Help with a DM

[Falcos]

Greetings, all! I'm new here, so I apologize in advance if I make any kind of faux pas.

The general gist of what I'd like to ask is, I'm having issues explaining something to my DM.

He is of the adamant belief that any debilitating or enemy-targeted spell that isn't damage should be nerfed to the point of oblivion.

I know he's the DM, and if he wants to think that, that's his business, but I think it's gotten slightly out of hand when casting a non-damaging spell doesn't matter if it's ninth-level or zeroth, he just says they all "partially stun" the enemy for a single round, meaning that it does slightly less damage that round (but is otherwise unaffected).

When questioning him on it, he says that the only spells he wants us to be using are damaging, self-buffing and healing. Again, I know he's the DM and it's his world, but this frankly feels ridiculous.

(Example to show what I mean. In his eyes, casting Dominate Monster, Power Word: Stun, and Grease all have the same effect - the enemy does less damage on the next round.)

I am open to any advice anyone here has, as he strongarmed me into playing a caster rather than a melee, and now he's doing these rulings.

If people's advice is to shut up and play the DM's game, however, I'll gladly do so. I don't know if I'm out of line with all this.

Please help. :)

[Crake]

Greetings, all! I'm new here, so I apologize in advance if I make any kind of faux pas.

The general gist of what I'd like to ask is, I'm having issues explaining something to my DM.

He is of the adamant belief that any debilitating or enemy-targeted spell that isn't damage should be nerfed to the point of oblivion.

I know he's the DM, and if he wants to think that, that's his business, but I think it's gotten slightly out of hand when casting a non-damaging spell doesn't matter if it's ninth-level or zeroth, he just says they all "partially stun" the enemy for a single round, meaning that it does slightly less damage that round (but is otherwise unaffected).

When questioning him on it, he says that the only spells he wants us to be using are damaging, self-buffing and healing. Again, I know he's the DM and it's his world, but this frankly feels ridiculous.

(Example to show what I mean. In his eyes, casting Dominate Monster, Power Word: Stun, and Grease all have the same effect - the enemy does less damage on the next round.)

I am open to any advice anyone here has, as he strongarmed me into playing a caster rather than a melee, and now he's doing these rulings.

If people's advice is to shut up and play the DM's game, however, I'll gladly do so. I don't know if I'm out of line with all this.

Please help. :)

You might want to point him toward 5th edition, because it sounds like it would be perfect for him.

[ThisIsZen]

Allow me to commence with the mantra:

No gaming is better than bad gaming.

The caveat: Is what you're experiencing, to you, bad gaming? If it is, then the obvious answer is that if your DM isn't willing to stop gutting the concept of BFC completely, then walk. There's no reason to sit around dealing with a character you were coerced into playing being made useless at your desired function.

If, on the other hand, you do want to have fun and are willing to deal with this... bizarre reaction to quadratic wizardry, then my advice would be to become the Mailman. Maybe not to the fully-optimized end of the build, but still, look into ways to deliver that damage and then deliver it, through rain, sleet, hail, snow, tornadoes, apocalypses and dead magic zones.

Alternately, focus around party support spells to control the battle instead of disabling enemies. Enlarge Person, Haste, and other force multipliers can make your party ridiculously more effective, but I dunno how many of those are on offer compared to BFC spells in most spell lists, so I can't really speak to how much mileage you'd get out of this.

But again, no gaming is better than bad gaming, so if you don't like this game enough to stay I'd advise you to walk.

[Falcos]

Okay, worth mentioning that he is one of my best friends, and I don't really want to bail on him.

I'll take a look for this "Mailman" build you mention, and see what it's like.

I think he likes 3.5 because of the large amount of support and side material for it.

Does anybody have any further advice? I was ideally hoping to be able to change his mind somehow, but I can't come up with an argument for my case, other than "I want to be able to cast all of my spells, not just a narrow window of them".

(Also worth mentioning that he has made "Kill the target" spells completely ineffective. Implosion, Power Word: Kill, etc just do nothing but waste a turn. I have less of a problem with this, but I suppose it's still worth mentioning.)

[ThisIsZen]

If you go any Mailman variant, you won't have to worry about save-or-dies not working - your Power Word Kill is a twincast Orb of X that deals Enough Damage to Kill Something, ignores SR, and offers no save. Mailmanning is all about stacking up a ton of metamagics on lower-level damage spells until they turn into monstrosities.

