ITT we trigger GMs

>I rolled 20 on intimidation, the Ancient Red Dragon should be scared of me now

>It doesn't work like that in the Monster Manual!

This upsets me on a deeply spiritual level since I've had to DM for a faggot like that before now.

>20 minutes, everyone has said that they should do the thing, no-one actually does the thing
>prompt someone to actually do the thing IC
>thing is done
>20 minutes to decide to move out to do the next thing, no-one actually moves IC, just all agrees to do so OOC

Appoint a caller you deviant plod.

>Let's make a 10 foot pole to replace our foot pole by using these 3 unholy staffs we cant use.
>Lighting strikes me down and brings me to 0 hp.
Fuck you and your staff story, I want a 10ft pool it is dangerous to walk without it in your dungeons..

>Without us players, you wouldn't even be able to run a game.
>you should be thanking us.

These words were some of the last spoken to me by a few friends.

You sound like a triggered player

In my experience as a player I've only ever seen these words uttered to conceited DMs whose ego's have grown too large for them and they think their campaign is god's gift to RPing.

Problem is that a caller needs to know how everyone works, and needs to be very skilled in resource management. It's a colossal responsibility that barely anyone can manage

>Which one is the d20?
>Which one is the d10?
>Which one is the d6?
>Which one is the d4?

> So he's the king, huh? I wait until he turns away and steal his crown XD

>How do I open the locked door? Uh... I roll diplomacy to seduce it. Or would that be bluff?

>I know its last minute but can we reschedule the session, plz? Something came up. thx

I'd let it go if the player could make up sufficiently impressive bullshit.

I don't mind these questions for the first hour or two of play with a new player, but after five sessions I'll be pretty fucking mad.

When's the hearing?

The hell are you running?

And they still talk with everyone.
They just get final say, barring consensus on a new caller.

I think intimidating a dragon is possible, but you'd have to first roll to either recall a piece of relevant information or convince him that you're someone else (rolling history or deception) or something along those lines, and only then you'd roll intimidation. And even then you'd need a very high score, or even multiple successes.
Actually, I think intimidating a dragon is an excellent excuse for a skill challenge.

>Player plays a Tabaxi rogue
>*character dies*
>Rolls up a new character: Tabaxi rogue

I have a rule now that if you die, you have to pick a new class or race. Even if they keep playing the same race they'll still have to pick a new class.

No sorry, everybody else is already here. But I'll play your character for this session and I'll fill you in what went on next session.

>REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
>*Acts generally huffy and bitchy because we're doing a session without them*
>*Carries this chip on the shoulder into next session*
>Why should I care? You guys do well enough without me around. Nothing I do matters.
>etc. etc.

>Why can't I play this class? I found it on d&d wiki so it should be official

>"Let me know when it's my turn"
>Leaves the table to bullshit with others
>a few minutes later: "dude, your turn!"
>"Be right there"
>Twenty minutes later: "Okay, back. So what's going on?"

They were former highschool buddies with no concept of time or responsibility. In truth they made me very aware of the red flags Veeky Forums is always going on about with problem players. That day was just the final nail in the coffin really.

We normally played one-shots or mini campaigns, so I always ran sandbox style. The breakdown was:

>about a year since I ran anything
>friends contact me about running a big AD&D2e campaign since we've only done small stuff
>none of them own any manuals
>none of them buy manuals
>none of them download manuals
>none of them read the scans I hand them later, during session 0
>"How come you don't know this magic spells' rules off the top of your head? You're the DM!" Was spoken more than once by this group
>session 0 with them, some individually due to college schedules
>game day in one week
>game day, no one shows up
>call them
>one forgot and is on his way
>other three are on route
>three hours later, call them to say fuck it, they refuse, apologize, and are still on their way
>five hours later they show up
>no one's eaten, so I order food
>two are high or coming down, I can't tell
>game starts, goes awry and TPK due to player stupidity (my friends loved open roll, high lethality, which was never a problem before)
>They get pissed at me being a passive aggressive shit, I tell them to fuck off for not only today but for years of their bullshit
>kick them out of my house
>enjoy the pizza and wings I ordered and paid for
>still had to go to the store because they drank all my soda.

