What's the most UNFAIR thing a Dungeon Master ever did to you? part 3

Put your stories in the comments below they could be in our next video! If you have your own video ideas submit them to us on Reddit at r/MrRipper
Stay tuned for more awesome DnD content!
/ mrripperstream
/ mrripper
/ mrripperyt1
/ discord
Source
www.quora.com/...
You can find out more about our narrator Brian (including all his socials) on his website:
www.brianvaugh...
Stay tuned for more awesome DnD content!
D&D players, what way did you use a "useless" spell in a good way? #2
D&D Players, What was your best "Wait...what?!" moment?
What's the biggest mind-f**k you've seen during a DND campaign?
What's your worst loot stories?
What's the saddest death that you have ever encountered while playing D&D?
What's the funniest way you spoiled a important plot element in your campaign?
DND players, what was your funniest “rolled a 1” moment?
DMs, What is a plotline you've always wanted to run?
Ever had another PC kill your character?
DND Players, What is the coolest character you have ever played?
DND players, what was your funniest “nat 20” moment? (r/askreddit)
DND players, what’s your best Stories of Rope? (r/dndstories)
D&D Players, what's the most screwed up thing you've ever done in a game?
What's the worst TPK you've experienced?
D&D Players, what's the most screwed up thing you've ever done in a game?
DND Nope Moments #1
What’s your best Tarrasque story?
What's the funniest thing PC's latched onto?
What is the most unexpected damage you've ever done as a PC or DM?
What is the smallest way your DM has driven home how "evil" a villain is?

[@zendikarisparkmage2938]

When my Paladin in Curse of Strahd contracted Lycanthrophy, he chained himself to a tree using two chains of different lengths, so that if one broke, the other would still hold. He told his party (half of whom were secretly vampires) to try to help him control the beast form, or, if the first chain broke, to take him down. Instead, the DM completely ignored that plan and let the werewolf break both chains with a single strength check.

[@devlinambers9408]

I mean... one hand on each chain... break it. One strength check.

[@devlinambers9408]

That being said, still a dick DM move

[@JubioHDX]

@@devlinambers9408 they said nothing about the chains being on their hands lol. the way i interpreted that was a tight chain around their chest and a more loose one for the beast form to have to struggle against if the small one broke from the transformation alone

[@devlinambers9408]

@@JubioHDX No I mean grabbing the chains, one in each hand. It's VERY hard to chain someone up well enough to stop them from using their hands even somewhat

[@IcyLucario]

That doesn't sound like a DM issue, that sounds like a massively underestimating a werewolf issue. Plate armor and chains should break from the transformation alone.

[@matt-thorn]

DM: "Leave the party or suffer my wrath!" Player: OK DM: Shocked Pikachu face

[@GoblinGirlLindsey]

I know a good question: “when has another player taken over a moment the DM specifically made for you?” Happens all the time for me.

[@fierceditiesnaruto]

My brother was DMing for the group and the unspoken rule is that if you don't play a session your character just wasn't around. You don't get the benefits, money, or experience. Fair enough. So our group has been playing a few months and we're pretty well into the campaign. A few players switch out their characters to find the right fit, but I'm set on my druid who is raising two baby triceratops. (Trixie and Cera) During the progression a few people call out here and there for whatever reasons and my brother just does as normal and they come back to the next session with no issue. I come home one day after a long stressful work day in a warehouse after starting earlier and everything. He asks me if I want to jump in and join them, but I declined, as I was just too tired. While I rested, I hear one of the players come into the living room laughing about how my character was killed and my two baby triceratops we're killed and reanimated by the groups necromancer. I brush it off thinking it was an enclosed event and everything would be reset by the next session, but when my brother asked if I would join in the next session, I agreed as I would be free, he then tells me I would have to make a new character, because mine actually did die. I said no thanks and proceeded to not play with them. That's what he gets for treating me less than his friends.

[@yaqbulyakkerbat4190]

So your character WAS around and the dm just decided to take control then kill them off? Hope you weren't dumb enough to play with him again in another campaign

[@drathynkarlias5134]

Yeah no your brother would have no place at my table. If my character doesn't get to receive the benefits then he doesn't get the negatives of combat either. Either he is there or not and until then I would not let him even participate in character creation for any group I put together.

[@Kualinar]

My response : By HIS rules, when the player is not present, then, his PC IS NOT present as well. So, last cession my PC WAS NOT THERE, and thus, COULD NOT die in a fight where he WAS NOT participating in. I continue playing with my PC totally unharmed exactly as he was BEFORE last cession, or I'm not coming back !

[@jackberberette5093]

I once had a DM secretly rewrite my character as a different class than what I was playing. I was going for the grappler prestige class in 3.5 and started the path as a Ranger. My ranger played like a fighter, but still a ranger. I struggled to get an animal companion, DM kept having merchants try and purchase or trade away a hatchet that let me speak to animals, and even refer to the hatchet as a spear of lightning with a smirk. Right before the campaign sizzled out, he revealed he had a new character sheet for me with different stats, equipment, and had me as a fighter. He was even modifying my rolls accordingly! My dad and I didn't know about it, but some of the others knew about it(his son and nephew). I laughed at the time, but as I grew older I realized what an absolute dick move it was.

[@SymbioteMullet]

Oh wow. That one's really messed up. Hope you never played with that _delightful chap_ again!

[@jackberberette5093]

@@SymbioteMullet We stilled played with them for a little bit till our families just kinda drifted apart

[@Kualinar]

I would have taken that rewritten character sheet, shredded it to pieces, flushed those pieces in the toilet, and give that DM a fresh copy of my ACTUAL PC. Making sure to do that in front of ALL the other players and telling that DM that you NEVER EVER remake the character of ANY player without the player ASKING first.

[@niniseconda5839]

The one time I remember the most vividly was in a play by post game. We, a party of level 1s, were asking around the village for leads on a dragon sighting. So far, so good. Next session comes around, DM starts it even though I'm the only one online. "It's fine , the other will eventually log in, right?" Wrong. The DM proceeds to describe the dragon just swooping in from the sky, and landing face to face with my peace cleric. Being the only one currently playing, I did my best to stall for time, thinking the DM couldn't possibly want is to actually fight. "It's a social encounter, right? We're supposed to talk to it, right?!" Wrooong. I stall and stall, and tried to persuade the dragon to stop attacking the village. The DM asks for a Persuasion check, I roll a 17. Dragon's not impressed. We talk more. Another Persuasion check, and this time is a dirty 20, plus my peace cleric bonuses. Dragon's not only not impressed, but now is pissed. Somehow. I see this is not gonna go well, and I tell the DM, clearly, that I prepare Sanctuary in case the dragon comes for me. At this point, I knew I was bacon, but I was curious to see how bad this was gonna get. Less than a irl minite later, DM describes the dragon coming for me. I bring up Sanctuary, but "I didn't tell the beforehand, so it didn't count". The dragon proceeds to one hit anihilate me, and I die. Oh? I'm sorry, you tought I was done? No, I needed to see *more* bullshit. So, I made some throwaway character just to stick around. Next session comes in, full of new people (most people left after the dragon session). We meet in a tavern, and barely get a word in, when goblin riders assault the place. Combat comes around, and again, we're all level 1. And again, DM tought it was a wonderful idea to have one goblin rider for every PC. Needless to say, it was a bloodbath. One particular highlight of that fight was when after one hit killing one of them, the rest of them proceeded to ignore every other PC in order to hit me. I'm fairly confident they ignored the other still alive PCs so they could beeline in my direction. Yeah, after that I was done with that.

[@travisbishop782]

Hell, i don't blame you. That guy sounded like an ass.

[@devlinambers9408]

Thanks for posting what was posted in here?

[@jameskaster8992]

@@devlinambers9408 what are you talking about? I just skipped back through and I don’t see this story in the video. Unless I’ve missed something.

[@omous7770]

I once had a DM who never allowed the party to kill anything “Oh you just did 13 damage to the boss, bringing him down to 5 hp? He stabs himself for no reason.” “Oh, you just did 600 damage to my boss over a 10 round boss fight where I was clearly not keeping track of any hp? I’m going to have my DMPC hop into a mech that I said was broken, and then one shot the boss without rolling” He hardly prepared for his sessions as well. Once, he scheduled a one shot for us, which ended up getting delayed by a few weeks. Guess what? He didn’t prepare AT ALL. A lot of his rulings were against the player’s agency as well “Hey, since the DMPC had the same initiative roll as you, I’m going to have him go first” “Yeah, all jail cells (Myconids, Drow, Etc) are like permanent anti magic circles.” I don’t play with him anymore. He was about as good of a player as he was a DM.

[@drakemagnus9846]

This one DM I play with really likes to emphasize time pressure in his games. The only problem is we play over video call he would to expect us to react immediately after he describes a scene with little to no extra context. Someone would ask "where are the footsteps coming from? do the sound hostile? is there any place to hide in this cave?" and then we'd be told that the 20+ skeletons are already in the chamber with us and we're rolling for initiative. He's gotten better about giving us a chance to ask about our surroundings and such, but time pressure is a common theme in his sessions and it gets kinda frustrating after a while.

[@Closer2Zero]

I feel like a good suggestion for that is for the DM to have you roll initiative in those situations when he wants the time crunch- then you get actual in game measured time to react when IRL logistics fuck you

[@devlinambers9408]

Just say, "Listen we all clearly Rent huge on the time crunch thing. It isn't how the games designed. I refuse to be rushed so if something just pops into a room after I ask questions. I will ignore them and their damage and do my own thing since thats what youve been doing."

[@edamitep1533]

@@devlinambers9408 uh, that's not how that works lol.

[@edamitep1533]

@@devlinambers9408 might as well go play Skyrim by yourself. It's up to the players and dm to come together and decide. He said he's gotten better at it so clearly they are moving in a positive direction. But putting time pressure on your players isn't a big deal at all, it stops the wargaming aspect where every turn takes 10 mins cause everyone is strategizing every single move. Combat should be quick and have unforseen situations.

[@roark914]

I'd suggest just talking to the rest of the group and seeing if they enjoy the timed aspect of the game. If it's something that you guys are frequently and synchronously not having fun with, I'd bring it up with the DM so everyone can have an enjoyable game. I'm sure there's a cool middle ground you guys can find.

[@zadime92]

My former DM allowed another player to melt my characters Magic Axe with a f*cking cantrip.

[@yaqbulyakkerbat4190]

I didn't even know there was a cantrip for f*cking

[@lawscolton]

I am usually the DM for my group but our campaign had fallen apart due to the irl death of a player and other group members moving away. It had been a few months since I played and I wanted to join a new group, so I went to a local game store that held weekly games for anyone to join. The DM leading the group was, apparently, new and introduced a 5e story about needing to find a missing gold piece for a leprechaun. After fighting our way through a tower filled with fiends and multiple traps, we eventually found the gold piece in a display case next to a door that could teleport us back to the leprechaun’s home. We called him through to show him his gold, but he immediately attacked us, transforming into a huge monster. My Artificer distributed potions to the rest of the party and turned invisible so as not to be targeted. As soon as the monster was killed, I grabbed his full pot of gold. The DM then ended the adventure by saying “a Tarrasque appears and swallows you all. You’re dead, the end.” As we all sat in shock, he told us that he always wanted to end an adventure by killing everyone with the Tarrasque and it never mattered what we did, we would have been eaten no matter what. I never went back and I eventually found a regular group by teaching newbies to play.

[@MitchellTF]

If a DM's dream is to sic a Tarrasque on people, then he is NOT a good DM.

[@travisbishop782]

You have my condolences for your friend. I'm also sorry for the dipshit at the game store.

[@speedingspoon262]

