Shit you're tired of your DM or players doing? Doesn't have to be something innately bad, just come and vent

I'm not the GM.

If I roll low I just truck on.

I keep the players on some sort of clock or facing some threat to avoid this. Sure, you can spend another ten minutes recheckng the room. I'll go ahead and roll for random encounters while you make your perception check.

Anytime I had players who did this, I made their lack of commitment bear consequences, and that's gotten those players to stop with the whole "we check for traps but only if it's not gonna take too long" shit. That's metagaming; rarely, if ever, do you know 100% if a task is going to take too long when you start it (especially searching/investigating shit). So if you're all just trying to debate out-of-game how long it's going to take searching for traps before you get caught by whatever the DM is planning, then you're god damn right you're all taking too long and the kobolds get wise to all that annoying whispering outside the door.

They've gotten better about just saying "we search for traps" instead of trying to debate what I'm planning to do. The game goes faster, and there's a lot more action and adventure to be had.

My DM keeps doing the opposite of this. If we fail a roll he starts coming up with every possible way or reason we might reroll it, because his railroad relies on us passing the checks he comes up with, so if I just decide "I'll stick with that low result" he gets annoyed.

>Shit you're tired of your DM doing?
Running 5e.

As opposed to what? 3.5? 2e? >not playing D&D?

Anything that isn't whatever the newest D&D edition is, yeah. He utterly refuses to try any other system because he has decided that D&D is perfect for every game.

It's been more or less like this with our group for the past couple months. Naturally, our party paladin has lead us on a personal quest into the Underdark, where every encounter is an existential struggle, every NPC is a liar, and every hallway, every door, every room and every creepy statue in it is a trap. My GM has literally said that they plan encounters with the expectation that we'll die, and then we just consistently rise to the occasion. And those kinds of encounters are fun in moderation, but not like this! Thankfully, it's never been so bad that we've needed to retcon anything, although we've had a pretty powerful DMPC around with us for a while now, which I'm sure just fucks up the encounter balance even more.

At this point, I'm not even sure why I show up. I know I'm somewhat new to TTRPGs, only having started playing a few years ago, and I've heard that older, classic dungeon crawls were like this, and I don't feel like I've missed out on anything. There are only so many months that you can impose a persistent sense of danger and being in over your head with nearly no relief in sight before tension just dissolves into indifference. I don't really feel into it anymore, and my character realistically has no motivation to stick around in this place, since the booty-to-danger-ratio is completely out of whack. At this point, if things don't change, I think I'm just going to play things out to their logical conclusion (death or leaving the party), and then excuse myself from the game.

>stop trying to reroll until you get a 20+
Best thing about 5e is the added passive perception.

W-why would anyone switch from 5e... to Pathfinder? What advantages are there?

If my players are rolling dice, it's because there's a situation happening that requires a one-time roll to dictate chance. If they could spend all night re-rolling for 20s, then why even bother having them roll in the first place? In that case you just say "fuck it, you succeed" and move on.

>DMing a high level campaign, 5e.
>High level enemies are meat point central, their health is super high (and so are the players).
>Almost every round consists of "He's not dead yet?" and "How is he not dead yet I hit him 3 times!?" and "Why do these guys do so much damage?!"
>These guys have never played a high level campaign, where everyone has tons of meat points and you stab eachother with magical +2 damage swords till everyone dies from paper cuts.
>But they just keep saying this shit every single combat, you think they'd learn that enemies have more than 20 HP by now.

>players
Everyone and their mother being a spell caster. Just once I want to play something that isn't a martial class.
Secretly playing evil characters then being butthurt when they get called out IC for it
Stop being a pouty bitch when you roll a 1, just say your number and be done with it.
>DM
read the fucking rules, its cool if you want to home rule stuff but don't just make shit up on the spot.

>>Every single NPC is a chilled out, quippy, 'lol so random' goof ball
>>But they're all guaranteed to be "secretly" a bad ass

Adding to that

>DM takes everything you say to an NPC to heart as if you were mouthing off to his PC or something and you cant RP naturally with NPCs anymore unless its all flowers and rainbows.

>I dunno, apply a bit of pressure, but not too much.
"He's put off guard at first but gradually comes to doubt you're going to follow through."
>We search a bit, but don't take too long.
"You waste a few minutes but don't find anything in your cursory check."
>I'll try and defuse it, but if it takes too long I'll run.
"It's doubtful you'll make it in time if you start defusing but give up."

