My DM Is a Moron

[Prak]

Nah, I live in Canada, my DM lives in the USA.

And don't get me wrong here, he's my friend. I've known him for like, 9 years now. But just the same, he can be a total retard about some things.

I think we all know one or two of those...

what I find hilariously sad is that he's seemingly in favour of over the top, unbalanced system, apparently thinks that the Frank/K stuff is over the top and unbalanced, and yet thinks it's shit, supposedly because it's too powerful and cares about some level of optimization...

[Judging__Eagle]

First challenge, the GM turned her into a dark fey bondage queen, and I swear, the GM doesn't even know me. Is there a sign on my IP address or something?

and i'm stuck dealing with an unhelpful retard that wants to play in trees while there's a t-rex that needs it's teeth cleaned.

[Meikle641]

I know the Den can be pretty harsh on ToB classes, but I have found they make fighty types interesting. That said, they don't do everything I want for fantasy archetypes. Tome classes do, mostly.

Hell, most of the reason my warforged scout is such a killing machine is because he's a swordsage. His build is unoptimized (swordsage/warlock), but it meshes enough that I've been the MVP since day one (Helps I have Scent, See Invis, K-Blind Fight, and good Listen checks. Few things get past him.).

[Maxus]

Really. The ToB classes are cool and all, except they're basically three classes who use "I can believe it's not magic!" as their special shtick. They don't do anything to help the Fighter or Barbarian or Monk.

[Meikle641]

Well yeah, they replace them rather than actually fixing the issues with older classes.

Only Swordsage is really pseudo-magical, though. The rest of that shit is conceivably done by a warrior dude; just look at Iron Heart and Stone Dragon. Diamond Mind fills a few niches of conventional fighters as well.

[Koumei]

Dude, Iron Heart Surge does things even magic can't! You can end Time, Gravity, Relativity, Conservation of Energy and Your Mum.

JE: in this game, I seriously AM the unhelpful retard. Kind of. We're playing chess... as chess pieces. And the effect includes getting possessed (just for this chess game, I can revert to normal personality after) and becoming "WHAT? Another Queen? How dare they insult the Dark Queen Naga with that! Screw tactics, I'M TAKING HER OUT! OHOHOHOHO!"

[Meikle641]

So, I was wondering about what my DM said. Is it really possible to do just fine with 1s in all stats, or is he talking out his ass? I'm thinking it's the latter, but I've never played the system.

[Username17]

So, I was wondering about what my DM said. Is it really possible to do just fine with 1s in all stats, or is he talking out his ass? I'm thinking it's the latter, but I've never played the system.

That statement is based on something that is true, but it is in fact false.

The true part is that your stats act as modifiers to actions that are so completely fucking lost against the backdrop of powers that may let you scrounge for food (with a 20% success rate!) or perhaps destroy entire continents and everyone on them. If you are a hobo, you have completely fucking useless powers that no one cares about or notices. If you are a world eating insect god (an actual character class, by the way), you will be able to kill everyone on planets by um... eating their fucking planet no matter how high or low your stats are.

But to add insult to injury, being a hobo (or in fact, any kind of human) gives you a completely different stat generation system than being a giant planet eating insect god. If you are the latter, you roll more, larger dice and get flat numeric modifiers that make you super human no matter what you roll. On the stat scale. That modifies the actions you take, which will be of the planet destroying rather than stray cat bothering variety.

So you're left to wonder what the fucking hell the point of giving the insect gods better stats is, since it's clearly just a relative scale and means fuck-all in the face of the fact that they are a devastating war beetle and you are not.

-Username17

[Roy]

That DM should be peeled open like an onion while dunked into habanero sauce and forced to listen to the worst music of all time while various disgusting visual memes play on wide screen. Also, electricity should be involved on sensitive areas throughout.

I think that covers it.

[Sir Neil]

Maybe I should just make things explicitly MTP loosely based on the D&D setting. Instead of having statistical representations of characters that never get used, we'll have a list of abilities, a list of things known, and a description of the character. I should pitch this to my group next time we get together.

Sounds like d02: Know No Limit.

[Koumei]

If you are a world eating insect god (an actual character class, by the way),

I... think I missed that World/Dimension book. Which critter are you talking about, and are they really an RCC or is it a monster that you might be able to fast-talk past some GMs just like the Lizard Mage?

[Judging__Eagle]

Dude, Iron Heart Surge does things even magic can't! You can end Time, Gravity, Relativity, Conservation of Energy and Your Mum.

JE: in this game, I seriously AM the unhelpful retard. Kind of. We're playing chess... as chess pieces. And the effect includes getting possessed (just for this chess game, I can revert to normal personality after) and becoming "WHAT? Another Queen? How dare they insult the Dark Queen Naga with that! Screw tactics, I'M TAKING HER OUT! OHOHOHOHO!"

