>DM warns me as I'm making a character that the party I'm joining is about to into a really tough fight and it's a good chance a large amount of players and npc are gonna die.
>Been playing with this guy for months now.
>Know by now he's horribly averse to killing PCs and he won't do shit.
>Decide to act as moronicly as possible to test this theory.
>I was right.
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Yeah, after close to 10 years of DMing I’ve learned it’s sometimes better to kill a PC if they do something stupid. For example:
> DMimg for a group at my local game shop
> had a guy join my group
> guy was playing vanilla (Human Fighter)
> party got stopped by local guards
> they were searching for an illegal drug (we will call it crack)
> coincidentally, the rogue had a pound of crack that he was planning on distributing
> I asked the party what they wanted to do
> I was fully intending on them ditching the drugs, or bribing the guards, or even deceiving the guards
> what actually happened was completely stupid
> the fighter shouted “I EAT the crack in order to get rid of it!”
> taken aback, I had him confirm what he asked
> Both the rogue and I explained to him that it was a pound of fricking crack
> this brave fricking bastard still insisted on doing it.
> I asked for two rolls, a sleight of hand check to see if he could do it without the guards noticing and a CON save on how his body reacts
> He rolled a respectable 23 on the first and a 3 on the second
> I then explain to the party how out of nowhere the fighter suddenly and without warning collapses on to the ground.
> his heart exploded… because he ate a fricking pound of crack.
> the table erupted in laughter
> lucky for the fighter, we had a cleric who could cast revivify.
> he’s still a fricking dumbass though.
Thank you for the story anon, I laughed
https://bedrockrecoverycenter.com/addiction/crack-cocaine/route-of-administration/eating/
>Eating crack does not provide the same rush and desired effects of cocaine, and in fact produces a much slower and weaker high, taking the enjoyable rush out of using cocaine
>With other methods of drug use, such as smoking or injecting, the crack reaches the brain very quickly. When a drug is eaten, however, it first has to pass through the digestive system, and this can take some time.
>The usual intense rush associated with crack — which causes effects such as an increased heart rate and blood pressure — will instead take up to an hour to be felt and will come on slowly
>Essentially, the high would be mild and slower to be felt as the crack would have to be digested first, but the cocaine would still be in the person’s system, affecting the body and brain.
>When people eat white powder cocaine, this generally means spreading the cocaine powder on their gums and letting it absorb through the mucous membranes
>If someone were to do this with crack, nothing would happen, as crack needs something acidic to be able to dissolve.
I get it probably wasn’t actual crack, but it sounds like he should have had plenty of time to pump his stomach since it needs to reach the digestive crack to be absorbed into the body, so might have actually lived in-game.
The guy's a hack, like almost every GM. Acts as an authority on shit he knows nothing about
Yeah, why does the GM not know literally everything there is to know about life? fricking hacks, I swear they think this is a game or something. I mean they literally just make up rules on the go to just move along instead of opening google and beginning a research (WHICH THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE EARLIER ON IF THEY WERE GOOD GM'S) seriously, its so embarrasing that such people would GM.
>can't collaborate with players to come up with a solution that makes sense
You're a lost cause
He literally said we'll just call it crack to make the story easier, presumably because it's some fantasy drug, and not literally crack
>why didn't this magical fantasy drug that isn't crack match exactly what would happen if someone were to eat crack in real life? immersion broken.
If you get that it's not actually crack, why would you assume that he should have had time to pump his stomach? Why are you assuming properties of this fantasy drug just because he used crack as a placeholder term? Besides, maybe he would have had that opportunity had he not whiffed his fort save.
a fortitude save doesn’t need to be made if the drug isn’t already absorbed and you ping his stomach wouldn’t help if it was
you’re a shit gm
I have a similar story. For context this is a game I play with my normie friends, its mostly murderhoboing and having fun, the game is only second as we just use it to have something continuous to do to hang out that wont cost us a fortune.
Now to the story:
>group was travelling aboard a merchant ship over the sea
>begin fighting pirates which ends up burning both ships down (their own fault as one of them decided to slam fireballs around)
>they jump off the ship to avoid burning alive and after a short time drifting across the water they spy a mini island that suddenly appeared nearby
>turns out its a dragon turtle and they start haggling for it to get them to shore
>dragon turtle wants compensation so they look at what they can scrounge up, check the box theyve been hanging on to and inside is a rusty old trident that still shows a faint magic aura
>dragon turtle wants the trident as compensation
>both of them are casters and cant use it anyways
>dragonborn player for some reason doesnt wanna give it up tho
>after some convincing he agrees to give up the trident
>proceed to ride on the turtle's back (which is covered in a small mangrove forest)
>turtle expects the ride to take 3 days
>first fricking night, the dragonborn sneaks up to the pile agreed to belong to the turtle, steals the trident
>next morning
>turtle notices the trident and the dragonborn are missing
>turtle gets pissed
>asks other players to climb up its head and proceeds to hold the rest of its body below
>dragonborn comes floating up
>turtle gives him last chance and demands the trident
>"No its mine! I will never give it up!"
