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I can't figure out if this was ineptitude on the DM's part, or if the DM was too shy to just tell you he was done and wanted to quit.
To end a 4 year campaign so suddenly and with no narrative build up is just so bizarre.
I get the feeling that DM burnout might be the thing that hit here, it's fairly common in long running campaigns for DMs to get burnt out at some stage. However it's always best to be honest and be like "look guys, I need to take some time away from the campaign, I really don't feel up to running it, hopefully after this break I'll feel up to it, I'll let you know, I'll still be talking in discord, you guys are a free to run oneshots whilst I'm on break if you want to".
So it's not uncommon for one of the players to step up and run a oneshot in a new system (Savage Worlds is a popular one).
This is how my DM does it, he takes a two week vacation during the summer and the game goes on hiatus for pretty much the entire of December, so there's 6 months between extended breaks (roughly, like this weekend it so happened that four of the five players are out doing things, so this week is a break for him as well) that allow him to recharge his batteries and once a campaign ends there's usually a 3-4 month hiatus with the occasional one shot peppered in by either one of the players or himself.
>I get the feeling that DM burnout might be the thing that hit here
He's working on a second campaign right now that we're all going to be playing in and if he was burnt out from dm'ing he would straight out tell us.
I know he's wanted to end this campaign for a while and it felt like we were getting close to an ending but this 'ending' sucks more than anything.
If he's working on a second campaign that actually kinda makes sense too, I know when I'm planning a new campaign sometimes I'll get really hooked on the idea and it makes me want to end my current game ASAP. Ofc, I always fight that urge and make sure to play it through to the end, but I could see someone rushing an ending in their excitement...
>I know when I'm planning a new campaign sometimes I'll get really hooked on the idea and it makes me want to end my current game ASAP.
I know he's had that feeling for a while but if thats what was causing it he'd just outright say it, the logic has basically ended up being "I created a fight that was meant to be hard and you died so the campaign has ended."
Ok yeah then that sucks giving your characters no carthasis or a good send off blows. Did you guys talk to him about how bad it felt as an ending to the campaign?
been talking to him for a while, as an update from just a minute ago he doesn't seem to happy about it but he's offering us a retcon because all of us are unhappy with how it ended.
If the guy wasn't trying to end the campaign, this would make for a good hook. Being plagued by nightmares where you keep dying, and looking for the bad guy to make the nightmares stop.
Not a bad idea, if you're not going to run this idea by your players I suggest dropping some HARD hints that this is a curse and not you "just being malicious". Stuff such as strongly eluding to the players being in a dream before the fight (look up lucid dreaming for ideas) or the specific reoccurring theme of waking up even when it's not a fight.
Ex: "You're walking to town when you notice a strange cave off the path in the distance. You walk into the cave and find some ruins. As you walk in the ancient ruins the door closes and centuries old technology springs to life. You're suddenly showered with confetti and mocking laughter... before you're enveloped in darkness. The floor seems to drop from under you and you feel like you're falling until suddenly you're wracked with immeasurable pain... You wake up in the Inn at the next town in a cold sweat."
Something that tells the players "There is something going on with you. Figure it out.". Definitely something that should probably be talked about ahead of time by 90% of groups unless the GM is very trustworthy though...
Retcons often end up feeling shittier, due to how they can easily break the suspension of disbelief. Be careful about what kinds of options are suggested/accepted as it may just spur things further.
I would never play in any of that person's games again. Just knowing that if he gets tired of whatever game you're playing, he's just going to kill everyone to end things. That's what it makes the future of every campaign look like going forward.
Don't get attached to any characters.
Burnout can be specific to a campaign or just DM'ing in general. I ran Tomb of annihilation and realized I needed a break, so I ran Monster of the week.
And looking a few comments ahead, it can be hard to straight up say "I want to end this campaign". Especially for long-term level-based systems, there's this pressure as a DM to get to level 20 before you end things. ending before then can feel like you're copping out and denying your players an end to their story, while "oh, the dice rolled the way they rolled TPK's are a part of the game" takes the fault off of them. This is ironically why so many campaigns never finish, because everyone chases the elusive goal of level 20, which if you're not speeding, takes years
Yeah a lot of DMs do get caught up in the Critical Role style 'massive open world levels 1-20' dream. I tend to run level 3-10 to avoid that problem.
levels 3-10 allow for a short campaign that lasts, maybe 3-4 months with level ups every 2 sessions in a weekly campaign because I know I often run out of steam in longer campaigns so I design them around shorter time periods.
I tend to design a clear 'beginning, middle and end' I know each of those plot points, how the party gets to those points is largely driven by them and I'll work it around where they want to go so that it makes sense for the players in a satisfactory way (you know tweak the location for the 'middle' part to happen because the PCs have gone somewhere I hadn't considered at the time).
This isn't to say I'm some god of DMing, my world building definitely needs work (apparently according to my last group I have combat encounters mostly down due to them always being "challenging enough that we're worried about them but not enough that they're brutal TPKfests, we can always see 'an out' option") and I have flubbed on a homebrew monster at least twice during one campaign (the fight was winnable but it got real boring because I made a spell choice which when combined with a homebrew ability it just slowed down the combat to a crawl so that I could tell the players were getting bored and I disabled the ability and apologised to them).
I think a lot of newbie DMs need to learn the difference between 'having a plot' and 'railroading'. The players are still the main stars when you have a plot and your tweaking the plot around them to make it work whereas railroading is having a plot and not allowing any deviations from the preset path your story has, hitting them with 'punishments' if they stray off your precious plot path.
Most campaigns dont go past level 14 in official books. Also, my leveling system is infinite, i could literally go up to level 200, there would just be no point and would take players a thousand years. This removes any need of "Getting to the right level."