Meant 3 hours, then 2 hours, totally 5 hours from initial call.

>what's going on?
>dude, fucking pay attention
>no
>well then fuck off nobody's going to want to keep repeating themselves
>get out of my house
Not even the dm but this actually happened. Needless to say he's not allowed to be host anymore

Why that image in particular?

Then quit. Buhbye.

Full disclosure: I'm in a roll20 group, and when combat starts to drag out really long, sometimes I'll take my turn, assess the board, and go make lunch, do the dishes, check in really quick, take the dog out, come back and wait another two minutes for my turn. I haven't missed a thing yet.

>My character is neutral alignment, why does my character care about this?

>'I'll wait for everybody else to say something first'

>Can I stab it? What do you mean you said this person was on a completely different floor to me a moment ago?

daily reminder that if you like anime you are That Guy

>*shows up an hour late or early with no prior notice*

This is everyone else in my group including the dm. ESPECIALLY the dm

Only an hour? Lucky.

>user said, on an anime image board
For the record, I don't even like anime, but your post is fucking stupid and adds nothing to the discussion.

>an hour early
Awesome, let's discuss your character's background and personal life and how we can integrate it more smoothly with the campaign's narrative, whilst playing Gamecube and drinking beer.

> What do you mean by I can't invent gunpowder?

Matches the OP.

fuuuuuuck this shit so much

one of our players makes the same hurr durr money is my only motivation chaotic neutral character in every single game and it derails campaigns like nothing else

like how hard is it to stay on track and not hoard all the loot or try to backstab everyone/sell everyone out all the time, goddamn

>hurr durr money is my only motivation chaotic neutral character
I'm somebody who plays a character whose ultimate dream is to live a life of excess, and fuck those people. Do they not understand that being part of a group that can consistently earn them money is a worthwhile commitment?

You think that's bad?
I had a good aligned party that wanted to a warband of demons to rape a pillage their friendly town AND one of those party members will only ever do things for money despite also being good aligned.

who CARES about consistent money flow
I need the gold NOW, so gimme your magic sword so I can hock it for 1/10 of its value to this bumpkin

I made a CE character. He's not greedy. He doesn't hate his friends. He doesn't murder people without reason. He doesn't start shit with quest givers who are paying him to do shit for them. And he doesn't really value money beyond the access it gives him to debauchery.
He's ruthless and will throw you overboard if you threaten him/his buddies/his ship. He has no problem if the quest givers tell him to slaughter innocent lizardfolk villagers. And if some other quest giver paid him to murder his current quest giver, he'd consider it.
Chaotic doesn't mean stupid. Evil doesn't mean sociopathic.

slightly related
>play warhammer 40k with someone who has more money then sense
>what does my own unit do
>what would you do if you were me?
>what does my own weapon do?
so many hours of basically playing my opponents army because they didn't know how to play or take initiative to learn.
when i know the stats of your army better then you, you have fucked up.

You know you can change their alignment, right?

>If you were me, would you match your bet? I have two aces.

change of Alignment has no repercussion except for one specific class though

How do I roll dice?

Intimidation is way too vague a mechanic as is the case with most D&D mechanics.

To improve it you need to enforce clarity. So you ask the person doing the intimidating two things.

>What they're actually threatening the NPC with
>what they want from the NPC

You then adjust the DC based on those values both what the threat is and what the pc is asking for. So a level 1 character threatening an adult dragon with his sword will have a high-impossible DC as that's not actually threatening to it. But if that same level 1 character somehow has some blackmail material or whatever then he might be able to intimidate the dragon. If the PC is asking for the entirety of the dragons horde that's unreasonable and so will be a much harder dc, but if the pcs ask the dragon not to attack one village that's more reasonable.

Or for a more realistic example threatening a guard with violence to get through the city gates might be pretty dumb but threatening to tell his commander he's been sleeping on duty might be more effective.

Likewise this also allows you to intimidate someone via a message if you have some leverage like a hostage for example.

Then they roll and the NPC can either suck it up and take the threat on a fail or do what they want on a pass. Likewise the GM can decide it's not possible to intimidate them and just say they suck it up.

