The Harbinger of Ferocity

Ask the Person Below You a Question

I am assuming you are speaking to the Catholic form of confession, or some form of traditional orthodoxy, which I myself am not familiar to, but I imagine the problem, the fear itself, arises from admitting wrongdoing to someone there and then, in the first person and who "knows" you the individual. The latent, underlying admission of guilt to another carries some sort of threat to it, that reprimand or punishment for it could be carried out, even if the idea is that it is an act of repentance. That is also ignoring that it is of course a frightening experience to confront one's own errors; people have enough issue with that as it is.

Speaking for myself, I have no real regrets or pangs of guilt that hang over me. Confessing an error or wrongful way is not that intimidating; it has already been rationalized and understood for where I erred in it. I know the consequences and weight of my actions, perhaps even knew them fully going in, and that in the end there is no point in having fear or not being at peace with things. No unfinished business.

Speaking on to stranger, more metaphysical and spiritual levels, have you ever experienced any moment where no amount of rationale, logic, reason, or understanding can explain an outcome for you? If so, what transpired? What made it break the apparent rules?

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

That is a start at least, accidents aside. One less direct issue to confront, one still left. An improvement all the same from where we were.

Dungeons and Derps - The D&D Experience

I always stood by the philosophy that a Dungeon Master should be one of, if not the, most experienced and versed players at the table. The sort who could recognize the party as a whole was a problem, as was their limited, narrow scope of understanding, not make it worse by punishing anyone doing it well. Unfortunately he too had that philosophy that only certain things were balanced or good, rather allowed. The punishment for myself was coming to the table with a character that did not matter and that we would spend hours flailing at enemies because they just would not die as quickly as they needed to, then be stuck with some ludicrously complicated puzzle that three-quarters of the time required meta knowledge to complete.

Exploiting character weaknesses is not so much cheating as doing your job correctly; you put the responsibility on the player then to play it out. The issue that arises is if and when players get singled out by the Dungeon Master to always achieve their agenda, see the Chaotic Neutral rogue always somehow having opportunities to break the game with a god of chaos on their side while the rest of us have to fix everything.

On to cursed items, which I admit I have only ever employed once and that was part of the objective they had. A clearly magical artifact, a broken sword, in a world where magic items were rare enough to the point they only ever saw a +1 Magic Longsword in the rest of the game. Of course they disregarded every sign of danger, that the weapon was locked away underground in a den, guarded by spirits, required a Dispel Magic casting to break down a barrier, then find it laid out in a large room atop a stone slab over a blood red tapestry, everything covered in dust. The only thing "cursed" about it was that it had a soul of its own bound to it that manipulated the group to free itself.

Yet, somehow, they only somewhat recognized the danger, but went about completing its quest all the same. Until the chaotic sort tried to steal it, throw it into a fire, then beat it with a hammer; said gnome was then jumped by the rest of their party. So no, not too fond of magic items or cursed items, normally because my experience with them is that they were always bad. I am sure you can imagine why based on my previous story.

There Are No Heroes

Still seeking one more dedicated and experienced player for this setting.

Dungeons and Derps - The D&D Experience

A tonal shift from my other stories, but here is one of a Dungeon Master in a traditional high fantasy Third Edition game not quite realizing that his party is, for lack of better words, really bad at the game, and making an ante with me they could not hold to.

Just what does this great cat mean by "Really bad at the game.", you wonder? Let us speak to a party that is wholly unoptimized, I mean to even the practical level of say, choosing a feat that actually does something for their damage, and say not wasting two feats on Endurance and Diehard. The sort of people that while every book in the game is allowed, they still bring a fighter or ranger and are confused why they are bad at everything. The sort of party who thinks clerics are only good at healing or that bards only use bardic music in combat. The level of just being impractical and nonviable.

Enter yours truly, as while I have never once brought a truly optimized character to a table, I did bring quite a few startling outcomes. Be it an ardent and psionics as a whole or just a regular warblade using material solely from the supplement. Now, you might ask, how was this an issue?

