That DM club

>To be fair, I wouldn't let anyone make a hand cannon with a roll of 18 in anything, either.

That's an arbitrary line and you know it. In a world where an average craftsman would have like, a +6 modifier an 18 should easily be enough to draw up any kind of plans.

That's not actually fair or balanced, that's just the GM arbitrarily deciding things for no reason.

Depends how prevalent cannon technology is. If it's like cutting-edge shit and you don't have tried-and-true plans to work from, you really do run the risk of doing serious injury to yourself if you aren't smart enough to try the fucking thing out before using it in battle.

It's like thinking that because you know the general process of how a steam piston works you can build a working one on your first try.

Sure? I mean, you're not wrong, but neither am for dictating as such. I often run with relatively low fantasy type settings: I think it's more than fair that it's going to take more than even a 20 draw up plans for an arm cannon from scratch.

Sometimes the DM has to make a decision based on their own internal logic, and that's not wrong, either.

kill self

>all this and more, coming next on
>"THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED"

Some of those things are reasonable. The last is dumb because the elves don't know how it was booby trapped.

>Roll an 18
>Draft up detailed plans for a space shuttle

Nah

It's reasonable to think that he may have booby-trapped his crossbow to fire the bolt backwards, for instance, or some other painful and unpleasant experience involving a tightly-wound spring mechanism, flexible wood and elastic cord.

That said, who keeps a crossbow loaded at all times? You're going to wear out the parts.

I was talking about the fact he also said the bag was booby-trapped, but they picked that up and ran.

The player is kind of dumb for not just intimidating them into leaving, but the DM also handled it in a stupid way

>group has been following dwarven military general in unserground maze to find kidnapped king
>get to a dead end
>the whole party is paralyzed (no save)
>turns out the dwarf is a satyr shapeshifter from 3 sessions ago
>satyrs steals their stuff, blood, and then uses it to summon a 50ft goblin demon with a flaming 100ft penis whip
>play out the whole scent as a cutscene and tell players there's nothing they can do to intervene.

I was THAT dm.

Sorry arc perun, beleg-mool, faonym, and orag the pimp.

Yeah, but if the "you aren't the first" is the excuse, it should be easier.

There's a big difference between the two.

Even then, multi stage rockets have existed for centuries and there's historical evidence to prove it.

Yeah. Banks having blue dye-packs in their moneybags doesn't stop bankrobbers, they just don't deal with the shit until they get back home.

Just because someone else attempted something before, that doesn't mean that makes it eaisier for you. With everything OP gave us, the PC had 0 knowledge about other attempts by others and made a schematic under those assumptions.

All that aside, a high roll =/= instant success, even if you rolled your highest. Hell, doing the best to your own abilities doesnt mean you will succeed, even if youre pretty good at it.

You deliberately put them in a situation where there was zero possibility of success, and then killed them all in a humiliating and nonsensical fashion. I hope they thought better than to let you ever DM again, and I hope you tell this story to any other groups unfortunate enough to allow you the job.

It's not nreasonable to think he would kindly alert them to his booby trap when they have the crossbow pointed at him. They're elves, not lackwits, even a 3 year old human would be suspicious of this shit. DM should have either coached a better action out of the player or told him his statement made no impact regardless of what the die roll was. Even a nat 20 can't save an action that has no chance of success.

The first story, honestly would depend on the bow.
There is nothing wrong with the second story since no one playing 3rd edition should think an 18 is enough to invent a new and complex piece of technology.
There is nothing wrong with the third story either, since he should have just told the elves to drop the stuff and fuck off or they're dead, which would have led to an intimidation roll. The deception was completely unnecessary.

>and then killed them all in a humiliating and nonsensical fashion
You know he didn't say he killed or even attacked them. Stop projecting

So many of these are just a GM's failure to communicate properly with their players.

Bow Damage: Surely its damage is defined by the system, with a listing in the book. If you're going to arbitrarily change combat mechanics, you should inform the player first.