"How tough would it be to drag these heavy objects out of the way?"

>PCs doing evil shit left and right then claiming to be Neutral.
I mean, you dont have to sacrifice babies to the nightmares beyond the human ken to be evil, if you have no scruples hurting others for your own gain and repeatedly make egocentric choices, you're it.

DM didn't like how 5e didn't feel as "heroic", apparently due to the smaller numbers involved.
I said, flat out, that it'd make the newer players unhappy since PF is new-player hostile. New players are unhappy. I was right, I'm sad I was right, the world turns anyways.

Everyone's character is either
>my exact personality, but also an attractive elf who everyone loves
or
>total psycho murderhobo who everyone loves (even when he's murdering merchants over prices)
None of my players can roleplay, and it's fucking tiresome.

Alternatively
>being constantly suspicious because I made my character LE
I'm not going to stab anyone in the back, I'm Lawful. I just want to be a dwarf who makes bad deals with surface dwellers and dwarfs them out of their money.

Pathfinder has more than 3 books of content and rules for things besides combat.

>rolling an assload of dice for functionally no reason
>other than to roll an assload of dice
>this is "heroic"
I apologize if he's your friend or brother or something, but your DM sounds like a stupid toolbag.

>dwarfs them out of their money
u cheeky cunt

>Plays Chaotic Neutral.
>In every, single, campaign.
>"I'm just out for myself lol"

>Everyone and their mother being a spell caster
There's 7 people including whoever's DMing in my group, and there is never more than two full casters at any point cause everybody gravitates towards fighter or ranger
Last game there was just a warlock for casters ( I was DM)
This time there's a wizard and a sorcerer (I'm the wizard, the warlock from before is DMing and the sorc is the barb player trying something new)
I fuckin wish they would play something other then martials, sometimes I want to play beefcake mcsmash too

I was in a group of all new players with a Gm who decided to actually scream when a character was angry. Instead of being immersed, everyone got tense and confused. If a DM's going to do some wild role playing shit, don't surprise brand new players with it.

That's also good, although in my perspective if a character like this will ever find himself dwarfed out of his money by a surface dweller, there is a real chance he will stab someone in the back or hire the stabbers -- so some amount of suspicion might not be misplaced.
LE is unstable when not placed in a position of power is another way to say it.

To be polite to him, he's better at GMing than he is at D&Ding.

To be blunt, he's fairly mechanically inept. I honestly think he'd look at the Paizo Iconics and say "Yeah, those look well made".
He's a good GM when he's not getting blindsided by mechanics he should have known, though.

>Gm who decided to actually scream

>never more than two full casters
Last game I played we had two full martial and everyone else was a full caster except for a friend trying the artificer. No one picked up cleric either, which at least that can be mitigated via potions.
Hopefully you get to play a low int barb one day, its pretty fun.

All the players after the Gm screamed

Homogeneous groups are perfectly fine

PCs never, ever trust each other, and mostly with good reason. Everyone is either a dick, or does backstabbing stuff behind each other's back.

I'd like just one ongoing game, where the we don't have to have Batman contingency plans in each other's pockets.

DMs and players that have played for months or even years yet neither know nor follow any of the rules despite owning more books and related materials than anyone at the table. It's not even badwrongfun wacky hijinks, it's just autism, uncompromising stubbornness, incomprehensible autism, disgusting arrogance, and insane beyond all reason autism. These people have often been the majority in my groups it is something I cannot escape. I've gamed in-person and online, in my hometown and across the country, with every ethnicity, age group, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation. What sins have I committed in a past life to deserve this? I'd even be willing to sit at a table in hell if it meant I could get a cohesive game going. All this and escalating personal problems has forced me to progressively give up gaming as a whole. Now all I have is a little bit of sanity here and there to vent to you elegen/tg/entlemen.

>The DM doesn't know about the high power fantasy rules in the DMG such as 5 minute rests, healing surges, and cleave rules.

Amatuerhour.jpg

character creation options

thats about it

TBF TO INEXPERIENCED GUYS IT IS FUCKING DUMB

>have a group of 7
>we play 5e
>I'm the only one with a physical copy of a book
>also the only one who knows the rules

>one of my players wants to dm
>say yeah, I want to play
>he doesn't know the rules
>end up backseat dming the rules for him
>actually works pretty well since he knows just enough to make it not annoying
>my character in this campaign was a professor before becoming an adventurer, has all the knowledge skills
>teaching players IC and OOC

It's fun at times

>So my characters made
>Cool, send it to me for review
>Ok

And then they vanish from the face of the earth.

