Community

Dash Branaghan wrote:

I'm not that much of a jerk - usually I like cool character concepts and will work around them, but for certain things, especially things that make the one player better than all the other players suddenly (like flight would), I put my foot down. And the minute a player acts like my submission is his birthright, I will pull out the DM Stamp of DisApproval and tell him to get bent (said knee-jerk reaction mentioned previously).

In some cases though I do things that qualify as your "Jerkitude" because I know my players. And this is something that hasn't been covered here. Because there are always players who ask for an inch and take a mile. So I usually go in with the veto stamp ready because I just know it's going to come down to something that puts him above and beyond the party in ways that even the unbalanced game mechanic never intended.

That and he's also a cheater unless you watch him like a hawk.

I know players can be Jerks too, but it's usually at the expense of the other players. Unfortunately, too many DMs fall for their "But I'm just roleplaying my character" line or otherwise act the same way when they're a player such that the Jerk players get away with it. However, that's a separate issue from this thread.

xanadu wrote:

1) "X race doesn't fit my campaign world."

Huh? Exactly how are there illithids that suck your brains and Medusae that turn you into stone but no Tieflings?

This is similar to the "no, you can't have a dinosaur companion because they don't exist" mystery. Real creatures don't exist but griffons, demons, and trolls do

Style. Storytelling. Exasperation.

2) "You can't use X book, class, or feat because it's too gamey/anime/unrealistic/whatever"

I thought this ended in first grade when I couldn't bring my matchbox cars to your sandbox. We are ostensibly adults (and thus capable of appreciating different perspectives) and ostensibly sharing a game experience. When I was 7, I really hated it when you changed the rules to kickball because we played in your backyard. I still hate it now.

I only ruled that they had to provide a physical copy of a rule or book so I could refer to it.
I flat out declared Monks (and other Eastern/Oriental - based classes) and Druids off limits. Yes, because I didn't like them and they didn't fit the style of the campaign (which was chosen by the players).

3) Magic item haters

You really aren't cooler/better/more sophisticated because you deem reliance on magic as amateurish. I like having toys, I like magic shops, and since I can't spend my money on hookers and beer, I like spending my loot on things that enhance my power not imaginary titles that have zero impact on gameplay. Don't give me this "I want my character to shine, not my gear" crap. Did you take toughness as a feat seven times? How the hell is that +2 flaming longsword trumping 7th level maneuvers or the shocktrooper feat?

I'm a convert. I did a low magic campaign and while there were many things wrong with that particular campaign, it made it WAY harder than I realized on the players. (But your character should still outshine your +2 flaming longsword.)

4) Fudging dice rolls in favor of the BBEG

Cheating. I don't as a player to take over the plot and have it conform to my whims - you shouldn't either. I don't care if you are the DM. Your perspective of drama isn't any more valid than mine. Have you ever considered the reason I choose to memorize "You die immediately" spell is because I want to cast the thing and, get this, have it succeed? Did you note, I did not wait until the 13th round to cast it to make the fight against the BBEG some contrived Hollywood nonsense? No, I casted it in round #1 and trust me, I'd be real happy if the BBEG drop dead right then. Otherwise I would have took out my trusty x-bow and fired a bolt.

I only do this to make things exciting. BBEGs that die in 30 seconds of gameplay translating to 2 seconds of In Character Time are not fun final encounters.

5) Fudging dice rolls in favor for the PCs

Cheating. Why bother having opponents if their very success in killing a character would be deemed an "accident"? Please do not waste my time. Just say we kill the [whatever] and move on to a situation where I must actually, you know, think and worry about the fate of my character/mission/world/etc.

Players really don't like dying. They like being hurt. They like overcoming incredible odds. But they don't like dying because I rolled three attacks for max damage from BEES. This is a skill a DM must develop: Making things challenging and fun, while preventing stupidly good or bad things from derailing a story.
BTW, when we do hack'n'slash munchkin characters, I don't fudge at all.

6) "[Insert melee class] is too powerful"

Either the result of "only wizards can do X" (explain to me why fighters, paladins, rogues, etc are in your game again?) DMs or overreacting to a barbarian crit (while not even raising an eyebrow to a cleric's destruction spell). You can't see how the warrior jumps over the monster and then stabs it in the head but you have no problem with the wizard turning bat guano into an explosive weapon against the flying demon on the earth elemental plane At 17th level, wish, miracle, and shapechange are available to spellcasters. Fighters get skill focus (jealousy). The mighty warblade gets to do an attack that does less damage than a full attack. Relax.

I like more powerful classes. I don't believe in class balance as essential to a gaming system. I believe in PARTY balance. Four white mages, it'll never work.

7) Pages of house-rules

Why play D&D? Yes things like polymorph and the unintended combination of things like divine metagmagic and nightsticks (both fine on their own) break the campaign. But 99% of the time the people who designed the rules, who 99% of the time have inordinately more experience than the house-ruler, have actually thought about and experienced scenarios to come up with rules that actually facilitate play. Your snap judgment that Ray of Enfeeblement is too strong and thus needs a saving throw sucks and turns what was a decent spell into something completely worthless. I'll live without your 1% small improvement of the rules rather than the 99% when your house-rules effect the game negatively.

Not all DM judgments are snap judgments. Not all house rules are there to make the DM feel powerful. Sometimes its not about the rules themselves, but about style and the DM's comfort level. Personally, Psionics make me uncomfortable, so we don't play with them. Also, I house ruled how negative HP functions. My players agreed, so we play. If you're playing with a dictatorial DM, you have worse problems than house rules.