Hand Cannon: If you weren't going to let them make it, you should have just explained to them that it isn't feasible and/or doesn't fit your setting, but that they could instead reasonably try making X.

Booby Trap: Not enough info given, but this one could well be on the player's end, for not clearly describing exactly what they're trying to convey with their lie. Also depends on how confident the elves were that running with the loot wouldn't set off any traps. Still, a potentially reasonable outcome.

>Wanted to have a lighthearted campaign
>All ideas that come to me after the first sessions are edgy and completely tone-breaking
>Couple it with a system that stopped working alltogether after a while, and was only kept up because of me being stubborn until recently
>Most stuff I do is full improv, which leads to bad shit that breaks the intended tone for the game

I've been changing stuff and trying to better myself after I realized a player might be leaving because of those flaws

Are you providing realistic negative consequences for edgy behavior?

No

rather I'm the one of the edgy behavior, despite me selling the campaign as a lighthearted comfy one

he said that he stole their blood. Most races need that.

Maybe he would've let a hand cannon get made, but it would require a lot more work than just one roll.

For fuck's sake, the player didn't even test it to make sure the cannon worked first.

The implication, as I read it, was that the physics involved make the weapon non-viable (Shoot cannon, break wrist), and if this is the case, I think the GM should have mentioned such before the PC got too far into the development process, unless the player already had good reason to suspect this would not work. Given the invention of new items isn't handled in most systems and is up to GM fiat, it's really a negotiation between the player and the GM to make sure they arrive at a result which is satisfying for the player while being setting-consistent and balanced for the GM. What was described appears to be a breakdown in basic communication, where the player clearly took the GM allowing this to be designed and constructed as implicit approval as to its efficacy. That said, I also think there's a good chance of none of this ever happening; wouldn't the player have asked for its combat stats before using it?

Those are all perfectly reasonable, actually.

You absolutely are not meant to use a bow as a weapon. I'd maybe be willing to let it do a d4, as though it were a club, but there'd be a chance that it would break since, you know, it's a bow.

The second one is just fun. If the players are going around trying to invent radical new technology, undreamed of by any civilization in the last 40,000 years, then there's a good chance they'll fuck up a decent amount of the time. As long as this was a consistently applied theme, I think it's fine.

The last one is just funny as hell, and the fact that the players aren't relieved shows that they're entitled sacks of shit
>waaaah, the bandits allowed us to live but they took all our shit!
Get over it fuckface

Keep it up OP. Doing the LORD'S work out there

>Town knows there is a doppelganger about, screwing with the town in every facet, from destroying shops, to performing muggings, to rummaging in the BBEG's belongings while he's away
>Actually, its just one of my players who likes to be a dickhead with a hat of illusions
>Town goes into martial law until he is caught
>Player sees people entering town, assumes BBEG is coming back
>Runs over to BBEG central base, disguised as the BBEG, yelling, screaming and bloodied, telling the guards not to trust "them"
>Yells "EXECUTE PLAN 22B!!!"
>Promptly goes invisible and fades away
>Players are giggling their asses off, thinking of the possibility of screwing over both the BBEG and the story.
>I say that the guards are completely unimpressed at the random apparition of their boss running and screaming at them and disappearing, as they were told that any strange occurrences can be pinned on the doppelganger and his illusions.
>Player is disappointed that his retarded plan didn't work
>I'm disappointed that he went invisible before the guards could spear him

>Same player with same magic hat
>Disguises himself as BBEG's boss, who would never show himself in public
>Shows himself in public
>Town still under martial law, still know about a doppelganger
>Wonders why people can tell its an illusion.

The first one would depend on the bow and the strenght of the character. Arguabily, it would do +1 damage (and the bow would also suffer from it: it might break, so make a toughness roll difficulty the toughness rank of the enemy. Oh wait, this is not mutants and masterminds, my bad. You're playing DnD)

The second one is kind of justified. You're probably more of a sadist than me, I would've said that he takes 1d4 bludgeoning damage instead. What I would have said, though, is along the lines "Do you want to try it out on some test dummies first? You do have high intelligence, after all" and let him see that it doesn't work. It would make sense for a high intelligence character to test a new weapon before using it live.

