/tg/ - Traditional Games

>Elf with 18 agility

>Tries to cross a very fast moving river via a log, and tie a rope to it, so others can cross safely

>"Okay, so, due to your high agility, I'll say you fail only on a natural 1"

>Of course it's a natural 1

>Roll to grab the vegetation at the sides with a -5 penalty

>It's a roll of 5

>Elf is carried by a very rapid stream through sharp rocks

>The elf is dead

>It's literally the first 10 minutes of the campaign

>>404159

Bruh, I'm reading this board too.

>>404159

Critical failure isn't a thing, stop making it a thing. Critical rolls apply in combat and there are no rules for them in skill checks. If you're posting here you're either a casual or you know that already and just wanted to kill someone so which is it?

>>404135

You can solve the problem in future by just not letting players make rolls for things that are not possible, like fooling someone into thinking you're a woman without any assistance and having no feminine traits whatsoever. Tasks which are either assumed to be well within reason (ex. walking) and tasks that are outside of reason, even potentially (ex. punching the sun) don't get rolls. Also an Archmage is presumably a Wizard so if he wanted to fix his problem he could've just polymorphed them into a woman and called it a day, killing someone is too much legal trouble and there aren't usually laws against magically removing someone's dick. Throw in some mind altering magic for good measure and you'd have a non-violent solution to the problem that is certainly in line with magician's infamous lack of moral scruples (which considering they have no trouble killing a man seems what you were going for anyways.)

>>404167

You know homebrew is a thing, right faggot? He made the right call. This is Tabletop 101. Having a 5% chance to fuck up running across a log in the middle of a rushing river is completely logical. Adjudication is one of the most important skills a GM learns.

>>404168

This falls under adjudication.

>>404167

>Critical failure isn't a thing

If you play shitty fucking systems of course it isn't.

>>404175

>homebrew

If you're homebrewing yet another d20 system with 1s and 20s as failures and successes then you're a faggot to begin with. Adjudicate your way into a better taste in games.

>>404214

Whatever makes you feel superior, faggot.

>>404167

Who said anything about critical failure though? It was just regular failure in very dangerous circumstances.

>>404214

I homebrewed a Cyberpunk 2020 variant that had crits (both failures and successes) on a successful LUCK save. Even then, people with level 7 or more in the skill can opt for a Damage Control mechanic, which allows a +5 difficulty reroll to avoid catastrophical failure (because any given explosives expert won't accidentally cause an explosion 10% of the time attempting to disarm a difficulty 15 bomb).

I am also in the process of developing a system which rolls three dice at once to describe possible side-effects of the activity at hand. I like to describe it as the [yes|no][, but][[,] and] system, since every roll can have failforward-like complications and crit-like bonii in the same roll, regardless of whether the roll was successful. All skills have three separate "skill levels" to describe how good they are at handling complicated unexpected situations or plain old working under pressure, another number which describes how good they are at the skill in general (the skill level in any other system), and a number describing how well they know how to exploit weak and strong points when presented with the situation. Yes, it is as autistic as it sounds pls rate

>>404221

>I am also in the process of developing a system which rolls three dice at once to describe possible side-effects of the activity at hand.

You might want to check out "Das Schwarze Auge", or "The Dark Eye". It's a German tabletop system that has interesting skill rolling mechanics.

>>404222

>wasting trips on recommending DSA

Disgusting.

>>404214

You're missing the point, dipshit. It's not a critical failure, he just had a 5% chance to fuck up. They're different in principle. Shove a menorah up your ass.

>>404167

He didn't say it was a critical failure, he said it was a failure. The character was performing a dangerous action that has a chance of failure for anyone, but the GM gave it the most favorable throw possible, of 2+.

That said, given the scenario, I think it was too favorable to begin with. I would given at best a 10+ success rate.

>>404135

>Join new group, make character right in front of DM

>Make a paranoid dwarf fighter noble that deeply dislikes peasants

>Nobody bothered to tell me this'd be a diplomatic detective thing where we investigate a rumored dark cult among peasant villages

>Enter village

>glare at filthy peasants

>rest of the party asks for accommodations

>the filthy peasants are initially reluctant to give shelter to a party of heavily armed hobos

>find this highly suspicious

>stay up all night guarding because I can't convince the rest of the party that the filthy peasants are clearly up to something (possibly because I keep calling them filthy peasants)

>travel to the village with the rumoured cult the next morning

>filthy peasants are suspiciously eager to give us good places to sleep

>ranger decides to go hunting as a present for the nice filthy peasants

>pacifist mage decides to go to sleep

>see a suspicious peasant wobbling across the street late at night

>ask what he's doing

>can't understand what the filthy peasant is saying because he's slurring his words

>clearly a worshiper of some dark god

>decide to interrogate it and drag it inside

>pacifist mage wakes up to the sound of a screaming filthy peasant-cultist being tortured for information while a mob tries ramming down the door of the barn we're staying in

>tells me to stop slowly murdering an "innocent"

>he decides it's a good time to try and smooth their temper and opens the door

>I run out the back as the retard gets pulled towards the main square in a mass of what are certain to be filthy cultist-peasants so I can warn the ranger of the danger

>sneak out of the village as best I can in mail armor and without any skill

>fail

>arrive at ranger at the head of a second, thankfully smaller, group of filthy cultist-peasants

>Yell at him they're cultists that tried to murder us in our sleep

>We decide to stand and fight just as we hear the mage's death screams as an impromptu pyre lights up the night sky

>haven't slept in two days

>can't manage to hit filthy peasants, this is certain to be dark magic

>ranger kills two

>I eventually get fought down to the ground

>get my head beaten to a pulp by filthy peasants as the ranger runs off to warn the local lord of the dangerous cult

>lord eventually comes and exterminates the village and its dark cult with it

>kingdom dies due to a dark god being summoned one village over a month later

>The village that got exterminated was innocent, we were just supposed to pick up some clues there

Fucking filthy peasants.

>>404268

My players almost got a TPK during the Halloween special. To be fair, everything started out pretty campy, but once the 'man behind the curtains' showed up, they should have realized shit was hitting the fan and played more carefully.

>>404271

"Careful Play" should always be the default option in this game. Which one was it? I like the Halloween modules, but honestly, the ones I've read aren't as themed as the Christmas ones are. Like if I ran Shadow Under Devil's Reef and didn't specify it as a Halloween adventure I don't think anyone would've picked up on it.

>>404273

It wasn't a module, it was just some shit I threw together. I strapped a Madoka witch to a Castlevania map, filled it with pumpkin-headed skeletons, thought up a rudimentary story, and called it a day. The pumpin-heads made them think things were a joke. And then they weren't.

>>404167

Autism.

>>404135

>Rick Sanchez

lel rick and morty is a mexican

>>404250

>noble

>even touching lowborn filthy peasants

>let alone torturing one instead of hiring goons i.e. the rest of the party to do that for you

Pitiful performance.

Had a lvl 1 nigga die because a horse fucking kicked him in the head and then no one cared enough to get him back up

>>404167

>Critical failure isn't a thing

If you're playing a gay system for fags. Any system worth it's salt will at least have complications, you can't have critical successes without critical failures and expect a balanced game, giving the player a 1 in 20 chance to always succeed and a 1 in 20 chance to always fail is just fair.

>>404168

>you can't punch the sun

not with that attitude you can't

>>404296

brutal

>>404394

>Party brains

>lights up the barkeep basically at random

I think you'd have TPKd soon anyway.