This was my first time playing dnd. I was playing a vengeance Paladin of the God of death Kelemvor. This experience almost made me give dnd up entirely, if it wasn’t for a different friend who was an amazing DM, who convinced me to give dnd another shot. I didn’t mention it below as it would be repeating the same thing a lot, but throughout the whole experience I attempted to work with the DM, telling him that I felt targeted and kind of useless compared to the rest of the players. He told me time and time again that it was for story reasons and to keep waiting. Story: The unknown Paladin Fairy early in the campaign (we were level 5), we had a very difficult fight which near the end of which I was knocked unconscious. After I regained consciousness the party decided to take a long rest, at which point the DM said, “paladin, you don’t recover any spell slots” At the time being new to dnd I got the idea in my head that this was an effect of being nocked unconscious. That made the next day rather rough as I had 3 spell slots. As such I ended up using one slot that day but ended up using most of my lay on hands to heal the party’s cleric and barbarian. At the following rest, you guessed it no spell slot recovery, as well as not regaining my spent lay on hands. Furthermore, I also lost my channel divinity. To clarify I was the only person in the campaign who had stuff taken off their sheet. Meanwhile the rest of the party was given magic item after item. At the end if the next session DM declares a level up but asks me to explain what I get. I told him I get aura of protection. DM told me to increase my hit points but don’t add aura to my sheet. At which point I spoke to the DM one on one asking what’s going on with my character? He told my story stuff and I would find out next session. Next session we arrive at a town which has a devoted following to Kelemvor. Party stops by the church and I speak with a priest. After a long conversation and talk with him, going through some RP dm describing a ritual the priest tells me the following. “You have lost your powers as when you fell in battle all those days ago, Kelemvor believed you to of died. As such he has resided your powers”. So in other words, the god of death can’t tell when their own paladin is alive or not and instead of judging their soul in the afterlife, takes away their powers. After the conversation the priest tells me to strengthen my faith in Kelemvor to regain my powers. So sessions go on I can’t seem to regain my powers and have finally gone through my 2 remaining spell slots as the DM started throwing physical resistance enemies. After the fight the barbarian gets a +2 greataxe. I currently have no magic weapon. DM declared a level up at which point I ask is I could multi class into cleric as a representation of trying to bolster my faith (plus at the time I had just learnt what multiclassing was), DM allows it but tells me I don’t gain any spell slots. But I do keep subclass features which don’t has set uses and I keep cantrips. Campaign goes on at which point we begin a rapid level up (once every 2/3 sessions) and boy can I tell you how fun it is to be a level 6 paladin and 4 cleric with only extra attack and cantrips. At this point all enemies are resistant to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. Another player who was also playing a cleric (a tempest one) was given a +1 great sword which dealt and additional 1d6 lightning damage. In addition to blue dragon scale mail, a ring which gave them extra channel divinities. Warlock was been given +10 spells through a magic book, a staff to increase their spell attack and dc, as well as a pearl of power. Barbarian, was given the +2 great axe, some necklace which effected his bear totem subclass, a bag of holding and bracers of defence. Rouge has been given a +2 long bow which lets them fire two shots and if they enemies are within 10 ft of each other, she can split sneak attack dice, deciding who takes what, providing she qualifies for sneak attack on both. A clock of eleven kind, a ring of protection (given to her character directly) and gloves of thievery. I was given some magic armour which let me use my reaction to take the damage from an attack, from someone within 5 ft of me. As well as, nope that was it. Note, the fighting style I chose as level 2 paladin was protection, which made that kind of redundant. Story goes on and we fight a undead knight which was immune to non magical slashing damage. Dm describes how it wielded a magic sword. I spent the rest of the fight casting toll the dead (which the undead was resistance to) and trying to get my character killed by taking as much damage as possible for party members. As at that time I felt kind of useless, I was doing nearly no damage, the enemy wasn’t targeting me because I wasn’t a threat (something the dm said) so I thought keeping barbarian alive was the best move. After the fight I ask the DM if I could pick up the magic longsword the undead was using. DM goes sure and we take a long rest. At the end of the long rest dm tells me the sword is a +1 weapon but has some dark property to it which I can’t understand. We also level up. I take another level in paladin at which point the DM tells me I get my first level paladin spell slots back. I say, “wait all 4 back?” DM “no just the ones you got at level one” me “spell slots is level 2 paladin”. DM (after looking up the class) “you get 5 lay on hands points back and 1st level spell slot”. Next fight we were fighting another undead, but armed with my new sword I could finally do damage to the undead. On my second hit I landed a crit, decided to use my only 1st level spell slot to use divine smote and I confirmed with the DM that because it was an undead, I deal and extra 1d8 radiant which doubles due to the crit. After rolling damage DM describes how the radiance, surges through me along my blade and shatters it. Me: what the fuck? What’s going on? DM: due to the blades unholy nature, whenever you smite the blade will break, but it will repair itself at a long rest. The sword is unusable until then. Me: that’s my only weapon which allows me to damage theses guys. DM: you will have to be more tactical when you smite. At which point I packed my stuff up, told the dm to control my character, kill them for all I care, as I quit the game. I know it would of been more mature to wait for the end of the session, but at this point I was just done with the campaign. My mental health was already deteriorating and feeling useless for 4-5 hours every week or so, was just making it worse. At this point I almost gave dnd up entirely. However, friend of mine which I talked to about the experience convinced me to try out dnd again. That campaign has been going on for 2 years and I’m currently I level 16 lizardfolk spore Druid, which has been a blast to play.

[@travisbishop782]

Holy fuck! That dm seemed to have a hate boner out for paladins, didn't he? I'm glad you found a great dm, though.

[@jeremieherard2166]

jeez, that's one hell of a story. that dm was a dickhead

[@waird2372]

Damn, something similar has been going on one of my campaigns for only 4 sessions and I'm already thinking about quitting. That's a lot of patience dude. Edit: Actually, did any of the other players bring up how You were always being nerfed with little to no explanation?

[@DarkValorWolf]

I would've told him to fuck of at his first attempt of doing shit like that, this was just all sorts of wrong, what a dickhead.

[@TheSockDragon]

I just read this and holy shit WTF DM?! I have never played and has been trying to get into it hope I never have to deal with this level of bs and am sorry you had too

[@burnttoast26]

A good friend who is a *terrible* DM pulled some shit when I was new to DnD in 3.5. Basically, when we were making our characters, another friend wanted to play a fighter and settled on dwarf, I had just finalized mine. I jokingly said out of character the dwarf quote from WoW "Interest you in a pint?" with the accent (me and dwarf player friend both played WoW at the time), and the DM goes "Racism. Your (dwarf player) character kicks his in the balls, roll for damage." The other friend did, and rolled well on it (I was playing wizard) and insta-killed my character. Over an out of character joke, quoting a game. So the game started with me just dead, and the other friend's character was severely injured because the DM made him roll dex to dash cover to cover, failed and made him roll for damage. The game didn't last long, and we basically gave that friend a LOT of shit for being a terrible DM. He hasn't DM'd for us in years, and a lot of us say we won't play if he does. What makes it worse is that he's an awesome player and an otherwise awesome friend; he's just a fucking awful DM. Sorry for the long text wall.

[@assassincharizard]

First game I ever played I was a warlock and I cast Eldritch Blast on a locked door. I was then immediately TPK'd by a level 20 plus wizard shop keeper and the universe imploded from how much power he had. Then, time "miraculously" rewound and we were back at the door just before I had blasted it.

[@dreamcream3738]

The most unfair thing a DM did to me was turn my IRL social awkwardness into in-character faux pas, forcing a misunderstanding to ensure that I couldn't warn someone about potential sabotage. The reason was clear in hindsight, it was to ensure I couldn't be "the good guy", since his setting was very cynical

[@TheGraveKnight]

You think he'd be aware that having a "good guy" in a cynical setting would make for good contrast, lest it fall into the category of being too bleak to care about it

[@dreamcream3738]

@@TheGraveKnight his view was that classical heroes were inherently dishonest, so they deserved to be knocked down, while jackasses with hearts of gold are inherently better

[@TheGraveKnight]

@@dreamcream3738 It sounds like he has no room for neutrality or grey-points, and leans heavily in favor of the negative side

[@TheGraveKnight]

@@dreamcream3738 Late but if you're in the mood for some spite, play either a hero or jackass extremely straight (to the point of exaggeration) next time you have him as a DM. No matter how hard he tries with the former the desire to do honest good remains, while with the latter the hidden heart of gold he's expecting to see never comes up and he gets an unrepentant asshole who could care less

[@dreamcream3738]

@@TheGraveKnight nah, he l*oves* moral ambiguity.

[@trueblade39]

He gave the kobold rogue in our party an Orb of Dragonkind as a looted treasure after we killed a pit fiend. After attuning to the orb, it became clear it was "speaking" to the kobold, and it started deforming his body to make him more feral and dragonlike, to the point where it couldn't be hidden. My character, who had recently taken a level in cleric and gained the attention of Bahamut, was told by a disguised copper dragon that the orb was immensely dangerous and that it couldn't be left in irresponsible hands. Under duress, I took the orb from the kobold and gave it to the copper dragon, who removed it from the campaign permanently. All of the other players immediately ragged on me for caving to the pressure the DM, as an NPC, put on me to fulfill my clerical duty to Bahamut to remove Tiamat's artifacts from positions where they could be abused by people who wouldn't use them responsibly. He basically set me up for failure

[@roark914]

I think you've got a group of players who are trying to play Skyrim. You're a cleric of bahamut. Why wouldn't you take the dangerous orb from the feral, constantly mutating kobold? To me it sounds like your group is comprised of some people there just to kill shit and get powerful. I'd say you made the story pretty sick by betraying your party for your faith, and stealing away a dangerous artifact for your god. I'd be careful about being gaslit by your players into thinking you "caved to the dm." You made an awesome story, and the DM probably loved that you followed through. Plus why would the DM give it to you guys in the first place if he didn't want them to have it? He gave you the choice of choosing your faith or your party. Whatever you picked is on you buckaroo.

[@Zanavor]

@@roark914 I agree

[@hkfifty871]

TBH, that sounds more like a party problem than a DM problem. You got rid of a clearly dangerous and evil item that was negatively affecting one of your companions (who, I’m assuming, your character would have considered a friend). Sure, it’s a powerful and valuable item that the party would like to have (and could have made for an interesting campaign direction) but it was also incredibly dangerous for both your party, and the world. Even aside from any divine pressure, it makes TOTAL sense for any character to want to get rid of it, and your party shouldn’t have been blaming you for that. That said, there is an issue where it seems like the DM ignored the agency of the rest of the party in the situation (rather than involving them so it was more of a group decision) and that’s not good. But bringing in a situation of conflicting character motivations that makes for a difficult decision your character would struggle with and agonize over, that’s not bad DMing. That’s a GOLDEN opportunity for growing and developing your character arc.

[@yaqbulyakkerbat4190]

This sound smore like the party was the problem than the dm. The dm just gave you a plot point, it's the cruddy players who all dogpiled on you

[@Korica]

Granted, give the GM some slack because we were all new at the time. But I made a Fighter character and wanted to be a tank, so I did that, used heavy armor and a shield. GM didn't know how to deal with me having much higher AC than everyone else, and wanted combats to still be threatening. He ended up adding in some enemies that were a bit too powerful and one-shot my character.

[@roark914]

I wonder if your GM knew about these crazy kooky things called saving throws

[@Korica]

@@roark914 I was killed outright by damage alone, so saving throw did not apply.

[@roark914]

@@Korica i understand. I'm saying that a way to counter a high AC is using abilities that require saving throws. Doesn't matter how much plate you have if you fail a Wisdom save and are now acting under the enemy's command. Ya get what I'm saying? There's less punishing ways of getting around your high AC that I think your GM must've been either not familiar with or didn't think about it.

[@Korica]

@@roark914 Ah, I see what you mean. No, I guess that didn't occur to him at the time. Like I said, we were all inexperienced.

[@Felipe_RdS]

happened once something like that, diference is that the DM kept breaking all my stuff (armor and shield) so i didn't had that much AC

[@erikzorger3311]

I had a DM that would give a weak character complete invulnerability. Imagine being a lvl 10 character being attacked by a berserk lvl 3 goblin that is completely immune to ALL damage. We managed to grapple this one down tied it up and buried it in a deep pit. It later came back with the ability to instantly teleport.

[@coolgreenbug7551]

If the goblin could only do really pitiful damage, that actually sounds like a fun encounter. The final BBEG lich riding an ancient black dragon, and also THAT goblin AGAIN! Have him be like team rocket

[@nunull6427]

That is almost exactly the encounter I ran as a joke one shot, and almost exactly how it was handled. No instant transmission later though, just a tunnel with tubes another goblin would roll rocks down.

[@erikzorger3311]

@@nunull6427 if it was a one shot, or an occasional thing that would be one thing, but he had it attack continuously untill it wiped the party. It took 8 6hr game sessions before it took down the last player. then the dm kept going on about how "we got our asses handed to us by a lvl 3 goblin"

[@nunull6427]

@@erikzorger3311 I didn't see the reply at first, but gosh that seems a little much.

[@karisasani7006]

@@erikzorger3311What if you had something that would have ignored his damage immunity?

[@estudoesthething8589]

My DM picked on my character in the opposite way, by making her the main character. We played Curse of the Crimson Throne in Pathfinder and it was my 2nd character ever. Looking through the players guide it said that sorcerers were not trusted in the city, and after reading about the bloodlines, sounded like alot of roleplay fun. So now I have a female human sorcerer with the Blue Draconic bloodline who is a complete idiot with a heart of gold and a mission to get her eye back from one of the books bad guys, Lamb. Despite me actively dressing as a sorcerer and actively using my magic alot, especially magic from a usually evil source, she was instantly trusted by everyone. Things just worked out for her easily. Even her main quest was completed without much of a fuss, and her eye was now enchanted. It really didn't feel earned at all, and I'm pretty sure that it was because she had high charisma, and that's it. Meanwhile our rogue was not trusted at all, even when he's doing his best to not be intimidating, everyone is just hostile towards him. When he would try to be stealthy suddenly there are guards in the alley that was cleared earlier. His family was also supposedly changed from what he described quite significantly to be quite a bit nicer, like they were copies of my character, which negates alot of the reason why he's an edgy rogue in the first place. We ended up talking with the DM and ending the campaign. She is very good with very short-term campaigns, but the long ones don't work with her, as a DM or player (which is fine). I do really want to play my little idiot as other characters don't scratch that itch as much as she did.

[@TheNoobRapter]

The first experience I had with D&D the DM made me roll up a level 1 character in a party of level 15s. I was a wizard. I could not damage anything and I would be instant killed by everything. It sucked, but the only bright side was after that game the next time I played the DM allowed me to level up 14 levels and gave me some magic items. It honestly looked like the DM just had a single fuck up and quickly corrected it. Sadly we switch to a different game right after that game so I could not really try out anything.

[@jonathanmorphew6786]

Had a dm that did a few things. I would of quit but wanted to see how bad it could get. The dm decided to make it so I could only have one cantrip going at a time. Aka if I cast light. Then cast an attack cantrip I go blind. Another time dm decided even though I have been using my familiar to summon inside of different room I now had to have line of sight. Another example. We were going to climb a steep wall. I said I'm going to cast guidance to get some help. Nope can't do that. So onto the story. The dm during session 0 insisted I play a necromancer (evil campaign) and I'm easy going so was like sure. We get to the point of me getting the spell seeming. Now by then we were well known baddies. So we pull up to a major city and I cast seeming on all of us and the undead we had above deck. So all in total 10 or 11 affected. We walk 5 minutes into the town and the spell stopped working. I was like umm what? He without telling me when I told him I was taking this spell said "oh yeah I changed the way seeming works. It loses an hour of duration for ever creature targeted by it". He legit nerfed seeming ( a lvl 5 spell) into a worse disguise self( lvl 1 spell)

[@travisbishop782]

Wtf?

[@roark914]

It sounds like your DM hated you finding solutions to things. I'm saddened to think they were just on some sort of power trip. Hope you've had better experiences casting more than one cantrip!

[@Nitro77rulz]

I was stunned for 8 of the 10 rounds of combat. No save, legendary reaction. But hey, at least it was streamed in front of like 7k people or something along those lines

[@johnhansen4794]

That last story reminds me of my first PC back in 1st edition. My over-proud first level elf magic user and his party got caught by the bad guy wizard... I role played the elf mouthing off at the BBEG. being 'That guy' - talking over the DM's canned speech... And the BBEG stuck a dagger in the elf's eye. lol. no regerts.