Because to put it simply, the Dungeon Master cheated. "How does a Dungeon Master cheat?", one might reasonably wonder. The reality of that is quite simple, in that he arbitrarily changed the difficulty class of some abilities, raised hit points as he saw fit on whim, or improved the enemy's defenses. Now, granted there are rules for that, he did so each round of combat depending if he felt we were doing too well and per character. As one can summarize where this is going, he took great issue with me bringing classes that were just plainly better to the table than the others. So much so that eventually I managed to catch him doing it by recording the fluctuating Armor Class of a monster and called him on it; enough was enough.

The rest of the group, being sort of tame and happy-go-lucky sorts were only slightly annoyed, but I was furious. What was the point of playing when the rules did not matter? Why do we even have character sheets, dice, Base Attack Bonuses, class features and the like if it is all entirely at the whim of the Dungeon Master?

He explained his complaint, "You do too much damage."

I had time and again pointed out, even encouraged and taught others the ways to not make their characters largely useless, even walked them through examples in my own free time. This, to say the least, was a flimsy excuse and I was about to prove it to him to make my point. I inquired as to how and why he said that, to which he said the classes I chose were overpowered and the others books outside the Player's Handbook were too strong. His argument? Only the Player's Handbook material was balanced and fair to everyone. I made the typical argument that the druid, cleric, and wizard are virtually better than every other class on print and he more or less ignored it; mind you I rarely played such classes to begin with, let alone to their extremes.

I then struck up a deal, a devious plan fitting of any cat, I said, "Very well, I will make a fighter using only the Player's Handbook and prove to you otherwise. The catch is, you play monsters exactly out of the book or within the rules. I will show you that the issue is not myself and that the books aren't the merit of balance."

Thinking he had his way and that his troubles would disappear, he agreed. Within short order I made a great weapon fighter, down to wealth by level, wielding a +1 Holy Keen Adamantine Greatsword and a plethora of combat related feats, two of which were the go-tos. Power Attack was not the stellar figure here, no, it was Improved Disarm and Improved Trip. My entire premise was simple, charge, disarm, trip, then dump the damage into power attack and massacre enemies. This was even easier than one imagines because the majority of creatures we faced? Open terrain, no obstacles, difficult terrain, and within sixty feet or less, with extremely rare spellcasting foes and fewer flying enemies.

In essence he signed his own death warrant, as did the sorry party. By no fault of their own, outside their laziness, they were content to plink monsters for at most, 2d6 plus a modifier or two per round on their turn, assuming they ever even hit, or cast spells that did little of anything - such as the druid attempting to bludgeon everything with a staff rather than turning into a lion, which I had wrote for them on their sheet. All the while the party as a whole tended to walk away from combat with nearly all their spells spent and only a few hit points left, usually to just be railroaded into the next event.

The following combat did not go that way the next time we played. Oh no, not this time. Held to the rules, we began fighting pirates on this stretch of the adventure and on the first charge, the Dungeon Master realized his mistake; a one hit critical strike and a cleave into downing another enemy. Fighters are not known for being power houses in this edition, but a competently made one, even so limited, wasn't a laughing matter at this table. On and on it went, most the party flailing and failing against even average enemies, orcs, ogres, lizardfolk pirates and the like, while everything I came across was soon disarmed or sundered, tripped, and summarily executed.

We cleared the entire cove of pirates in one fell swoop and went on to the boss, which of course, were more pirates and their captain. We all knew the obvious, that the boss had minions and spells, and that this was going to hurt; mind you much less where some half of the party would die in this encounter normally. However, I did not go for the glory, I spent my turns destroying the lesser foes, hoping, praying the rest of the party would actually manage to take down the pirate captain, but of course, they failed. Two of them were charmed and I was forced to make short work of them; luckily disarming them and keeping them prone had the effect of not killing them.