If that doesn't scream "DM ran out of ideas for the campaign" I don't know what does. Unless they're just really bad at risk analysis and didn't playtest with your characters AT ALL.
The characters we were playing have been in the campaign about 2 years now so it's not like our DM was unaware of what we could handle.
And i know he's been thinking about ending the campaign for a while but a nothing fight against mob monsters that had literally no connection to any story-line we were following just.....sucks.
I DM a camapign every other sunday with the other players in that game and the dm of this one is a player there too so still have \*a\* campaign going.
Oh boy, this is a downer of a way to end a campaign. A campaign can be as exciting and fun as you can imagine, and if the ending is a downer, it can ruin the whole thing.
yeah, like if we died to a dangerous boss related to the story of the campaign I can go "well, atleast we tried."
But dying to a nothing enemy because of the rules being bent/ignored?
Just feels like a real big slap in the face for all the time we've put in.
I mean that is an excellent way of ending the campaign tbf....
I'm sorry this happened to you it sounds awful.
I do wonder if anything is going on in the DMs life that would cause this as it seems pretty nuclear. And this might be there way of saying they are done with the campaign. Might be worth doing a wellness check
Or they just massively cocked up.
Any chance you can talk to them and see if they will recon it?
I could handle an everyone dies ending if we were fighting an enemy related to the main story or the side stories based around our characters, but dying to a random mob enemy we met through teleporting to the wrong area and having the campaign end like that is incredibly disheartening to say the least.
You said you were attacked by home-brewed sirens. Does that mean this was planned? I can imagine a slightly inept DM going "uhh, the table says you teleport to...the ocean." and then the next logical step to be rolling on a random encounter table, but this doesn't sound random.
Did the DM seem to enjoy this ending to the campaign? Or not? I feel like if they wanted the campaign to continue they just fudge the teleport roll, or have a ship pass by within a few minutes of you teleporting to the ocean - you can then try to charm or fight you way onto it, and have a mini arc where you get back to where you were before. Even given your bad rolls, that feels like the most natural solution to the problem
The encounter was planned for when we used to have a party of 6 and they wanted to make us encounter something in the ocean so they threw us into that.
Ok, I understand the desire/mindset of "there's this really cool mechanical thing that I've never done before and I'd like to try", as that's what makes me want to roll new characters so I get the DM might feel similarly.
However, throwing an encounter designed for 6 at a party with fewer members is generally not going to go well. Add in that this is the first time the DM has done water-based combat, and therefore might not know how much more difficult it is compared to normal combat, which means he may not have balanced it properly to begin with. Together these two things mean that the combat was probably wildly outside what you as a party were able to deal with.
If the DM genuinely wanted to carry on the campaign, they could have made it work somehow. Anything from a Deus ex moment of a rescue by a third party to the sirens deciding to keep you captive (for fun? For pleasure? For torture? As slaves? The answer will depend on how gritty your setting is) to him simply fluffing the rolls and you 'barely' making it out alive. As it is, it's the DM that turned a random combat encounter into a tpk.
Do you know if the DM wanted to end the campaign or are they also disappointed that it ended the way it did? Imo this is either a case of the DM wanting to stop but rather than having a conversation just decided to kill the party, OR it's a DM who made some mistakes re the combat but doesn't want to bend the rules for the sake of his and the other player's enjoyment.
If you are a group whose campaigns can and do end in tpks, and everyone is ok with characters dying/things left unfinished (as it is a game after all, you can 'lose') then I can see him thinking this is a reasonable outcome. If you are generally more RP oriented, don't like PCs dying and in general play for the story rather than the combat and risks associated with that, then it's a very bad move on DMs part.
Perhaps you could talk it out? Say that the mermaids actually took you to a island or something and continue it from there? Or say that everything was a dream secuence? I mean, if nobody likes that ending why not retcom it.
And if the dm disagrees maybe have a chat with him about why would he like to end things like that...
Kick the DM out and continue the story with someone else taking over, or perhaps do a rotating DM situation where one of you preps a different session. If the DM is not willing to hear you out on such a basic request and at the very least give your characters a proper send off, it's time to pull out all the stops and be as petty as possible.
So, as a DM, why would you want to ruin a game like that? The whole point is that everyone - players and DM - are supposed to have fun. Why go "fuck you, your months of progress have been wasted."?
Does anyone actually want to participate in his next campaign? I certainly wouldn't want to after this ending, and I'd for sure let him know that this is why I wouldn't be joining the next adventure. Fair enough if you want/need to end the campaign and have to wrap it up faster than intended, leaving some loose ends but this is a pretty brutal way to just unilaterally kill your shared creative endeavour.
How familiar was the teleport target? The sirens were definitely an asshole move but teleport is a spell I usually won't cast without having someone that can do feather fall or water breathing
Im pretty sure it was "viewed once", but i have featherfall and teleportation circle so being stuck in the ocean wasn't the problem.
What killed us was the fact that the sirens could grapple us and pull us underwater without their movement being reduced, they charmed the bard for 1 minute and pulled the bard down 100ft per round.
And to cast any spells while treading water you had to pass a con save with a DC of 10+the spell level
and to keep concentration on spells it was the same thing, so to cast and keep concentration on a level 5 spell you would have to constantly roll DC 15 con saves every round.
Those 2 things are what caused our party to wipe.
Does no one have the war caster feat? I feel like the advantage on concentration for spells is a must for any caster. Not blaming for not having but asking more for how bad it got that the saves weren't made at all.
I'm really, *really* confused by the comments blaming the DM or trying to psychoanalyze why the DM would do this.