Restrict the alignments to LG, NG, CG. You'll basically have to treat this like a company trust exercise where the DM puts the players in various situations that have to be solved through teamwork.

Unless you give them more of a reason to be good other than "Good is written on your sheet" they aren't going to be good

Neutral is a fucking idiotic alignment for boring assholes anyways. It always ends up evil because it means they steal, lie and kill all the time
but it's for their own gain so they think it's okay? Because it isn't a Demon Lord's idea I guess? It doesn't matter why you do evil shit, it's still evil, including inaction/neglect.

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

I'm sorry if I did not make it clear, but what separates my circumstance from yours is that even if I were to offer advice to the DM, it would be brushed aside without second thought. But yes, it was great wonderful fun those handful of times I had a novice aspiring DM who did listen.

5e is pretty solid. What's your complaint with it?

:/ That sucks man. Have you tried bringing it up with the GM, or the group?

Is it really that bad at high levels? And have they not figured out group tactics or something?

Have them find Wanted posters for their characters in-game, describing their crimes and the effects it had. :D

How do they pen their own popularity into your setting??

Had somebody like this in my college group, always played the same selfish dickhead regardless of race and class.
>I just want money and gear
>I'm Chaotic Neutral, so that means I never do anything for anyone
At the start of a new game, he made a CN elf rogue (to no one's surprise). One of the other players rolled up a Lawful Good paladin and played it totally straight, digging into everyone's characters for not being as righteous as they had the potential to be. Obviously, this meant he was constantly admonishing the CN character for his attitude and actions.
>All the riches in the world won't matter if you're alone when you die
>I'm convinced you're allergic to altruism
>I thought you elves were above petty things like material wealth
Unlike the rest of the group, though, the CN player was clearly taking it personally, so the paladin player backed off on him. In-character, he decided nothing he could say would ever get through to the hopeless rogue. Eventually CN performed an outright evil act by secretly betraying the party for the promise of double the reward money on a bounty. Once this came to light, the paladin got fired up and called him out:
>I had hoped you better than this, rogue
>But now I see you truly only care about yourself
>Draw your sword and face justice, you worthless scum
CN player said "nope, fuck this," packed up and left. I saw him around campus but he never came back to our group. Paladin player felt bad about it, too, said he really didn't think the guy would react so negatively to being called out after straight up "Game of Thrones"-style betraying everyone.

I think the people who play the same character all the time are playing some weird ideal self, and it's actually really sad when it's always a dickweed loner.

amen to that brother
theres another player in a game im in. he didnt do his level up for FOUR levels. still didnt do it

>they're seeking some "better" compromise, in their minds
What's the fucking alternative? "Oh, there's a challenge here, but I assume you use the best compromise? Roll the dice." Get your head ass outta here.
That's what I've been doing, but they get MORE wishy-washy or drag even the most trivial actions into "Now I check the door HINGES. No, the TOP DOOR HINGE first." minutiae.

agreed on the dm part, a good mastery of the rules is need to keep the flow going

It's all in how you describe it or visualize hitpoints, IMO. If every hit is a severed arm or shattered skull, yeah, it's moronic.

But if you think of combat damage more as the minor injuries and exhaustion that wear someone down before the killing blow, IMO it's much more reasonable.

Also lets you avoid nonsense like sleeping off that severed arm you got in the last fight.

Well it was two games of Exalted, one game of Rogue Trader, and one game of Mutants and Masterminds. None of the systems have aligments.

Maybe you are right and I should stick to a good old fashioned D&D someday.

>including inaction/neglect
With you up 'til this point. The whole point of a Neutral alignment even existing is to illustrate that not being Good doesn't instantly make you Evil.

I dunno man, I rolled a True Neutral bard that was part of a Performing Troupe/Information Brokers that lived by a code of Liberty for All. He hated oppressive groups good and evil, and he was at his core self serving, but he had his own morals he lived by and would die for his friends. Neutral doesn't have to be boring, people just play it that way.

Could easily just be your GMing. Players will usually only act that way if they've gotten used to every NPC being an asshole or out to kill them, and if you try to "punish" them for it they'll just act that way even more as you're validating their fears. They'll probably stop if they notice that the majority of people they're trying to intimidate are just normal, helpful neighbors.