This means players have to think about the ramifications of their intimidation checks and be clear about their intent and what they want out of it and it allows DMs greater flexibility as a result to narrate the action.

what said
and none of them were paladins

This is why I humans only.

This one hurts me. Well done

My DM imposed a rule on our now somewhat veteran group that you need to decide what you are going to do in around 10 seconds. Frankly, you shouldn't need to take much longer once you get savvy because you should be paying attention to whats happening with everyone else anyways.

He's not strict with it, obviously, but its a general pressure thing. If you wanna try some crazy shit, he'll drop it for you to explain what you wanna try, and tell you what you need to roll to do it.

I find that to be a good way to keep things moving and more dynamic.

As a GM, I knew GMs would flock to this thread, because clearly we all like abuse or we wouldn't be GMing in the first place.

Better than finding out the guy went to get laid.

Its all well and good to get some, but if you can't even keep clear 3 hours once a week to do thing, then you can fuck right off with that bullshit.

>My old GM let me play *insert overly optimized bullshit ten levels above the group from the internet here*, why should I have to play something else?

This so much. I've also played a CN-slipping-into-CE character like that. He was perfectly happy to work alongside even the two LG Paladins as long as they didn't accept a quest that was liable to be more trouble than it was worth. He never betrayed the party, not even the Paladins.
He did, occasionally, mess with them lightly though. And he usually blamed the TN Ranger for it.
He'd also omit certain rather important details when debriefed(oh myyyy) by the quest givers, usually because they never asked about anything other than the main part of the errand they sent him on.
To this day, nobody knows it was our party that was 'accidentally' responsible for the sudden appearance of a group of Werewolf Gypsy Bandits in the desert of Not!Spain.

Lucky sevens confirm GM masochism.

I just wish my player would tone down the abuse a little, and maybe even make rational decisions sometimes.

Their alignment is only truly known by you. They still think they're Lawful or whatever.
The world will react differently to them though.

>Cleric/Paladin lose spells, abilities, church support
>Alignment based magic items fall off or stop working... Or outright backfire.
>NPC contacts no longer deal with PCs due to Alignment language

Abuse?

>I wish my players would tone down the abuse
Do you not punish your players for acting out? I have a rogue in my party that likes to get uppity, but once I threaten to take his character sheet and lower his dex he settles down

>Cool, I think I want to attack the goblin
>Let me just add up my combat bonuses
>Yeah I know they haven't changed since my last turn, but I forgotten them.
>Alright, so where are they on my sheet again?
>Okay 1+1+2+3 7.
>Er, no wait 6.
>Sorry guys I was right the first time
>Alright so, what are my modifiers if I want to grab the goblin?
>And what if I want to disarm him?
>Alright, I've changed my mind, I'm going to hold my action and see what the goblin does.

Influences how NPCs interact with them.

Not directly, unless the NPC in question has some ability to detect alignments AND uses it on the party, which is probably a fairly rare situation.

tldr:
My reaction was for the demons to predictably betray them but they were too stupid to get that far and they all died.

1 bard, 1 barbarian, 1 incapacitated cleric

What the party planned:
Party told the demons that they would enter the town first, wait until night then kill the gate guard and open the gate.

What really happened:
Party entered the town and entered the apothecaries store to heal cleric. Bard attempted to kill him for no reason but low rolled, apothecary ran and got the guards who surrounded the building and told them to drop their weapons and come out or be run through. Bard asks if back wall has any windows, there's two. He uses Shatter on the wall in between the two windows, "because the wall is weaker there". Windows break but nothing happens to wall, barb helps cleric and they go through the window, ~10 guards burst into the apothecaries store and kill bard in 1 turn. I attempt the give the barbarian an out to save his life. Barb runs into two helpful npc characters they ran into before. They ask why hes running/what happened. He tells them the truth, npcs say they will escort him back to town since he didnt technically commit any crime. Barb just wants to get back to sucking demon cock. Attacks friendly npcs, dies like a bitch. Literally too stupid to save.

>here's my character sheet. I rolled at home.
>I got 4 18s a 17 and a 16.