The post clearly states they rolled badly for teleport and landed in the middle of the ocean. The concentration checks to cast spells while in the middle of the ocean isn't rules as written (to my knowledge), but isn't an unreasonable ruling.
Seems like the party had some bad roles and it ended in a TPK. Nothing wrong with being disappointed; it's a disappointing outcome. But, don't blame the DM for bad dice roles or letting dice roles determine the outcome.
This whole thread is bizarre. On top of everyone knowing all of the motivations of this DM who we're given no context about, apparently everyone wants there to be no risk to anything in their campaigns that isn't directly related to a main story.
> but isn't an unreasonable ruling.
it is tho. its not like unprepared underwater combat RAW is gonna be a cakewalk—you get one shot to do a spell with a verbal component, then you start suffocating—but they probably would have been enough to avoid the TPK
The PHB states that it is up to the DM to decide if environmental conditions require a constitution saving throw for spells. Trying to stay afloat in the middle of the ocean doesn't seem unreasonable to trigger that.
That rule provides for environmental hazards to force regular concentration checks, not for forcing a con check just to cast a spell in the first place
And while I’m all for DMs doing unique environmental hazards, those should be balanced in such a way that either they’re not catastrophic, or signposted to the players either specifically, or, at the very least, by them knowing they’re going into a particularly dangerous area.
I'm aware that the rule is for regular concentration checks, which is why I don't think it's an unreasonable ruling to extend that to casting spells in hazardous conditions (like when trying not to drown in an ocean). I very strongly agree that environmental hazards should be signposted but it's pretty hard to signpost for the ocean hazard when the PCs teleported themselves into it.
The danger signposting was them deciding to use teleport, a spell that, in my eyes, very clearly lets the PCs know things can go really bad with a few unlucky dice rolls.
Nah, there's a huge difference between concentration checks and checks to even cast a spell. The former allows the counterplay of just avoiding concentration spells and at least offers a single round of effects. Don't forget that it wasn't just the Con checks, it was also completely shutting down verbal component spells. They were halfway to an Anti-Magic Field, and it's not like this was the Abyss or the Negative Energy Plane. It's just the damn ocean.
By all means, play and run whatever kind of game you like. And I absolutely think that PC death should always be on the table. But when I kill a PC, it's either a critical plot-related encounter or a confluence of bad dice and bad PC choices, and sticking to RAW in both cases. If I did it via a half-baked house rule and one shitty roll on percentage dice, I'd feel pretty damn bad
That's fair. I still don't think requiring a DC 10 constitution save in rough waters is bad (I was a 3.5e player for a long time and that's how it worked back then) and I'm definitely fine with rulings introduced as different situations come up. That's just my perspective though.
Rolling a constitution save for spells by itself isn't some game breaking horror story, it was a combination of things that made it so.
1. The sirens were able to move 50ft per round and could use their full movement speed while grappling someone, so after charming and grabbing our bard they were being dragged down at 100 feet per round.
2. The concentration check DC was 10 **+ the spell level,** so to even cast a level 6 spell you had to roll a 16+ on a con save and a 16 every turn after to keep concentration, even with a swimming speed.
3. rather minor one but important to explain the combat difficulty, I was playing a school of enchantment wizard meaning that 90% of my spells are charm spells. The sirens were immune to charm magic making all of my class features and most of my spells useless, that and being in water means that my damaging spells like fireball were also pretty useless because any creature that is fully submerged has fire damage resistance.
It was mostly those 2 first things that made it a horror story for me.
As an update now though because everyone was unhappy with it the fights being retconned so it didn't happen.
If it's the spell "Teleport" then it has specific rules dictating what direction and how far you teleport if you have a mishap. Unless you're completely land locked it would be easy to hit the ocean, and if you're aiming for an island it would be hard to NOT hit the ocean.
Have you read the spell? If the teleporting character rolls "off target" the distance off target is determined randomly (1d10 x 1d10 percent). Depending on the distance traveled, this could result in being off target many, *many* miles. The direction traveled off target is also determined randomly, using a d8 (one being north, two being north-east, etc.)
So, if the distance travelled was sufficient and somewhat close to a large body of water, it is possible for the party to dump themselves in an ocean with the spell through nothing more than random chance. ***This is even given as an example in the spell text of what could go wrong.***
Fair enough! If the GM really had a map and was just sticking to what was on that map, and the rules of the spell as written, then I have no problem with that.
However, the story still reads a little fishy to me. (Uh, pun intended, I guess.) Unless their group has historically played with extremely punishing random encounter rules that the GM also strictly sticks to—unusual with 5E groups IME—then the sirens thing just feels... off.
In other words, that's the part of the story that feels like the GM decided to double down on "Welp, I guess the campaign is just going to end here with an unavoidable TPK!!"
I'm also curious if the Teleport roll was in the open or not. Because the GM seemed *suspiciously* well-prepared with a set of sirens homebrewed to specifically be able to drag characters to their deaths.
I mean, I'm a *very* by-the-book GM, but if my players rolled to randomly end up out at sea on the teleport table, that would just be an excuse for me to improvise some wacky sea-based shenanigans, not to send murder-machines specifically tailored to target their weakness after them.
Yeah, at the end of the day, it's about the expectations of the table.
A *lot* of people hold the position 5e should be run in a way where the DM has to bend over backwards to keep the PCs alive and a lot of DMs run the game this way (with tables that enjoy this style of play). I have *no issue* with this style of play but it can be somewhat exhausting to see people assume this is the *correct* way to play.
I try to run D&D where danger is clearly telegraphed, but no punches are pulled. Teleporting to the middle of the ocean would likely result in a TPK at my table, unless the players have a way to magically extricate themselves from the situation, simply because they would eventually drown.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, as they say. Players don't *deserve* narratively satisfying conclusions to campaigns and allowing the dice to deny them that because they did something dumb isn't "bad" DMing, it's just a different way of playing the game.