The third one is somewhat justified. I am not a fan of sending things to nick stuff from the players, mostly because they roll fucking well on their perceptions and I always roll shit on stealth so they always manage to catch the thief even before he starts to think about stealing something in their bags...

At that point, I would have him make an intelligence check and if he rolls high enough explain it to him in peasant's terms.

A high roll isn't instant success, but it shows how hard it would be for a specialist to make a similar object

An 18 means that an average craftsman, with a +1 from stats and seven skill points, meaning minimum level is four assuming that they have only slightly above average in that stat like a regular person, with an average roll of ten, can't make it.

You're essentially claiming at that point that a hand cannon, not even a flintlock or matchlock pistol or a multi barreled weapon, is something no normal man can ever craft.

Don't bullshit user. Something is either possible or it isn't. He isn't crafting fucking excalibur.

What? Even with a -2 total modifier, a normal retard could still craft it on a nat 20 if the DC is 18.

>can I-

For last fucking time, YES! YES YOU CAN DO THAT! These players are being treated like toddlers and they still don't know how checks work. Do they really need to ask permission for everything to you?

Next to that, they naïvely think that everything works out the way they expect it and don't bother with communicative skills or risk. They need to grow up. The exploding arm cannon is a little dickish, though. The rest is fine.

Sjeesh, just let them run from it.

In my case a player considers me a bad GM because my homebrew Plant monster didn't abide to the rules of photosynthesis, I should've understood that when he said "I liked that this session didn't have any combat" should mean that I should never have combat ever, and that all Constructs are Golems and they should not start attacking on sight.

He was a newbie and a metagamer, I do not regret anything.

Watching this thread and all I can see is a bunch of min-maxer's autisticly screaming to one another and to a garbo DM. Keep going peasants this is getting good~

>Party is wandering along the road
>Come across a checkpoint manned by several soldiers
>Soldiers offer them some plot information
>Kill them all because murderhobo
>Check for traps
>There are no traps
>Looting the corpses
>Shit starts exploding all around them
>Leader instakilled
>Scout loses a leg
>medic hit by shrapnel and bleeds to death
>"WTF GM you told us there were no traps."
>mfw an artillery barrage doesn't count as a trap

Was I in the wrong?

Why? Its literally a cup of metal tied to a stick.

Should've had a warning, like a loud whistle getting closer, not just "OH SHIT EXPLOSION"

Actually they let me dm again and I've greatly improved. That was my first campaign ever. I've been dming for 2 years now and it's going well. Being that dm or that guy is something that a lot of people go through before becoming good at tabletop gaming. You have to learn from your mistakes so you aren't that guy/dm again.

If there was some kind of warning like them noticing a radio that seems to be used very recently, then no, nothing wrong.

When they started looking around they did find a dead guy hunched over a (now shot up) radio and he was still holding the handset in one hand and a list of coordinates in the other.

I think that whole adventure was an autistic lesson in realism on my part.

>When they started looking around they did find a dead guy hunched over a (now shot up) radio and he was still holding the handset in one hand and a list of coordinates in the other
It's sort of doubtful they'd get shelled by their own position; normally one sends in a response team and avoids shelling your on positions because you can usually rescue any wounded.

Can you imagine the morale? "this guy said they were being attacked, so high command dropped an artillery barrage on their position"

"holy shit I hope I don't get my radio shot while reporting an attack or they might do the same to us"

I don't see anything bad with what you did honestly
Hitting someone with a bent stick wouldn't do a fucking lot
Not testing a prototype weapon before using it is just asking for it
And it's logical to not fuck with possibly booby trapped bags in danger, better to take them with you and deal with that shit later

I'd gladly play with a DM like that

I belive it was more of a ''This guys are going to kill us all, might as well send in our coordinates for a shelling cause we're going down anyway.''

Fucking cunt

So this is just a bait general right?