>proceeds to get 1hit by the steam breath (which was demonstrated before) and is flabbergasted that he had died
Rereading and realize I forgot to mention, the reason the dragonborn was missing the next morning was because he stole the trident and went to hide in the forest on its back. His plan was to just hide there for 3 days and have the turtle assume he just swam into the sea on his own or smth.
Frick off, Darius.
is there anything more cringe than someone screenshotting their own greentexts? as soon as I see a (You) in there, I stop. It did explain why it was so awful, though.
He posts on them on /r/dndgreentext. He just posts them here first and screenshots them. At least before he would delete them after posting them here
>amiBlack person is still alive
I had forgotten about that homosexual for years. How sad does one's life have to be that the highlight is him posting his own fanfics to plebbit for digital dopamine?
I remember that homosexual. Last I heard from a thread in mid-2021 was that he was using an image editor to make "greentexts" without being called a homosexual. homosexual.
Why would anyone want to screenshot this shit, it's the most embarrassing thing I've ever read
I legit thought this was gonna be the St Floyd story
The man was probably hoping he could just tank the consequences of his actions with sheer HP alone. If they were at least mid level, I'd probably let this guy get away with just a chunk of damage. I dunno. It just feels weird to me that a mundane street drug should be "save or die", unless most drugs/poisons in your game are like that.
It was a pound
so what? a fighter can survive falls and force no human can, why is taking drugs where you pretend to appeal to realism when it’s already been established that drugs don’t instantly kill you when swallowed?
he could have waited the half minute to get past the guards, then get slow/cure poison, antidote or whatever
>imbecile b-but it’s not a poison
a universal antidote doesn’t e ist either, it requires precise measurements and knowledge of the exact substance in question, its quantity and the person’s mass among other things, so we’re long past muh realism
Anon, he ate a pound of crack.
had he ate a pound of crack, he wouldn’t have dropped dead on the spot
Anon, people touch dollar bills with fentanyl dust in them and get shipped to the hospital. Don't focus on the crack, specifically. It's meant to be analogous to "dangerous drug." When fractions of a gram can kill, a pound can kill armies.
If by “people” you mean “hysterical cops”.
Fentanyl literally can’t enter through skin; that’s not how it works.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/fainting-fentanyl-exposure-nope
Are you intentionally dumb? The mode of ingestion is generally nasal. People pick up the bills and rub their noses.
You're also missing the point by focusing on the method of transmission. I'm pointing out that infinitesimally small doses can kill, and do so incredibly quickly. Direct ingestion of a pound of magic fantasy drug with unknown properties can easily kill anyone, even the most powerful of PCs. That's the point.
See above.
>see above
see what, Black person? you not addressing the point?
a fighter will survive being mauled by a bear like it’s fricking nothing
actually look up deadliest poisons in the game, a fighter can chug that shit and walk it off
after a couple of levels, it is practically impossible for a fighter to fall to his death
he can take a dive in metal-dissolving acid and suffer superficial burns
meanwhile, the “average person” in-game equivalent gets killed by a thrown rock
a drug that instantly kills a fighter in any quantity is not a drug consumable by a normal person
No, Black person. Your inability to abstract. I have no idea why you insist that fantasy drugs have to ascribe to the principles of real world drugs. Or is your argument with that a super human PC is proportional to a super drug? Why? That's one hell of an assumption to make about chemicals in someone else's setting. All I'm gathering is that you're a c**t who thinks all settings should conform to your preconceptions.
Any substance killing you instantly is a Hollywood meme, even the deadliest poisons known to man, to the point that half a pound would be enough to kill everyone in Europe, would have the first onset of symptoms no sooner than 10-15 minutes. In a normal human who is not a fantasy superhuman that can tank a dragon.
>can have fantasy superhumans
>can't have fantasy substances that kill you instantly
What is your argument here?
>can't have fantasy substances that kill you instantly
You can, they’re just not drugs then.
As long as I, the DM, say they are, then they are.
if you were anything approaching a chad, you wouldn’t be here getting assblasted about getting your epic greentext shat on
Are my only posts.