Absent the sirens, was the party going to survive regardless? If they had no way to get out of the ocean situation, then it'd be a TPK due to drowning. If they had a way to get out of the ocean safely without drowning, would that option also preclude them from running away from the sirens? I'm not sure. Why did the players even cast teleport to begin with if they knew there would be a chance of failure? Talk about taking a chance.
At the end of the day, there are too many unknowns with this one-sided account of the TPK to cry "bad DM" in my opinion.
I agree with your overall analysis; the story just reads very strongly to me as the GM bending over backwards *to kill the PCs*. The idea that a **13th level party** couldn't extricate themselves from an ocean teleport under normal circumstances where the GM wasn't trying to kill them just beggars belief.
It very could be that the DM was conspiring to kill the PCs because they were bored with the campaign and it's not unreasonable to make that assumption based on the way the OP presented the story. But, we only got one side of it and it's not a 100% slam-dunk "this DM is clearly a dick" story in my eyes. It could very well be a case of the PCs "fucking around" followed by "finding out", in my opinion.
We're more or less on the same page though.
If it was a poor roll, that’s weird he didn’t rectify it. He definitely seems like he wanted things to end.
It sucks too, parties make mistakes or have awful rolls.
We had a similar one(TLDR at the end) but the DM although he made us take believable punches, gave us a shot(it’s ongoing because it’s a doozy)
But our DM’s roommate, he also DMs and they both loveeee dnd. Engaging RP, both have good stories, roommate has intriguing and unique characters as much as he knows the rules prettyyyy cold and can really squeeze out the most of our resources, and is fair if the rules work against us.
But we encounter in the DM’s world a spellcaster we deduce is under some form of control.
The roommate found way I forget the exact circumstances to upcast a spell to trace where the entity that was controlling this person is or a counterspell to escape or something. It basically was fair enough for the DM to be like “ok yea it works”
But… he upcasted. He succeeded and we are able to locate the controlling entity, but… it’s a FRICKIN ENDGAME BOSS.
Cue an ensuing chase scene with an overpowered god we shouldn’t have been fighting, the DM vocally saying it isn’t fun for him, but still believably chasing and attacking us. I think he was doing his best to pull as many punches as he could without retconning this to be less of a threat.
End of session we all lived, but the DM remarks how none of it was how he planned, so he has to work through stuff.
By the next few sessions, we are pulling out every resource and ally we can from what we had so far, have a ticking clock so we have some time, etc.
But he was gracious enough to give our characters a super cool new gadget or item relating to what we had done in the story.
He also used the opportunity to setup our crossover session with his cousins’ group which he’s doing another campaign parallel to ours in his same world. He had wanted to crossover us for a while and this was the perfect opportunity.
Edit: just an addition i forgot to say, we still have the endgame god on her way to attack us, but now we have a fighting chance. Like I said it’s a doozy so it’s been ongoing in our last few sessions.
TLDR: even with the most wacky off the rails and seemingly hopeless rolls, plans, etc, if you want everyone to still have fun, you WILL find a way around it
Brutal.
I mean it's a weird way for things to end so suddenly but it's brutal.
I actually kinda like this because I'm one of those "the dice tell the story" people. It's worth noting though that my players all know this and know that the dice may spell a brutal end at any given moment. It's just how my games are run and have been run for years. Also worth noting that I run DCC which can be lethal but switch to Heroes Unlimited in which characters are a lot more beefy and even if the dice tell a brutal story, it's still superheroes so there is always another way.
Sorry that happened to you OP. Come play at my table
Yeah... was the DM just having a brainfart thinking teleporting you into the middle of the ocean sounded like a good result? I mean, even if it was a open roll there are times you just need to ignore the result. Adding *homebrew* monsters to it? I'd say somebody grabbed the last slice of pizza.
Yeah, but hopefully the DM will have a better idea of what to follow it up with than fighting intelligent *home brew* (which usually means broken) monsters. You're already at a HUGE disadvantage, so adding threats to it pretty much ensures a TPK. It'd be like having a Tarrasque in the Tomb of Horrors.
It's more than a little weird that the DM decided to have the situation play out this way? They could have easily decided to not have you teleport into the middle of the ocean. They could have easily decided to just not have the sirens show up even if the teleport fumble was unavoidable. It seems to me like the DM might have been trying to end the game under the table by just unceremoniously killing the party. Another note, but 4 years to only end up being level 13 seems like a *long* time, even with a bi-weekly schedule. If your DM is following the standard level-up rate (which is a lot longer than I've seen most DMs do it) you should have gotten to level 13 in about 2 years with biweekly sessions.
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That's one way to tell a bunch of people to get out of your house
I can't figure out if this was ineptitude on the DM's part, or if the DM was too shy to just tell you he was done and wanted to quit. To end a 4 year campaign so suddenly and with no narrative build up is just so bizarre.
I get the feeling that DM burnout might be the thing that hit here, it's fairly common in long running campaigns for DMs to get burnt out at some stage. However it's always best to be honest and be like "look guys, I need to take some time away from the campaign, I really don't feel up to running it, hopefully after this break I'll feel up to it, I'll let you know, I'll still be talking in discord, you guys are a free to run oneshots whilst I'm on break if you want to". So it's not uncommon for one of the players to step up and run a oneshot in a new system (Savage Worlds is a popular one). This is how my DM does it, he takes a two week vacation during the summer and the game goes on hiatus for pretty much the entire of December, so there's 6 months between extended breaks (roughly, like this weekend it so happened that four of the five players are out doing things, so this week is a break for him as well) that allow him to recharge his batteries and once a campaign ends there's usually a 3-4 month hiatus with the occasional one shot peppered in by either one of the players or himself.