Eh, any system a guy with automatics shooting at the party has less of an effect than an artillery barrage called in over radio sounds highly suspect to me. But that's just me.

You could've given them a perception checl or something along those lines for a load whistling noise.

But I chuckled because they murderhobo'd the npcs.

Wow it's almost like guns have existed for over a thousand years at this point and have been used in wars since before full plate armor was even a thing and aren't as complicated to construct as fantasy faggots like to imagine.

youtube.com/watch?v=Q8cWsjnSAc4

>implying a pc couldn't make something as complicated as this.

>implying the pc already has premade shotgun ammunition lying around

it's the same principle fucktard
all you have to do is make an iron pipe and fill it with shot and powder

youtube.com/watch?v=EE0fT1MwSro
Just wow so complex

youtube.com/watch?v=uaR-X_HenpA
yep a gnome could never make this

youtube.com/watch?v=alsd3JBc88U
Just get fucked OP

hand cannons have been around longer than you think hombre.

youtube.com/watch?v=zPA-D8wtUv8
Wow look even a child can make one of these fucking things.
But a fantasy race who's entire shtick is making shit can't.
SAD

Gnomes don't typically have access to the internet and Wikipedia. Where do you find a pipe of the proper size and durability whe, wide-scale plumbing probably isn't a thing? Where do you magically find the ingredients and proportions to make black powder when plenty of smart alchemists have blown themselves up trying? Where do you find someone to cast extremely round metal balls for you?

There's a lot of steps to making a gun, and under a 20 shouldn't remotely cut it for drafting plans. That would mean that any random individual, independently of hearing anything about guns, has a 10% of drawing a blueprint of a full functional gun.

If he had rolled a 25 of something, I'd be more sympathetic, but 18 is not a very high roll no matter what system you're using.

Stop being so booty bothered

>Where do you find a pipe of the proper size and durability whe, wide-scale plumbing probably isn't a thing?
you go to any random smith, make a clay mold and cast iron, don't be a faggot
>Where do you magically find the ingredients and proportions to make black powder
Assuming this is D&D there is already rules for fucking bombs and explosives. You could also use all kinds of magical charges. Don't even meme about black powder faggot.
>Where do you find someone to cast extremely round metal balls for you?
Do you even have any idea how easy it is to cast lead? For fuck shakes for hundreds of years soldiers would cast their own shot before battles around campfires.

Stop being so fucking retarded about the history of guns.
For fuck sake HANDCANNONS have since the 1100's
Full plate armor, which is a staple in all fantasy, wasn't a thing until the 1600's

Just get fucked.

Anyone can roll an 18. So Joe blow with 10 INT and no education has fairly good odds of inventing firearms. If technology was that easy to advance the PCs would probably live to see the internal combustion engine and space travel.

You're missing the fucking point that making a cannon isn't fucking hard to do at all and almost as soon as the chinese discovered blackpowder they were constructing cannons and long guns

Making shit go boom in the first place is the hard part, directing that force is easy as fuck.

The reason bows weren't rendered immediately obsolete was because refining simple designs like solid iron tubes into more efficient weapons is hard as fuck.
In the time it took to get off 2 shots with a long gun a archer with a longbow could get off 10-20 depending on their skill and stamina and until around the 1600s when full plate armor was basically perfected it didn't matter if you were shot with a bullet or an arrow.

>as soon as the chinese discovered blackpowder they

And as soon as your Gnome is an entire nation's worth of scholars researching this and having the resources to make it, then he can come up with a design safely without it blowing up in his hand.

You think the first chinese discovering Black Powder never, ever had a single gun they made explode? Especially the early prototypes?

Do you honestly think that random Chinese peasants could've designed hand cannons? Do you think a random peasant has a 10% chance of getting barrel thickness, projectile shape/size, powder charge, formulation of powder, all right and have a fully functioning weapon?

>Implying the cast iron tube is strong enough to not blow up
>Implying there's such thing as explosives in a fantasy setting
>Implying one could just cast a really minor explosion inside an iron tube
>Implying there's such thing as lead, or any other element in a fantasy setting

Ok fuck it
you guys are all retarded
I'm done
/k/ out

>/k/

Mystery solved. /k/ can't comprehend a world where not everyone has a gun and knows how to build more.