[@trifectashuffle8462]

This was early on in my time with my DND group. I was recent in the group and also the first full caster they had at the table. We were attacked on our pirate ship by a group of Cloakers, and round 1 I was grappled and in trouble. I had low strength so me getting out was unlikely to happen so I said "I cast Dimension Door to get out of this grapple". The DM read the spell and said "Because this thing is physically attached to you and the spell can allow another person, it is coming with you." I tried to explain to him how that ruling was not in line with how the spell works but he was just not having it. He told me that I should of casted misty step instead to get out. I told him multiple times how the spell worked and how I was casting it and he just wouldn't change him ruling. Eventually he said " Wait, this thing is too heavy for you so it is left behind." I was done with that session after that. He has gotten better at listening players now and how spells work.

[@Lord_Inquisitor_William7391]

One time I was playing in adventurers league and where where in hell. One of the players had been cursed to perpetually scream and we stumbled upon a group of devils. One of the devils said they could remove the curse at the cost of the partys souls. I refused to give my soul up but the DM said it wasn't my choice it was the screaming players. I tried to explain to him thats like me selling his car without his permission but he wouldn't listen. I had to give up one of my soul coins (a rare item and the currency of hell it is also uses to power the cars) i only had 2 and they where hard to come by. TLDR DM let another player sell MY characters soul without my permission so I had to give up an important item to keep my soul

[@BlueTressym]

Yeah, that's well out of order.

[@juniorthao641]

I was playing an artificer, steel defender, and I was big on building metal constructs or conjuring extra creatures for the party, it was a support build, he then proceeded to send all of us, into a Homebrew realm that deteriorated any metal constructions, I was fine with it at first Eventhough it completely removed my characters ability and class, so I relied on the other class, in which he said “oh in the realm, you’re unable to further bolster your numbers and summon anything that would multiply your party”….I got super upset and have no idea why he even did such a thing, basically making my entire character a Meat bag, he then also proceeded to say “well if you’re going to build around one thing, then your character is just bad” after I complained…we were a party of 5 and had no support or extra way to gain bonuses, so I built a character that can support and spit out extra small beasts for everyone, support and flavor reasons

[@roark914]

It definitely sounds like your DM had it out for you. "What a coincidence that the new setting completely negates all of your abilities right? Wow what a stupid decision YOU made." He sounds like a jerk off. I'm sorry your character got their wings clipped, and I hope you've had more positive experiences since then.

[@arkron81]

I once made a character to play in a Curse of Strahd game (teeny-tiny spoilers) however, I quickly realized, within the first three sessions, that my character wasn't a good fit for the party. I was a paladin built as a tank, while the party consisted of a blood hunter of the lycan order, a bear totem barbarian, a war domain cleric, a moon druid, and a wizard. All pretty tanky, save for the wizard. So there was really no need for a 'tank' kind of character. I contacted my DM and asked about retiring my character, letting them leave Barovia in some way to return to their home, and we talked about them making a deal with a local group to get safe passage back to Faerun. Then the next session, our group comes across Srahd, and the DM makes Strahd attempt mind-control characters of the party. First the priest, then my character, but succeeded on the saving throw. And then he targeted my character again, and I failed the roll this time. He commanded my character to get on his steed, and Strahd then teleported away from the battle with my character. And that was how the DM decided to remove my character from the party. I contacted him later saying that was pretty scummy of him considering that wasn't what we have discussed the previous week, and he told me the group would've betrayed me to Strahd anyways. I told him, right then and there, that he should've told me that would happen, or at the very least tell me that the idea wouldn't have worked, as I now feel like my player agency was betrayed. That left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. My decided to not continue in the group and left.

[@Agriche94]

Once upon a time, me and the party went on to investigate goblin lair. We were ambushed by goblin alchemist that uses molotov, me and one of my friends got burned as a result from getting hit by molotov. We were supposed to take 2d4 fire damage at the start of our turn because of the fire. So i tried to sumberge myself in the nearby river, but the DM said it was knee deep shallow body of water. So i asked if i can roll into the body of water instead. Got told to roll acrobatic checks, got 16, the fire did not go off, and i become prone. Action spend for looking dumb. The next turn, my friend tried the same. No save, no prone, the fire on his character put off instantly. Called the GM out for this and got replied with "It's okay, you're strong lol" I am a druid with 12 hp.

[@SamWeltzin]

This is actually something unfair I did as a DM. I was DMing a Pathfinder campaign, and the party was infiltrating a tower of a large religious organization. The Magus in the party split off to go look around, and cast Invisibility on himself. He, by chance, found the room of the villain they were seeking out, and when he opened the door, I had the villain cast Destruction on him as a reaction, killing him instantly and disintegrating his body. The way I justified it at the time was that the villain was on-edge and had the spell readied for whenever the door opened, and the villain DID have True Sight cast at the time, but setting up the situation like that was bullshit, and I feel bad for it now. For what it's worth, the Magus got revived after they beat the villain 'cuz they were pretty high level, and he finished out the campaign with the rest of the group, but man, that was really flimsy reasoning on my part.

[@travisbishop782]

Hey, everyone makes mistakes.

[@SamWeltzin]

@@travisbishop782 Oh, for sure. I don't beat myself up over it too hard. It's just something I wanted to get off my chest, is all. :)

[@travisbishop782]

@@SamWeltzin Thank you for sharing. And have a great day.

[@SamWeltzin]

@@travisbishop782 You as well.

[@mikkaddo9861]

I just told this story in another video comments section from you guys, but I'll give the ending bit here, a GM that was mad I'd made a character that had essentially ended up having a very similar story arc to his FAVORITE character he'd ever made in D&D, had my character die because a sniper shot him *around a corner* and somehow a natural 20 was not a good enough save to dodge or have it miss, this was in star wars, no destiny points were used, and my character was a species known for seeing the future AND was a jedi.

[@yaqbulyakkerbat4190]

Please tell me you didn't play with them again

[@UndeadVengence]

Some names have been substituted as I simply don't remember them all and don't want anyone to stir up trouble if they recognize any of the persons in this story. This DM had issues with myself and my friend in particular, for reasons I cannot fathom. When I first started playing DnD, I joined a small game store where the owner would DM a game one Wednesdays and two games on Saturdays, all of which were with the same group of people. After a few weeks the store suddenly blew up, getting more and more popular. The owner had an old, supposedly experienced, friend of his run sessions in the same universe to accommodate the sudden influx of players, and I volunteered to swap to this new DM as I had invited friends of mine to come along as well so we filled out the party nicely. In this new group was myself, playing Zrad the dragonborn warlock, my three friends playing Gray the human assassin, Valentia the Sorceress, and Burdo the Barbarian. Additionally we had Alena the human Cleric who had just moved to our city from Hawaii. We're all level 3, as that's what the average level was for the original party, and all of us are new to DND, with this being Valentia, Burdo, and Alena's first session ever. It was a relatively normal adventure at first, though I don't remember what our original goal was. After trucking through the wilderness for some reason or another, we randomly encounter an Oni in an open field. A CR7 monster, for a party of level 3 first timers. Now, none of us knew what to expect, and only weeks later did I find out exactly how much this DM was pulling out of his ass. Combat starts, and we're all spread around the Oni as he popped up in the middle of our group. Combat proceeds normally, the barb and I getting a few hits in, but then on the Oni's turn he cast "Cone of Cold". Except the DM made it a sphere. A 60 ft sphere. Most of us made our saves, barely escaping with our lives, but Valentia failed and was killed instantly. She hadn't even taken a turn in her very first combat. The Oni then makes some vague threat before disappearing into the shadows, ending the session. Fortunately this didn't kill my friends interest in DnD, and Valentia and Burdo simply switched to the store owners game as he had a few seats open up. Another few sessions go by, and I notice the DM seems to be forcing some of the players into the roles he wants them to fill. At this point, I'm fed up with being pushed in a direction I don't want to go, so I have a conversation with the owner and he brings me back into his game, but Gray decides to stick it out in this game because he's too stubborn to be kicked out. Months go by, and Gray tells me all about what this DM has been doing every session. The cleric from Hawaii has been given many gifts by the DM, from buffing her channel divinity to ridiculous proportions, to giving her a +5 mace. The Cleric was a very attractive young woman so we all knew why she was receiving these gifts. New faces have joined the group, and the DM has turned every one of them against Gray, so that whenever he attempts to interact with the party they ostracize him. He ends up doing little things on the side to help the party when they wouldn't let him, but this makes them more suspicious. Eventually, Gray is captured by the BBEG, who immediately spotted him as he was sneaking into the fortress of the BBEG. Gray was tortured for in-game months, and is forced to obey the commands of the BBEG as he has an explosive gem planted in his chest that will explode if he doesn't. This finally broke Gray's resolve, and he joined me at the owners table. The owner had a goddess of nature offer Gray a way out of the indentured servitude, she would remove the bomb in his chest by changing his past, and making him a ranger. Gray accepted, but due to a tumble with another god he, and more than half of our party, died a session later. It was due to failure to prepare on our part, so there was no hard feelings. That DM only had a few more sessions at that store, as his wife found out he was trying to sleep with the Cleric at a New Years party that was held at the store, and she forced him to move out of state or lose her and the kids. I only saw him once a year or so later, his wife had divorced him and he was just visiting town. He did try to flirt with the Cleric but she brushed him off.

[@dgargoyle]

1 played a gargoyle once in Vampire: The masquerade. During character creation i was told to make all choices by myself so I chose hand guns thinking it would be smart firing while flying. After my transformation I learned gargoyle's can't hold guns with their claws. So in combat I was practicly useless. I could live with that where it not the GM called me stupid and laughed in my face for making that choice several times. I did not play with him ever again.

[@theultrasceptile]

1:28 I am in a party of 10 and our DM admitted to being a new one, and said he wanted a challenge with a large group. Now, he has said he wants feedback and we have given it where it counted, but we just had our first *BIG* combat at a wedding, there were a ton of npcs that could fight (on our side/neutral) and 7 or 8 enemies. I used a fighter and rolled a single digit initiative, and our DM rolled individually for each and every npc, so in total we had 27 characters… I was the 20th… and it took over an hour to get to my turn with how much the DM tried explaining what each player saw as things happened Group initiatives was one of the things that all of us agreed on telling the DM over halfway into round 1

[@MechbossBoogie]

Same DM, two different games. I played a ranger type character where my plan was to live off the land on adventures rather than keep track of trail rations. So far every time I've attempted that I've been punished by a forest god for daring to think that I could attempt to support the party by being a cook. Had the proficiencies and everything, so it's not like I'd go "okay I killed an animal, now what?" My character could actually identify, prepare, and cook a kill. I built the character for that. Tried to make a fishing pole to catch fish in a river. A dryad showed up and made me plant a bunch of trees for daring to take a branch. Tried to hunt small game to make soup and an invincible owl attacked us. I think the point he was trying to make was that I was dragging the game out, but I wanted the full experience of the life of an adventurer, if I went hungry I went hungry. All that did was make me stop playing with him. Different DM would get pissed at us if we made the attempt to react to things "before he was done giving a description" but then if we didn't react immediately after he was done giving a description, for which there was no indicator that he was done, he'd start going into how because we're just standing there with blank expressions all of these things start happening and the BBEG gets away. Or he'd complain about how when we're in combat "you should pre-roll your dice so when it comes to your turn you can immediately tell me what your character does" and then he'd call out your character's name and immediately start counting. "Six, Five, Four, Three..." not allowing you to even respond. So I would let him count and skip my turn, because combat just started. I don't know initiative order, and I still had questions about what we were facing as far as numbers, weapons, what they're wearing, etc. All pertinent information. I need to know if they have reach. If the mobs are charging us wearing full plate I'm not using things that will lower my accuracy for higher damage. If they're using ranged weapons or chanting spells I need to know. And then we'd pre-roll our dice and he'd say stuff like "I didn't see you roll that" or "I didn't ask for a roll." He was also a fan of trying to punish us for "splitting the party." We were in a dungeon with a bunch of rogues, thieves guild sort of thing. One of them stole from us so I decided to go full murder hobo on the lot to prove a point. Figured out the layout of the place and came up with a plan to pinch them between the collective party, couldn't get the party to decide to help, so I just went ahead with the plan anyway, because they were taking potshots at us from around the corners and then we'd end up chasing them around in a circle. We were about to be dead no matter what and I figured my chances were better at survival if I just made the party's mind up for them. So, long story short, somehow this guy decided to punish me for "splitting the party" by allowing his rogue NPC's to sneak attack my character and the one other party member who decided to go along with my plan, even though there was no way they could actually get in position to do it. Straight up removed the wall of the dungeon and had his NPC's step into those squares to get flanking. I called him out on it and he told me I never declared that I was against the wall, so they could stand there all they wanted after I had just described to him how I find my way down the corridor through my obscuring mist spell by, get this, following the wall. The two characters that had gone that way were standing back to back and he pushed his NPC in between them, because screw the rules of combat, apparently. I found out later he did that because he hates doing combat and dungeons and hates running combat and dungeons. So, he was trying to get the rest of us to hate doing combat and dungeons by giving us a bad experience doing them. Turns out everyone just left his game without saying anything instead. My biggest gripe, though, was I let him be a player in my game and he ran everyone out of that game, too. Turns out if you have a problem with a player in the game you should tell the DM, because there's always so much going on that I hardly catch 10% of what's going on between players, because everyone always starts talking over each other, but I started paying more attention and apparently every time someone tries to role play their character he'll do something to make them stop role playing, or pull them out of character and if there's a situation in the game where he can't just bullshit his way through it, like combat where there are rules, he'll shut down and out comes his phone.

[@SymbioteMullet]

So... does the second guy actually like _anything_ about d&d? Doesn't like dungeons, combat, or roleplaying... Seems a bit weird to even bother with d&d at that point!

[@MechbossBoogie]

@@SymbioteMullet I don't think he does. I ended that campaign, though. Maybe the next group I find will be different. I don't know. I just hope to find a group that actually wants to interact with the plot I've spent weeks preparing instead of standing outside of a dungeon, moaning "I don't want to do this" and then doing everything in their power not to play the game we all agreed to play. Or when another player decides to role play his character groaning about how slow he is while the character he's playing is literally an old man.