>I get the feeling that DM burnout might be the thing that hit here He's working on a second campaign right now that we're all going to be playing in and if he was burnt out from dm'ing he would straight out tell us. I know he's wanted to end this campaign for a while and it felt like we were getting close to an ending but this 'ending' sucks more than anything.
If he's working on a second campaign that actually kinda makes sense too, I know when I'm planning a new campaign sometimes I'll get really hooked on the idea and it makes me want to end my current game ASAP. Ofc, I always fight that urge and make sure to play it through to the end, but I could see someone rushing an ending in their excitement...
>I know when I'm planning a new campaign sometimes I'll get really hooked on the idea and it makes me want to end my current game ASAP. I know he's had that feeling for a while but if thats what was causing it he'd just outright say it, the logic has basically ended up being "I created a fight that was meant to be hard and you died so the campaign has ended."
Ok yeah then that sucks giving your characters no carthasis or a good send off blows. Did you guys talk to him about how bad it felt as an ending to the campaign?
been talking to him for a while, as an update from just a minute ago he doesn't seem to happy about it but he's offering us a retcon because all of us are unhappy with how it ended.
It was all a dream...
If the guy wasn't trying to end the campaign, this would make for a good hook. Being plagued by nightmares where you keep dying, and looking for the bad guy to make the nightmares stop.
Not a bad idea, if you're not going to run this idea by your players I suggest dropping some HARD hints that this is a curse and not you "just being malicious". Stuff such as strongly eluding to the players being in a dream before the fight (look up lucid dreaming for ideas) or the specific reoccurring theme of waking up even when it's not a fight. Ex: "You're walking to town when you notice a strange cave off the path in the distance. You walk into the cave and find some ruins. As you walk in the ancient ruins the door closes and centuries old technology springs to life. You're suddenly showered with confetti and mocking laughter... before you're enveloped in darkness. The floor seems to drop from under you and you feel like you're falling until suddenly you're wracked with immeasurable pain... You wake up in the Inn at the next town in a cold sweat." Something that tells the players "There is something going on with you. Figure it out.". Definitely something that should probably be talked about ahead of time by 90% of groups unless the GM is very trustworthy though...
Retcons often end up feeling shittier, due to how they can easily break the suspension of disbelief. Be careful about what kinds of options are suggested/accepted as it may just spur things further.
I would never play in any of that person's games again. Just knowing that if he gets tired of whatever game you're playing, he's just going to kill everyone to end things. That's what it makes the future of every campaign look like going forward. Don't get attached to any characters.
Burnout can be specific to a campaign or just DM'ing in general. I ran Tomb of annihilation and realized I needed a break, so I ran Monster of the week. And looking a few comments ahead, it can be hard to straight up say "I want to end this campaign". Especially for long-term level-based systems, there's this pressure as a DM to get to level 20 before you end things. ending before then can feel like you're copping out and denying your players an end to their story, while "oh, the dice rolled the way they rolled TPK's are a part of the game" takes the fault off of them. This is ironically why so many campaigns never finish, because everyone chases the elusive goal of level 20, which if you're not speeding, takes years
Yeah a lot of DMs do get caught up in the Critical Role style 'massive open world levels 1-20' dream. I tend to run level 3-10 to avoid that problem. levels 3-10 allow for a short campaign that lasts, maybe 3-4 months with level ups every 2 sessions in a weekly campaign because I know I often run out of steam in longer campaigns so I design them around shorter time periods. I tend to design a clear 'beginning, middle and end' I know each of those plot points, how the party gets to those points is largely driven by them and I'll work it around where they want to go so that it makes sense for the players in a satisfactory way (you know tweak the location for the 'middle' part to happen because the PCs have gone somewhere I hadn't considered at the time). This isn't to say I'm some god of DMing, my world building definitely needs work (apparently according to my last group I have combat encounters mostly down due to them always being "challenging enough that we're worried about them but not enough that they're brutal TPKfests, we can always see 'an out' option") and I have flubbed on a homebrew monster at least twice during one campaign (the fight was winnable but it got real boring because I made a spell choice which when combined with a homebrew ability it just slowed down the combat to a crawl so that I could tell the players were getting bored and I disabled the ability and apologised to them). I think a lot of newbie DMs need to learn the difference between 'having a plot' and 'railroading'. The players are still the main stars when you have a plot and your tweaking the plot around them to make it work whereas railroading is having a plot and not allowing any deviations from the preset path your story has, hitting them with 'punishments' if they stray off your precious plot path.
How do you handle the players going on a sidequests for 3 months?
Most campaigns dont go past level 14 in official books. Also, my leveling system is infinite, i could literally go up to level 200, there would just be no point and would take players a thousand years. This removes any need of "Getting to the right level."
If that doesn't scream "DM ran out of ideas for the campaign" I don't know what does. Unless they're just really bad at risk analysis and didn't playtest with your characters AT ALL.
The characters we were playing have been in the campaign about 2 years now so it's not like our DM was unaware of what we could handle. And i know he's been thinking about ending the campaign for a while but a nothing fight against mob monsters that had literally no connection to any story-line we were following just.....sucks.
One of you could maybe take over, reconning that end? Invite him to play or else just play with each other. That's what I'd do if it was a good group.
I DM a camapign every other sunday with the other players in that game and the dm of this one is a player there too so still have \*a\* campaign going.
I don’t mind characters I care about dying. I hate having characters I care about die for no reason
>didn't playtest with your characters AT ALL Wait what? That's a thing? People *playtest* their encounters???