These other anons replying to you are moronic, this is what D&D does to your brain
people trip, hit their head on the sidewalk and become vegetables, what bearing does this have on a fighter in dnd?
I'm certain getting shot by an siege cannon would kill most people, but fighters still survive it
>a fighter can survive falls and force no human can
Chunky salsa rule.
I had one like this
>space station saga
>party of Scion, Power Caster, Altalest, and a Tetramancer
>Altalest gets caught in an explosion and is sucked out into space
>Activates a survival pill and gets the atmosphere jelly for the next three hours
>Power Caster will try to void pull him when he can, plenty of time to do it
>Altalest decides to just Meteor Thrust instead
>instead of picking the ship floor to target he chooses.... the planet below.
>Inform him that he's going to be doing atmospheric re-entry
>out of the ship
>in his fricking clothes and some shitty armor
>"YEP!"
>proceeds to rocket thrust himself towards the planet
>streaking thru the atmosphere taking huge pressure, heat, and stress damage
>manages to survive that
>grounds coming fast
>WHAM!
>"Well, you hit the ground at terminal velocity, thats 65,535 da-"
>"I parry the earth."
>What
>he declared his Tulpa Skill: Third Arm Guard
>literally used his fricking subconsciousness to manifest a shield that absorbs the next damage that should have occured
>survives falling into the planet
>". . . ok, that's fine. but."
>he dies immediately because the planet is composed of 6000 degree acid storms and Stalwart rock
>proceeds to b***h and complain that he couldn't parry the fricking rain
>doesnt let this shit go
>its been TEN GOD DAMN YEARS
>its been TEN GOD DAMN YEARS
That is some salt.
wait, what system is this? looking up some terms from your post, i can't find any info
oh for the love of god tell what system this is. I want to play it now
Game feels empty and meaningless when there's no stakes.
Legit. Once had a character take what I tought was a lethal amount of damage. It was to be expected, the DM was using a homebrew system an associate made, generally lethal combat was a norm. No hard feelings, my character wasn't deeply invested into the plot like a few of the other PCs. Had a good idea for a new character. DM freaked out, I eventually realized I miscalculated armor, had a few points left.
The entire rest of the session nothing took a shot at my character. And suddenly the game was completely fricking boring.
Stakes can exist without player character death unless you're playing a boring dungeon crawler where the world might as well not exist outside of dungeons and the player characters are just statblocks with no personality, grounding in the setting, friends, or family.
I've literally had players be like "oh I don't care if my PC dies I was torn between this guy and another concept I'll just make that" then turn around and go "THE PARTY MULE WAS KILLED I MUTILATE THE GUY'S CORPSE FOR THIS TRANSGRESSION AND LOOK FOR A WAY TO REVIVE IT INSTEAD OF JUST BUYING ANOTHER FRICKING DONKEY". Attacking and endangering the people close to the player characters is 10000% more effective at setting the stakes than putting the PCs' lives in danger. I've even been on the other side of this, I hate my current PC and 1v1'd a CR 11 creature (we're level 11 btw) and got my ass handed to me, failed two death saves, and rather than let me - the character who MUTILATED AND CRIPPLED THIS butthole'S FRIEND - die, he stabilized me to use as a hostage, and quite frankly half the party rightfully was like "eh, I dunno, maybe letting them die would be okay" in-character. So now, I'm just going to go full sadist and use my shapeshifting to turn into the guy's crippled friend and make him beat his own friend up. If that doesn't get him to kill this character, I don't know what will.
This. My players got invested in a medusa girl who I 100% intended as a combat encounter, but they ended up disabling her with a spell and talking to her. She got adopted and turned into the person who stayed on the ship when the party was adventuring on islands, and she'd always be ready with food when they came back. That was all it took for the players to treat her as equivalent to the PCs.
Bizarrely no one tried to romance her, and the one time she tried to ask a PC out on a date she got gently rejected.
they were all fricking her in their headcanon anyway, they just didn’t want to make it public and expose themselves
>"THE PARTY MULE WAS KILLED I MUTILATE THE GUY'S CORPSE FOR THIS TRANSGRESSION AND LOOK FOR A WAY TO REVIVE IT INSTEAD OF JUST BUYING ANOTHER FRICKING DONKEY"
this is based
It was, and since the guy was an assassin who worshiped the god of death said god bent the rules of reincarnation and now he has a harengan daughter who he adopted into his family.
At level 11, it shouldn't be that hard to 1v1 a CR 11, depending on your character.