[@jettblade]

The most unfair thing that happened to me by the GM was in Role Master. I was playing a Ranger, which is a semi-spell caster. Well we took on this mission to take out a caravan. The fight was broken up into 2 stages: first was the scouts and the second was the main caravan force. During the first fight I got hit, stunned for 4 turn, and had bleeding 10 a turn. In RM if you're bleeding less than 4 you aren't at penalties needing First Aid skill to stop the bleeding, between 5-7 you're at penalties needing Second Aid skill to stop the bleeding, and at +8 bleeding you have turns equal to your Con bonus and need Surgery skill or you die. I had a spell that stopped bleeding but if I did literally anything except move less than 5 ft it would end. I did nothing that fight and since he was using the rule where you only gain EXP while fighting I missed out on a ton of EXP. We were able to recover and prep for the second fight. I used my spell Summon Guardian which was supposed to get me an animal that would get between me and danger: I got a giraffe. Giraffes actually have really good stats. We start the fight and the enemies target me completely ignoring the giraffe. They are able to hit me because the giraffe gave no cover or penalties to the enemy. I get hit, stunned, and bleeding +8 a round. The giraffe's turn comes around and it does nothing. He ruled that it wouldn't do anything, not even laying down to give me cover, because it couldn't be directed to protect me or go after any threats to me. He ruled Summon GUARDIAN wouldn't protect me. He even had the giraffe to graze and leave before the spell wore off in the middle of a battle. I ended up only gaining a little over 600 EXP while the second lowest end up getting close to 10,000. I was level 5 when literally a person that started a character and entered at the same time as me hit level 7. It got to the point I could kill off my character and bring in a new character 2 levels higher while still being the person with the least EXP. I was so low of a level and so far behind that I brought down the encounter average which made the gap even harder for me to close because everyone else was taking out the monsters before I could do anything. Nothing is worst than being so far behind with absolutely no way of catching up.

[@caritahearts2405]

"My family was killed by undead :(" says the most useless level 20 paladin ever

[@SechzigRayner]

Its a small thing. But for my first character he used point buy for his points. But the other players all rolled for their points and ended up with an overall greater point array

[@roark914]

It's small, but it also affects your character for the whole game. It also normalizes you being treated less than everyone else. I hope you stand up for yourself if a similar situation ever presents itself. You deserve the same as everyone else!

[@metadoe8168]

The most unfair thing a DM ever did to me was insta-kill my full-health sorcerer outside of combat simply because I was role-playing. Some context: we were playing a Skyrim campaign in 5e, taking place years before the game itself took place. Our characters were basically rounded up by a god (which god, I do not remember) to fulfill a quest to save the world and everything. None of our characters were prepared for just how deadly the quest would be. And my Argonian sorcerer character was a naturally pessimistic person, so he was threatening to just up and leave because of some plot development. Now, I wasn't actually going to leave, as I was expecting the other party members to talk him out of just walking away. Then the DM just has the god that contracted us to begin with literally part from the clouds above us, slicing my character in half without even giving me a single warning or dice roll to avoid it. Without a word, I left the call and never came back. I like to imagine the other characters were as angry as I was and abandoned the campaign, as well.

[@postapocalypticnewsradio]

PANR has tuned in. On a very good birthday. How evite is having as good of a day as I am

[@reynoldszelaya4559]

Alright, I got a story. Wasn't me playing, just watching from the side. But the party was attending a festival being thrown by the lord of the town they were visiting. They'd just finished a quest to rescue some of the lord's people who were being held hostage by a group of brigands, so spirits were high. They're having fun at the festival. Drinks are had, games are played, money is blown. Not much interesting happens, until the lord shows up with his pet dog. It was a small puppy that the lord cherished greatly. The party all "Aww"ed at the DM's description. And then the party's half-orc barbarian asked if he could pet the dog. The lord allowed it. And for some reason the DM had the barbarian roll a strength check to pet the puppy. Right away I had a feeling I knew where this was going, but I said nothing cuz I wasn't actually playing and didn't wanna risk ruining anything. So the barbarian rolls... Nat 20. And so everyone was forced to hear the DM describe in vivid detail how the poor puppy gets splattered under the barbarian's hand like a tomato. Naturally the party had to flee, became wanted criminals and the lord ended up sending a squad of bounty hunters to kill them. All because the DM felt like being a sadist and sacrificing an innocent puppy to the dice gods.

[@BlueTressym]

That poor puppy! Yeah, some DMs don't get that a Nat.20 is supposed to be the BEST possible result, not the most extreme. Sometimes, it's genuinely misunderstanding (I did this a couple of times in my younger and less savvy days, though I never killed anyone or anything with it) and sometimes, it's just being an arsehole.

[@leekonze7441]

I was playing in a Shadowrun game with my magician adept gunslinger martial artist Hollywood. My GM asked to see my character sheet, and being young and naive, I handed it over without asking why. The GM proceeds to erase half of my adept powers, some of my spells, and a bunch of my skills. He also takes away most of my character's money. I asked the GM why. He said that Hollywood was becoming more powerful that his own GMPC, and that I could either willingly take a cut to Hollywood's power, or Hollywood would get killed next session, to keep his GMPC as the most powerful party member. I never went back for another session

[@danielhale1]

Hey MrRipper, got a story for your next edition of this. I had a narcissist GM who pulled a lot of crap before we finally ended the friendship and concluded he would never get better. One of the things he did was try to play my character for me. I wanted to be a fighter; fighters are simple and that means more of my attention is free to focus on roleplay (while a complicated spell and ability list is just more mechanics to think about when instead I should be in my character's head). GM decided his world was too primitive for fighters to exist, since fighters have to train with weapons and nobody has time for that in a subsistence farming community. Dick move. GM instead believed I should be a wizard - his favorite class - and he saw no flaw in his subsistence farming village logic. I eventually got to be a fighter, but he made sure every creature flew, climbed, jumped etc so that my melee weapons were useless, and I could never carry enough throwing weapons. I switched to a bow, and he decided materials (e.g. cold iron arrows to bypass DR) were overpowered and took those away as I was rolling my first attack. When I wanted to make in-story choices, he'd often try to correct me or hem me into the direction he wanted. (related: when one player broke off from the group for legit roleplay reasons, the GM insta-killed him offscreen with no chance to save). When I wanted to take a feat, he fought me on it because apparently everything was "overpowered". He invented a new skill called "Use Rope", which he emphasized was extremely important in his game's primitive society. We all basically had to take the skill or we couldn't do anything important (like tie a rope to climb down, just as an example); use rope came up a LOT and it was just a skill point tax. The story was obviously heavily railroaded, and all choices were illusions (at one point he mentioned the "illusion of choice" in game design, apparently being quite enamored with it; I'm pretty sure he didn't understand the actual point of that idea). He got so controlling that at one point I just told him "Well why don't you make the character yourself and I can autopilot it through whatever story you want to tell!". Whenever we pushed back hard enough, he'd either make us out to be the bad guys (he said "I will not censor my art!" when we didn't want so many poo monsters and demons everywhere), or pretend to give way in some small and - it turns out - meaningless way. He just wanted to drag us around to show off the world he created and mistreat us. Now, why the hell did we stick around? Because he was a very skilled narcissist, very good at smoothing things over, excellent at pretending to be completely taken aback by our reactions, etc. He was very effective at making us look like the unreasonable ones, in ways I struggle to fully articulate -- he was incredibly subtle and skilled at this, and little else. I finally quit when I read through the email chain front to back and his gaslighting (a word we didn't know back then) was suddenly plain as day, and his carefully crafted illusion broke. Behind all the RL charisma skill, he was just completely full of himself and his "art" (and yes, he actually called his campaign that). He loved to have control over people, and to bat them around emotionally like toys. It took me some time after walking out on the friendship to realize the full range of what had been going on (narcissists weren't discussed much back then and we didn't know the signs). It's hard to explain just how he got into people's heads and got them to stick around despite all the gaslighting, emotional abuse, and manipulation. At least I'm not the one who was living in his house as his roommate -- that guy was completely wrapped around his finger. (I don't know what happened to him; I haven't been in contact with that friend in a long time.) At least the GM's wife finally divorced and got the hell out, good for her! This experience changed me in real life, but it also changed how I look at charisma in games. Your channel has had this come up a lot, in fact, even from players who claim their character's alignment is good. Problem players treat it like a mind control beam: "Haha I rolled a nat 20, now this shopkeep has to do something totally out of character to bend to my will!". People like to treat charisma -- and its related spells -- like a dagger, and they're happy to go around stabbing the life out of people with it. In other words, they're social-murder-hobos. In real life these people would be rightly seen as monsters, but in the game suddenly they're good-aligned and supposed to be viewed as fun and quirky. Upending someone's life because you smiled and winked very charmingly and said all the right words can be at least as harmful as smacking them on the head with a club and robbing them blind. Experiencing a real life narcissist showed me what this is like for the recipient and how... genuinely sociopathic some behaviors are. If you want to play a character this way in a TTRPG, for the fun of wielding power over others, you should stop and ask yourself why. And also? That character is not good-aligned. Probably isn't neutral. This is categorically evil behavior. (If you're playing an evil campaign and you're all supposed to be monsters, different story... assuming it's just your character and not your RL personality) Now when I play characters as a player or GM, I try to avoid behaving like that unless it's actually part of their character, usually an evil/manipulative NPC the players are meant to be at odds with. I genuinely think this is the evil & violent side of the Charisma stat, in the same way that a sword in a villain's hand will be used differently than that same sword wielded by a good person. I try to think about how people would feel about this ultra-confident rogue trying to talk them into giving them stuff for free, or switch sides and betray everyone around them, or divulge extremely important secret information, etc. Maybe they're open, or maybe the mere attempt feels like an attack. Whatever works in video games, NPCs in a TTRPG are not automatons; they absolutely should have their own lives and mindsets. When dealing with this abusive GM (and also when he was a player) we always knew something was _wrong_ but we couldn't put our finger on it; he'd talk circles around us to avoid an incident, but that tension never when away. When we eventually bailed on him, things between us were so bad that there was no looking back; he could put off the inevitable, but not prevent it. He was just too fundamentally broken as a person, and he treated everyone around him as toys. Once we figured that out, that was it, permanent mistrust and unwillingness to have anything to do with him. Something to keep in mind if you're playing a character this way and expecting to be loved for it; instead, people should grow to distrust you the more you use and abuse people. The book is clear that there's a limit on what skill checks can accomplish, and that intimidating or persuading a person can have negative consequences depending on what you did. Charisma isn't mind control. There are actual spells for that, and whether you succeed or fail to manipulate someone, by magic or skill, there can be consequences. Sometimes it's no big deal, while other times it can be as offensive as stabbing them in the gut. On the very mild end, I have friends in the service industry who regularly deal with RL charisma characters (and some who only think they're charismatic) marching in with major Main Character Syndrome. And god the tantrums these characters throw when that coffee isn't free. Most of us can play a better character than that, in-game and out.

[@MitchellTF]

So, I was playing a support cleric, with a DM who was a bit of a nuts guy. Summoning,, with low health so I can heal the max possible. He proceeded to have EVERY person target me first in battle. He then forcibly infected me with lycanthropy via pushing me to have sex with a prostitute who was, in fact, a secret werewolf. (The whole village was infected, which I saw coming) He sold us fake silver and fudged rolls so we couldn't tell, even if it's clear OOC. He had the big bad guy be twice the level he should have, and be able to resurrect dead people as minions. Meaning that the more players we lost, the harder the battle was. An dthe resurection was instant. And, of course, he could heal anything since our weapons weren't real silver. He had people who could turn invisible and auto-coup-de-grace, with no warning, and then had a Magic Missile Expert in full armor with no warning, DESPITE us sending in spies to see what he could do.

[@braedenmclean5304]

Worst thing a dm has ever done (from the point of view of the DM) Give the players encounters. Basically one of my players got annoyed with me for making encounters for them to run into and claimed I was railroading despite me giving them complete freedom to go any way they wanted to a destination the entire party was heading to.

[@amplifuckation]

I haven’t screwed over anyone as a DM but one of my players was obsessed with goat simulator and without any experience made a Druid which was obviously not good already. I forced him to switch to a fighter instead but he insisted on the ability to wild shape into a goat. I said yes just to shut him up as we had to spend 1hr of our session redoing his character. All he’d do was turn into a goat, for example: Me: “You all enter the abandoned fort where the warcheif your looking for is rumoured to be hiding out in” Player: “I turn into a goat, scream and shit all over the floor” Some players found this funny at times but overall it disrupted the story I had spent hours writing and fun for everyone else. He’s still in our group and getting a bit better but also jokes too much and messes about in the wrong situation.

[@johnhansen4794]

One of my favorite encounters to pull is the human male 'j#ck-@$$' who has been cursed into the form of a donkey. He can understand common, bray, kick like a mule and carry 450 lbs if it is correctly packed.

[@devlinambers9408]

Trust me, lay down the law and make it clear your setting, or have someone kill the character for heing stupid in the wrong situation. If its not your DMing style to he goofy, then the NPCs shouldnt be willing to deal with it either

[@drinkablebean1812]

Me: "I pet the dead owlbear" Dm: "do to the injuries on your hands and the rough fur of the owl bear, you take 2d8 slashing damage" Me: *rolls* "wow, i am now unconscious" Dm: "outside of combat, dropping to 0 hp is instant death. Time for a new character" I played it off as if he was joking the whole time, but he got mad and told me he was serious

[@billcox8870]

I had a DM that like to make homebrew changes in the middle of a campaign. When he got pushed back he would just fire off the insult, you just want easy mode. He's up the mindset that if he enjoys the homebrew changes then everyone should enjoy it just like he does.

[@roark914]

That sucks! I don't get why your DM wouldn't want to make a game that everyone enjoys. Even if he thinks that this rule might be cool, he could say, "Hey guys what do you think about adding this rule to the game? It'll make it more difficult but that's the kind of game I think I want to run." Just that simple but of communication could easily start a dialogue with the players about what they expect from the game they're there to play, and maybe they would've been open to trying it. The DM power trip is an epidemic I swear.

[@billcox8870]

@@roark914 homebrew rules should be discussed in a session zero. Not everyone is going to enjoy the changes. If not everyone likes the changes, then the changes should not be made. When he said to me, you just wanted easy mode, I stopped having fun. His attitude is now, you chose to stop having fun. Sometimes I just want to punch him in the nose. I don't like it when someone tells me how I'm supposed to enjoy anything. If you're going to run any kind of game, you need to take the players enjoyment into account and make that the primary and not the DMS enjoyment.

[@roark914]

@@billcox8870 one hundred percent. It definitely sounds like there was no setting of expectations between everyone. I don't blame you for wanting to punch him in the nose lmao. Do you still play in that game if you mind me asking?