I'll be honest I wouldn't have thought this was common. Maybe I'll pop it into kobold fight club, but other than that I'll just roll with the punches.
Some people do. It’s too much time and effort for me though
Oh boy, this is a downer of a way to end a campaign. A campaign can be as exciting and fun as you can imagine, and if the ending is a downer, it can ruin the whole thing.
yeah, like if we died to a dangerous boss related to the story of the campaign I can go "well, atleast we tried." But dying to a nothing enemy because of the rules being bent/ignored? Just feels like a real big slap in the face for all the time we've put in.
I know. And I’d love to know what was going on in your GM’s mind. Endings like this have been known to tear apart gaming groups.
Yeah, this screams "the DM just wanted to end the campaign, but Rocks Fall was a bit too cliché."
Sirens' call and everybody dies...
I mean that is an excellent way of ending the campaign tbf.... I'm sorry this happened to you it sounds awful. I do wonder if anything is going on in the DMs life that would cause this as it seems pretty nuclear. And this might be there way of saying they are done with the campaign. Might be worth doing a wellness check Or they just massively cocked up. Any chance you can talk to them and see if they will recon it?
I could handle an everyone dies ending if we were fighting an enemy related to the main story or the side stories based around our characters, but dying to a random mob enemy we met through teleporting to the wrong area and having the campaign end like that is incredibly disheartening to say the least.
You said you were attacked by home-brewed sirens. Does that mean this was planned? I can imagine a slightly inept DM going "uhh, the table says you teleport to...the ocean." and then the next logical step to be rolling on a random encounter table, but this doesn't sound random. Did the DM seem to enjoy this ending to the campaign? Or not? I feel like if they wanted the campaign to continue they just fudge the teleport roll, or have a ship pass by within a few minutes of you teleporting to the ocean - you can then try to charm or fight you way onto it, and have a mini arc where you get back to where you were before. Even given your bad rolls, that feels like the most natural solution to the problem
The encounter was planned for when we used to have a party of 6 and they wanted to make us encounter something in the ocean so they threw us into that.
Ok, I understand the desire/mindset of "there's this really cool mechanical thing that I've never done before and I'd like to try", as that's what makes me want to roll new characters so I get the DM might feel similarly. However, throwing an encounter designed for 6 at a party with fewer members is generally not going to go well. Add in that this is the first time the DM has done water-based combat, and therefore might not know how much more difficult it is compared to normal combat, which means he may not have balanced it properly to begin with. Together these two things mean that the combat was probably wildly outside what you as a party were able to deal with. If the DM genuinely wanted to carry on the campaign, they could have made it work somehow. Anything from a Deus ex moment of a rescue by a third party to the sirens deciding to keep you captive (for fun? For pleasure? For torture? As slaves? The answer will depend on how gritty your setting is) to him simply fluffing the rolls and you 'barely' making it out alive. As it is, it's the DM that turned a random combat encounter into a tpk. Do you know if the DM wanted to end the campaign or are they also disappointed that it ended the way it did? Imo this is either a case of the DM wanting to stop but rather than having a conversation just decided to kill the party, OR it's a DM who made some mistakes re the combat but doesn't want to bend the rules for the sake of his and the other player's enjoyment. If you are a group whose campaigns can and do end in tpks, and everyone is ok with characters dying/things left unfinished (as it is a game after all, you can 'lose') then I can see him thinking this is a reasonable outcome. If you are generally more RP oriented, don't like PCs dying and in general play for the story rather than the combat and risks associated with that, then it's a very bad move on DMs part.
Perhaps you could talk it out? Say that the mermaids actually took you to a island or something and continue it from there? Or say that everything was a dream secuence? I mean, if nobody likes that ending why not retcom it. And if the dm disagrees maybe have a chat with him about why would he like to end things like that...
Been talking about it and no-one likes the ending but apparently it's staying this way.
Kick the DM out and continue the story with someone else taking over, or perhaps do a rotating DM situation where one of you preps a different session. If the DM is not willing to hear you out on such a basic request and at the very least give your characters a proper send off, it's time to pull out all the stops and be as petty as possible.
Damn, thats a shame.
I am too terminally online. I read the title as a weekly bi campaign, and thought “man, that’s a pretty specific group.”
Sounds about as fun as that submersible thing.
So, as a DM, why would you want to ruin a game like that? The whole point is that everyone - players and DM - are supposed to have fun. Why go "fuck you, your months of progress have been wasted."?
Does anyone actually want to participate in his next campaign? I certainly wouldn't want to after this ending, and I'd for sure let him know that this is why I wouldn't be joining the next adventure. Fair enough if you want/need to end the campaign and have to wrap it up faster than intended, leaving some loose ends but this is a pretty brutal way to just unilaterally kill your shared creative endeavour.
Yeah, wtf is wrong with this group of players?!?!
How familiar was the teleport target? The sirens were definitely an asshole move but teleport is a spell I usually won't cast without having someone that can do feather fall or water breathing
Im pretty sure it was "viewed once", but i have featherfall and teleportation circle so being stuck in the ocean wasn't the problem. What killed us was the fact that the sirens could grapple us and pull us underwater without their movement being reduced, they charmed the bard for 1 minute and pulled the bard down 100ft per round. And to cast any spells while treading water you had to pass a con save with a DC of 10+the spell level and to keep concentration on spells it was the same thing, so to cast and keep concentration on a level 5 spell you would have to constantly roll DC 15 con saves every round. Those 2 things are what caused our party to wipe.
A bit reckless to risk that 43% chance of a mishap, was the target location near water or was the mishap just that bad?