8) Stinginess

"My players won't be getting x, y, z!" Please, leave your haughtiness at home, this perspective isn't anything to be proud of. Undoubtedly you tip 5% at restaurants and aggravate your friends every weekend. If you can't stomach/deal with/adjust to the mere thought of the PCs having the recommended wealth as set in the DMG, you probably shouldn't be DMing. Oh, we're supposed to be having fun and screwing me over while compelling me to accept your interpretation of what fantasy role-playing is not a pleasant experience.

I like poor PCs. They're WAY more creative in how they overcome things. True "wealth" (as in being filthy rich) is a plot device. But I always make sure to make Dragon Hoards a little better than the books say.

9) Imposing your anachronistic and biased 21st century Enlightenment morality on the D&D world.

The paladin is a holy warrior, not a pacifist who extols the virtues of poverty and non-violence. The orcs raid the human village not because they are oppressed or some unfortunate social influence but because they'd rather kill them and take their stuff than debate the finer points of postmodern philosophy. There were no jails or prisons in Medieval times (incarceration is a luxury of surplus resources). The world is a dangerous place. I'm not saying there isn't a time and place to try a non-violent approach but mimicking the Hollywood practice of having bad guys act stupidly and giving the protagonists the opportunity for a happy ending is lame as well as unbelievable.

Good is good, Evil is evil. I use 21st Century morality as an absolute so that my Good Heroes are exceptional in the world. That's what makes them Good in a good/neutral world.

10) "No munchkins, only role-players"
It's been rehashed before. Just because you bring a knife to a gun fight that doesn't automatically make you a good role-player. Just because my character is a Rogue 1/Fighter 2/Warblade 3/ Chameleon 7/Barbarian 1/ Rogue 2/ Dervish 4 doesn't automatically make me a bad role-player.

edited #10: original did not express my sentiments and was wrong.

Okay, first: Rogue 1/Fighter 2/Warblade 3/ Chameleon 7/Barbarian 1/ Rogue 2/ Dervish 4 amuses me because you have Rogue in there twice.

Second: No rule-complicated characters do not necessarily make for bad roleplayers. But some players are distracted by their character sheets.
Hell, some roleplayers are bad roleplayers because they don't look at their sheets enough. (Don't get me started on CN characters). There's a balance here that needs to be achieved, if such a quality RP is desired.
I ruled that players can only take two core classes because quite frankly, seven classes doesn't make for a powerful character. This rule helps newbies focus. Multiclassing delays rewards, and we don't always reach level 10, let alone level 20. I guess my ruling on this isn't roleplaying oriented as much as balance oriented. Severely multiclassed characters are generally weaker or very niche oriented and can backfire easily.
As far as Roleplaying goes, I have a character that disables himself because he thinks up character concepts and sticks to them so closely his PC barely functions. There are extremes on both sides and its the DM's responsibility to mitigate such extremes.

This post is quite late to the discussion, I realize and quite wordy. I feel that players need to give DMs some credit for responsibilities that might not be perceived but are still there. I just switched off DMing and our new DM is an EXCELLENT story teller, but he doesn't always have everything ready like stat blocks, XP and treasure. These responsibilities are new to him. And I'm enjoying my vacation from them.

And if players have this many problems with a DM, its time to have a conversation. About changing things or getting a new DM, I leave to the players.

High Octane wrote:

A Munchkin will see crunch and ONLY crunch. There is nothing wrong with seeing crunch in a character choice, but you should be mindful of the fluff.

...

Granted I dont think picking dwarf without thinking is a huge deal, but imagine someone picking up say the dragonborn template or the half-celestial template or Drow as their race without any regard to how this should affect their character.

You could also use that same crunch to represent some other set of fluff.

Trailfoot wrote:

This is a prime example of DM-as-god thinking...

That's just silly. The dungeon master is not a god.

Gods are NPCs.

iserith wrote:

A buddy of mine ran a brief campaign basically involving our group getting shipwrecked on a weird island. I was told it was similar to the show, Lost, but having never seen it, I couldn't make the comparison. It was certainly fun.

One thing about it annoyed me though: one of the other players was ridiculously powerful. We were told to create 9th-level characters for this campaign. I made a gnome wizard who specialized in using scrolls - any useful scroll imaginable (and even some worthless ones) was stuffed into his haversack. I even made sure I never took teleport for my spellbook since spells like that would kind of ruin the nature of this particular campaign. In essence, I nerfed my own character's power to suit the story. I did it without asking the DM. As a longtime DM myself, I just knew that was the right thing to do.

The other player I referenced earlier created a druid who was basically specialized in shapeshifting. Specifically, he shifted into a polar bear for combat. Why? Because that was the most powerful thing he could shift into at his level. His backstory sought to explain that: He was from the north and that's why he chose that form. Nevermind we were in a tropical setting. Despite his protestations to the contrary, we all knew that polar bear was chosen simply because that was the most optimized choice for him and the backstory was totally secondary. The DM struggled to challenge him because of his power level relative to the rest of us. It was very annoying to me.

Perhaps it is a matter of the chicken and the egg. But if I were DMing, I wouldn't have allowed this on principle. Would that qualify me for DM Jerkitude status? Are not players inured to create characters suitable to the game without being prodded by the DM or nerfed?

There was a polar bear in Lost.

That should explain things a bit.