[@billcox8870]

@@roark914 we have stopped playing for a while. I'm not that good of a player and he wants to make things really difficult. If I don't agree with what the rule changes he makes then somehow I'm a terrible person I guess. We may be playing sometime in the new year but it all depends on his attitude. Well he is correct that as a diem he can make whatever changes he wants, I have the player can also choose not to participate if I want. If he wants to criticize me for it then he's just a jackass.

[@billcox8870]

@@roark914 one of the homebrew changes he did that I did not like was having me roll a d12 for a random direction for my character every turn while it was in the effects of a cloud kill spell. I have no agency at the player under those effects. Another surprise he's sprung on me was when he used hypnotic pattern but said the effects continue to linger anyone entering the area after the spell had been cast. Completely changing the mechanic of a spell mid campaign. Nowhere in the spell description does it say one characters or creatures enter or start their turn in the area of effect. Said that for things like Spirit Guardians and other spells but not hypnotic pattern. For me it goes off like a flashbang grenade. The effects will linger on those who are affected but they cannot affect new characters that enter the area where the spell was first cast.

[@stratahawk_1]

This is not the most unfair thing but it was really screwed us over. We were exploring a cave and we asked what we could see. Our ranger rolled a 19 with +8 in perception so a 27. The DM told us we didn't see anything important (we didn't have a map so he would have needed describe the room to us). I rolled for investigation, looking for secret doors. I rolled a nat 20 and got a total of 22. I found no secret doors. With both of those rolls, the party decided that there was nothing in the cave and we turned around and left. The DM got mad at us for not exploring the cave further because plot relevant things. We stalled his campaign because we couldn't find this very important clue. I asked what did we miss. He told us that there were 3 doors in the cave. I told him that he told us there were no secret doors. I didn't roll high enough to find the secret doors. Okay, I know nat 20s don't mean automatic success but there was no way for me to succeed in this situation. I rolled as high as I could and still failed the DC. Plot relevant things should not be behind a DC. They should definitely not be behind a DC over 20 if it is critical to your plot to keep the campaign going.

[@Delta-sg2zq]

We were playing a Star Wars campaign where we were playing Jedi at the beginning but two out of the four players defected to the dark side and one died and made a mandilorian bounty hunter. I was asked if I wanted to make a character since everyone agreed mine wouldn’t defect because it didn’t make sense but I said no because my character wanted to see if he could redeem the fallen Jedi. We did separate things for a while and it was slowly building to a point where it was inevitable that the sith characters and bounty hunter would clash against my character. We were all excited because this sounded cool as hell. I had gotten my hands on some ancient scripts that promised enough power to not only give me enough to defeat the three but maybe even ‘heal them’ of their dark side influence. Of course, I followed the scripts advice and went to an ancient vault and started opening it. Little did I know, the sith had found me and were hot on my heels. They arrived right as I opened the vault and my character was taken over as a sith ghost was released and took my body from me. No saves. I felt absolutely crushed and left the table, giving the excuse that, if I’m not needed, I needed to get sleep for work the next day. I still feel completely betrayed by the bait and switch.

[@JacobL228]

9:09 Drow aren't inherently evil, they just live in a brutal, predominantly evil society. One of D&D's most famous characters, Drizzt Do'Urden, was a drow, and he was neutral good.

[@cooldownboi3890]

hes even mentioned in the PHB 💀💀💀

[@gunhead7159]

My story isn’t major, but it put a bad taste in my mouth none the less. This is a new DM so I’m not gonna give him too much hate, but he’s really bad at railroading and our party wanting to do things would be met with him responding with something along the lines of “you have to do this because I spent a lot of time preparing this.” So our party sailed to some island to find a party member’s son. Turns out the kid slept with the town leader’s daughter and the royal guard was after him. As we’re trying to escape the city, some character shot at us and nailed my character in the eye. Ok, I cast magic missile at the bastard. “It doesn’t work, he’s too far away.” I ask how far away he is? “90 feet.” But magic missile has a rage of 120 feet. “Ok, you do it but it fails.” He has a common problem of making us chase after people and doesn’t allow us to use spells or anything to stop them because they have to lead us to an area or something. I was annoyed but it was whatever. We chase after him for 8 miles and apparently not only does he not lose any ground between him and the party, but he just so happens to gain enough ground for none of our spells to hit the entire time. No skill checks to see if anybody would get tired of running for 8 miles straight or anything. Eventually we get to a mountain area where he has some hideout and he has a bolder fall down the path and the DM says “Ok, y’all need to find a way to prevent the boulder from hitting y’all” Oh hey, I have thunder wave. I’ll just go to the side where the boulder won’t hit me and throw it off course. “Ok, you do that and the boulder falls down and crushes a campsite with some people in it.” Cool, so my character who isn’t evil or anything just killed a bunch of innocent people whom I wasn’t informed were there until after I did the thing. Tl;dr- my DM attacked my character, flat out refused to let my character retaliate, then punished me for doing a thing he asked me to do.

[@Adamwinniemarv]

Dude thanks for lowering the volume on the merch cut! My ears thank you!

[@NoFaithNoGlory]

Ok, sit back. So I was playing a tiefling for the first time ever(5e) in my DMs own setting. In that world archdevils where HIGHLY involved in society and were kinda winning at corrupting the whole world so tieflings were highly despised. My character, an Eldritch Knight, wanted to be a knight and wanted his whole race to be accepted. Thing is, I was good at it. I became a hero and soon-to-be-a-knight squire. He was also smart and cunning and never fought straight-up, but with exploits(no meta-gaming, just resourceful). He turned out to be, by my DM's choice, the offspring of the queen of archdevils(queen of pride, and corruption), and she wanted him to reach power to use it as her cornerstone for dominating the realm. My character got also killed by her brother, archdevil of lies, with a Power Word: Kill after some heated up discussion even if we were granted safe pass through his realm(bc his daughter, another tiefling, was with us). Yet another tiefling who was also in the party managed to escalate the situation into an almost tpk. I got shocked but I started rolling a new character. Other players complained and we got Deus-ex Machina resurrected. They all got their memory erased but me. I got to remember as a torture but got casted Geas so I could not tell what happened to anyone. At this point I accepted to help my mother temporary, so I could get her help to kill her brother, archdevil of lies, who had pissed her off greatly by killing me even if it was temporary. Anyway. Some sessions after, we band up to kill some goblins who were giving troubles in a village. I knew that village. We entered archdevil of lies realm thru there. People is acting weird in the village. They have Tourette's syndrome. I immediately think about the archdevil being behind it, so I go to pay a visit to the local temple. The clerics there were rescued from hell by us, and they were prisoners from the archdevil. I go there and I realize they are doing satanic masses to the archdevil bc they got corrupted while in hell. Alright, I tell the other players what I know and that I'm about to go ballistic into that temple, but that I got stuff to plan, so I offer them to keep with their mission, as I remain silent for the rest of the session so I don't take out the rail the entire party. I tell the master we can do something 1 on 1 other day or an extra session if somebody joins. Well, the whole party stands by me on and off rol and they agree to bomb that place. I contact city guard, the local knight, we storm the place, previous offer of surrender (which the clerics use to draw first blood) and we just kill them. I get a funny scene with the archdevil of lies in which I say "knight captures bishop". Everybody think that was epic. Some sessions after we are fighting a wereweasel. 2 of us get lycanthropy. We try to find a cure, but there is none close. DM says if we get the curse completed, we lose our characters. Before we finish the session I say "can I talk to my mother and ask her for help? I would swear to serve her and offer anything in return, not for my shake, but for the other character". I had a magic stone that would allow me to talk to anyone in 7 hells as long as I knew his or her name. Denied. "It's impossible for you to talk to your mother" "I studied archdevils during this last 2 years, can't I roll to see if I know some way to contact her?" "Nope, impossible". Alright. Next session the other PC that had lycanthropy backstabs me when I was at 0 hp and kills me. DM contacted him as the archdevil of lies and offered to heal him if he killed me. The other player did not ask for that. He was a warlock, he tried to contact his patron who also did not answer. The DM forced him into change patron for his previous patron would feel betrayed. I collect myself and privately tell him that I was disappointed at his choices. He says "but you were forcing other players to do what you wanted". I got extra mad, but decided to stay in the game bc I really appreciate the other players. Specially the one that killed my character bc I knew he was forced to do that. After this he forces other player(the one that was playing archdevil's daughter) to resurrect the Bishop we just killed even if he had no head. He just allowed a 5th lvl character to cast True Resurrection with no components. I kept playing for another year with another character in which the archdevil of lies became the main villain while having 2 infiltrated forced collaborators into the party. That archdevil was the DM, basically forcing us to do whatever he wanted, threatening PCs and railroading as hell. It got to a point in which we just didn't want to play anymore the adventures he offered us bc they were letal and somebody always ended up dying. He got mad an shut down the campaign when another player tried to resurrect the archdevil's daughter bc their characters were in love. "Resurrection is not possible in this setting".

[@IAmCar47]

Had me, and only me, roll a d20 after every single encounter, said something bad would happen if I rolled below a three. First encounter, I roll a one, and my charector, the party's only healer, exploded

[@BlueTressym]

WTF???

[@blackjackrose605]

I was in an all-evil campaign where we were playing thieves running from a major thieves guild after we pissed off the boss, who was an ancient blue dragon. We were level 6 at the time, so standing our ground and fighting was a bad idea. However, our party had managed to get teleported to the ass-end of nowhere along with one of the plot macguffins and we had a way to semi-reliably teleport like that again. I decided that we could probably use this place as a base, especially after a series of coincidences saw me and one other player (the rogue) stopping another crime and the town liking us. Meanwhile, the party's sorcerer was messing with the item we stole and got their mind altered by its curse (turning "good"), and wound up agreeing with me and the rogue that we should stay but for wildly different reasons. This was in contrast to the fighter, bard, and monk, who wanted to keep moving, and ended up leaving (on foot, not teleporting) without us. As soon as that happened, the DM wrote the sorcerer (brainwashed into being "good"), the rogue (going along with my plan of pretending to be heroes for shits and giggles), and myself (wanting to exploit the town as meat shields, but having not yet explained that to the others) out of the game. We were "too good" for their evil campaign. Literally one failed dice roll, one whim, or one conversation different, and any of us would have been fine. Hell, if she's let the scene continue, we'd have probably abandoned our idea and caught up with the others to try to get the sorcerer uncursed. But nope, fuck that, delete your characters. The replacement character I played in that campaign is the only character I've ever grown to actively hate, and it's all because I had to scramble to make them after the character I actually wanted to play got expelled from the game. Oh, and the absolute worst part? She was a paid dm. I was paying real money to be at this woman's table.

[@esthermorton5189]

I had the DM craft a monster that was basically a demilich turned up to 11 to use on our tenth level characters. He rolled the save I needed to make to not have my soul stolen for me while I was in the bathroom for less than a minute and after that he went through the rest of the encounter where I had to sit there and watch this super overpowered monster kill the rest of the party. Turns out he had intentionally made the encounter to be a TPK because he didn’t feel that our party was “good” enough (like in alignment) and pointed out my character as being the most evil even though my character was true neutral. He had planned from the get-go to get rid of my character at the beginning because he felt my character was the only one that could have prevented it from being a TPK because my Blood Hunter had the highest DPS.

[@pethronspeakerofstories]

Spoilers for CoS My DM had an issue railroading and refusing to let us find creative ways to solve problems. If we tried to stray from the module we were berated my npcs and had our free will taken from us. This story focuses on my party member rather than me. We had reached Vallaki and had tracked down the church's relic. We found the tavern where it was being kept and talked with the man who owned the establishment. He seemed terrified so our wood elf grave cleric, the star of this tale, used his eyes of the grave ability and could tell there were 6 undead creatures upstairs. We prepared to investigate to the dismay of the man. A lieutenant of Strahd showed up to challenge our party and keep us from going upstairs to retrieve the artifact. Before a full round had passed we could tell we were far outmatched and that our only chance was to hold him off while our cleric made a break up the stairs to grab the relic. He slipped past while the rest of us did our best to hinder the lieutenant. When our cleric found the room where the vampire spawn were hiding with the relic, he channeled his turn undead and frightened 4 out of 6 of them. We paused that combat for the night and picked up next week. When we returned, the DM made only our cleric (who had rolled near the top of the initiative order) reroll his initiative along with the vampire spawn. This put him after them and let them have an extra round of swipes and chances to break the hold of fear. He grabbed the relic and nearly made it to the door but was overwhelmed by the vampires. His character was taken after this to be turned into one of Strahd's minions, while the DM berated the player for acting foolishly, acting like he was stupid despite his character's limited knowledge. We pointed out that his plan may have worked if he hadn't been singled out to reroll initiative. The group dissolved soon after that and left a sour taste in my mouth despite how good CoS is supposed to be.

[@roark914]

Definitely sounds like your DM took the severity of CoS way too seriously. Someone used an ability of theirs to recognize a threat, you all worked together to stall for that character to get the relic, and then when the cleric uses their feature to make a mad dash, the DM just pushes it to the side. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with that module. It's super fun and I hope you have found or find a group that has more fun solving problems without DM fiat.

[@ghostishere143]

3 year campaign. Started as a 5e Lvl 1 assassin rogue dragon borne, pirate themed character. Carried around materials for a ring of minor Invisibility until the last session because no one could or would make it. Was given an amazing bolt thrower with only 5 rounds that weighed 30lbs but could do massive damage (could potentially 2-3 shot adult dragons) but couldn't find or make any new ammo but couldn't get rid of the thrower so I was denied a lot of inventory space. Had a flip belt that would teleport me away from damage, but I couldn't attune to it for whatever reason and the DM had full control, often putting me in horrible and often fatal predicaments (ex: teleported me 150' in the air and taking 15D6 fall damage because someone was going to pat me on the back. That was 74 damage at level 6... I can still see the marks on my old sheet.) We were teens, I was the broody goth kid (had a pretty F'ed up childhood and parents were in the middle of a divorce.) I was extremely small at that age. I often got used as a unit of measurement. 'you can fit 4 of Ghost in this box'. I was often the quiet kid at the table just kinda watching what was going on. But damn looking back, it felt very abusive.