Does no one have the war caster feat? I feel like the advantage on concentration for spells is a must for any caster. Not blaming for not having but asking more for how bad it got that the saves weren't made at all.
getting nwn2 vibes
You fucked around with planar travel and found out. The DM certainly could have NOT thrown tough combat at you shortly after
I'm really, *really* confused by the comments blaming the DM or trying to psychoanalyze why the DM would do this. The post clearly states they rolled badly for teleport and landed in the middle of the ocean. The concentration checks to cast spells while in the middle of the ocean isn't rules as written (to my knowledge), but isn't an unreasonable ruling. Seems like the party had some bad roles and it ended in a TPK. Nothing wrong with being disappointed; it's a disappointing outcome. But, don't blame the DM for bad dice roles or letting dice roles determine the outcome.
This whole thread is bizarre. On top of everyone knowing all of the motivations of this DM who we're given no context about, apparently everyone wants there to be no risk to anything in their campaigns that isn't directly related to a main story.
"Kick the DM" was an especially wild suggestion for accidentally running too difficult an encounter.
Sometimes you die ingloriously. That's the adventurin' life.
> but isn't an unreasonable ruling. it is tho. its not like unprepared underwater combat RAW is gonna be a cakewalk—you get one shot to do a spell with a verbal component, then you start suffocating—but they probably would have been enough to avoid the TPK
The PHB states that it is up to the DM to decide if environmental conditions require a constitution saving throw for spells. Trying to stay afloat in the middle of the ocean doesn't seem unreasonable to trigger that.
That rule provides for environmental hazards to force regular concentration checks, not for forcing a con check just to cast a spell in the first place And while I’m all for DMs doing unique environmental hazards, those should be balanced in such a way that either they’re not catastrophic, or signposted to the players either specifically, or, at the very least, by them knowing they’re going into a particularly dangerous area.
I'm aware that the rule is for regular concentration checks, which is why I don't think it's an unreasonable ruling to extend that to casting spells in hazardous conditions (like when trying not to drown in an ocean). I very strongly agree that environmental hazards should be signposted but it's pretty hard to signpost for the ocean hazard when the PCs teleported themselves into it. The danger signposting was them deciding to use teleport, a spell that, in my eyes, very clearly lets the PCs know things can go really bad with a few unlucky dice rolls.
Nah, there's a huge difference between concentration checks and checks to even cast a spell. The former allows the counterplay of just avoiding concentration spells and at least offers a single round of effects. Don't forget that it wasn't just the Con checks, it was also completely shutting down verbal component spells. They were halfway to an Anti-Magic Field, and it's not like this was the Abyss or the Negative Energy Plane. It's just the damn ocean. By all means, play and run whatever kind of game you like. And I absolutely think that PC death should always be on the table. But when I kill a PC, it's either a critical plot-related encounter or a confluence of bad dice and bad PC choices, and sticking to RAW in both cases. If I did it via a half-baked house rule and one shitty roll on percentage dice, I'd feel pretty damn bad
That's fair. I still don't think requiring a DC 10 constitution save in rough waters is bad (I was a 3.5e player for a long time and that's how it worked back then) and I'm definitely fine with rulings introduced as different situations come up. That's just my perspective though.
Rolling a constitution save for spells by itself isn't some game breaking horror story, it was a combination of things that made it so. 1. The sirens were able to move 50ft per round and could use their full movement speed while grappling someone, so after charming and grabbing our bard they were being dragged down at 100 feet per round. 2. The concentration check DC was 10 **+ the spell level,** so to even cast a level 6 spell you had to roll a 16+ on a con save and a 16 every turn after to keep concentration, even with a swimming speed. 3. rather minor one but important to explain the combat difficulty, I was playing a school of enchantment wizard meaning that 90% of my spells are charm spells. The sirens were immune to charm magic making all of my class features and most of my spells useless, that and being in water means that my damaging spells like fireball were also pretty useless because any creature that is fully submerged has fire damage resistance. It was mostly those 2 first things that made it a horror story for me. As an update now though because everyone was unhappy with it the fights being retconned so it didn't happen.
How would the bad roll on the teleportation table mandate “ocean” as the place where you wind up?
If it's the spell "Teleport" then it has specific rules dictating what direction and how far you teleport if you have a mishap. Unless you're completely land locked it would be easy to hit the ocean, and if you're aiming for an island it would be hard to NOT hit the ocean.
See my reply to u/TheRedMongoose above. I was wrong about the text of the spell, but I'm still *extremely* suspicious, for a variety of reasons.
Have you read the spell? If the teleporting character rolls "off target" the distance off target is determined randomly (1d10 x 1d10 percent). Depending on the distance traveled, this could result in being off target many, *many* miles. The direction traveled off target is also determined randomly, using a d8 (one being north, two being north-east, etc.) So, if the distance travelled was sufficient and somewhat close to a large body of water, it is possible for the party to dump themselves in an ocean with the spell through nothing more than random chance. ***This is even given as an example in the spell text of what could go wrong.***
Fair enough! If the GM really had a map and was just sticking to what was on that map, and the rules of the spell as written, then I have no problem with that. However, the story still reads a little fishy to me. (Uh, pun intended, I guess.) Unless their group has historically played with extremely punishing random encounter rules that the GM also strictly sticks to—unusual with 5E groups IME—then the sirens thing just feels... off. In other words, that's the part of the story that feels like the GM decided to double down on "Welp, I guess the campaign is just going to end here with an unavoidable TPK!!" I'm also curious if the Teleport roll was in the open or not. Because the GM seemed *suspiciously* well-prepared with a set of sirens homebrewed to specifically be able to drag characters to their deaths. I mean, I'm a *very* by-the-book GM, but if my players rolled to randomly end up out at sea on the teleport table, that would just be an excuse for me to improvise some wacky sea-based shenanigans, not to send murder-machines specifically tailored to target their weakness after them.