So...you'll have to explain that to me later, b/c the GM seriously doesn't let us see anything that an other group is doing, or at least not me anyways.

Also, I'm playing a 'human' with supernatural intelligence. I rolled guud on stats. Then took stat boosting skills to drive my "IQ" up to a 35.

Seeing how stats 'normally' range from 3-18 for a human; that's about the equivalent of a 35 Int in D&D. I figure that my character needs that much Int so that I can 'solve' these problems, and not count as metagaming. Because I'm always metagaming, at nearly everything, not just tabletop games, I'm just really bad at it though.

[Meikle641]

*Cackles* Okay, so here's the story now. Me and Iori had a discussion about Agni (the DM's character who just died), and how awesome he would have been if he'd just taken K-Samurai or K-armour as offered.

Well, there's an NPC warforged who became a badass after I gave him the best sword the samurai ever crafted (+2 adamantine katana). Hemmed and hawwed about playing it as the new character, or as a stop-gap until he made a new one.

So me and Iori schemed. "What if I made stats for the warforged," says I, "only it uses K-Samurai rather than the lame OA or CW version. We trap him with it, and he'll see how awesome it is."

"Genius!" cackles Iori, and we both rub our hands with glee.

So then I whipped up the lvl 12 Samurai in about an hour, and sent it to Iori for vetting.

And now:

Getter Poseiden: To an earlier question: We have [insert other 3 players, and myself as players currently
DM: Yeah, on any given night Iori has the risk of not having enough players now.
DM: I would have run the Warforged Hero as an NPC that night if circumstances hadn't shown up that distracted me for hours.
DM: I'm thinking of using a Fighter build with Agni's ability scores.
(6:59:53 PM) Getter Poseiden: Talk to him tonight. It has been worked out.
DM: That'll make whipping his numbers up quick and easy
19:00
DM: What, he already has numbers for me?
(7:00:05 PM) Getter Poseiden: Yes
DM: Excellent. Warforged for me for a while then



JUST AS PLANNED!

[Cynic]

if a warforged became a tome samurai, what would it's ancestral weapon be? it's hand? is that allowable?

[Heath Robinson]

Appeal to Apathy/Laziness is the fastest method in a great many cases.

A_Cynic,
Can't you inherit ancestors from an adoptive family? That is, you can use the ancestral weapon of whatever family takes you in. Or they could fluff-hack the whole thing to work for Warforged.

[CatharzGodfoot]

if a warforged became a tome samurai, what would it's ancestral weapon be? it's hand? is that allowable?

In this case it's apparently a bastard sword. I think that with a name like 'warforged' and the relevant flavor text, you could make an argument for pretty much anything except a sap or whip.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

if a warforged became a tome samurai, what would it's ancestral weapon be? it's hand? is that allowable?

Being that the warforged are an ancient race of battle-robots from the last Great War crafted to wage war/destruction upon neighboring empires, I could probably make a good case for 'Robot Body' or 'Giant Club' as ancestral weapons.

[Koumei]

So...you'll have to explain that to me later, b/c the GM seriously doesn't let us see anything that an other group is doing, or at least not me anyways.

Same here. No group can see what another group is up to.

Anyway, here's the gist of it:

We've been placed on a giant chess board. Upon stepping on it, we sort of get changed into chess pieces, with costumes and powers. There are enemy pieces. It looks like the board is looped so you can go from the left edge to the right edge. If you reach the far end (without looping), you can escape. If we take out the king, we win. Getting captured involves taking an injury but not necessarily dying. Enemy pieces die, on the other hand. Some squares are replaced by holes. With lava underneath.

Each chess turn, only one person can move. It's beginning to seem that we needn't exactly adhere to chess movement rules.

I became a Queen. I gained evil bondage "clothes" and a whip, and the powers of "Faerie Queen". And just for the duration of the chess game, the character has been possessed and needs to act evil, mean, self-obsessed and so-on. So I immediately charged ahead, trying to defeat the enemy queen as soon as possible. This resulted in an ally (who would have moved otherwise) being taken by an enemy piece.

