thinking someone could help where it turned back into a Griffin and an npc stopped it from hurting us and took it home. That's how I traumatized a Griffin and why I'm not allowed to go near any, until someone walked us into a battle with one that was almost a tpk only two of us lived and I tamed it

[@disableddragonborn]

I'm pretty sure I didn't comment this, so here's mine. Not exactly a ruling, but it was an unnecessary change. I wanted to distract goblins we had to get past using a rock and prestidigitation on it to make it sparkly (I had recently learned that canonically, goblins like sparkly stuff) but the DM said that his "homebrew" goblins did not have that trait. The quotation marks around homebrew are because of the fact that, as far as I could tell, the only difference between the canon goblins and his is the sparkly stuff detail. This was my first session ever and I was proud of my idea. This was when I was still attending college, and the group had more than one DM, and I think anyone who wanted to run a campaign could be a DM, but this guy was the head DM. If he had been the only DM, it's probable that I'd have stopped attending sessions far sooner.

[@bgdragon99]

I don't disagree with the door squeak one if the check was low... but a 23...

[@aegisScale]

4:18 *MMMMMMMMM* do I love it when an NPC insta-dies to a stray random attack. _Fortunately my DM didn't punish the party too hard afterward._

[@enceladus3102]

Had a dm flat out ban magic altogether unless 'it could be explained with technology'. I like the guy but it's still a bit of a sore spot because just about everything I play (especially the Magus, my favorite class) has magic to some extent. Wish I had known about the 3rd party Path of War books back then.

[@wonkybiscuit2760]

0:30 I’ve used this rule before- in a super low magic setting with a level cap of 10. It was very Conan-esque. The players liked it, because I WARNED THEM BEFOREHAND, and thematically it fit the setting.

[@ismirrevan6760]

Pathfinder game witj 3 friends/coworkers : each one of us had to take turn being the DM as we made tiny campaigns in order to become more experienced. One time "this guy" was the DM and made every single enemy in the campaign immune to my rogue sneak attack then woul laugh at me for not being able to damage anything during fights...

[@BlueTressym]

Yeah, that's just being an arse. I'm sorry you went through that.

[@turtrenold8532]

I once had a dm make a rule against making any reference to any media whatsoever if we did we would suffer a d100 damage

[@FatedGamer]

My worst dm call was when an intellectual devourer targeted me through a wall, and did it twice, the dm claimed my in was permanently drained even when they didn't roll above my int, and if it had dropped to 0 I'd be dead. He claimed it's WotC fault for being stupid and making it a low cr. If you've ever read the 5 statblock you would know how stupid this was. They can't multiattack with devour twice, they need line of sight, they don't drain your int if they roll lower than your int, and you are only stunned if it does get dropped to 0. The dm was not happy when I called him out on this and that he didn't even attempt to read the statblock. Then he said how they are written is dumb and his way is better. For a cr2 monster who's a minion.