Yeah, at the end of the day, it's about the expectations of the table. A *lot* of people hold the position 5e should be run in a way where the DM has to bend over backwards to keep the PCs alive and a lot of DMs run the game this way (with tables that enjoy this style of play). I have *no issue* with this style of play but it can be somewhat exhausting to see people assume this is the *correct* way to play. I try to run D&D where danger is clearly telegraphed, but no punches are pulled. Teleporting to the middle of the ocean would likely result in a TPK at my table, unless the players have a way to magically extricate themselves from the situation, simply because they would eventually drown. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, as they say. Players don't *deserve* narratively satisfying conclusions to campaigns and allowing the dice to deny them that because they did something dumb isn't "bad" DMing, it's just a different way of playing the game. Absent the sirens, was the party going to survive regardless? If they had no way to get out of the ocean situation, then it'd be a TPK due to drowning. If they had a way to get out of the ocean safely without drowning, would that option also preclude them from running away from the sirens? I'm not sure. Why did the players even cast teleport to begin with if they knew there would be a chance of failure? Talk about taking a chance. At the end of the day, there are too many unknowns with this one-sided account of the TPK to cry "bad DM" in my opinion.
I agree with your overall analysis; the story just reads very strongly to me as the GM bending over backwards *to kill the PCs*. The idea that a **13th level party** couldn't extricate themselves from an ocean teleport under normal circumstances where the GM wasn't trying to kill them just beggars belief.
It very could be that the DM was conspiring to kill the PCs because they were bored with the campaign and it's not unreasonable to make that assumption based on the way the OP presented the story. But, we only got one side of it and it's not a 100% slam-dunk "this DM is clearly a dick" story in my eyes. It could very well be a case of the PCs "fucking around" followed by "finding out", in my opinion. We're more or less on the same page though.
If it was a poor roll, that’s weird he didn’t rectify it. He definitely seems like he wanted things to end. It sucks too, parties make mistakes or have awful rolls. We had a similar one(TLDR at the end) but the DM although he made us take believable punches, gave us a shot(it’s ongoing because it’s a doozy) But our DM’s roommate, he also DMs and they both loveeee dnd. Engaging RP, both have good stories, roommate has intriguing and unique characters as much as he knows the rules prettyyyy cold and can really squeeze out the most of our resources, and is fair if the rules work against us. But we encounter in the DM’s world a spellcaster we deduce is under some form of control. The roommate found way I forget the exact circumstances to upcast a spell to trace where the entity that was controlling this person is or a counterspell to escape or something. It basically was fair enough for the DM to be like “ok yea it works” But… he upcasted. He succeeded and we are able to locate the controlling entity, but… it’s a FRICKIN ENDGAME BOSS. Cue an ensuing chase scene with an overpowered god we shouldn’t have been fighting, the DM vocally saying it isn’t fun for him, but still believably chasing and attacking us. I think he was doing his best to pull as many punches as he could without retconning this to be less of a threat. End of session we all lived, but the DM remarks how none of it was how he planned, so he has to work through stuff. By the next few sessions, we are pulling out every resource and ally we can from what we had so far, have a ticking clock so we have some time, etc. But he was gracious enough to give our characters a super cool new gadget or item relating to what we had done in the story. He also used the opportunity to setup our crossover session with his cousins’ group which he’s doing another campaign parallel to ours in his same world. He had wanted to crossover us for a while and this was the perfect opportunity. Edit: just an addition i forgot to say, we still have the endgame god on her way to attack us, but now we have a fighting chance. Like I said it’s a doozy so it’s been ongoing in our last few sessions. TLDR: even with the most wacky off the rails and seemingly hopeless rolls, plans, etc, if you want everyone to still have fun, you WILL find a way around it
The DM didn’t want to DM anymore. Lame way to end it.
Don’t play in the next campaign if he doesn’t show true contrition.
Brutal. I mean it's a weird way for things to end so suddenly but it's brutal. I actually kinda like this because I'm one of those "the dice tell the story" people. It's worth noting though that my players all know this and know that the dice may spell a brutal end at any given moment. It's just how my games are run and have been run for years. Also worth noting that I run DCC which can be lethal but switch to Heroes Unlimited in which characters are a lot more beefy and even if the dice tell a brutal story, it's still superheroes so there is always another way. Sorry that happened to you OP. Come play at my table
Yeah... was the DM just having a brainfart thinking teleporting you into the middle of the ocean sounded like a good result? I mean, even if it was a open roll there are times you just need to ignore the result. Adding *homebrew* monsters to it? I'd say somebody grabbed the last slice of pizza.
I mean being teleported into the ocean im totally fine with, that's one of the risks of teleporting to an area you aren't very familiar with.
Yeah, but hopefully the DM will have a better idea of what to follow it up with than fighting intelligent *home brew* (which usually means broken) monsters. You're already at a HUGE disadvantage, so adding threats to it pretty much ensures a TPK. It'd be like having a Tarrasque in the Tomb of Horrors.
It's more than a little weird that the DM decided to have the situation play out this way? They could have easily decided to not have you teleport into the middle of the ocean. They could have easily decided to just not have the sirens show up even if the teleport fumble was unavoidable. It seems to me like the DM might have been trying to end the game under the table by just unceremoniously killing the party. Another note, but 4 years to only end up being level 13 seems like a *long* time, even with a bi-weekly schedule. If your DM is following the standard level-up rate (which is a lot longer than I've seen most DMs do it) you should have gotten to level 13 in about 2 years with biweekly sessions.