>>404404

>a warlock thinks something is amiss

>lights it on fire

He sure thinks like a warlock. I remember someone here posted a funny guide on how people actually played warlocks in wow. I can't seem to find it again, but it's really relevant.

>>404410

>>at this point im seriously considering my party's sanity because they all were level 3 and both my in game descriptions of the halls beyond the door and out of game comments indicated that this place WAS NOT supposed to be visited by them yet

Then why were you showing them it

>>404437

I had the world premade with places they would revisit. The concept evolved around key places most of them based on lovecraft's works. I realise it is a poor practice but seemed good at the time

>>404433

it was the warlock's and paladin's second game. The barbarian had played other rpgs before but not dnd (i think VtM). The bard was a first-timer in both D&D and rpgs in general

>>404437

>wagghhh why isn't the party only facing level appropriate encounters

Faggot.

>>404541

Pre-making that much stuff isn't the best idea either, generally, because it leads to quantum ogre syndrome when your PCs decide to fuck off of your grand master plan and your salty ass tries to move material around.

>>404167

But then you don't get epic moments to post about on r/DND dude!!!

>>404421

I know the picture you're talking about but just off the top of my head some warlock antics can include:

>summoning an infernal in the auction house of your own faction

>damage from infernal (a constant AOE) kills all lowbies and afks

>ritual of doom (which summons an incredibly powerful elite mob) in the middle of lowbie questing zones

>glitched, multiple rituals of doom in front of a raid entrance so entire parties of 20-40 people get wiped out by 10-15 elite mobs soon as they exit/enter the dungeon

sage for off-topic

Guy who insists on a merfolk pc dies because campaign is set on ground. Hahahaha.

https://imgur.com/gallery/A9WRNE0

>>406990

I think you accidentally the link.

>>404342

>having critical sucesses

No. Only have critical strikes in combat, which are balanced by the fact the enemy can score a critical strike on you. On out of combat rolls, there should only be two states – success and failure. No "lol you trip over your own foot and kill yourslef xD" and no "You managed to steal the armor the king was wearing without him noticing"

>>404167

>You shouldnt be able to fail

>that one time a player character was kidnapped and tortured to death after the GM found out he fucked his gf

>>404168

>and tasks that are outside of reason, even potentially (ex. punching the sun) don't get rolls

I often jokingly give players a ridiculously difficult roll for player choices that I consider to be outside what they should reasonably be able to do but not absolutely impossible, and once a player actually pulled it off. It resulted in the character becoming a demigod as intended, but also dooming himself due to not understanding the full nature of the vast amounts of power he had channeled.

>>404394

I had a player make decisions like that constantly for a while, like, I am not making this up, he once reasoned he was probably dealing with an illusion, so he decided to sodomize it. But in his case, he got away with stuff like that for a long time due to ridiculous luck. Somehow, the more unreasonable his behavior, the better his rolls were and the more likely things were to somehow work out in totally unexpected ways. It's like the character had the magic power to make enough bad choices roll the dial all the way around to a good choice again. He'd steal stuff for no good reason and that thing would be the perfect solution to a later problem. He'd adopt some random unreasonable persona the moment he stepped into a new town and that would be the perfect identity to deal with a social situation that came up later. He'd use the dumbest tactic possible on an enemy and it would save the day. Somehow, being an absolute jackass was his super power.

>>404541

should have had the door be dead until a layline got activated somewhere else

>>404342

Disagree. Critical failure can be useful.

Sure, having someone roll for every action is ridiculous, and making them trip and fall on their own blade and kill themselves is just retarded, but sprinkling some chances at critical failures and then providing a REASONABLE result of that failure is absolutely fine and within reason for a dm to do.

>player moves for cover in a high stress situation and critically fails an agility check.

>trips as they turn and accidentally drop their sword, losing initiative.

That's fine and interesting imo and it throws the kind of curveballs your players accept because they failed the roll, where just throwing curveballs at them without allowing a check will eventually piss them off.

>>411716

Degrees of failure and success are something most GMs should be doing anyway.

>>410359

>Player character

>Not just player

???

>>404410

>they grabbed the bard and tossed him in the pit agreeing to not speak of this again.

Why does this keep happening?

Seriously though, good fun story.

>>404296

>Hit points are reduced to 0. The total, not just the current. Dead.

This is just bad GM:ing. I hope this is just a story. I would have given the character "unlife" letting the character be on negative hitpoints, with most of the negative effects, the effects would be permanent even after healing, until he proves himself to Vecna. Nice and "easy" side quest, opposed to death. Also very, very edgy.

>Playing DnD 5e

>Friend decided to bring his girl friend

>Bitch shows up with blue hair and a dog collar

>Her character was an amalgamation of everything wrong with the west

>LGBTQ+AM101.9FM

>Both genders because tiefling

>We are sent by the local fuedal lord to figure out why his mines are functioning

>Find out its a bunch of Orc Barbarians who decided to set up shop

>Everybody but her thinks going back to feudal lord and just telling him whats going on would suffice for a reward

Take a wild fucking guess what happens

>Bitch declares that the feudal lord would just have us kill them

>She instead insists she will speak on their behalf

>She runs down to the mine before we can stop her

>Instantly impaled by an orcish guard the second she got close enough to try and shake hands

Nothing of value was lost

>>411851

Yeah.

That happened.

>>411740

He didn't intentionally autokill me. You would lose/gain 3d12 hp depending on the fountain picked. Since I posted off the Arch Lich, it became like 6d12 which was enough to kill me. Story is true. I know the critical hit/miss shtick reeks of reddit copy pasta, but that's how one of my favorite characters died. He was surprisingly useful despite having very few offensive spells. And yeah, he liked his edge.

>>411899

Seems a bit embellished but not totally unbelievable, especially if the player's gf was new to roleplaying.

>>412980

Evil? Are you sure it's just not incompetence?

Ooh I got one

>Pathfinder

>Decide to be a melee class for one instead of a Wizard

>Some kind of Outsider Paladin named Djindu Nu'feen, stacked up on some sick elemental resists or something at level 1

>Despite the name, decide to play it straight and take the character seriously

>There's a rogue and a gunslinger, so our plan is to just not take damage, using guile and cunning

>Some adventure path, quest is to go into these ancient ruins inside Absalom(?) using a limited use chime of opening

>Beat up some bats, no big deal

>Passage opens to a spiral crypt thing, with a ton of offshoot passages in a circle, haha time to explore.jpg

>There's a passage with an unusual source of cold

<I have cold resistance, so I'll take point instead of the rogue

<<Clearly, this is some kind of magical trap left active, and I just need to go past it to deactivate it

>Take 3d6 points of cold damage

>It's fine, I've got 10 points of cold resist at level 1!

<<<Step past the 5ft buffer of safety where they can reach me safely

>Down I go

>Rogue is 1hko by the cold when he comes in to save my ass

>TPK

Turns out it was some kind of magical fucking mold that feeds on heat. Oops.

>>413028

The first two sounds like GMs deciding to kill players for no reason other than shits'n'giggles. I'd rather not hear more, this thread is for players making retarded decisions that get themselves killed.

>>404394

It's an illusion though. Illusions aren't flammable. Fucking toss a coin at him.

>>404135

>5e

IDK if this is the case in 5e but in 2nd the wand of wonder is great for a wild mage. A 50% chance of actually casting what you want to intead of just a random roll 100% of the time.

Also this sounds like a DM and player problem. Both seem to be retarded.

Died on a bicycle

>>413029

You Djindu Nu'feen Anon.

I got one

>running a barbarian in a group of 5 in tomb of we wuz. Our hexblade warlock and fighter are not on good terms since they are both rat faced kleptomaniacs.