>He hated oppressive groups good and evil he was at his core self serving, but he had his own morals he lived by and would die for his friends.

sounds like textbook chaotic neutral tbbqh

>Is it really that bad at high levels? And have they not figured out group tactics or something?

From what I've gathered, yes it's that bad at high levels, considering that enemies around CR 9 and 10 have more than 100 HP, so it's basically just stabbing at a guy until you can get his HP down. Though high level spells and magic weapons and increased ability scores do help, I now understand what some fa/tg/uys mean when they talk about enemies having meatpoints. Because everyone has high health, especially if you're playing a tank, then it's basically just punching eachother with various attacks until one of you dies.

Next session I'm going to use the enemy rules for mass combat and have the players fight a small brigade of enemies, and restrict the meatpoint guys to big bad monsters.

good riddance, elf rogue was a dick

>waaah why doesn't everyone play into my false dichotomy like a fucking tool waaaah

neck yourself.

Tell him that if a check NEEDS to be passed for the story to progress, it shouldn't be a check and you shouldn't have to roll.

>players put off leveling characters all week
>players saying they don't have time to pick feats while literally on a headset with me playing video games
>no rollplaying, but not much roleplaying either.
I honestly enjoy our casual atmosphere as it takes a hell of a lot of pressure off of me as a DM but calling each other by PC names every once a while wouldn't kill ya.

Who are you quoting?

I did and he didn't take it well.

>not being Good doesn't instantly make you Evil

this only works when Good has control, if Evil rules and you are powerful yet decide to do nothing you are Evil, too

you can only ignore small problems for selfish reasons, people being murdered you can't ignore or you are complicit and Evil

typical Neutral player here

that's cool and all but it sounds like he was Good with a side of greed. Also if a gov is "oppressive" it is evil. Yeah, 'good' gods don't burn heretics at the stake and ban dancing and singing and force children to marry adults. That's just evil pretending to be good. You were a Classic Han Solo type good guy.

>Your players
Pausing the game to whine about [thing] when they were told they'd be [that exact thing] before characters were even made

Also policing other players. Knock it off

>your DM
Not existing so I don't have to GM for once

I agree with this dude

Make a lot of helpful nice NPCs who are just trying to help instead of edgy spies and assassins all the time dude

Still not true. Doing nothing while other people commit Good makes you Neutral. Doing nothing while other people commit Evil still makes you Neutral. Doesn't matter if it's jaywalking or murder; you are literally doing nothing. That's what being Neutral is.

>you can only ignore small problems for selfish reasons, people being murdered you can't ignore or you are complicit and Evil

So how much of your time and money are you donating to make third world countries less shitty, or are you just another Evil guy?

>hearing "haha, it's what my character would do!" several times a session

>not spending XP
I swear, I just killed a PC in a WoD game, because I have figured that by now he'd be able to tank anything short of AA rounds, but the chucklefuck hadn't spent any XP since the game started five months ago. He has done it in many games the past year, but this time died with almost 100 XP unspent.

There's one player who refuses to let NPCs be dramatic or withold any information. I'm not the DM, but I can clearly see that we're supposed to get the quest hook, find clues on our own, then go in and still be slightly surprised by what exactly we find in there. Don't cross-examine every NPC we meet, man. RPGs are interactive stories, sometimes stories are better when you let a narrative exist instead of acting like there will be real-world repercussions if you don't minmax every aspect of the game.

the ruling cases and the perspective of the neutral individual dont live intertwined.
good or evil dont rule in vacuums outside their planes.

One can be completely uncaring of the murders going on in town--being neutral and letting the guardsmen who are paid to do their job do it, be good and actively pursuing murderers, or be evil and actively murdering.

I'm worried about the current mission to go do yada yada, the fact that some serial killer has surfaced seems to be someone elses job, maybe a paladins.

>5e is the added passive perception.

>moshi moshi, baito desu

If your neighbor beats their children every night but cooks a mean burger at BBQs staying out of it and not trying to stop it/report it is EVIL

“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict…[an individual] who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Fucking Neutral players. If you walk by a mass grave only to steal their gold teeth instead of using your might to put a stop to it you're evil.

Selfishness IS evil.

Neutral isn't a third way, selfishness and greed are LITERALLY one of the oldest sins in every single religion for good reason. Allowing torture, rape and murder when you could stop it is evil, there's no argument to be had here.

Dietrich Bonheoffer, a murdered priest during Hitler's rule said, “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. Not to speak is to speak, not to act is to act.”

attempting to reduce suffering in the world is important to me aye

Words are meaningless, what have you actually DONE to reduce suffering in the world?