>entire nation's worth of
It was a few chucklefucks over the years working on and off. The world isn't a grand strategy game; nations aren't monolithic.

You see, the problem(the way I see it) wasn't the gun per se, it's called meta-gaming and any attempt of it, can and will be punished

>depends on the setting
Oh, fuck, no shit. Until stated otherwise, though, we can only assume the relevant parameters of the world match our own.

And you're getting butthurt that 1 guy hammering one out in a few days didn't get it right.

You're arguing that instead of those few scholars, it could have been anyone and they would have gotten it right after about 10 tries over the course of a month.

Purposefully punishing metagaming is metagaming.

The DM's entire job is metagaming.

Man, I just jumped into the thread. I'm just pointing out that not every scientific or technological advance has to be the result of a concerted national effort.

Still have to say that testing a device he'd only just constructed in the middle of battle wasn't very smart.

Technological innovation, like all types of innovation, are driven by people in the top percentiles of creativity and intelligence. Most people who tried to make a firearm gave up, but it was the best and brightest that actually got it to work.

Just because his player can metagame the mechanics of firearms, doesn't mean that an 18 will allow him to make one.

It's for a good cause

That's just not true. Maybe for scientific innovation, but technological innovation is, the vast majority of the time, an incremental process.

Meaning that there's even more steps needed to invent something, so a single 18 shouldn't be an automatic success

Which I do agree with. I just had to quibble on that one point.

>comparing the knowledge, skills, and tools of gun enthusiasts to that of a person in a time when guns don't exist

When did I say it wasn't incremental? Every invention that's defined the modern world were tried for a long time until one or two super geniuses came and figured it out. The VAST majority of people trying to create the airplane failed, but all it took was one success for the technology to get off the ground (nopun)

Same goes for
>Vaccination
>telegraph
>Telephone
>Pasteurization
>Nitrogen Fixation
>mass production
>and many many more

I don't get people like you.
waaaahh you should of told them.
let them do it.
>if the person rolled a 25 I would have made it so the blue print was the equivent of a Leonardo Da Vinci blue print.
>it the person either knew smithing I would let him roll to make the parts if he rolled a 18 I would make it perfect
>since he looked for a blacksmith it really depends on the price he is paying and if the blacksmith is as good as he claims. I don't make up blacksmiths on the spot, each town I make has set amount of smiths who charge x and Y prices and are X and Y skilled at armor or weapons.
if he found a good blacksmith (which he did, that wasn't the problem it as the blue print) I would have instantly made the parts correct
>the last part is putting it together which is the easiest considering it's just a massive inpractical gun

*which HAD been invented in my world... in the past 5 years and it was a shitty matchlock

I had a encounter where they would fight a guy with a matchlock that he stole from the inventer (who he also killed) they would get scared of his gun due to meta gaming and then it would take him 5 turns to reload it

>but to put it together would still be a DC 15.

fuck if he didn't bitch and just made a flat intellegence check to to figure out what was wrong he could figure out which aspect of creating it went wrong and then make another to revise the blueprint basicly starting again with a lower DC.

I would have made making a gun harder due to wood work also being needed and tinkering being harder. I told him at the begining that making a gun would be extreamly hard for him so I'm guessing he thought a hand cannon would somehow be easy peasy.

I was laughing to myself the second he thought the 18 was enough. I had plans for it to fuck up and the more high rolls he got the funnier it became, of course I didn't want to remind him to test it. thats his job besides he was so happy that I wanted him to learn the hard way

You sound like the biggest faggot imaginable.

> low fantasy
A cannon is incredibly simple. It's a closed tube, possibly with a handle, and a spot for ignition. Its simpler than a handgun or even a well made bow. For it to catastrophically fail like that, you would have to have an insanely strong combustible - way stronger than what was commonly available at the time. It's far more likely to fizzle.