>After gathering 10 glass beads, we discovered a 50 by 50 dome room with nine treasure filled alcoves.

>Because I was possessed by Moa, i'm able to become invisible whenever i want, so i scout ahead. The floor is magically slippery and there is a big magnetic ball in the middle of the room.

>Metal ball activates and our warlock that is wearing plate armor gets stuck to it.

>Fighter thinks it's a good idea to throw a plus one shield found in the alcoves in such a way that it would orbit around the ball and hit our Bladelock.

>The main danger of the room, and invisible beholder, starts shooting off beams and petrifies our cleric.

>Me and our other warlock book it out after getting the bladelock free from the ball. Bladelock dies to a death ray soon after.

>Fighter thinks it's a good idea to loot the body of a guy who just died right next to him instead of running. The dm has enough of his shit and uses telekinesis to throw him around like a rag doll and kill him.

That was the first time we got our asses handed to us in Chult. Fighter is still salty that i didn't cloak out of my invisibility to help him with his fuck up.

>>414160

So wait how much bad blood are we talking here?

Not sure if I wrote this anywhere else before but here it goes

>got five players: paladin, ranger, wizard, thief and druid

>system is 2e adnd

>homebrew setting

>they reach a place known as the Abyss

>basically a never ending dungeon crawl with vast plains filled with death and dungeons

>long story short a certain enemy they meet is a giant golem/gargoyle/demon thing

>it shoots magical beams from its one eye, which deal damage with no extra effect

>eventually they discover that the eye it's actually a gem and it can be thrown around to explode, it being volatile

>I don't tell them that there is a chance it could explode if not handled properly but I do make a point of rolling a 1d100 dice

>and the say "you safely retrieve the volatile gem"

>fast forward to group killing three of these big boys

>wizard is the most interested in the gems (as he should be) and decide to harvest the ones near the golems

>issue is that he keep extracting them using a metal knife instead of... anything else really

>rest of the group notice the golems are closed to each other and decide that a chain reaction would be bad and move away

>everyone but the thief

>wizard goes to first golem

>tries to extract gem

>I roll the die

>result is within the % of exploding

>4d10 to the face of both the wizard and thief, with spell throw to take half

>thief fails, wizard saves

>another 4d10

>thief fails, wizard saves

>another 4d10

>thief fails

>wizard saves

And thus the thief died.

Let it be a lesson for you: the actions of a stupid man can have repercussion on your very life.

>>414244

>His first character was a gnome who pissed on everything. That was all he did. He thought it was hilarious.

Is he a whizzard?

>>414238

Sounds rough.

>>414408

>not keeping your worlds separate

>>404167

Why roll skill checks at all then? If a critical fail is unfair, then failure of anything outside of combat can be argued to be unfair.

>>404135

First session of a new campaign.

>Enter town to speak with the magistrate for work.

>DM says my Inquisitor recognizes him as a good man from the area and begins to discuss the job he has for us.

>Newbie Minotaur friend decides it'll be funny to challenge the magistrate to single combat.

>I warn our newbie friend (out of character), "my character will be forced to fight you if you kill this guy for no reason."

>"why?" asks newbie.

>"my character doesn't know you, and the first thing you do is randomly challenge an innocent magistrate to single combat, my character is neutral good, he will see you as a murderer."

>"haha okay" says newbie.

>DM actually has the magistrate accept the minotaur's challenge (later said he just wanted to teach him a lesson) and spends a couple minutes drawing up stats for the magistrate.

>fight begins, minotaur charges at the magistrate, makes a called action at the magistrate's head. Mino rolls a natural 20, then rolls a second 20.

>GM: "uhh you chop his head off"

>My inquisitor charges the Minotaur.

>Our elven archer shoots the Minotaur.

>The Cleric moves up to support my Inquisitor.

>We kill the Minotaur.

>"WHAT THE FUCK GUYS I OBVIOUSLY DIDN'T MEAN TO KILL HIM!"

>GM is laughing.

>We use it as a good opportunity to explain to the newbie the nature of role-playing. Explain that our characters will sometimes do things we as players might not want to do, due to their personalities or their alignment. Explain that it's nothing personal.

>Newbie says he understands, asks if he can just play his minotaur and forget this happened.

>GM says "no, that's part of the game too, your character is dead".

Turned out to be a pretty fun campaign nonetheless. Newbie was more behaved after that.

>>414451

But anon, death is problematic. You might have driven away a new player.

>>414452

I know your being facetious, but this attitude really baffles me.

What's the fucking point if our characters don't risk anything?

>>414450

How braindead do you have to be to fail to comprehend the difference between the DM saying, "No, it doesn't work because you failed the check," and him saying, "You trip on a twig and die instantly because you rolled a 1," and why one of those is not desirable?

>>414455

Your strawman scenario is not the scenario you were originally bitching about.

The original scenario you took umbrage with was:

>character tries to cross a fast moving river over a log.

>character can only fail on a 1.

>character fails and falls into the river.

>RIVER IS A DANGEROUS AND FAST MOVING RIVER.

>Appropriate DC check to grab vines on river edge.

>character fails to grab vines

>character dies.

You know, maybe the players should have looked for a safer crossing.

Maybe the player should have spent a few points in swimming.

Maybe they could have had the group tie a vine around his character's waist in case he fell in.

Instead, they took a gamble, were impatient and never took the skills necessary to help offset the risks of such a risky action.

It's funny, I've found that the players who bitch about dying to drowning or other mundane situations are always, inevitably the players who min max the fuck out of their characters.

Hmm, maybe, if you don't want to "waste" points on swimming, it might be a good idea to be extra cautious around water based challenges.

>>414453

Why anon, making a new character is painful. You should let your players control an NPC when they die, so they can keep playing. You also should make sure enemies that can fly don't just stay out of range and kite the groundbound idiots under them. Nobody wants to feel frustrated or marginalized. The point is to come together to cooperatively tell an engaging story, not to have everything ruined because somebody rolled poorly.

>>414464

>The point is to come together to cooperatively tell an engaging story, not to have everything ruined because somebody rolled poorly.

Lol I actually am one of those dorks who believe the ultimate goal should be for everyone to tell a story together, I just believe that death is all part of a great story. Even if it all appears to come down to "one die roll", because it almost never comes down to one die roll, it's usually a chain of mistakes, whether it's immediately apparent or not.

As an example:

After Robb Stark failed his perception check at the Red Wedding, I'm sure the party felt like it had all come down to just one die roll. But the reality is that he had already screwed the group by putting his whole party in that situation in the first place, not only for choosing to break the agreement the party had made with the Freys, but also in going back to their castle after the Caitlyn player had warned him countless times about their treachery after she passed that knowledge check about the Freys.

I think the entire progression of bad choices were a fair ending to that campaign, no matter how much the players complained after it ended.

Maybe the Robb Stark player should have spent a few points in perception or speechcraft instead of min maxing his stats for combat and leadership.

>>404135

This thursday, my party's cleric tried to more or less solo 3 trolls, one of which was venom, trying to use Spiritual Guardians and Polearm Master to make it viable or something?

Long story short, his level 6 ass up and died, even with help from the druid (the rest of us were severely beat up and out of resources and wanted to run away).

>>414464

>Why anon, making a new character is painful.

>Laughing old school GM / Only War GM

Make backups, you fag. Also, git gud. I'm not going to make all the enemies incompetent just so my players feel good about themselves. Either plan ahead, be good at asspulling, or eat shit

>>414456

You made this fucking post:

>>414450

I was responding to that. You know that I was, don't be disingenuous. I also wasn't the first anon you replied to. I agree that if you can only fail on a 1 and you fuck up several times you should die for being an idiot.