That being said, your DM is operating completely outside of the rules. Any rules-based argument is going to fail here because what he's doing has nothing to do with either RAW or RAI. It kinda sounds like he doesn't really understand how to run combat when his PCs have the wealth of tactical options open to them that standard D&D parties have, and therefore is trying to reduce things to a simple question of Which Side Runs Out of Numbers First. I could be wrong - I don't know your friend so I can't say what his motivations might be.

Have you mentioned that it's making the game less fun for you? If he's a close friend of yours then that might be a good point to start a dialogue. Beyond that, have you asked WHY he's doing this? You might be able to construct a decent argument if you know what perceived issue with the game he's trying to fix.

I think beyond that, I might ask why he's letting you still use these abilities if he intends them to be nonfunctional. Why let you prepare and cast Power Word: Kill if it's a waste of a turn? If he doesn't want to play with those sorts of spells then he should just remove them rather than letting his players pick them but Noping them at the point of discharge.

[Falcos]

I've mentioned that it's making it less fun for me, and asked why he's doing it, and he says that "An enemy that can be CC'd is a boring enemy."

...I really don't know what to say to that.

So, on that topic, what Mailman builds would you recommend? I've been taking a look around, and finding some interesting ones, but my preference would be for one with the least multiclassing possible. I'd prefer simplicity over hypereffectiveness.

[Tohsaka Rin]

I would reply with 'An enemy that you just pour damage on until it goes away, is a boring enemy'.

But that's just me. I tend to drop a dozen trees on really big enemies to pin them down, or collapse buildings on small hordes in down. Scroll of 'Wall of X' and pushing it over on packs tends to work well, too.

Basically, if the fight goes 'full attack until it dies, next guy' I find it rather dull.

But that's just me, as I said.

[heavyfuel]

Yeah. Bringing a Theoretical Optimization build capable of killing the any creature in the MM in one round to your apparently non-optmized table isn't doing to solve your problem. The DM will either ban what he'll considers Metamagic abuse or just nerf them like he's nerfed the other spells. Worse yet, he might use your build against you out of spite: the vengeful equivalent of "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies" and eternal reminder that "if you can do it, so can the enemy"

If he doesn't like spells that serve as control instead of damage, either don't use these spells or don't play the with him. Like ThisIsZen said, no gaming is better than bad gaming.

Also, try to see thing from his point of view. There's a reason spells like Dominate Monster got axed in the later editions... Because they are cheap. How would you feel if every encounter you had someone throwing Hold Person on you and Coup de Grass-ing them? After all, if you can do it, so can the enemy.

As for Grease, take this example: Currently I'm pitting my players against lockdown builds (melee trippers, ranged entanglers and grease are a big part of it) and it's frustrating as hell for them. If my intention wasn't to frustrate them (because I want them to hate every ounce of this faction) I wouldn't be using these things. If a DM isn't willing to deal with these things, just don't insist on using them.

A better suggestion than Mailman is the God Wizard. It's basically centered around buffing the entire party so that they can perform better. Regardless, try and tone it down to meet the same power-level as the rest of your group

[Crake]

It sounds like he just cant be bothered coming up with creative ways for his enemies to deal with various kinds of BFC, which again leads me to point toward 5th ed, which is highly damage centric. Whats the point of liking 3.5 for it's high amount of support material if you aren't willing to use it. And let him know that turnabout is fair play, enemies can use those same tactics on the players. How does he handle grappling? That may as well be a disable if done by a competent grappler? Just seems like, if you only want to use damage, 3.5 might be the wrong system to be using.

[Milodiah]

I suspect he doesn't want to have to deal with creativity in terms of magic...he's embraced the "magic = shoot deathballs from hands" mantra of video-game RPGs, and closed his mind to anything else.On a related note, have you ever ended a fight with an enemy still alive on the field? If no, and he pretty much has every encounter be "enemies rush you until one side or the other is completely dead, no surrender, retreat, or non-stabby interaction" then I'd suggest .

I have one PC in my campaign who constantly tries to force his enemies to yield (by shrieking "JUSTICE!!!" in a high-pitched shrill voice, since he's a freaking Tiny-size fairy cleric of St. Cuthbert). Dunno what his opinion on mind-altering magic is, but he's forced me to think laterally when the enemies I've virtually designated "to be killed" are captured and interrogated. If he simply can't be arsed to do the same, then obviously he'll be pressuring you in-game and out of game to "just kill 'em all already".


Also, whenever he says that next, I recommend glaring at him and throwing down the most absurdly over-optimized blaster build GITP can give you.