The Dungeon Master was infuriated. He was red in the face and obviously mad this had not gone as planned. We had a habit of annoying him, but usually it was never in combat, usually it was only when we circumvented some needlessly complicated puzzle - stories on that to come - though you can guess what came next.

He cheated and he cheated hard. How so? Suddenly my average rolls cannot touch the enemies they were regularly cleaning right through and no amount of hitting them when I did hit, usually critical hits now, did anything of merit or note. The rest of the party, whose characters could regularly not hit or do anything to save their life kept plinking away as normal. I called foul and asked for the notes, to which he sighed and turned over, part of our agreement.

It was over then, he needed to smoke and the game folded there. Needless to say, he much rather enjoyed playing in other peoples' games, but he wasn't about to Dungeon Master again for us. The moral of the story? Do not cheat your players or make accusations or agreements you cannot back up. I have plenty of stories of him, but this was the one that led into the games I spoke about of my running; a happy turn of events there.

Ask the Person Below You a Question

The one character above all I retain who was and is my favorite is Andarra Bloodmane, for the simple fact I created a monster and a anti-villain who is reasonable in execution and actual purpose. The objective was to write a personified force of nature, like a hurricane or a volcano, something completely indifferent and unfeeling, destructive and tireless, but as with my works, give it an animal bent alongside the strong undertones of "Nature conflicting with man.". The reason I call her such a success is that for all her failings and weaknesses, a thing gripped by compulsion and obsession, there is good reason to understand her purpose which is summarized most simply as, "The destroyer of destroyers." The setting she was wrote for and in was a gamble for the future, something the characters themselves would never see; something they did not even come to know until the very end. It was the least of the worst options in either setting the world at war against itself and letting it burn to ashes, or allow an unchecked, completely merciless thing to pare down all fronts until they were no more.

No less, the other great success I had with her character was making her existence a myth within a myth. The people of the world had no name or concept for what they were truly facing so they ascribed it to their own mythology, which the characters came to know her by. All the lore and legends about the "Crimson Woman" being parallels for our own personification of unfeeling death, a force of nature, as the "Grim Reaper", but without the obvious benefit of knowing what we know in the meta. Why was this a success in itself? Because the players played it out utterly not knowing really what they were facing or what it all meant; they expected one thing and met another in turn. Rather than having this epic battle with some monster of myth they came to confront what amounts to a living firestorm or a tornado, just much more supernatural and animal.

The one story I ever told where I did not ask myself at the end of each piece, "Could I have done this better?" and the greatest illusion I ever inflicted on players.

As for my question, let us speak to something a bit different in tone - quite a bit different - but much the same. What is the one character you have always wanted to play but have just never been able to? Why and what reason haven't you?

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

A major takeaway with the Suggestion spell is to, well, suggest with it. Without teasing too much about it, if it sounds reasonable and he fails his defense against it, good odds it will go well for us... depending on how you make said suggestion. Of course we will just need to see how that all goes, won't we?

D&D 5e - Hoard of the Dragon Queen

I have no objection for my character in Brannor being relegated to the side briefly. I of course would like to see this chapter further on forward and with more haste, but there is little I can efficiently add until something is done outright. Noting this, if need be I will continue to post as I have been, if only to further elaborate where I can or even exploit a weakness if I so happen to by accident. Regardless, no challenge from myself.

Old timer looking for get back into things.

Provided you stay committed to whatever roleplay topics you so choose for yourself, you are likely to find some measure of success. That tends to be one of the fundamental truths in this realm, that persistence pays off. So do not feel discouraged if you encounter a few games here and there that never achieve lift, @WildRPer. As a related note given a portion of the audience, the cycles of activity generally reflect those of the college system, so you can predict rises and falls in them appropriately.

Old timer looking for get back into things.

Unsurprisingly more and more of your archetype are becoming rare, @WildRPer. That said, welcome back to the community as a whole and while things have certainly changed since the days of rooms and tables, you can find some similar echoes here on the forum itself or the site's official Discord.