>>414479

There was a comment chain leading from the original anon who was butt blasted about critical failures.

If that wasn't you then it was my mistake. I honestly didn't realize you weren't the same guy. Apologies.

As to the greater topic of critical fails, challenges are challenges, full stop.

In the same way that traps and puzzles are challenges; a heavy door, fording a river, an ogre bouncer who won't let you in the tavern, these are all challenges for the players to overcome.

Therefore, unless it is completely unimportant to the campaign, any challenge you put in front of your players should have a die roll of some kind, even if that die roll can only fail on a critical failure of 1. I'm not advocating for retards who kill pc's by making them fall on their sword after tripping on a rock, but I'm also not opposed to having a critical failure of 1 lead to a series of checks that could ultimately kill a pc, especially when the entire situation could have been avoided by simply spending a few unoptimized skill points or planning ahead for a disaster as a party.

My attitude on this topic as a DM is similar to Chekhov's gun. If it doesn't matter enough that you can just let the players pass the challenge without making them roll a die, then why give them the challenge in the first place?

>>414477

You're contributing to the death of the hobby, you washed-up fossil. There's a reason tabletop RPGs weren't mainstream until now, and you're part of the problem. Player vs GM mentality is bad for your game and facilitates murderhoboism and metagaming. For shame, anon. For shame.

>>414493

>Baddies and Players function differently. Poison is a lot more dangerous to the players than it is to a mob of 10 mooks.

I'll echo this sentiment, due to the many games I played in the past with a GM who was obsessed with the Book of Vile Darkness. He'd make wave after wave of affliction based mages who wouldn't bat an eye at blowing up their eyes, or killing their loved ones to forever damage the player's stats. He joked several times once we got high enough level, they'd be able to remotely kill the player characters family, and anything they held dear. Oddly enough, his non-3.5 games were more balanced, which is odd, considering we played a lot of WoD stuff.

Polite sage since I'm not really adding you a discussion that I didn't read the previous replies to.

>>414450

Critical fails are a houserule born from another houserule where critical successes is a natural 20. It's really simple logic, if 20 is succeeding beyond all odds then what is a critical fail (natural 1)? Failing beyond all odds. Interpreting this usually results in injury or something crazy happening because it's more amusing that way.

>>414505

Makig tabletop mainstream is how we got faggots (including you) pozzing it up in the first place.

Back then, players had to do a little something called thinking and planning ahead instead of being mouthbreathig retards distracted by their phones at the table and hoping for inane bullshit where they're the big damn hero who's given everything at the beginning on a fucking silver platter.

You're going to be an expendable, filth covered murdohobo or guardsman. You become the big damn hero by surviving long enough to git gud enough to be one. You earn your adventure.

>>414505

>tabletop being mainstream is a good thing

Do you know where you are?

>>414525

A challenge is a challenge. If there is no chance of failure, why even make the challenge?

See: >>414497

As I said in that post, it's like Chekhov's gun. If it's a challenge, they should have a chance to fail. A critical fail doesn't need to include a ridiculously destructive result either, it can simply be a fail. Or if you want a little spice, have them fall flat on their face, or fall off a log, or whatever. Something to make the party chuckle if that's important to you.

And if a critical fail leads to a series of failures and a pc dies, then so be it. Because it's almost never the fault of the inclusion of critical fails, it's almost always a series of failures and poor decisions by the character/party.

>>414505

>mainstream

Yeah, because they're so much better now that we have tranny elves, nigger wizards and pussy ass faggots whining about character death.

God you cunts are insufferable little babies.

>>414574

>A critical fail doesn't need to include a ridiculously destructive result either, it can simply be a fail.

That is an entirely different mindset. I'm telling you it's not actually an official DnD rule until much later. It's a houserule from another houserule, which itself came about from houserules involving combat ahich are criticqal hits and automatic misses because of the very basic rules for combat wasn't satisfying enough for players. Even those critical hit houserules didn't even start seeing any official 1st party support until ADnD2e.

>>414534

>>414570

>>414575

Can you believe there are actually faggots out there who think like that? Have you ever noticed that they always start off at a higher level, too? To skip the "boring stuff"? Or they make dying really easy to come back from? *Why do people have fun wrong?*

Not related to the whole death thing, but to the criticals discussion.

My opinion is that you should never use them to do drastic changes for the better or worse, but rather nudges based on passing or failure. Some of which may not happen right away. So I made a quick guide for what to do.

Say there's a check (lockpicking a locked treasure chest for example) and you make a roll.

>Pass: You succeed. (Open the lock)

>Fail: You fail. (Waste time or break a lockpicking)

>Pass w/ Nat 20: Success plus a little bonus that may or may not happen immediately. (Open the lock, extra bit of treasure in the chest. Maybe a note that can help the party later. Make a range of loot say 9-15 coins with 12 as the average for a basic success.)

>Pass w/ Nat 1: Success but with a drawback that might happen. (Little less treasure inside, opened but broke a lockpick in the process, trigger a trap inside).

>Fail w/ Nat 20: Fail, but get something to help make the failure not as bad. (Broke your lockpick, but gained some insight into the lock. Next attempt gets you a +2 to your roll.)

>Fail w/ Nat 1: Failure and things get worse. (You jammed up the lock real good. You can't pick it anymore unless you get it fixed.)

Basically, apply it based on the situation and don't over exaggerate the criteria effect.

>>414579

It seems like you do as I do.

The greater a chance to fail, the worse the result of a nat 1 will be.

Alternatively, the greater the chance to fail, the less impactful a nat 20 will be.

Here's a scenario:

>Pc attempts to pick a lock without any skill in lock picking.

<Nat 20 = lock is picked but the lock pick breaks

<Nat 1 = lock pick not only fails, but the pick is broken, is stuck in the lock and possibly the pc even cuts themselves and loses 1hp.

Alternatively,

>Pc attempts to pick a lock and has high skill in lock picking

<Nat 20 = lock is picked stealthily, and maybe they even earn a temporary bonus for all locks in that Dungeon (maybe they understand how these particular locks work better now)

<Nat 1 = the lock pick breaks, but they manage to save the lock and can try again.

Idea being, if you take points in the skill, your chance of a catastrophic failure occurring will be inevitably reduced. But if you try to do something you have no skill for and you crit fail, it's going to be really bad.

No skill in swimming and you want to try swimming across a river? Well, a nat 1 and you'll fucking drown (high skill in swimming with a nat 1 and maybe you'll have a chance at another check, or maybe you are forced to drop your heavy pack so you can swim back to the surface.)

Idea is, maybe you should've tied a rope around your waist, or maybe you shouldn't have tried to do something your character isn't skilled at doing.

It's harsh, but so many advocates for easy mode gameplay and avoiding pc death, also end up bitching about people who min max stats. Well, maybe if a pc ran the risk of dying for failing a basic skill check, then maybe they will know they need to actually create a character with a diverse skill set.

>>414578

At the end of the day I don't give a fuck what these stupid retards want to do within the confines of their own campaigns.

The issue is that they seem to think that, not only is their way of playing *superior*, but also that it's *necessary* everyone plays the same way, so that "the hobby" can be more inclusive and mainstream.

It's not my fucking job to see that the nigger Tyrone and the dumb tranny Shyler (formerly know as Tyler) are comfortable and feel "included" and "safe". Let alone ensuring that the overweight man kids who want to play superhero with paper and dice never see a genuine challenge during the entirety of a campaign.