[@eradian1]

I always tell this story cause it still urks me. My first proper attempt at a session and I made a tabaxi monk cause I just wanted a character that could dodge really well. So I end up with a pretty standard monk and we're all out into a cage after being captured by some kobolds that we have to escape from. Mind you we're in a cave with zero light except a few torches in the distance and on the first few seconds of us looking around I try to slip out of our chains. Got like an 18+ stuff and managed to get out, but I specifically said I wanted to lay the chains over my wrists so if any guards walked by it would look like they were still on. Everything goes as planned and then some guards walk by (normal like level 3 kobolds) and without a single check see over 30 feet into the cell, past a dozen people, that my chains are off, throw a rock at my character's head, it hits and I think I was either unconscious or at one HP. Again... All without a roll. Called bullshit, everyone looked at me like I was stupid and even said we could just retcon it and say I was still in chains. "Ok but you'll still be at 1 HP". I just got up and left

[@jonathanhunter1350]

This was not directed at me, but a fellow player. We where playing 3.5. I don't remember what creature we fighting but it had the special ability- swallow. Now the mechanics say if the creature succeeded in a bite attack it could make a grapple check to swallow the I other creature. Now this player had a ring which as part of it's powers makes the creature that is wearing it automatically succeeds in all grapple checks. The dm did not like this and said it does not work against swallow attacks so our paladin got swallowed . Now I was also running a game that this dm was playing in and I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. So I attacked the party with a purple worm..... and of course all my bite attacks where against his character. Now he had the same ring as iyr paladin and tried to remind me of the powers of the ring. I smiled at him and told him that I was using his ruling on the ring.

[@ContagiousRepublic]

be me, 11+ campaign old multiclass rogue- > wizard with one prestige level of spy. Amnesiac (back to level 1 rogue, unaware of even his race) and looted of everything he ever got, but he's got .... baggage from his old life both good and bad that WILL come up (nothing OP). And a +10% exp bonus regaining exp in the classes he had or equivalent under new systems. Temporary one-off campaign new DM I met 4 minutes ago: "I destroyed your character sheet, here, you are a fighter I just rolled. Your name is Adolf". ME: ADOLF????????

[@TyphinHoofbun]

The number of times someone goes to play a drow, the DM completely allows it, and then hits them with "Oh, everyone is super racist to you including me, so your character can never do anything or participate in the game." A good DM should have warned them first, explained what kind of thing they were in for, but they clearly did not do that. --- My story is that I made a specific character, something I came up with and wanted to do because it sounded pretty cool. A rogue, but not a criminal. She had all the skills, but it was because she was part of an academy/university, and she was an archeologist that specialized in delving into ruins. So she had lockpicking, trap detection/disarming, high intelligence and wisdom because she's smart, knowledge of History and other skills, etc. Indiana Jones meets Lara Croft, basically. We're in a dungeon, my character's natural element. We come into a room with a mechanism, my character's strength. It's a lever with a row of lights above it, with switches to turn the lights on or off. I examine it for traps and find nothing, so I pull the lever. I get shocked, lose some HP, and the lights have switched to a different configuration. Now, outside of the game, I'm a programmer, so I'm immediately thinking in terms of patterns and binary codes and math. I make notes of which ones were on when I pulled it, and which ones are on now. I pull the lever, get shocked, get a new set of lights, and am frantically working out relationships. I had to be healed before I was killed by this lever. I've got a set of data but I'm still not making sense of it. I've asked if I can use History to decipher anything, but no good. I've asked Perception, I've asked Insight, I've asked Arcana since it's lightning, I've rolled pretty much every single skill in the game that could possibly relate to this situation to try to get any kind of hint. Nothing. Keep trying light combinations and getting zapped. I have to be healed again, before I was killed. The party is grumbling, we're fairly low-level so the cleric doesn't have that many slots, it's been something like 45 minutes and the air REEKS of electrocuted rat-girl. I've asked multiple times about skills, and either been told it doesn't apply or I didn't get anything despite high rolls. Any time I've asked "What skill / Is there any skill I can use to get info?" the response was "Tell me what you want to roll, and I'll see." I'm near death a third time. I tell the DM I'll use the potion I bought at the start of the game so I can keep trying. Finally, he goes, "Well, before you do that... would you like a hint?" Oh yes please, finally! "There actually is no solution. The lights are random, and no matter what they're set to, you'll always be zapped. This puzzle exists purely to trick people into overthinking it and damaging themselves. I really didn't expect you to be so stubborn about it." He's been giggling with glee every time he tells me what the new pattern of lights is. I asked him why none of my skill checks, from my character explicitly specifically created for exactly this kind of situation, revealed any of this, his response was "Well, you didn't ask about [skill name]." I forgot which one he named, but I told him that yes I did, twice, and at the time he said that it didn't apply. "Oh, you did? Oops." I walked out of the room in anger. It took half an hour before I could calm down enough to even talk to him. He handwaved a healing fountain to have more uses so I could heal up again without using the potion, and we continued, but the game fell apart a couple sessions later anyway, for unrelated reasons. To this day, I have a really hard time being willing to play in any game he's running. (He's not great but he's okay enough as another player, at least. He's a roommate, so avoiding all games with him would basically cut me out altogether.)

[@demonicgrub1025]

This was one of my first campaigns ever, so I didn't have too much experience under my belt. My party got involved in some rp that I didn't particularly care about down at the city docks, so I narrated that my character went to the corner of the street to wait for them, maybe 100 ft away from them. Very important to note that I specifically said the corner of the street, not that I was going past it. Because my dm narrated me walking around the corner and being spotted by some people who were beating on the door of the place we were aiming to get to. He then meta gamed that they knew my intentions of getting to this house, despite us being in a busy city, with every real possibility that I was just walking past. This group of guys went to gang up on me, and I tried to run away. Only to be grappled into the water by a merfolk with a harpoon. I was so thoroughly pulverized by the time my party made it to the scene that they had no chance of saving me, and my character died. All because I had no interest in one particular rp encounter, and decided to remove myself from it.

[@raviasadventures]

That Drow story is so similar to one of my first experiences playing dnd, I just thought she sounded like she looked cool but everyone was insistent on playing the racism angle which isn't great when you already experience that in real life and are playing an escapist fantasy game to escape? But we were out in the middle of nowhere anyway, not in a city where just ignoring cultural/political dynamics or whatever might be weird, so it felt especially hollow.

[@joshrivet4011]

It's short, and a bit of a repeat from memory; While I was in Job Corps, I played DnD with my dorm mates, the DM was a great story teller and someone I naively considered a friend. During our very first game, I was in a rut creatively and decided to lean into a trope; a fighter who saw magic use as a crutch. The very first NPC we met was a DMPC who was a multi class fighter/wizard. When they confronted my character about his beliefs on magic and (both in character and out) the DM made fun of the distaste for magic, I foolishly Challenged the DMPC to spar. Unsurprisingly, I lost and was given the worst jobs on the ship we were taking. After the trip, when the DMPC asked if I had changed my mind, I reminded him that he won without using magic. One lightning bolt later, I refused to play any games with him again.

[@roark914]

I'm sorry you had such a power trip of a dungeon master lmao. I hope you've had more positive experiences since then!

[@joshrivet4011]

@@roark914 I have, and have become (by the statements of those who play with me) a good DM. I won't lie, the first time I got a good handle on how to be fair and fun as a DM, there may or may not have been an arrogant NPC who the party hunted down. Whether this bounty was a fighter/wizard or not is purely coincidental.

[@supermanshock159]

My DM made my goddess forsake me. The reasoning: 1) I unknowingly befriended a “zombie” who, the whole time, I thought was a Leonin. 2) My party didn’t kill an awakened kraken that begged for its life. Evidently all krakens are evil. 3) The homebrew weapon I was given BY THE DM was “too powerful for mortal hands”. 4) He hated that I used Bless during our combat encounters. So now I have two levels in cleric and I can’t use my cleric spells or channel divinity.

[@stantheman9002]

I played Pathfinder with a DM once who hated the idea of me playing a Paladin for some reason. I'd spent hours making my character, came up with a good backstory, and was excited to play. Our party started in a tavern with no combat. We had already ordered drinks from the barkeep so I was shocked when I asked the barkeep a question and the DM made me roll for initiative. I tried to say I didn't want combat, just to ask a question. Suddenly the level 20 barkeep murdered my level 1 paladin in a matter of 2 turns. No matter what I did, the DM would one up it. I was so pissed.

[@SuperLumianaire]

Sounds like he doesn't like paladins because he's a scuzzbucket.

[@gregorysoldatman]

What on earth

[@karisasani7006]

I bet this DM had too many "Lawful Stupid" paladins that he treated it with such hostility

[@RikuwOblivion]

My character was a Hexblade Warlock who was inversed. He was evil, the deity was a justice god (think ghost rider). I had said he would be fairly hands off as long as I did justice things during character creation. Every single thing I did that wasn't good aligned or would do something the dm didn't want I was told my god would de power me if I pushed forward and I would become a really bad fighter. Great. I was the party face since no one else role played much so I was constantly stuck trying to move us without pushing the wrong buttons and still staying in character. He was normally the best dm but this just hurt and I desperately want to run that character in a game where I can actually enjoy him.

[@StonedPriest]

Playing a wild magic sorcerer, DM uses 3 different D100 tables for Wild Surges. Each table has 100 individual possibilities. Whenever a surge happens The DM was rolling on one of the tables "randomly". We were also using a house rule that surges happened on a roll of 5 or lower instead of a nat 1. Over the course of 16 sessions, I set off Fireball on myself and the party at least 3 times to the point where everytime I cast a spell they would stress out. I finally had to ask him if I could kill the house rule, and let me roll the D100. Haven't hit a self fireball again since, and started actually getting interesting surges.

[@ryanabernathy7821]

Easily one that still haunts me and serves to remind me to be fair to ALL my players as a GM to this day. Was new to D&D and a group in high school, having played one game of D&D prior that was essentially just a dungeon killfest with no roleplay what so ever. My new DM asks about my character and having watched me role completely average, decided to give me a few extra points in strength since I wanted to play an Elven Ranger (CG) who was focuses on Ranged bow attacks (remember this) and viewed strength as a dump stat (putting my 8 there that then got bumped up to a 14 instead). Not bad, think this guy is alright so far. Then I get introduced to the rest of the party (D&D 3.5 for the record): A half devil sorcerer (LE), a celestial paladin (LG), a drider assassin (CE), a fey sorcerer/bard (CN), a doppelganger assassin/cleric (NE), a half-orc barbarian (CN) who was married a goddess and granted a fiery axe of "whythehelldoyouhavethis?!", a psionic warrior were-scorpion (CE), and a half-dragon fighter who became a talon of Tiamat (CE). Feeling a LITTLE underwhelmed by my character suddenly, the DM promptly tells me that because I don't have any magical gear, they will think of something super awesome to get me up to their level in terms of power. "Alright, cool!" I say and proceed to sit through roughly 14 sessions of being ignored except for the occasional "oh yeah, what do you do?" whenever the DM would bother to remember I was even there in the first place. When I finally asked for about the second or third time about the magical weapon promised, the DM sighs as if annoyed and offers me a single (not two for dual wielding purposes) dragonbone scimitar (not even magically enhanced in any ways, which I promptly refuse). They took that personally apparently and set off to kill my character off two sessions later. Took me awhile to get back into any roleplaying setting, but luckily got into my stride and enjoy GMing now even. Looking back knowing what I do now, I would have walked much sooner.

[@DekrosnaArcana]

being a greenhorn as a DM my first campaign was homebrew but the premise of it was based around actually TALKING during certain situations rather than 'draw weapon and attack' I wanted to do something that was different and to have some instances that would punish any murderhobo antics.

[@zanielgaming4296]

Oh boy do I have a fun short for this. There is more to the story but at the moment I’m a bit short on time. But the event went as follows. We just finished a fight with bandits and we were camping for the night between towns. One of the players decides he is going to try and sneak into my tent to steal some things. Her rolls stealth and fails. He then decides to grapple my character and my rolls can’t break his grapple for two attempts. He then proceeds to convince my character that I drug his character into my tent with the intent to rap him. I said “No that would be stupid” but the DM says roll to counter and I failed the roll. DM then says I believe I tried rapping the other character and now have disadvantage until the next day.

[@MitchT97]

Not me but a friend back in college a few years ago. There was probably 4 or 5 players in this game I believe my friend was a human ranger and another guy was a half orc barbarian, but the guy who got shorted by the DM was a gnome in the party. The DM hated gnomes for some reason. They were running some random short campaign I couldn’t tell you what but they’d come to a cave guarded by some wolves. The fight was almost over in no time with only one wolf left in a matter of rounds when the final wolf stood between the Half-orc barbarian and the gnome. The orc player threw a spear and got a nat 1 so the dm ruled it still hit the wolf and killed it, but also hit with so much force it went through the wolf, skewered the gnome and pinned them both to the wall of the cave. Yeah no death saves either he just died. What a nice wholesome DM right?

[@danieljones3291]

My nephew struggles to keep players, and for a reason. As a DM, he metagames and has a player vs. DM mentality. Examples include monsters suddenly avoiding a character they'd surrounded because they took the dodge action, and specifically creating homebrew creatures that counter our party. Currently he almost never holds session because either not enough players show up, or he isn't up to it.

[@MercuryA2000]

I was playing a druid. Circle of grasslands, so my wildshape wasn't particularly powerful, but he did give me a magical staff. The issue: We were fighting enemies that were completely immune to magic (they absorbed it from the area around them). So RIP me and our Bard. But, we were in a forest which was causing fog of war. I asked if I could use wildshape and the class feature I literally just unlocked to weave through the trees functioning as walls so I could scout and be useful that way. Nope! The trees were magical, completely against the lore, specifically because he didn't want someone going through walls. I climbed on top of the half giant in our party and said if someone takes damage I use healing word on them. That's about all I could do.