You're ignoring the fact it was:
>immune to psychic damage
>Had a DC 17 WIS save blind just by being within 10 feet of someone
>Had advantage on saves against magic
>Was not a humanoid
>Was resistant to non-magical BPS
>Could teleport 120 feet without an action on a 4-6 cooldown roll
>Could deal 4d10+8 force damage in a cone with a 5-6 cooldown
>Had a +10 to hit with its melee attack which did something stupid like 4d8+8 damage on hit
CR is balanced towards a group of three to five.
>CR is balanced towards a group of three to five.
CR is claimed to be balanced towards a group of three to five but let's be real here
Whenever someone mentions CR is balanced towards parties, I remember the time I run 2 Quicklings against 4 4th lvl players inside an abandoned house. Look at this fricking shit, man
>120ft of movement
>Recieves attacks with Disv. and has fricking Evasion.
>+8 on attack at CR 1, THREE FRICKING TIMES. The least damage they can do is 7 and the maxium is 10.
>They don't even need to risk AoO due the ranged attacks
The only "weakness" I felt was that crits are kinda irrelevant since 2d4 isnt' threatening, but holy frick man. If these frickers get a surprise round the fight might aswell be over if the party doesn't get goot rolls. At lvl 2 or even 3 they can easily get one or two PCs down on the first round, not risk any attack and go back behind a wall.
CR is so dumb man. Seen stuff with 20 AC and 134 HP in the same CR as something with 16 AC and 45 HP.
Shut down by a sleep spell or magic missile.
That's what my players did. Grease to cover the entrane, ready Sleep spell when they come. But as said, more than one coming from different angles will still cause mayhem. Specially since spellcasters will be the ones falling first.
>Stakes can exist without player character death
No.
>t. braindead moron with no imagination who plays statbocks instead of characters
I think wargames or skirmish games would be more your speed since you can't grasp the RP in RPG.
>thinks RP means cringe inducing play acting
You and your demisexual tiefling bard should have a nice day NOW
there's a middle ground between "cringe inducing ERP" and "wargaming" where you try to build a character based on the mechanics at hand and play it, and acting it enough for you to convey the idea both mechanically and thematically.
They're games of pretend for a reason.
Hey I'm sorry you lack the charisma to properly roleplay your character, the rest of us aren't vacuums of charisma however and don't have to worry about being cringe when we actually play our characters properly. You know, having them say things they would say, do things they would do, etc.
>demisexual tiefling bard
Projection much? What's wrong, did you get booted from the table for trying to rape another PC?
This is why I like games with fate points a la 40krpg. Promotes risk-taking both to have fun and to gain more fate points (most GMs never give them out, but I do), and provides a serious consequence to death without permakilling characters.
If it's not permanent, it's not a death. Revival magic and fate points are a cancer in the RPG community. How can you ever be proud of a high-level PC who got there via a glorified respawn safety net?
>If it's not permanent, it's not a death
Holy cope.
>Revival magic and fate points are a cancer in the RPG community
They're the only thing that makes games playable. If you play a game where death is permanent you're going to start giving less and less of a frick about your characters until you just make a bunch of disposable statblocks with no personality, connection to the setting, etc and become numb to PC death to the point when you finally do have a PC that survives you still won't give a frick.
>How can you ever be proud of a high-level PC who got there via a glorified respawn safety net?
Because they still lost and had to find a new way to overcome the thing they fought and died to and took a huge setback by burning resources like GP or FATE points.
>Because they still lost and had to find a new way to overcome the thing they fought and died to
meanwhile in reality, the thing is already dead and overcome by the rest of the party because this isn’t a singleplayer video game
Realismgays ruin RPGs
That’s not realismgayging, that’s just how games actually work, because you’re not the protagonist in a story, you’re one of X people playing a game and when you die, the party doesn’t pack up and leave so you can recover and have a training montage and a comeback arc, they deal with whatever killed you.
I mean, in a solo/1on1 game it would make sense, but not in what I assume is the default given context, ie a group game.
>the thing is already dead and overcome by the rest of the party because this isn’t a singleplayer video game
Fat chance, if the melee guy with the best defenses and best damage is dead no way in hell the rest of the party survived.
>
I mean, in a solo/1on1 game it would make sense, but not in what I assume is the default given context, ie a group game.
>because you’re not the protagonist in a story, you’re one of X people playing a game and when you die, the party doesn’t pack up and leave so you can recover and have a training montage and a comeback arc
They do if they aren't morons.
>they deal with whatever killed you.
Again, fat chance. The squishy non-durable non-damage dealing characters would get wiped and that'd be game.
You don't die to "bad decisions" or any of that moronic bs unless the whole party does. Like you said, it's a team game.
ok, when did that happen?