>>414582

Your implementation of critical successes and failure in skill checks like that for your second example overrides vanilla rules for skills and renders having high skill ranks worthless. The first example is fine since the only way they could succeed is with a natural 20.

>>409913

>On out of combat rolls, there should only be two states – success and failure.

Okay, what should be the consequence for failing to cross a very fast moving river on a log, and then failing to grab onto the side of the river? Would you expect that character in that situation to be gently pushed back to where he started, and then try the same action again until he succeeds? If you can't lose anything, what's the point of having a chance of failure at all?

He was a level 1 elf of unknown class and edition, it's likely he had very little max health and the damage roll for the sharp rocks had a chance to kill him but no chance to kill other characters in the party.

>>414695

If this is DnD3.5 (or lower) your success or failure in out of combat skills is determined by roll result + skill ranks, add and subtract bonuses or penalties, compare to DC check number. If your result is higher then the DC you pass the check and succeed. There is no particular "critical" success unless your total result far exceeds the DC check in which case you shouldn't even bother rolling the check anymore since their ranks alone will let them pass it every time.All critical failures on DC checks are always specified for each DC check individually.

>>414697

What part of my post implied I don't already know all that? You didn't answer the question I asked.

The elf in the river taking damage was not a critical failure, it was a consequence of a two regular failures in a dangerous environment.

Again, what else would you have decided happened to the elf as a consequence for failure in that situation?

>>414771

>You didn't answer the question I asked.

I'm not the one you asked, yours and his posts just generally give the impression neither of you know that rolling a 20 or 1 does not give a critical on skill rolls. You take damage when the DM decides you do based entirely on circumstances in out of combat skill checks. You would take damage in a rapid moving river but not from actually falling in. That would be from time intervals. Once you're in the river, in to do anything requires a saving throw and if you fail the saving throw then you wouldn't even be allowed to make the second skill roll for a while. If the DM is being a dick.

>>414773

Well I never once mentioned criticals on skill rolls. In the specific situation told by >>404159 it is completely logical and fair that the consequence for multiple failures would be damage.

It wasn't because he rolled a 1 that he died, it was because he failed the attempt, failed the save, and got an unfortunate damage roll. How is that the DM being a dick? How many more chances to mitigate consequences could there possibly be?

>>414796

Well, letting the dice kill a character instead of the story just reeks of adversarialism.

>>414796

The saving throw call is the dick move. At least to me since if something like that happens the river is suddenly shallow, coincidental rocks catch you, or you get unlimited attempts to get out.

>>414799

Letting the story kill a character just reeks of scripted death and plot armor.

>>414806

Unlimited attempts? Then why have a chance of failure at all?

>>414806

>you should have unlimited attempts to get out

That's retarded, anon. If someone falls into a river they have one chance to get out before they're killed by something and two if they are very lucky.

>>414809

If only you guys knew how bad DnD rivers really are. There is a ton of DC checks involved and the PC can be stuck in a situation where they're struggling to get out but swim checks ensure they won't

won't take damage or go under while going down the river for a mile or even more. Unlimited attempts just speeds this stuff up.

>>415830

I miss MR.RAGE.

I know 8chan /tg/ shits on name fagging but it really wasn't that bad.

I miss Sergalfag too.

>>415862

>He falls into the river and loses some HP plus perhaps gains a lingering injury, if you're playing a rough game.

So you agree with me here? >>414771 >>414796

>>415867

Yeah. It sounds perfectly reasonable.

>>415860

Gimmicky tripfags would only occasionally have a funny moment that was worth remembering. It was the law of averages at work. Only problem is that regular users tend to remember the 99 times out of 100 other times that some tripfag showed up in a thread and tried really hard to be the star of the fucking show, demanding attention, and attempting to be "le epic funnyman XD" and then pretended that they haven't been a giant faggot and that people complaining about tripfags were the real problem.

>>415862

Why do you guys insist on fall damage when falling into a river from a log, just how damn high is this log?

>>415996

>fall damage

never implied such a thing. Falling in a river big enough to a check to cross means there will be a strong current, which will drag you across the rocks + maybe drown you, and you'll get fucked up

>>416045

>which will drag you across the rocks + maybe drown you

Nigger that's not how rivers work, the under current doesn't move at the same speed as the surface so all rivers are checked to see if it's safe to cross as a matter of course.

And strong enough to be dragged on to the surface immediately? Wholly fucking shit the only river I know of that does that is in England, impossible to escape, and you're pretty much dead if you so much as put your hand in it from the edge because the under current is so strong it pulls you in with a force no human can resist. Oh and it's surface is perfectly calm so you'd never know by looking at it.

The more I'm hearing your reasoning the more shit it is, at least for a simple river.

>>416052

>muh weelism

Jesus, you people are one of the biggest of the innumerable cancers killing this hobby. I'd reccomend promptly appologizing to any group of gamers who have had the displeasure of playing with you then jumping into that river you described.

>>416052

Well, my negro friend, if it's a tiny, shitty "river" then you can just cross it on foot without some shitty log acrobacy and thus do not need to make agility check. Since crossing on a log IS necessary, it implies that the river cannot be crossed this way, ergo it is either too deep (in which case you could simply swim across, so that's not it either) or the fucking current is too strong.

I don't even know what the fuck you're trying to say with the rest of your ramblings. No shit rivers are checked to see if they're safe to cross, which is why the character opted to cross using the fucking log instead of just walking or swimming across.

>Wholly fucking shit the only river I know of that does that is in England

Maybe if you lifted your fucking ass from your sperm and cheeto encrusted throne and went outside, you'd find plenty of fucking rivers that are dangerous as fuck to try and swim across. Hell, even if you just opened the fucking web browser and checked on how many people die by being dragged by the current and drowning, you'd realise what a goddamn fucking retard you are. That's not to mention that this is a fictional setting where one can indeed encounter big as fuck rivers with big as fuck currents.

Go jump in a river, you nigger.

>>416073

No need to be so salty. I remember one of my characters falling into a river once and failing the swim check. Instead of arguing about it, the DM merely asked what gear I was wearing, then said leather is insanely hard to swim in when wet, and furthermore a backpack with 100lbs of gear almost PLUS now getting full of water is gonna assuredly drown me unless I doff gear and make the applicable rolls. Realism can be a detriment, but it also establishes why the rolls are made in the first place.

polite sage because this discussion feels less about common sense, and more about "I have to win this talk".

>>416075

I'm talking about niggers who fucking shut down the game to argue with the GM about percieved need to have 100% realism in the game. If the GM wants to inject that stuff into their game, more power to them.

>>416073

>>416106

I'd seriously raise an eyebrow to any DM who makes up an extremely simplified set of rules that end up being deadlier then raw which is already pretty punishing for same scenario.

>>416074

>or the fucking current is too strong.

You've already established the river is too strong for the Elf but nobody else so the river's strength isn't so certain. Likely he could just remain as buoyant as possible, keeping his head above the water's level while moving in a diagonal direction as the river takes him down it's path. Unless you think you should get 1d4 for kneescrape-tier damage he'd be fine but need to treat his mild cuts on the legs for infection. Possibly losing some gear in the whole ordeal.

This happened about a year and a half ago. Apologies in advance for the length and granularity, but I want you all to understand how stressful it is to have literally almost every roll from one party member capable of screwing up an encounter or killing someone.