[@happypasta1229]

this was during my first few plays dnd we where doing meet ups several weekends with lots of different parties going on at the same time. My dm was away sick so I had to join a group that was ahead for one day. All other groups said they where too full and I was stuck with kids way older than me as a group. They immediantly took a disliking to me the dm forcing me to play a hafling race so I decided to play a bard as that is a good combo to use. The first problem I met was encountering my first teamate, the barbarian. This guy was the most annoying person I have yet to this day for a dnd session. Instead of greeting me or anything. He asked the Dm if he could pick me up and put me in a sewer. The Dm allowed this so I quickly intervened asking the dm If I could possibly scare the barbarian into letting me go. He also allowed it. I rolled a 19 on intimidation with a bonus. This is what the dm said to me. The intimidation does not seem to work on the barbarian as he is a barbarian. I was jaw dropped. The dm then proceeded to tell me that I was drowning because I didn't have enough strength to swim and grab the bars even though it was a fairly shallow. I died from drowning. I had to make a new character keeping a sharp eye out for the barbarian this time. I was now playing as a grung paladin. I was actually proud of this guy and hoping he could survive this annoying group. This time I spawn near the rest of the group. I walk up to the rouge and the barbarian also appears. the barbarian shoves me into a sewer again this time theres bloody crocodiles. (side note the dm said I was lacking water and suffocating from the lack of it and I pointed out that he previously just said it started raining while I was making my character.) I can easily jump out of this seeing as I'm a human sized frog and ask the dm to allow me to jump out of the sewer. The dm says yes but then tells me as I'm beggining to roll to jump out that a crocodile bites me and tears off my leg. He tells me I can no longer jump out of the sewer. So I say I begin to cry. He tells me that my cry is greatly weakend due to me being in pain. However by some miracle our ranger comes along and hears me. Grabs a long stick and pulls me out. FINALLY I scream in my head someone nice (I was very wrong). the ranger takes me on a carriage to a marriage ceremony between two of our characters where everyone besides the rouge was there. I was not allowed into the ceremony and you can guess what happened next. Yep barbarian gets out of his seat and throws me into another sewer. I begin to miss the other sewers at this point because this one was the most evil one the dm pulled on me. The sewer was smaller than the others meaning I could get out however the sewer was laid in quick sand, dosed in alcohol and then soggy because of the rain. The barbarian and the ranger then proceed to get a log from nearby and play wack a frog. I'm now drowning and the dm says I need to get a nat 20 to get out of this with disadvantage. The barbarian offers his hand out to me to pull me up. I put my hand up and it get torn off purposly by the barbarian. I'm taking two rolls of dmg per turn and not even being letting to roll to get out by this point. The ranger holds out the log for me before taking it back lighting it on fire and chucking it in. I'm now in thick firey moist quick sand and then die after having to roll 5 hit dice at a time. I make my third and final character which the dm Is pissed by this because he thought he broke me. I'm not going to tell you what my character was because as soon as the character was made the dm got off his table went over to the many dice for everyone to use grabbed a d1000 and rolled saying that a gods lightning rained down onto me. I got revenge by telling the organiser and owner of the dice the next day about how unfairly I was treated. Which ended the dm with a very big warning saying if he did one more bad thing he would not allowed to be dungeon master ever again.

[@chefkawasaki7158]

Alright ik I'm late and this probably won't get seen but I love telling this story A dm that I already have qualms with playing with (previous drama but it was a chance to play a high level character) told us to make level 17 characters I rolled crap for stats so, I made a Grave Cleric, one shot, all the heals, all the support, exactly what we needed We were also told that we only get 1 +1 weapon or shield and then a +2 weapon or armor With some bonus proficencies in heavy armor and shields a casual 23 ac, very nice Then we all got one randomly rolled magic item, that he put entirely no effort to balance considering one player got a ring of ice resistance (in an adventure the he KNEW had only 1 individual creature that can deal ice damage) and another got an OATH BOW unfair #1 imo We're traveling through a dwarven under city and we go up against unfair encounter, after unfair encounter, 5 bard like characters, all with legendary actions, attacking three times with a "modified version of their attack" I guess 8d6 on an int save of 18 with half damage on a success is fine for one attack, kinda annoying when we need to try and survive upwards of 12 a turn. We continue on, a room full of demons, I prepared banishment specifically for this reason, I had a feeling demons and high level go hand in hand so better to stay prepared. I cast banishment on the general, wording of the spell (loosely) "target is sent back to their plane of origin or sent to a temporary demiplane that they're held there for up to a minute" Everyone in the party was hype "fuck yeah let's go" as the dm just looks flatly at me with no roll, no explanation "it doesn't work on him" ....excuse you? The spell literally made exactly for this purpose... just "it doesn't work"? He then is like "well you can cast it on one of the little guys" So you're telling me the level 4 spell slot of which I have 2 left instead of stopping the guy who just dropped a double cast of Cone of Fire (respeced damage cone of cold so 16d8 damage on the first turn) I'm gonna stop someone who attacks twice with d4+5 Nice #2 Now for the actual part that really irks me We made it to the final encounter and we successfully sneak up on ancient red dragon We sit there planning for a good 20 minutes trying to figure out how to deal with it while being 1. Spent on most resources 2. Sitting at about 3/4 hp and 3. Having no magic items that a high level party would have to deal with an ancient red dragon. Easy...if you're a FREAKIN ROCKET SURGEON We decided on using a mixture of the Oathbow, the Assassin rogues assassinate, several weapon enchantment spells focused on by me and the wizard separately. Then to top it all off my channel divinity to double the damage With ALL of this taken into account we paryed to make this a quick fight. After that first shot connected we started totaling up the damage, we surprised the dragon so the rogue got the automatic crit, we were cheering, super excited and laughing when we finally realized we broke our table's damage record 396 damage on a single hit. The dm: "Well...I'm giving this thing max hp" ....all of the resources, all the planning, just *whistle* boom gone, the dm just openly told us that no matter what our prep, our attempts to deal with the problems he throws at us, just don't matter We then go for 7 rounds on this damn dragon dealing over 1000 damage in total, An Assassin rogue, wizard and monk supported by a Grave Cleric has pretty good survivability and damage output. After that, I vowed to not be a player at his table again 12 attacks 8d6 psychic damage, sure Banishment not working on a demon general, you're pushing your luck Almost 400 damage trying to deal with the GIANT RED PROBLEM ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM "I guess he gets max hp now" Nope, I'm out, done, idc anymore Unfair to all of us and imo very disrespectful to all of us

[@AgentWhite]

Playing Pathfinder 1e in my university group, a few things happened that were symptomatic of having quite a few newbies and the DM (thought) he was the most experienced. I was playing a Half-Orc Monk named Agronak (which made DM grouse as 'man it really doesn't fit the setting but fine') and our group had gotten captured by some lord's army. One of the guards chuckled and offered us a chance to fight for our freedom, so my character stepped forward and agreed to single combat. They let me out of the cage, and the guard goes 'choose a weapon, orc'. My character looks at his fellow guards and points at one, asking for his spear. DM starts laughing, thinking I hadn't read my own sheet as I wasn't proficient in spears. OOC, I said just let me continue, I've got an idea, so he says 'okay, they toss you the spear, you're rolling with a minus because you don't know how to use a spear'. I say 'Agronak takes the spear and cracks it over his knee, holding each half like an escrima stick'. DM asks me why I did that, I told him that I may not be proficient in spears, but I do have ability with improvised weapons, which is what I'm going for. DM just derisively says "you aren't holding two improvised weapons, you're holding one broken weapon that you're using wrong. You roll with an even bigger minus". I think it's kinda bullshit but I don't argue, it's his game, so after one round of rolling like that, I say 'Agronak, realising this isn't working as well as he had hoped, drops the sticks and engages with his standard martial arts.' DM says that the guards took me dropping my weapon as a sign of me yielding so the rest of the guards bundle me back in the cage. I felt like I got rules lawyered or the guy just didn't like me, I thought just having two sticks would definitely count as an improvised weapon and be a fun, in-character way to show the guards I was fighting on my terms, not theirs, but I just got shut down and wasted everyone's time.

[@TheGraveKnight]

Why do I feel the first time player Drow story was an instance of the DM and party trying to gatekeep

[@dakgnol9004]

My barbarian was falling from the sky after a failed attempt to smash a flying enemy with her explosive greatsword and needed to stop the fall in some way or take serious fall damage. I had her attempt to stand on the greatsword's blade (she had metal spurs on her ankles that improved her climbing abilities, so it was fine) and use the sword's explosion to negate her velocity. I ended up rolling in the high twenties on the check to do so, and the DM proceeded to state that I managed to do it, but the force was so strong that she ended up flipping over and cracking her head on the ground, knocking her out. She succeeded so well that it wrapped around to being a critical failure. Why? There was a running meme that she tended to stumble and fall a lot due to coincidentally unlucky rolls throughout the campaign, and he thought a boss fight with instant-death mechanics would be a great time to forcefully perpetuate the joke.

[@BlueGriffin20]

In CoS, we had a dungeon master change mid campaign. Not sure what was passed from DM to DM, but everything seem fine. We started to travel the wilds of the lands and were asked if we wanted a group of locals to guide us that we met while traveling. Knowing how untrustworthy some of the locals could be, we declined. The next session we come upon a large hill with a gnat swarm attacking a lady. While trying to save her, she “dies” and we kill the swarm. As the party discusses what happened my lizardfolk warlock notices her body trying to cast a spell. I counterspell it successfully and try to crush her body with my foot. I was told it was like trying to crush a rock. Warning my party she the body tries to cast a spell again and I go to counterspell. Failing this time the hill we are all on disappears and we all fall. I try to feather fall the group, but I used my reaction for counter spell, I don’t have time and we fall near max distance hitting the ground and killing all but one of the party and the lady too from fall damage… Apparently the hill was fake and the lady cast dispell to get rid of it wanting to at least kill us if she was going to die too. The guides would have been able to know the land and tell us that that hill wasn’t suppose to be there. DM tells everyone to make new characters for the next session including the person who survived, but they will weave those characters back into the narrative. Felt more than a little cheap at the time.

[@breyor1]

Playing AL (Adventure League) and we hit time to clean up. So, the Dm looks at everyone, Cuts Scenes to everyone grouping up in a specific location an dropped a Gelatunous Ooze on everyone. We died outright…

[@starstorm3400]

I played a one shot with a group of friends and my dm told me beforehand that all the character were going to die. So I asked my dm if I could play my swashbuckler rouge that I have been wanting to try out and if they could be the only survivor so I could have the chance of playing them later on in the campaign if my then character died and then actually be connected to the plot of the main campaign. My dm said yes and we both were really excited so when the day of the one shot came I was pretty excited. But the first moment we get into combat against bugbears and goblins my dm then tells me that the whole battlefield was difficult terrain. I kinda sat there dumbfounded when they said that because they never said the WHOLE one shot would be in difficult terrain needless to say I couldn’t fight because I have 3 goblins with crossbows pointed in my direction and the closest enemy to me is 50ft away while I had no ranged weapons. So I had to wait the whole battle being the most pathetic thing ever. But even then I was fine because my character was going to be the survivor right? Later My party gets trapped in an underground mud tunnel and as we move further in we see it a huge green dragon. I’m excited for the fight but then my dm reminds me we are in difficult terrain and things start to get a lot harder. after the dragon gets me down to half hp I shoot a orb of darkness at its head to blind it. I thought I was finally In the clear but then my dm chimes In and says “it can still see you” I ask why and they tell me it has TWO HEADS. I was astonished because they seemed to have skipped over that when they were describing the dragon before fighting it. But I was fine they said they wouldn’t kill my character until when one party member died. Then It turned towards me again and my character was killed turns out my dm couldn’t figure out a way to not have my character die so they killed them and let a different person survive instead. I know it may seem a bit selfish but I really wanted to play that character later, if I would have known I wasn’t going to be able to play and survive I wouldn’t have played that character. ( if you are wondering why I don’t just play them anyway it’s because that the one shot was canon in the world of the main campaign I play in)

[@devlinambers9408]

Sounds like you need to not be playing with such a shitty DM

[@Shades14]

I made a character who was just a humble healer who wanted to go out and do good in the world, so she left her wife with her parents and the promise of returning someday. Many sessions later, our DM had us head towards my character's village, and I was actually excited at the thought of my character getting to see her family again and catching them up on her adventures. But as the party came over the hill, the DM said we saw that the village had been burned to the ground. We all ran in to try to look for survivors and just to twist the knife, the DM said that we had found my character's wife just on the brink of death with no chance of healing or reviving her and the corpses of my character's parents were right nearby as well. I was in tears, about ready to cry in front of my whole gaming group. Everyone else was outraged at the DM for doing this, even yelling at him for being so cruel. The DM tried to justify it by saying, "It's to spur your character on to the adventure like Luke Skywalker." This was already after my character had been on several adventures and even helped defeat BBEG of previous stories. She didn’t need a call to adventure. The worst part was, we later found out it wasn’t the villain of that campaign that burned down the village. It was just a random goblin attack that was never brought up again. No justice, no revenge, just the needless slaughter of everything my character held dear. The DM did plenty of other cruel things like that to other players for no real reason other tan to make the player upset. We eventually mutinied against him and booted him from the group. It's sad too because other than his penchant for needless cruelty, he was a pretty good DM. When one of the other players took over as DM, they pulled a cosmic retcon on a lot of ex-DM's cruelty and our characters had no memory that any of ex-DM's cruelty had ever happened to them unless it was something actually relevant to the story. Now my character's village is in one piece again with her family alive and waiting for her to come home and my character's wife is a badass guardian of the village who puts arrows between the eyes of any incoming goblins with hostile intent.

[@dojopar6574]

My Level 8 horizon walker ranger one time tried to use the ethereal step feature to pop into the ethereal plane for 1 turn and move through a door to a wizard's study that was locked. When I popped through the door and stood on the other side waiting to come out of the ethereal plane, the DM told me that I didn't. Apparently, the wizards study was enchanted with private sanctum which made planar travel not work inside of it meaning that when my 6 seconds of etheralness ended the DM ruled that rather than me getting shunted to the nearest area outside of the sanctum I just didn't leave the ethereal plain. So my Level 8 character with no way to actually escape the ethereal plane (and believe me i tried my hardest asking if i could try and use my sending stone to our guild leader who could cast planeshift but the DM said that since the guild master couldnt pinpoint my exact location on the ethereal plane they couldn't get to me to planes hitting me out), I was basically insta dead for trying to use a clever solution to a problem. That was the moment I had enough of that DM and quit the campaign.