[ThisIsZen]

Er, yeah, I suppose I made the same mistake I've seen others make when suggesting the Mailman: Don't bring the whole thing in. I should've said this at the start.

If your DM is limiting you to buffing and blasting, I suggested the mailman as a sort of vague guide to being good at the blasting half of things. Look at some of the ways it achieves damage on par with/exceeding uberchargers and use those so you don't end up being the Side Event to the martials (who are generally always good at dealing damage). Don't bring it into the game wholesale, but look for it as a guide to how to make a damaging caster.

Even just twincasting an Orb spell or something like that is liable to get you a decent net damage boost. No need to stack ten metamagics with reducers on said Orb spell to instantly one-shot Orcus, really. If you're consistently out-damaging your party then dial it back - if you're running under the damage average then add a few more tricks.

Either way, heavyfuel was totally right for calling me out on that so don't straight-up bring a mailman into the game, for all of those reasons and also because it'd leave the rest of your party without something to do. My bad.

[daremetoidareyo]

imbued summoning, augmented summoning + index cards with stat blocks for summoned creatures. Throw damage at the enemy till it dies, 3 templated truestriked crocodiles at a time. Charge of the rhino celestial eagles? At level 5, 3 mirror imaged wolves will definitely keep you alive for a little bit. This way, you got multiple rounds of damage potential and your self buffs work out nicely.

[Divide by Zero]

I think he likes 3.5 because of the large amount of support and side material for it.

So he likes it for the material, then cuts out a huge chunk of that material?

[Falcos]

He has a recourse for when we one-shot monsters: He gives them arbitrary large numbers of HP. We recently fought a single undead with 600 HP, and the ability to heal himself (approx 150 over the fight). At level 2.

My ideal solution would be to show him that debilitating spells are probably better for his casters to be casting than plain old damage, as us spamming whatever "Hey you hold still" spell until the enemy fails their saving throw are better than us pouring on insane damage and him just giving the enemies more HP, right?

I've promised him I'll stick around until the end of this campaign at the very least.

Also, he likes 3.5 for the range of classes and spells, and he is maintaining (and is technically telling the truth) in that he hasn't actually *cut* a single thing, except for Spellthieves.

[Milodiah]

He has a recourse for when we one-shot monsters: He gives them arbitrary large numbers of HP. We recently fought a single undead with 600 HP, and the ability to heal himself (approx 150 over the fight). At level 2.

My ideal solution would be to show him that debilitating spells are probably better for his casters to be casting than plain old damage, as us spamming whatever "Hey you hold still" spell until the enemy fails their saving throw are better than us pouring on insane damage and him just giving the enemies more HP, right?

I've promised him I'll stick around until the end of this campaign at the very least.

Ok, that's some bull**** right there.

Either call him on his bull**** or optimize out the roof. We can help with the latter

[Falcos]

Alright. Well, time to optimize me out the roof. He likes his "everything is a boss" mantra. (And if nothing else, it makes for more interesting fights than a room full of thirty zombies, having one zombie with a ton of HP)

[ThisIsZen]

Yeah, gonna have to agree that that feels just... tedious. Did the monster do anything interesting to justify how long a fight against an opponent with 750 effective health would take at level 2? For that matter, did it deal much damage back? If it was dealing typical damage for an ECL 2 fight but had HP not even seen in some cases at CR 20, that's basically patent insanity.

[Falcos]

Yeah, gonna have to agree that that feels just... tedious. Did the monster do anything interesting to justify how long a fight against an opponent with 750 effective health would take at level 2? For that matter, did it deal much damage back? If it was dealing typical damage for an ECL 2 fight but had HP not even seen in some cases at CR 20, that's basically patent insanity.

He gave it a homebrew spell where we had to make Will saves or start taking stacking continual damage.

It was doing pretty low damage, but lots of "save-or-bleed" mechanics, that actually did kill half our party due to stacking damage.

[Divide by Zero]

I can understand not liking save or lose spells, but how can he possibly think direct damage is more interesting than something like Grease? What does he do about offensive spells that don't directly affect an opponent? Walls, fog, etc.

[Falcos]

This is my second campaign with him. In my first, I bought an Eversmoking Bottle. It worked on one enemy, then he gave every enemy Truesight. His reasoning was that if it worked on everything, everything would be non-challenging and boring.

So every "clever" technique will work once.

This guy has the potential to be a great DM, though! I don't just want to cut him down and walk away...