Party:

• D&D3.5e campaign with level 8 characters; dragon shaman and sorcerer had been playing together previously but the rest of us were new

• Human cleric (me) of Pelor specializing in healing because we needed a healer. Decently well-rounded stats with bonus ranks in social skills. I rolled him to be an insufferable yuppie cleric who would act as the party's face. Hails from a fabulously wealthy family.

• Lizardfolk barbarian with huge guts and INT & CHA as dump stats who specialized in craft: taxidermy to make trophies of the enemies we kill. His player is inexperienced but plays his character well. Regularly has damage modifiers of 40+.

• Human dragon shaman. Can channel a lightning breath weapon and has a ring which lets him transform into a young dragon once per day. Experienced player, but never really role-plays.

• Half-elf sniper ranger. Just likes rolling dice. Zero role-playing.

• Human sorcerer specializing in wild magic. Technically role-plays, but he's LE CHAOTIC NEUTRAL which means he acts like a shithead and calls it role-playing. Somewhat autistic.

◦ You know what wild magic does? You roll a d6 and a d20 before you cast any spell that isn't a 0-level spell. The d6 might make your spell stronger, but if the d20 rolls a 13 you consult a (homebrew) list of 10,000 possible effects and the spell is replaced by something on that list, chosen randomly.

Setting:

• Overarching goal concerns lifting the curse from a quartet of cursed elemental orbs, yadda yadda doomsday, yadda yadda necrotic damage if you lose possession of them. The previous party (dragon shaman, sorcerer, some other guy who left the campaign) had been carrying around a bag of all four elemental orbs. The bag had been made of mithril, which prevented them from being cursed by the orbs' power, but one of the sorcerer's wild magic surges had turned the bag and quite a lot of other stuff to adamantine, which meant it cursed him and the dragon shaman a while ago.

• Our current setting is an archipelago full of merfolk and lizardfolk, who are being attacked by salamanders to the point many of them are fleeing the region. My character is an arrogant, foppish cleric tasked by his church with "sorting out that fucking lizard problem" and getting things back to normal so his kingdom won't have to put up with the influx of lizardfolk.

• To that end he's enlisted the lizardfolk barbarian as a guide for his yacht which he's sailing around the archipelago in search of clues, and the half-elf ranger as a bodyguard.

>>416293

>First session starts off with a bang when the DM grabs a bag of MLP miniatures and tosses them onto the map for us to use as our characters

>Consider going along with it but Rarity was already taken by the sorcerer

>The party meets up, etc. and the previous members explain the situation to us

>We venture to a small, unnamed island and as soon as we make landfall my cleric jumps out and rechristens it to my character's name while jamming a flag with my family crest into the beach

>Barbarian succeeds on his knowledge check to know what a flag is, so he doesn't take kindly to it, but that isn't the problem. The problem is the wild magic sorcerer.

>Sorcerer was way more opposed to me claiming the island than the barbarian

>I don't know if his character had any justification for giving a shit, but the flag stood where it was before the barbarian took it down

>I don't think the sorcerer appreciated the DM changing the map from "Island 8" to the new name, but I loved it

>I'm improvising at this point and establish my cleric as having a collection of these flags on his yacht which he brought along for just such an occasion

>I didn't have any interest in the island because I'd cast Detect Poison on the glowing purple flowers that covered it and didn't like what I saw

>Sorcerer was the only one dumb enough to pick the flowers, and he didn't cast Detect Magic or do anything to see what they were

>After spending a night with these flowers in his pocket, the sorcerer awakes to realize he's suffered 2 points of ability damage in WIS and INT each

>The DM informs us the flowers are magical, but their magic emits radiation

>I should also tell you one of the items the sorcerer had "acquired" in previous sessions was the not!One Ring, which one of his wild magic surges had turned into the One String

>The sorcerer, upon realizing these flowers are poisoning him, does what any normal person would do and dons the One String to sneak into the captain's cabin and irradiate his flags

>He decides to do this at dawn, while my character is praying and preparing spells

>I want you to imagine an autistic skin-and-bones horsefucker saying "I sneak into his quarters and rub the flowers all over his flags!" with a Spurdo-like grin on his face

>Sorcerer sneaks in only to discover the small compartment of flags under my cleric's bed is, surprisingly, fucking locked

>My character doesn't hear enough to warrant being suspicious so I call out to the dragon shaman, who tells me he's sleeping in the bunks downstairs

>Sorcerer attempts to Knock open the lock on the flag compartment, but the DM informs him that would rather defeat the point of stealth

>Defeated, sorcerer sneaks back out and removes the One String

>DM rolls to see if any not!ring wraiths appear

>Pause

>Heavy sigh

>"Alright, roll initiative while I find the map for a caravel in 3.5"

>Two wraiths with greatswords spawn in, and two party members are still asleep

>Dragon shaman, who was awake, runs upstairs and transforms into a dragon to grapple one wraith

>Sorcerer flees to captain's cabin, locks the door

>My cleric needs to ask him what's going on four or five times before he gets a straight answer, which is poor news considering he prays before donning his armour and he takes great pride in his yacht not being destroyed by wraiths

>>At least the figurehead of himself, shirtless, will be okay

>Walk outside, make a Greater Turn Undead check in place of a normal one thanks to a class feature

>Just enough to destroy one wraith as the dragon throws the other overboard

>Crisis averted

>Party confronts sorcerer as to why he was invisible in the captain's cabin

>"It was a prank. I'm sorry."

>Dragon shaman, having seen this happen before, removes the One String and throws it overboard

>>DM notes the walking speed of a wraith in full plate at the bottom of the ocean, just in case

>Sorcerer tries to cast a spell and is immediately dogpiled by barbarian and my cleric

>Restrain urge to throw him overboard

>As the party describes their day, I browse the cleric spell list and discover the interaction between the Bestow Curse spell and the Brew Potion feat

>Did you know you can invent your own potion in 3.5 as long as it isn't too mechanically powerful?

>"Uh, yeah, I'll stay on the ship and brew up a potion while you guys explore this island"

>What should be a routine combat encounter nearly turns into a party wipe because the healer isn't there and sorcerer has another wild magic surge which gives a drake a set of full plate armour, making it almost impossible to hit

>Meanwhile, the curse I've invented is a doozy: target's body is covered in my cleric's family crest & colours, tonnes of social penalties, takes huge penalties to arguing with my cleric, etc.

>And now we wait

>Turns out I shouldn't have waited because the day after the potion is brewed, sorcerer has another wild magic surge and his saving throws become jacked

>>416294

Several sessions later:

>Se infiltrate the salamanders' main island

>The reason we can get there by penetrating the giant sphere of smoke and ash surrounding the island is because we hijacked one of the salamanders' metal ships earlier after going to a merfolk settlement they had razed

>During that fight, sorcerer wild surged again, which meant his eyes "appear to have small fish swimming in them" – this obstructs his vision and makes spells less accurate

>We have a salamander hostage and the captain's door is also glowing as brightly as the sun thanks to another wild magic surge, which makes picking the lock a real pain

>Anyway, none of us know how to work a steam-powered ship (my cleric's background in recreational yachting is surprisingly not relevant), and we almost blow it up before resting for the night

>The next morning, we do blow up the boiler and the sorcerer almost dies because he was manning it

>>The DM describes the boiler as being powered by a steam elemental or something, and Sorcerer’s player instantly starts moaning about how we need to save it, and spare the life of the salamander we took prisoner

>>"you're aware the salamanders have been committing genocide, right?"

>>"well, yeah, but this one COULD become a good person!"