Players
>character name is a joke, pun, reference, or ISP name written backwards
>bitch about consequences
>"Sorry, I can't make it" the day of a session
>get pissy when someone is more powerful than them in some way
>make absurd plans and get mad when they don't pan out
>interrupt me mid-description to go ackshually
>anything that is out of the ordinary is hilarious to them, no exceptions
>can't remember any names, even if they're common, modern day, and monosyllabic

GM
>Every single NPC has a personality that starts and ends with 'smug'
>Not a single NPC reacts to things like a normal person does
Example:
>Cut off an enemy's arm
>He reacts ominously "You shouldn't have done that"
>It's literally just a low-level cultist henchman

So then, should a paladin who enters such neighborhood slay said neighbor who beats their children, then slay everyone on the block save the children for permitting the beatings, then slay any of the children who didn't speak up against the abuse for supporting the beatings?

and I'll add I'm talking about TTRPG morality, because applying game logic Good Evil and Neutral in real life is fucking retarded, but the Problem of Neutrality has been discussed at length over and over and there's plenty of places to read more

In terms of RPGs, you are playing a character with POWER to change things and you choose to play a character that just wants to get paid? how fucking boring can you be. and it always seems to be Rogues/Bards and "alien" races trying this shit to get away with doing whatever they want at the table

>If your neighbor beats their children every night but cooks a mean burger at BBQs staying out of it and not trying to stop it/report it is EVIL
Wrong.
>“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict…[an individual] who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it”
Wrong.
>If you walk by a mass grave only to steal their gold teeth instead of using your might to put a stop to it you're evil.
Wrong.
>Allowing torture, rape and murder when you could stop it is evil, there's no argument to be had here.
Wrong.
>“Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. Not to speak is to speak, not to act is to act.”
Unbelievable doublethink and also wrong.

If all this were to be true, then show me what exactly would make a character Neutral. "Good but not Good enough to satisfy my moralfaggotry" answers need not apply. "Claims selfish motivations but still ends up doing Good at the end of the day" answers also need not apply.

Gave my kidney to an unrelated person, donate money and blood (not anymore, kidney), always there to talk to for my friends/family, cared for elderly grandmother until her death, comforted my sister after a really bad thing happened to her and so forth since you want to know so badly.

are you just a cynical lazy asshole bringing your shitty take on human life into ttrpgs?

>interrupt me mid-description to go ackshually
Oh my god, this. I was describing how it was weird and a little unnatural that a city that was destroyed less than a full lifetime ago had zero corpses in it, but one player decided to interrupt me saying it was totally normal, and then went online to look it up to prove me wrong after me telling him straight out that it's unnatural and to shut up

Protip alignmentfags:

Neutral doesn't mean the exact center of the alignment scale, it means not far enough in either direction to ping on the alignment radar.

Some neutral people tend towards doing good, some tend towards doing evil, but unless they start getting into the proverbial big leagues, they aren't gonna get that scale tipped far enough for it to matter.

So by your own logic, you're full-caps EVIL since you're spending time posting on Veeky Forums instead of doing charity work or joining the police?

>what exactly would make a character Neutral

Nothing, it's a stupid alignment which is the entire point

you end up silently complicit with whoever has the most power.

All that it takes for evil to triumph is for 'good' men to do nothing.

WRONG

paladin can give the death penalty only: retard edition

>I donated a redundant organ, bodily fluids my body produces for free (but not anymore once that would start actually having an effect on my life), some nebulous, unspecified amounts of money most likely for tax purposes, and... uh, oh, right! I'm nice to my family members!
Nah.

>everyone is either Good or Evil and everyone less Good than me is Evil
Fuck right off, adults are talking here.

A True Neutral character would only be concerned with his life and goals, he wouldn't be an "I'm only out for myself and fuck everyone else" that CN is.

I do agree that the examples listed aren't exactly true, if you don't have the power to stop something then you're not exactly evil. You don't exactly have the power to stop an army by yourself, and the neutral thing is to escape or hunker down and hope for help from an outside source.

For example: a good character would lead innocent people across the underground railroad to safety, but a neutral character would let the people fleeing stay in his basement (but only because he knew and was friends with the good character).

Neutral is you average salary man, content to focus on their life and not much else.

this may surprise you but rl and ttrpgs are separate

human health is more complicated than HP may suggest for instance

...