[@thambo9566]

I had a DM who was known for being tough but not unfair, which made his actions that much more shocking to me. I brewed this plan before this session an I giddily told the what my plan was and they gave me great encouragement to do it and they were as excited as me to see this epic result. I was a wizard, he had given a fair few levels to work with, with my level I did some math and found out I could summon 24 steam Mephits. My plan was to have all 24 use their breathe weapon, steam Mephits explode on death too so I was in no way worried about the Mephits hitting each other as it would just be more damage. We were told that we would need damage on this monster as it was quite dangerous. We found the monster in a cave, I summoned all my Mephits before entering. I had an invisible servant scout ahead and it got killed. I sent the Mephits in to where the servant died and excitedly told them to use their close to 48 d4 roll damage. Then my DM said words that crushed my spirit. The hoard mimic used three poison breath weapons on my unsuspecting Mephits and killed all but 2 of them. To say I was salty is a very mild way of putting it.

[@ironer100]

This is a DnDA2 story i played a while back (not long, but still TLDR at the end): Me - Rogue DMPC - DMPC fighter/cleric turned PC... but still got DMPC privilege DM - DM that hated me DM: "You are in front of a fortress with about 100 skeletons in the courtyard, none are on the walls, what do you do?" Me: "Since there are none on the wall, can I try and climb it with my grappling hook" *queue the like 5 strength check to toss the thing up* DMPC: "I break down the door" *Rolls decent enough to succeed* DM: "Ok, one of the skeleton let's loose his arrow when you enter, no initiative, it's a readied action, nat 20, nat 20 to confirm the crit, the rogue is dead, the others you get your surprise round" Me: "Wait, why me? i'm literally next to the wall trying to climb it, it would need to be a crazy angle to even see me... and i'm not the one charging in like an idiot, why do i get punished for his doing?" DM: "Shut up you are dead" ... I later learned that the DM wanted to be a player and not a DM... and since rogue was his "childhood class", he said things like "I punish him for playing the class wrong"... because i was playing a rogue with a bow and not daggers... never knew you could throw them at the time AND i could never be sneaky everything would always see me (i was and still am consistently rolling bad)... so at that point i don't know what he wanted me to do... TLDR: The DM hated me "because i played rogue wrong and he would do a better job if it was him", he used an excuse to 1-shot my character from a readied action... during OUR surprise round...

[@Devilhand21]

This happened recently and it wasn't dnd, but was an rp based around MHA/BNHA, my character was set to fight another player's character. They have the ability to animate any inanimate object. We rolled initiative, and they won by .5, and then I kept rolling badly. Now, if I had been able to roll attack with disadvantage, I would have been a lot more calm and understanding. However the gm had a different system where it was attack priority, and the player kept getting it constantly because they tossed chains and made it so I couldn't do anything but defend, or attempt to. The player then would boast about how they defeated me and how their character was a menace, to which I called bs, and I had a huge fight with the player and I left the campaign (I rp on mrpg since I live on a mountain and currently waiting to do more college classes), and the gm and I were able to talk and he said in dms that the player had abused the ability and that he had hoped that wouldn't have happened, and that he would have a chat with the player before letting me back on. I admitted that I was childish, but I woke up at 2:30 am that day and had been wanting to puke for the entire day and did puke a bit, and rolling so badly and the player boating how they did was just the tipping point for my anger point since I obviously wasn't feeling well. I am part of the campaign again since I have been active in the gm's campaign and he said I am one of his best players, my characters are essential to the plot (Both are sisters and one is a villain that will be attacking in a future session and had been introduced recently in a past rp session) and he's changing the system so that it's turn based and won't screw anyone over anymore because the campaign should have been a tpk a while back since we fought spider people that can use webs, and we should have been incapable of fighting them since they could have done what the player did, and made it impossible to fight, and I pointed this out in the argument and everyone who saw the argument knows this to be fact. The player tried to argue back that because my character can fly, that I would have screwed them over, but my character has never flown before and wouldn't try anything crazy since she can exhaust herself while using her ability to use flames and would stay only a bit high. And the player is almost never active and they decided to think they were billy badass and couldn't be defeated. I plan on using my villain to knock down the player a peg in the future since they obviously need a lesson in humility, but that's for later.

[@eldardrakeson]

Posted moons ago, but still rankles me first game ever. first character ever. Tex-Trek '93, random pickup game advertised as 'new player friendly' ADnD - dm killed him 5 minutes in without a roll. he was a thief hiding in a bush on a ridge above an orc camp, over 250m away from the closest edge. (think 3 football fields, give or take a few meters) my turn came up, and so I said 'I lay as low to the ground as possible, and peer out from under the cover of the bush to see if I can see anything at all, is the camp calm, quiet, are there any arguments, etc?' 'you get shot in the eye. you're dead.' so yeah, from the far side of the camp, which was roughly another football field length across (so somewhere around the 350m mark) a one hit die, one eyed, drunken orc pinpoint shot me in the eye with a light crossbow. without even rolling. because the dm didn't like rogues. (which I'd asked before I even rolled the character if there were any limitations or preferences, and he said 'nope, roll what you like.') Honestly almost put me off playing entirely.

[@jesseyancy1160]

Had a DM give my Character an Artifact (long story) but didn't know it gave an ability. Dm took away the ablility only when it helped the bbeg, but would constantly remind me that he wasn't allowing my ability to work.

[@tommartin1223]

I was literally killed off in the 1st 3 min of play. I was in a bar. Drinking. Guy walks in firing randomly. Hits me. I had never played this game before. Left a sour taste in my mouth. Did not play for years after that. He literally killed off the party of 6 people in about an hour. With very little roll playing and combat. All attacks were random or sniper like. About the dumbest gm ever

[@maximilliansummers3725]

Playing one of the Warhammer 40k roleplaying games. We were told to make overpowered characters. After I showed him my character, he said it was too powerful and nerfed it. Nobody else's character got nerfed, just mine. Then at the very beginning of the first session, The GM's severely overpowered insert character kidnapped, drugged and cybernetically enhanced my character without even discussing the idea with me. I literally packed up my stuff, walked out, and never went back. This wasn't the first time he railroaded a campaign to make his character look amazing. The guy should have been a writer, NOT a GM

[@ThatTexasGuyyyy]

My DM's have been pretty decent all things considered, but my Sorcerer did die in our game because he claimed the eye ray of a Beholder's disintegrate beam dealt half damage on a successful save. I was extremely squishy, and had already taken severe damage, so the nat 20 I got on the save was the thing that was going to save me there, but I died due to the halved damage.

[@nicolasv6031]

lol, that's why, despite me spending time planning shit for my friends/players to experience and have fun with, I'm pretty damn open to letting them do whatever the hell they want. decide, "fuck this shit" and raid the starting town rather than fulfill the town's suspicious request? sure, just give me a minute cuz I have *no other areas planned out!!* so, they had a relatively small fight while I planned out how tf to deal with this, then let them continue on their merry way (after ramming their car through a building and 2 of the 4 of them being knocked unconscious) rock up to an abandoned city and ram your car through the front entrance of a mall, rather than sneak in and investigate if there are any baddies hiding in there? hell yeah, those front doors are obliterated, reduced to atoms! and, you rolled well enough that neither you nor the car took damage, nice! a horrible monstrosity has you pinned down to the ground, you can't reach your weapons, and your ally tried tranquing the thing and it didn't work, so you want to try hoist it above you and rip its arms off? sure, roll the dice! .... welp, you go Kratos on this sorry thing's ass and tear its arms so that nothing but tendons, veins and strings of flesh hold them together. nice! a deranged mad man is charging at you with what looks to be blood covering his mouth and lips, so you want to gab his head and try to slam it against the ground? ok, roll! ... well, in a feat of impressive strength and skill, you grab the dude's face, and smash the back of his skull against the floor, crushing it beneath the palm of your hand! btw, this was all with the same group using Apocalypse World. the other group I'm dm'ing is much more tame in comparison, though I love both of their solutions to solving problems and challenges they face!

[@yokaiwolfcreations3076]

title says it all...basically i have 2 moments that come to mind but the worst being when my characters trapfinding ability was basically taken away for no reason. we were okaying 3.5 sunless citadel. i was playing a ninja (basically a rogue with some added flavor fun) and i had trapfinding simular to a rogue. even with a +6 to my checks and never rolling under a 15 for trapfinding, i proceeded to never find a single trap untill i set it off even if i was 1 square away from where the trap was hidden. I even rolled a nat 20, took 1 step, set off a large trap that nearly killed me....i was basically done after that

[@nikkilester618]

DM home-brewed a pair of fist weapons for my character to use. They relied on some kind of blood sense but blinded the wielder. I forget how they were originally offered but I turned them down, not believing that my character would willingly blind themselves to use a couple weapons. The next large encounter was an acid breath dragon engaged from a small island approximately the area of the breath weapon's effect. Despite my rolls, my character failed and took some direct acid damage! But Wait! Your eyes specifically seem to have stopped working, being particularly damaged by the attack. I don't remember if the weapons dropped from the dragon or if I was railroaded into buying them later. Time goes on, I get healed of lasting damage from the acid attack. Whatever, I have the weapons now. Might as well just keep on. In another adventure we acquire weapon upgrades for my character. I'm excited to get them. My character's sight has been restored; so in theory if I don't have the blood weapons I'll be able to see again. This is great. Turns out, he wanted to railroad a different character into using these new weapons that the party had instead chosen to give me. And what a shock. We found out that the blood sight weapons that I never wanted in the first place and cursed! My character can't bring themselves to get rid of them. I was young and stubborn so I threatened self harm (in character!) to Reroll a new character. And shockingly the curse also prevents the wielder from intentionally causing themselves harm. From there it further degraded into a cat n mouse game of me offering a new 'solution' to the cursed weapon issue. And then finding out the curse also counters whatever that was "ok, I can't harm myself. Party, please bind me to an anchor and drown me" Now the curse prevents the user from encouraging others to help you harm yourself. "Let's get the curse broken for a fee" The archdeacon isn't sure he could break this powerful bond even if you had enough gold! I'm sure I had a good time using the weapons mechanically. And definitely embraced them once I had them until finding out I was cursed into them but I've always resented the hijacking of my character.

[@BakudaSon]

I played as a transmutation wizard but wanted to branch out a bit and try having traps available with the Fireball spell later on in the game with the aid of Glyph of Warding. In this city where there was a giant college for magecraft, turns out that it's impossible to get components for spells that the college deems 'Illegal'. Thus, a diamond and a pearl were impossible to get as Identify and Glyph of Warding were deemed 'illegal' in this city, to which I couldn't find out prior due to said college hiding it's knowledge from outsiders. So I gained two spells in my book that were not only very hard to get materials for, but using them was a criminal offence. I can maybe get Glyph of Warding but the *Identify* spell?

[@queenyordle1171]

Actually the most unfair thing a Dungeon Master did to me ironically was being overly Nice With me, he always saves My characters the enemies rarely go For me, i always get the Best ítems, and i always felt it was unfair For The other players i tried to tell him that i'm a big girl i don't need to be babysit but he always goes back to his old habits as soon as we start, at the Beggining it was cool having everything i wanted, now i just Want to be fair With the other players

[@sebastienbusque2312]

My very first pen-and-paper game... only, it was the other players who didn't give two sh*ts. I went with a female half-elf conjurer in a Spelljammer campaign, not knowing that the rest of the crew was already higher-leveled, with the group leader being a vampire. Anyways, my character was supposed to meet up with the crew at the local tavern but was jumped by a group of bandits. I tried my hardest to ward them off but got captured and held at knife-point. The other players didn't know who I was, even when I pleaded to the group leader - the vampire - and called him 'master'. Rather than deal with the bandits, they shrugged and waited for my character's throat to be slashed before doing anything. I was so crushed by the experience that I almost ripped my character sheet to pieces.

[@hiropisku1078]

Once upon a time I was playing a Monk Barbarian. We were facing down a homebrew Demon Slayer Undead Dragonborn who was supposedly super tough. He was guarding the Emperor of the Land (which he did poor job at since said Emperor was out in the open and killed by turn 1 of combat) and we were forced to face him. Seeing as this enemy was so dangerous, I decided to finally unleash my Monkarian's Rage which she had never used in as a Fight or Flight response to this foe. Her face distorted to that of a maw with razor fangs, the normally quiet and stoic monk was now a vicious, rage induced beast ready to fight to the death with this Elite Guard. The Demon Slayer went down to one rage filled punch. Any impact or moment for the transformation was quickly swept under the rug so the DM could have his DMNPC do a "I'll stay behind" moment as the Undead guy was reforming. We were still very much healthy even after the on-death AOE from the Dragonborn and my character was beating on his corpse in bloodlust. Despite that, we were dragged off the scene by the other NPCs so the DMNPC could have her "sacrifice"...Which lasted about a minute before the room we were just in somehow exploded, having both the Undead and DMNPC survive not only the explosion but a fall from a 50 story tower. Needless to say, I was quite annoyed.

[@hiropisku1078]

Just to list another unfair time. It was in the same campaign with my previous character. She was a Yuan-Ti Glamour Bard who was a cursed human due to her vanity and perfectionism as per myths and legends. The entire idea was to get her to become a good person, to work with the party and get her to reform or at least humble her through her quest of becoming human again. In the literal first session she is introduced, she was cured of her curse by the DMNPC in exchange for guiding the party. All that planned character development - gone. She had no reason to change as the party never really tried to warm up to her as their guide. Despite everyone else getting an important plot note related to them, she was just sort of there. After she was done guiding the party, I retired her as the world in-game turned into a civil war, prompting the rise of my Monkarian.

[@aidanjackson5084]

Not sure if this is just bad DMing, or just bad luck on my part. It was my first ever D&D game and it was the start of Curse of Strahd. I was playing a Tiefling Rogue alongside my friend who was a Wild Magic Sorcerer. We were in the Vestani camp right after the Tarot reading from Madam Eva. The DM said that anything was lootable, so my Rogue and the Sorcerer decided to explore the Vestani camp. DM had us role Investigation to explore one of the Vestani tents and we rolled like a 1 or 2. From there, we got discovered and brought forth to three Vestani leaders of the camp and were cursed, one to my Rogue, one to the Sorcerer, and one to both. I don't remember the Sorcerer's curse or the shared curse, but the one I got was memorable in how it just screwed me over. My character ended up getting deafened and blinded, effectively crippling him and ruining my experience in the process. I tuned out the rest of the session after that and left that group after that first session.