>My cleric doesn't have much reason to save the sorcerer’s life but the two of them move from the boiling air belowdecks to the safety of the main deck

>This is the best chance he'll ever have to spike the sorcerer since he's unconscious, which usually makes will saves pretty tough

>the DM rules a huge penalty and sorcerer fails his roll as everyone else at the table laughs like hyenas

>I pass him the curse description, and for once he shuts the fuck up while reading it before rifling through his character sheets

>The rest of us sort out the ship and hail my yacht, which had been following at a distance

I will freely admit I am nor familiar with the various spell lists in 3.5e, but did you know sorcerers can cast Remove Curse? Did you know it didn't count as being outside of the sorcerer's specialty domain (fire) so he had the smallest chance possible to wild magic surge? I fucking didn't.

>>416296

>Naturally the dumbass cures himself like it's nothing; even the DM is bummed

>But I am a patient man, and as fate would have it, I wouldn't need to do anything

>We sail to the main island home of the salamanders

>We attempt to kill our hostage, but he manages to slip away just long enough to sound an alarm, alerting one of the patrolling ships to our disguise

>It starts launching fireballs at us, most of which miss but some of which scuff the paint on my yacht

>This is unacceptable

>The wizard and the dragon shaman are able to fly over to the ship, but all I can do is cast Air Walk on myself and start booking it (Air Walk lasts for 10min/caster level, so 1:20, which becomes relevant)

>The ranger and barbarian sit on the yacht, wondering why the fuck they didn't roll casters in a game of D&D3.5e

>The enemy ship is dispatched and scuttled shortly, and we sail around to a sheltered side of the island

At this point I should state that the way we would stop the salamanders is by closing a portal to the elemental plane of fire, which we deduce to be at the top of the giant black tower on the island. This would require the work of the dedicated ritualists and their bodyguards, who were sailing with us, and would have the additional benefit from removing a curse from the elemental orb of fire.

>Make our way inland, avoiding patrols by going through rocky hills

>We discover a tunnel, go through it, and discover a door leading to the base of the tower

>Our DM is kind of a fuckant, so naturally the doorknob has poison on it and it deals a shit tonne of CON damage to the dragon shaman, halving his HP, and ultimatly leading to his death later (his is replcaed with a sort of cleric wizard)

>The next three or four sessions are filled with fighting and traps fucking everywhere

>We slog through three or four floors of enemies, combat rooms, and trapped doors; highlights include:

<Using an amulet of Perfect Stasis on a smoke monster and trying not to think about what'll happen if one of us walks into a smoke particle frozen in space

<Me using air walk to climb five floors of a magical elevator shaft and piggyback up the entire party plus the retinue of ritualists and their bodyguards, one at a time

<Using the headless corpse of a fire-immune enemy to make a gap in a wall of fire

<Realizing the arthritic, obese Sorcerer is overencumbered because of all the random shit he collects "because it'll all be useful at some point!" ‒ so he commandeers a bag of holding

>>416297

>At length, we reach the top of the tower, exhausted, and the only reason we hadn't run out of magic was due to a few potions and a level up

>The final boss is an ifreet whom we nearly kill before he planeshifts to the elemental plane of fire

>We encounter him again on top of the tower where the portal is, surrounded by gigantic fire elementals

>The fight is tough, but the Cleric Wizard helps by casting Stone Shape three or four times to immobilize the ifreet for several rounds

>Sorcerer, who has been running on fumes much of this time, is burning low-level spell slots as higher level spell slots, which means he takes big penalties to wild magic surges, which means he's been surging a lot

>Most of them have been harmless, but after the Cleric Wizard uses shape stone to drop the ifreet through the ground into the floor below, Sorcerer surges again and two additional ifreets appear

>At the table, we start freaking out because these guys can cast tonnes of spells at will and more or less murder anyone in the party with a full-round attack

>"well, maybe they're phantasmal"

>We take pot shots at each of the new ifreets, and they disappear after we damage them

>Huge sigh of relief, they're obviously phantasmal

>Several rounds later, the DM asks the barbarian to make a listen check, which he fails

>Oh

>Turns out ifreets can just turn invisible once per day and barbarian gets ambushed in the middle of combat and drops to -9 HP

>O-oh

>Chaos ensues

>Sorcerer tries to stabilize the Barbarian with a healing potion

>He is successful, but the ifreet gets an opportunity attack, crits, and deals upwards of 50 damage to kill him instantly

>The barbarian player remarks how ironic it is the sorcerer's own wild magic surge killed him

>His last moments were spent bleeding out, desperately pawing through his belongings, trying to find something in his bag of garbage to save him

>Barbarian player and I lose our shit laughing at this mental image, but after a bit we calm down

>My cleric uses his last spell and a triple-spell potion to heal the barbarian up to nearly full HP

>The ranger, equipped with a magic bow, quietly deals roughly a million damage and kills every single enemy over the next few turns

>Huge sigh of relief, partly due to defeating the ifreets, but mostly because the sorcerer is dead

The wild magic sorcerer was dead, hoist by his own petard, and the party had saved the day. The cleric got saddled with a new quest to lift his curse, the ranger got a sweet new bow from the dragon shaman's corpse, and the barbarian got to drown in lizard cloaca at the lizardfolk's celebratory feast.

>>416313

I asked the guy doing chargen in the FATAL thread and apparently that list is only 2,000 entries long.

>party fighting dragon on floating platform way up in the sky

>everybody rolling pretty well, not hurt too much

>kill dragon while it's midair over the side

>it falls to the land below

>player (barbarian): We can't lose it, it's got loot. I'm going after it. *runs toward edge*

>everyone: You're going to die.

>player: The GM wouldn't make it so high that we'd die. What if we fell off during the battle?

>GM: There's no tension without stakes. Don't be retarded. You're going to die. It's a big dragon's corpse and you saw more or less where it fell. Not hard to find, if you just wait a second-

>player: GERONIMOOOOOOO

>GM: *rolling dice* Roll to break the fall and then save for massive damage

>player: wait what

>GM: *quick maths* Never mind, still too much damage. The rest of the party hears you shout all the way to the bottom followed by a crunchy splat.

Not particularly entertaining but it feels stupid.

>The party gets trapped in a demiplane created by a wizard who just collects magical items

>In order to leave, we have to give him our magical items

>He says he wants to give us some items he wants to get rid of, and shows us the room of items

>Bunch of really decent items including a neat upgrade for my sorcerer

>Rogue finds a bottle with an eye floating in some liquid

>My sorcerer examines it; and thinks its an eye of great evil. Tell the rogue.

>Rogue disregards information and looks deep into the eye

>it makes him gouge out his own eye and replace it with the evil one... otherwise, seems fine

>leave the demiplane afterwards, continue adventuring as normal

>learn that the evil eye belongs to some entity that has his body parts scattered all over, and each has a modicum of his power. Those who use it have a chance to lose their soul to him. The more they use it, the worse it gets

>One of the spells in the eye is Disintegrate

>Over the course of the adventure, the rogue proceeds to use Disintegrate on

-a chair (to test it, he says)

-fog

-drunk npcs he got into a fight with

-the person he was trying to save from the drunk npcs

-an illusion (that he knew was an illusion, he just wanted to get rid of it)

>not a single enemy

>the final one had his soul stolen, insta death.

>Flame princess

>Campaign starts in a magical prison with the only exit being a gauntlet of underground threats

>We roll for characters and go down into the abyss through lift

>One PC randomly yells in a monster infested cave

>Giant birds of death come down and eat us

>TPK in the first 2 minutes of the game

>GM has a strict "no backup characters" rule (which I think it's kinda dumb but well)

>We decide to call it a night.