I've run games where it's happened. Guy with the most HP/Wounds/whatever you want to call it for convenicence' sake and the toughest DR/highest AC/whatever the system has and the highest DPR goes down and the rest of the party topples like dominoes.
I've had it happen in 5e, I've had it happen in homebrew systems with far less HP and rolled/contested attack/defense + DR, it's a universal thing that when the beefwall dies everyone else freaks the frick out, loses morale, and books it because if the guy who's literally there to tank hits goes down their squishy asses aren't gonna survive, so they either are morons and stick around and TPK or aren't morons and leave to come back later.
please greentext the 5e thing, because I do not for a second believe you that that the party decided to frick off because “the tank” (lol) bought it
>Running Dragon of Icespire Peak as filler since someone can't make it
>Party is a Half-Dragon Paladin, Kobold Monk, Centaur Fighter, Human homebrew class that's basically a not!kamen Rider
>They opt to take on the dwarf ruins quest first
>Get jumped by two ochre jellies
>Monk nearly goes down round 1
>Paladin gets killed by shit death save luck round 2
>Party immediately fricks off back to phandelver
>Paladin literally just changes the first letter of his character's name and reuses it
I gave them a healbot NPC to control and they fared marginally better on round 2.
They also nearly TPK'd again later in the same adventure but couldn't run because they were boxed into the place the orcs attack and the horde had the exit blocked off. I basically just took pity on them at that point because it was the third time they'd nearly died to shitty module design.
They ALSO ALSO TPK'd at the woodland manse where the evil tree is in that module and straight-up abandoned the 2nd paladin PC and actually did lose the homebrew guy who was also frontline beef and bailed right before that.
So I had it happen three fricking times in the same adventure module.
I've also come close to TPKing them in the main game a few times, which is why they ran in the module because they've learned that I don't fudge rolls and I roll open and they can and iwll die if they don't learn when to run.
That sounds a lot more like your party is trying to play DND without a single real caster (or so much as a bow or flask of oil) but isn't smart and/or system savvy enough to pull it off.
The homebrew guy made a Druid after, and the guy who missed day 1 made a warlock. They still got their shit absolutely rocked.
Sounds like you only play games where the GM holds your hand and babies you.
>How can you ever be proud of a high-level PC who got there via a glorified respawn safety net?
The same why in arpgs in general there's little to no risk/reward and people enjoy the games anyway.
If anything high risk games just leads to a boring degeneracy of super-safe metas like in PoE hardcore leagues.
This, and that's the problem with old games like B/X and AD&D.
Modern games create tension and risk through the players' investment in the world and NPCs around them.
>Join group
>It's one of those critical roll false sense of danger groups
>About to leave, only stayed since it was nearing the end of the game and I was kind of important to the story and the only person driving the game forward
>People constantly do stupid stuff knowing the DM will fudge dice and get them out of trouble
>Game ends, new DM runs the game
>Decide to stay just to see how he runs the game
>DM actually ends up killing the entire party over the course of 2 session save for me who was actually sensible
>Even in my caution I almost die a few times
>People start leaving because they keep dying doing stupid stuff like pissing off high level monsters minding their own business, forgetting they had healing spells and thinking they could solo the dungeon boss without preparing any gear first.
Sounds like you found a good DM, now you just need to find players.
>making character, DM warns me my PC will be introduced mid fight
>Should be a bit of a pinch
>Their ranger goes down in one action to these wendigo things
>Got to have my barb come in and save the day
Good end
>Me
Extremely high fantasy, colorful world, characters are friendly, almost all combat ends with enemies retreating/ routing/ negotiating/ surrendering, revives are plentiful...
>"no, it wasn't just a death, you got your soul expelled, you can't come back unless you do a really complex ritual because your soul is scattered all around the ethereal plane"
>Other DM
Low fantasy, everything gothic and gritty, people suffering, most enemies are completely evil and want destruction
>"you failed the death save? Well, you just got captured"
And the weirdest part is that even with 3-4 characters dying every campaign I dm, while nobody dies in his games, the players think I'm the merciful one
>be DM
>players goof around constantly, barely pay any attention
>I keep saving them from encounters by fudging numbers whenever they get too low
>players goof around more
>have enough, stop fudging the numbers
>one PC dies
>players stop goofing around and start paying attention
There's no downside to killing PCs and anyone telling you otherwise is either a terrible DM or a player that can't deal with his OC waifu character dying.
I think that was meant to basically give you permisison to make a super optimized character.
In the same way that GMs say that a campaign won't be combat focused to signal they don't want min-maxed characters.