[Divide by Zero]

This is my second campaign with him. In my first, I bought an Eversmoking Bottle. It worked on one enemy, then he gave every enemy Truesight.

Er, he knows that that doesn't do anything for mundane concealment, right?

I honestly have no idea what he's trying to accomplish here, other than make it impossible to use any sort of actual tactics.

[Milodiah]

This is my second campaign with him. In my first, I bought an Eversmoking Bottle. It worked on one enemy, then he gave every enemy Truesight. His reasoning was that if it worked on everything, everything would be non-challenging and boring.

So every "clever" technique will work once.

This guy has the potential to be a great DM, though! I don't just want to cut him down and walk away...

He's never going to be a great DM if he doesn't get real critique.

[Vox Nihili]

Alright. Well, time to optimize me out the roof. He likes his "everything is a boss" mantra. (And if nothing else, it makes for more interesting fights than a room full of thirty zombies, having one zombie with a ton of HP)

I mean, this is pretty much the ultimate Mailman guide. Since you're at a really low level, the Venerable Dragonwrought Kobold skeezy stuff will be your primary source of "murder ****," but you'll get more powerful as time goes on.

[ThisIsZen]

Did it do anything else? That honestly sounds like the basic definition of a 'gear check' boss in an MMO - in the constraints you were fighting under, the only way to win the fight was to have Bigger Numbers than your opponent, and D&D does not favor sustained, DPS-check-style combats because daily resources are limited and assume a certain level of expenditure. (A 2nd level prepared caster only really has enough spell slots to cast one or two spells per encounter over the course of a four-encounter day which probably assumes something like a max of 20 rounds of combat, so not even more than two minutes of fighting in 'real' time.)

Not having Bigger Numbers than your opponent isn't a player failure, since you can't just walk off and farm the nearest instance until you have the right set of gear to beat his bosses. While random crits and such can be an exception, I'm generally of the opinion that a player dying while making no mistakes is bad. =/

EDIT: So he's no-selling any creative actions on the part of the party? That's bad DMing, straight up. He's treating this game like it's him vs you, like he HAS to counter all of your tricks every time once he knows about them, and that's a big mistake. If a player creates a character there's a general expectation that said character should be able to do what it was built to do, at least some of the time. If you're never allowed to use your character's capabilities then you built them for no reason and the game gets boring, and boring is the DM's enemy.

[Falcos]

I think his intent is to make it that I need to use different tactics. He doesn't want me, say, casting the same half-dozen spells in every fight.

I am trying to gather critiques to use on him, rather than just shut him down by walking away without trying to give him feedback.

[Milodiah]

I think his intent is to make it that I need to use different tactics. He doesn't want me, say, casting the same half-dozen spells in every fight.

I am trying to gather critiques to use on him, rather than just shut him down by walking away without trying to give him feedback.

...it sounds to me like the opposite, I feel like he'd be much more comfortable if you just cast Magic Missile till bad guy fall down.

[Divide by Zero]

I think his intent is to make it that I need to use different tactics. He doesn't want me, say, casting the same half-dozen spells in every fight.

I'm not really sure how making all tactics except direct damage nonexistent encourages you to use different tactics.

If he wants to do that, he needs to design encounters that require different tactics. Enemies with different movement modes and defenses, enemies with casting of their own, terrain or environmental conditions that have to be taken into account, etc.

[ThisIsZen]

Mixing up tactics is a fine goal. It's why you don't throw endless hordes of humanoids with no mind-affecting immunity against the resident Enchantment specialist for Every Encounter of an Entire Game. But it's not a reason to, upon KNOWING what your party is made up of, only give them undead to fight. Then the Enchantment specialist gets to do nothing despite his time spent designing his character, for largely arbitrary reasons.

When you build a character, you're deliberately making choices about where to focus your abilities, and in general those choices aren't changeable from encounter to encounter. A grappler isn't going to morph into an intimidate-focused BFC character in the span of one dungeon hallway. The Wizard isn't going to change his forbidden schools every day of the week. A sorc doesn't get to re-choose every spell they have on access. Etc. etc. There's a difference between mixing it up and punishing player creativity, and there are more engaging ways to mix it up than handing out blanket immunities every time your player comes up with something new and neat to do.

[Falcos]

In conversation with him now, he says he's trying to "Encourage us to be clever"

[Marlowe]

Encouraging you to do nothing but throw dice at a problem until he decides it's dead is supposed to be clever?