The worst part about this one is that I find myself doing it too when I'm a player. My only defense is that my plans often gets upset by whatever the last action way.

This hits too close to home...

also
>I don't have dice so I just use this dice roller app I have on my phone

Even -5 on Reaction Chart doesn't really mean much.

That does happen, doesn't it?

Are you me? I do all my housework during combats and usually finish up my turn in one minute with a little bit of pre-typing. Sadly the extremely slow pace of most games has made me lose patience. With 4-6 players I usually have 45 minutes to an hour and a half between my turns.

>One hour late
Well, this is fairly normal at this point. This is why we start early.
>Two hours late
Hey, has anyone heard from user? I can't get a hold of him.
>Three hours late
Well, I guess the session's canceled because we need him for story things. Thanks for hanging out anyway, guys.
>Three and a half hours
Hey! I got a text from him. He said he was helping a friend move today, and now he's tired, so he's just going home for a shower.

Two out of our last three sessions, this happened. Every week, I've told the GM that if we want to play, we just have to ignore absent players. Fucker couldn't even be bothered to let us know he wouldn't make it in advance.

This triggers me so much. I'm the busiest person in my group by far but I'm still able to set aside a few hours a week for D&D. Haven't even gotten to play in 2 months because of these fuckers

alignment based spells are sub-level 10 spells usually, with the odd one being higher.

So rare, not so much. Most average magical murderhobo's can do something with it. magic circle against X spells are 3rd level spells for example.

Gonna suck for that evil rogue when he's all of a sudden shunted away from the party because he's an asshole. If you happen to have a weapon that is holy, that would also work because it affects anything with evil alignment as well.

Unless you are playing 5e or something, but alignment takes a heavy backseat there.

>Cool, a door
>I check it for traps
>I don't find any traps? I check again but more carefully
>Still no traps? It can't be that easy. I cast detect magic on the door
>I don't detect magic? I cast a different spell to try and find hidden magic
>No hidden magic? I prod the door with my 10-foot pole. What's it made of?
>Are we SURE it's made entirely out of wood? Why would we think that?
>No we can't open the door yet, it might be guarded.
>*20 minutes later*
>*Still hasn't opened the door yet*

>Reaction Chart

This every fucking time

Thats when the resident barbarian bashes it down user.

I had one player rolling a d12 all night before anyone noticed

>I run down the hall!
>You trigger a trap.
>I didn't mean that literally! I creep slowly and carefully down the hall looking for traps

FFFFFFFFFFF
ok, got me on this one

This is a good one. also
>I didn't read the background. Seriously, two pages? I didn't come for a homework assignment.
>Here's my half kitsune half ooze blood mage.

its already an act of god if you rally 3-4 people at the same time. if one say he cant at the last minute, fuck `im.

and its worst with a playgroup in their twenties.
if you can game 2 twice per month its a miracle

>I roll to convince him that I'm God!
>No, I don't have anything to convince him with besides my word.

>alignment based spells are sub-level 10 spells usually, with the odd one being higher.
Spellcasters by themselves are fairly rare(at least in most settings). Then they have to a)either prepare the spell or have it on their very limited list of spells known and b)actually cast it in the presence of(or right before meeting) the party. Unless they already have a good reason to be suspicious of the party, that takes a fair bit of paranoia.

Maybe if they're dealing with nobility or are otherwise getting involved in intrigue, alignment detection spells might crop up(but in that situation, the PCs may well invest in ability to fool them). But other than that? Your average cleric or wizard most likely won't cast Detect Alignment every time he meets a new person.

And of course, that's not even touching the fact that just starting to cast a spell for no apparent reason in the presence of strangers is, at best, very impolite. At worst it might be the equivalent of drawing a weapon with all the implications that follow from that. And announcing that you're going to probe someone's alignment is probably even MORE impolite.

>half XXXX Half ooze blood mage

I'd actually be interested in that. More, is it capable of using ooze instead of blood for the magic?

Aren't ooze asexual? How can anything be half ooze?

MAGIC.

Other people's blood.
They're not asexual, they're just aromantic.
Shitlord.