>The player that killed us found it funny

>I didn't like the fact that I drove over 2 hours for 2 minutes of game.

>>416699

>Rogue disregards information and looks deep into the eye

>it makes him gouge out his own eye and replace it with

So your GM gave you the Eye of Vecna. Expect your friend's Left Hand to be lost next, too.

>>416780

Your GM sounds like kind of a faggot.

>>416780

>GM has a strict "no backup characters" rule (which I think it's kinda dumb but well)

In a system where you can die in 2 or 3 hits?

>>416404

I had a player a little like that.

Ever hear of grimtooth's traps? I made an evening's diversions exclusively from Grimtooth's offerings. The party learned to hate rice paper.

Doorway out, long hallway. In the dim light the party can just make out a solid, wooden door at the other end.

Bard makes a run for it, giggling and singing irish drinking songs all the way.

Paladin grabs the poor boy, ties a knot with his silk rope and lets him go.

Floor of hallway rises, snaps the rope clean.

Falling straight down now, the bard fails his fall/fly checks, goes straight through the rice-paper-door to impale himself on the spiked wall-now-floor.

Also, failed his climb check, as the door out, now, was up -- and it was filled with water, now all over the cobblestone walls. Hits the spikes again. But he and both his hitpoints make it up to the next room, letting the hallway balance back down to show itself, empty of bards and tidalwave sloshing towards the confused paladin.

I got the paladin, though. Final McGuffin in a room, protected by a giant hammer, poised against the wall.

Paladin stands as far away from it as possible, orders the kobold POW to grab the McGuffin.

Bard, now up to five HP, hides under the hammer, thinking it will swing way out and miss him.

Do you know this trap? The head falls off the giant haft, misses the bard by about an inch, and knocks the floor catywumpus, dumping the bard into 1d4-every-round acid.

Oh, and it catapults the paladin. I made him give me a 'fly' check: neg-7. He flies through the rice-paper roof, locates the spikes protecting the jeffries-tube-exit with his face, then misses the DC8 dex check to catch the shelf as he falls, so I'm kind and let him hang, LukeSkywalker style, from the shelf that hides the way out of this madhouse.

Ah, Grimtooth. I think we need to chat again.

>>416699

So what was it mechanically was it increasing penalty usage? Seems kind of dumb when cozying up to the Beholder cults can give you free disintegration eyes with the only drawback being that you're really ugly and Beholders hate you more.

>>416780

Has he ever heard of a campaign reset? That is a thing you know.

>Be me.

>Join a new group at a FLGS.

>Play in a campaign set in a city with rampant corruption and seedy criminal organizations.

>Party is sent to fantasy-chicago to investigate some mysterious plot hooks.

>Get stopped by a street gang shaking us down for money. Combat encounter ensues.

>After combat we decide to show some bravado as we try to make a name for our group and tell anyone who is watching us not to mess with us. Second combat encounter ensues.

>Decide to check the nearby apartment building. Third combat ensues.

>Another PC scratches his ass. Fourth combat encounter ensues.

>I try to interrogate one of the survivors but that starts the fifth combat encounter in a row and my ass gets three bolts from some faggots camping up in a balcony red wedding style. Being a level 1 party my pc went down and thats where we left off that 5 hour session

It seemed like the DM was trying to punish us for not moving on the the next event in the plot by copy pasting his first encounter over and over again. We didn't come back after that.

>>417536

>be me

You thought you could get away with posting that sort of shit here, faggot?

>>416780

If that's Lamentations of the Flame Princess and a no backup characters rule, rhat GM is both a moron and as big an asshole as the lolrandumb player.

>>418982

I was too lazy to look for something more suited and youtube does not have chinks killing themselves videos. Sorry for low effort, and if you have better idea for it you are welcome to write about it in meta thread.

>>418978

Anon, the OP is from December of last year.

>>414451

Why did you have a Minotaur as a playable race itfp?

>>414505

>tabletop being (((mainstream)))

>good

Go fellate a gas canister, Chaim.

>>419323

>do you want to do anything on a trip

>no, i am good

>GOTCHA! You sit and do nothing for 3 weeks!

What a douche.

>>412980

>Troll Witch doctor (Warcraft) arrives in the group

>Paladin comes back from an unknown previous session fight.

>Heavily injured

>"Let me heal him"

>I do voodoo shit, taking the first critter I saw (squirel), cutting him in half and splashing intestines on paladin.

>Start to dance, making everyone around me dance as well or the magic will not work.

>GM is amused. I roll.

>Fumble

>Paladin covered with squirell blood dies of blood loss when everyone is dancing on him because I told da voodoo will cure da paladin.

>We already had a more competent healer in the group.

I was 12 btw.

>>419323

>cause disruption with extreme stat and spell abuse

<get slapped down for it

>reroll with extreme stat and intent to cause disruption

Yeah I'll take a flyer on that for things that never happened and even if it did you would have deserved it.

>>419365

I forgot to say we randomized stats and made characters from what we got.

Also, did you read the whole thing ? I wasn't enjoying it, but the group did make some kind of sucess with me and I was the one who sweet talked every encounter.

I hate systems where charisma is used as a base stat. The point of roleplaying is playing a character, not saying "I persuade him" "OK roll a dice" (even if it wasn't like that) so even if I was eventually really convincing people in every situation by roleplaying it, even when it wasn't needed, I did not enjoyed being a key.

Everyone was pissed of after my death because they enjoyed the fact that we had some freedom on the railroad (that we still followed because we wanted the GM have some fun too). Also, I may still be able to show you my sheets, but it may took some time to ask my friend to find them and won't be a real proof I guess. Also it was wrote in French.

The idea was to talk about retarded player death. If I have to explain to you how the GM was an idiot by pointing every elements of what happened instead of most important ones you will end up bored saying "ok I understand, he does not want you to bypass his plans, stop"

He literally admitted later he made me an incapable character. I played it like an arabian carpet seller and he was pissed at first because I was enjoying playing as "Tanir" the "correct" way to pronounce "Daniel" (the name he gave to my character), even if I was incapable the group saw me as a good timid guy and liked me. He did not liked it either.

Everyone agreed that he should have talked to us and say he wanted me to make a new character (I would have done that). But he preffered throwing giant sabertooth tigers on the group and created IRL tension between us when everyone was shocked after he butchered us.

I may have been a jerk playing with his npcs (I was only able to MC one so I choosed them wisely) and solving every explosive situation only with my charisma. But the death was still totally retarded.

Why can't you enjoy reading other's experiences in the hobby ?

>>419410

Sounds like he is one of those DMs.

There are old good CLUE files (Shadowrun): https://web.archive.org/web/20061206051637/archive.dumpshock.com/CLUE/index.php3

>>419416

These actually got me into trying Shadowrun out, thanks to this now I can pop these out as 6th world news segments.

>Vampire: The Dark Ages

>A Ravnos PC is hunting for blood

>He notices a homeless guy sleeping in a ruined building

>Sneaks up on him, maybe even grabs the guy

>The homeless guy confronts the Ravnos: "What are you doing, vampire?"

>The player just sits there dumbfounded

>The homeless guy was a werewolf

>The Ravnos just stands there

>The werewolf continues to beat the vampire to a pulp or claw him to death

I was the Storyteller. I gave the Ravnos plenty of time to do something. I wanted him to escape, but he just sat there. I described the werewolf's actions slowly. I was waiting for him to react, but the player did nothing. He wasn't known for his Wits score.

I once blew up a planet challenging Kanye West to a Swag-Off.

Most of the rest of them are because my GM is a douche.