[Meikle641]

Me: Would being in the Astral aversely affect a pocketwatch?
DM: Yes.
Me: Hrm
DM: Time stops on the astral. You don't age or need to eat.
DM: But when you leave, the time you spent there catches up with you
DM: (I NEED A BURGER)
Me: See, thing is, the Astral makes no sense. There would be no gith at all
Me: Any that left would die instantly
Me: Nothing could gestate on the plane either
DM: Except they do.
Me: Which makes no sense.
DM: This is a world where you can create fire by talking funny and waving your hands.
DM: And God actually talks to you.
18:15
Me: So? The mechanics for the Astral still make no sense. This is a campaign-wrecking flaw
DM: Why so serious?
DM: It's the Outer Planes. Nothing about them makes sense. They function on belief, not physics.
DM: Sigil is atop an infinite spire except you can see it from the ground
DM: Planes are in the same place except arranged in a wheel.
Me: It's stupid. You go in longer than like, 3 days, and you die if you leave
DM: Nonsense. You're just really hungry when you get out
Me: Dehydration
DM: Boy, do you look for inconsequential things to complain about?
DM: The astral works. Don't worry about it.
Me: Yet somehow I'm expected to believe that a civilization survives like that. It's dumb
DM: You're dumb.
Me: If there was some BS thing where their sphere of influence allows time to function normally, I'd buy that. The githzerai have a similar thing going on. But as is? A fatal flaw
DM: Only because you worry about it.
DM: This is the Outer Planes. The world is made of crazy stuff that doesn't make sense but works. Infinite Spire.
Me: Only it DOESN'T. If people leave after spending x time, they die if they leave. Only way the githyanki would survive is by a macguffin or not voyaging for brief periods on the astral, else they die
18:20
DM: Only if they're on the astral past what their normal lifespan would be.
Me: No, it's a matter of starvation and dehydration.
DM: And where did you get that idea?
DM: You're complaining about nothing again, like that K guy. It doesn't work that way.
Me: Sure it does
DM: You come out, you're hungry and thirsty. You don't immediately crumble into dust.
Me: "But when you leave, the time you spent there catches up with you" Therefore, spend too long and you drop dead upon leaving
DM: Yes. if you're a human and stay until you're three hundred years old, you're dead.
Me: No, that doesn't exclude eating and drinking

Me: Time elapsed is time elapsed
DM: I'm ignoring you now. You're complaining about nothing.
DM: It does not work that way. If it did you would have a problem. But it does not.
Me: Then perhaps this should be written down somewhere
DM: It is.
Me: Where?
DM: Guide to the Astral Plane.
DM: Don't you feel silly now?
Me: Which we're not allowed to read, naturally
DM: Of course not. I want to use adventure ideas from the published books.
DM: The problem is, you spend too much time at Frank and K's boards, where their sole joy in life is coming up with hypothetical problems to complain about.
Me: They're hardly hypothetical
DM: Which only ever apply to the dankest ranks of munchkining anyway.
DM: No reason complaining about how broken wizard spell combos are when nobody uses those spell combos.
18:25
Me: Except people do
DM: Not anybody we have to deal with. So stop worrying about it.



This was relevant as we're doing a Planescape side-campaign as a Githyanki Hunter-Killer team.

FFFFFFFFFFF-

[virgil]

I remember/have the Astral Guide, and I remember the timeless trait stating that your metabolism towards hunger/thirst never advances farther than just shy of taking damage once you left, even if you spent a year without eating. Although, even by normal d20 rules, you're still allowed to eat/drink while on the Astral to keep the retroactive starvation from knocking you unconscious when you leave (which never kills, I've noticed).

As for the aging part, the githyanki are egg-layers and it was established (can't remember where, likely the Astral Guide again) that they have hatcheries on ultra-remote Prime worlds where they're raised to adulthood before going back to the Astral. Also, I think a lot of the larger dead gods have a normal time trait on their corpse (as well as gravity), and gith live on their corpses.

There did exist spells known by warlocks (githyanki wizards) that could temporarily stave off the timeless catchup issue if you lived past your natural expectancy and wanted to make short visits off the Astral without dying. Otherwise, yes, living on the Astral has the danger of it eventually trapping you on the plane unless you want to die; but at least you got to be young for a very long time without having to sell your soul.

[Meikle641]

See, I can dig that, but a "just because" and "Lol, it exists but you're not allowed to read" is total bullshit.

[Akula]

Why he didn't just say, "You can eat and drink on the Astral to stave off starvation and dehydration." is beyond me. Because he could have totally said that. And should have, if he wasn't a dick who seems to constantly assume that you are complaining for the sake of complaining.

[Crissa]

Published adventures should not share book space with rules.

Ugh.

-Crissa

[Meikle641]

But that would make *sense*, so that can't happen. Besides, anybody who claims things are underpowered or criticizes inconsistencies is a powergaming munchkin AND THERE'S NOTHING WRONG THE THE MONK, STOP COMPLAINING.

Recently we offered to prove conclusively the monks (in)effectiveness using the Same Game and/or the list of monsters in the MM that Frank found that make a monk useless. Since it's like, a lot.

His counter? "Shouldn't I have a cleric or something with me?"

*facepalm*

[virgil]

At least he didn't discount the concept of the Same Game Test.

My DM once inferred that an 8th level character doing an average of 30 damage per round would be overpowered. Hell, he believes that a 12th level character that can solo a stone giant (CR 8.) without a real threat is overpowered.