>lol games are meant for fun dude, realism just subtracts from it

you're one step away from sitting in a circle and jacking each other off if you play a EVERYONES A WINNER YOU'RE ALL SO FANTASTIC type of game.

this isn't focused on you but applies to everyone

if a faggot wants to make a gun and somehow thinks this will take him about a week because he is a gnome and a tinker (nothing to do with guns btw other than the trigger and hammer)
then he better be feeling lucky or willing to make a lot of rolls and wait a long time for it to work out.

>lol I rolled a 18 (1/10 chance) I’ve invented a thing used to destroy ships that I can fit on my arm.
fuck right off with that shit.

no your character ISN'T special.
no just because you are level 16 doesn't mean that creating a gun will be easy for you (just an example he was only level 6)
in my 11th century campaign the same guy wanted to make an inventor that time too and I flat out told him that it's the dark ages and that he shouldn't bother trying to invent anything.
Less than 300 hundred years later and he thinks he's in meet the Robinsons.

I have nothing against him I just want him to learn the reality of the world back then and for him to stop thinking that if he was sent back in time that he would change the world, let alone being BORN back then.

my focus as a DM I design a good world, fill it with interesting characters and important events and they can interact with it however they like and their interactions change the world. am I saying he CAN'T invent the gun or that I would be upset if he managed? fuck no if he stuck to it and the mad man actually done it I would chimped out with excitement.

the PC's make it fun, I give them the setting to make their own fun. my friends are smart people and enjoy my ball breaking method if you don't then your opinion is wrong.

>cannon has never been invented
>I WANNA MAKE A CANNON
>makes cannon in a week

wow hey aren't we in fly cars yet?
I know what cannons are I could go back in time and totally invent one in a fucking week. I fixed a watch once.

I know what about chocolate and I'm a great cook, why don't I go back in time and just create chocolate too.

>cannon has never been invented
>I WANNA MAKE A CANNON
>makes cannon in a week

wow.
hey why aren't we in fly cars yet?
a tinkerer just invented a arm cannon in a week.
I know what cannons are I could go back in time and totally invent one in a fucking week. I fixed a watch once.

I know what about chocolate and I'm a great cook, why don't I go back in time and just create chocolate too.

Oh, I'm not the OP. I wouldn't have broken a player character's arm or have it backfire or anything like that. That's a little silly to me. Rather, you're right: at an 18 (in whatever skill), it just wouldn't have worked.

>gnome (the smallest race) fires a poorly build cannon with his arm
>it's silly that it breaks

oh no now the gnome has to downgrade from a D8 to a D6 because he can't use both hands to fire his crossbow.
DM you're being unreasoable. he no way of knowing that this was a bad idea.

don't worry his arm will heal in around a month or two game time and a hell of a lot faster with magic
OBVIOUSLY

Examples of edgy behavior?
A fix that I always use when I find myself getting too grimdark while DMing is to lampshade it. Have the edgy NPC's/towns get made fun of by other NPCs and get partially negated by common sense results.

Ex: an edgy town guardsmen that spouts barely veiled threats on the party's life. Until he does it without knowing his captain is in hearing range and gets slapped upside the head. Party later learns that that specific guardsmen is a bit of laughing stock among the watch because his mouth writes checks he can't cash and often has to be bailed out when he spouts off on wrong person.

>pathfagger
>show up with our character sheets
>DM makes up a town and gives elaborate NPCs to tie into our character stories (which, this being a 3.PF game, none of us had bothered with)
>later in that very session they all get killed by a giant weasel
what was the point man

>player begs me to let him make a fucking lightsaber
>"sure it'll just be +1 and emit light, it'll cost X gold and Y time and you'll have to do favors for the blacksmith and dwarves for materials"
>by the time he gets all that shit done everyone else has better weapons than that
>he's in massive debt

>obvious bait thread
>96 replies later
Good job OP. Now tell me again about how Veeky Forums doesn't encourage shitposting.

>do you even know what bait is?
>did you even read one post in this thread?

why is it that this thread is bad yet is fine?