Who's Right?

Situation
>Party comes upon destroyed town
>Finds ogres wrecking shit
>Kills the ogres
>Inn is kind of okay so the party sleeps in it
>Partway through the night more ogres show up and light the outside of the inn on fire
>Most of the party make for the front enterance
>Fight ensues
>Wizard, still standing in his room, casts a spell and turns into a bat and flies out of window
>Ogres waiting outside attack the bat/wizard immediately
>Wizard Player thinks thats bullshit that ogres would attack a bat fleeing a burning abandoned building when there is combat going on
>GM thinks the ogres would know to kill anything because wizards

Have you ever seen bats flying at night? They're tiny. How the fuck did multiple ogres make that spot check? It's also bullshit they focused on the player because there's probably a dozen or so small animals.

No spot check because the wizard player didn't roll stealth
The wizard player thought the transformation would be enough
GM declares that the ogres were killing everything that tried to escape because wizards

The wizard ends up taking a hit that nearly kills him and ends having to fly back into a near windowless inn, unable to see the enemies outside, low on spells, all of them evocations.
Ended up not contributing to the fight in any way.

This is where you bog down the DM by investigating every creature larger than a cricket from now on in every situation.

the gm must be smoking crack or the ogres are some kind of magic sensing variant because there's no way they would've known it was him. maybe they got intel from some of their higher ups? maybe they fought y'all before?

Don't do that, either call him on it OOC or just leave. Don't turn the game into a fistfight between you and the GM

sounds like a bad gm, ogres are dumb as rocks. why would they randomly attack a bat? you gotta use logic sometimes

The DM was wrong. But he probably just made a mistake and is caught up in his own point of view - not really able/willing to look at it from another.

If it is something that happens often, then make a big deal out of it and/or leave. But you are probably better off if this is a one off just making a calm argument and then letting it go. If you continue to fight it you are going to make it a context of wills and when he realizes he is wrong he won't be able to admit it.

Player is right, that's bullshit

Seem to have the right ideas, The Ogres should have been too dumb to attack your wizard, unless an intelligent higher up had explicitly told them they were going up against a wizard who could transform into things. If It were a more human creature I would say the DM was either in the right or at least right enough to let it slide. Even if it was annoying I don't think your DM was being that DM, just like said it sounds like he was too caught up in his own POV and wanted to make combat challenging and tactical.The player doesn't sound like that guy either. I think it's unreasonable for the DM or the player to hold a grudge for very long unless there are other details I'm missing.

I just realized the other thing. Even if the ogres had a reason to attack your player, It doesn't feel that way, It just feels like a mistake. there has to be someway the player would know or quickly find out.

Your GM is shit. You don't have to be stealthing to be hard to see. Ogres shouldn't expect wizard's unless they know their are wizard's. Ogres shouldn't assume transfiguration magic. Ogres are fucking dumb & shouldn't make a plan to ambush potential wizards magicked into bats flying out of every window. Ogres shouldn't be busy covering every literal exit from possible wizard escape when there is a fight they could be hitting people in.

And this is probably a good lesson to take away. If, from the players point of view, the actions of the monster do not seem 'fair' or reasonable then you as the DM should probably reconsider what is going on or at least how you are describing it.

I'm curious exactly what weapons the ogres were using that would even allow them to kill a bat without a lot of luck

Even without rolling stealth, the chances of the ogres actually seeing the bat at all in the dark, with a fire blazing, and in the middle of a combat situation, are slim. Even if they did see it, and even if they know about wizards, the odds of them all immediately thinking, "oh, that's the wizard polymorphed into a bat" are, again, slim, unless they have specifically seen that wizard polymorphing to animals before. Especially since ogres are low intelligence, low wisdom creatures, again, making it unlikely they even would have noticed.

And even id they DID notice, and even if they DID decide to attack it, it's a fucking bat. It's tiny and fast, and the chances that they'd be able to even react quickly enough to try and hit it before it was gone, much less actually land a hit, are very low.

It sounds like your GM was just doing what GMs often do, which is slapping down a player for trying to bypass combat.

I'd say the player was right desu
Did the GM at least make a perception check for the ogres or something? He sounds like the type that instinctively shuts down any out of the box solutions.

The movement speed of a flying bat far exceeds the reach of unaware ogres.
You cannot make AoO's unless you have acted on Initiative.
You cannot take an action when it is not your turn.
The only way the ogres could have grabbed the mage is if the ogres had won initiative & delayed their collective actions to specifically grab wizard-bats from the window

No perception check

GM/DM has a tendency to veto outside the box thinking viewing it as "power gaming" or "not what the game designers intended"

Seems like the player came up with a creative solution for a problem and you shut them down without even considering it. Not every combat has to be straightforward. Improv and creative solutions make the game generally more fun.

I'm neither the player being referenced nor the gm I'm one of the other players in the group. I sided with the wizard player for pretty much the same reasons stated in this thread.

I wanted to see if anyone agreed with the GM and if so, why? I wanted a cogent argument for the other side so I could better understand the "logic" behind it.

Not you, that's for sure. What a boring game.

While I may not agree with everything you said, I respect that you Anons took the time to give clearly written advice with an aim toward helping.

Are you OP or someone just filling in what you think happened next for fun?

Sorry, fucked up that reading comprehension. I could try making an argument for the GM. Back in my early times as GM I spent a lot of time preparing adventures. I wanted encounters that felt memorable to the players, encounters where they'd be at the edge of the seat and where they'd only win by the skin of their teeth. You know, fights that felt epic.

Back then, If I spent so much time preparing for an encounter and one of the players came up with a creative solution that would simply skip the encounter I could see myself getting a tad angry and wanting to simply deny the solution. I wouldn't have been able to see that they were simply having fun in another way than I intended.

While I don't know your GM, something like this might be a reason?

This. It sounds like the GM didn't want his surprise encounter to be outwitted.

>GM/DM has a tendency to veto outside the box thinking viewing it as "power gaming" or "not what the game designers intended"
If this isn't bait then I really feel sorry for you. That's fucking gay.

Not him, but while that's a reason you can sympathize with (I can as well), it doesn't really make it a good, logical reason. Plus, was the wizard just bailing or was he going to get around the ogres and attack? If it was the latter, that would have been pretty cool, and some quick thinking on the part of the player that he would have been really satisfied with.

The wizard wanted to get out of the burning building to (save his books & scrolls) and get to a vantage point where he could rain fireballs down on them.

He was very adamant about burning them in response to trying to burn him (and his books)

I've been trying to get him to watch some DM tips youtube videos but he wont listen

I'm running a game on a different day of the week with a few of the same people and he's one of the players
He gets upset when monsters aren't built exactly according to to the rules and knows the monster rules and stat blocks of the most common monsters like the back of his hand.
I think he has some control issues desu
After the situation I laid out in the first post, he ended up saying out loud "I'm starting to think I'm just a bad gm." So maybe he'll put his pride aside long enough to read up on some game running tips or watch a video or two. I can only hope.

Its me, OP

Just providing answers to questions to get more fleshed out responses. I thought you anons might be able to point out something I haven't thought of. When I play with these guys again I'd like to have thought of both sides of the issue at length so I might be able to help avoid this kind of shit in the future if possible. I really like our group and just want to keep things running smoothly. Its the only group I've been a part of where I'm not the DM/GM all the time.

Your wizard sounds like a fun dude, at least.

depends entirely on the intelligence and wisdom of the ogres, and the size of the bats.

Assuming normal ogres, and normal non-amazonian bats then this is quite unlikely, and even if the ogres were berserkers they would have missed those bats.

>enterance
You are in the wrong here, OP, for your lack of spelling.