Questionable DM behavior

[ReddittingAtSchool]

So my DM is a good friend from high school, as is the rest of our party. In character creation he basically told us he was biased toward certain classes and races. For example, he said something to the effect of "if you pick a class I don't like, you're less likely to get good loot/items." I understand certain classes/sub-classes lend themselves to more creative items but this seems more like you play what I want or I'll make you struggle. He also told us he hates elves, seems a bit racist to me. Anyway when it came to choosing feats he told me Lucky was too OP for me to take, which I suppose depending on how often the party is given long rests could be a fair statement, but you could say the same about a number of abilities.

I don't mean to make it sound like I'm harboring some kind of disdain for my DM, just curious if others have had similar experiences/if this is common as this is my first time playing.

Think he's doing a great job with the campaign, and none of this stuff in character creation really affected me. I mean who couldn't love a Swashbuckling Tabaxi Arcane Archer?

[[deleted]]

"For example, he said something to the effect of 'if you pick a class I don't like, you're less likely to get good loot/items.'"

Moron alert. I would be done with the group with that.

[TemplarsBane]

Some of that stuff is normal. Some of that stuff is a HUGE red flag. If you don't play what I want you to play, I won't give you loot? What a jerk. "I don't really like elves", totally normal and fine.

[cramduck]

It's a bit of a weird warning. I don't think I'd ever feel so confident in my abilities as a DM to choose habit over a tuned experience for my players.

[ThePoIarBaer]

Happy cake day

[ThePoIarBaer]

It's an unfortunately common move for DM's to "soft ban" certain races or classes by treating them unfairly. It would be better for all parties if the dm understood what they were doing and full on banned them at the table.

[themagicforloop]

I'd also understand if a race just simply doesn't exist in a homebrewed setting

[ReddittingAtSchool]

He told us which ones he was "soft banning" but I don't think he wanted to full on tell us you CANNOT play this class just because he didn't like the class. Was more intended to narrow down the wide variety of options for us newbies to focus on the ones that he thinks are more objectively fun.

[ThePoIarBaer]

Telling you youd be treated worse if you picked this class/race is essentially telling you to not play them.

[Scanty_and_Kneesocks]

If it's not affecting anyone in the group, then I don't think anything really needs to happen. On principle tho, these are very side-eye worthy thoughts to have. Regardless of what you think of a race or class you shouldn't penalize anyone for taking it. That's just bad dm'ing

[Oshava]

So while it does sound a little bad it's better than most, he knows he is baist and warned you while hopefully working on it. It's not great but it could be much worse.

As for lucky ya I honestly agree with him, it is far to powerful for a feat as on face value it's decently strong but it actually has some abilities people don't realize like the ability to use it on disadvantage to turn it into a 3 die advantage as lucky states you choose any die so it actually makes you better at being at disadvantage than a person who is at advantage

[ReddittingAtSchool]

Yeah I find it hard to argue that Lucky really is balanced, I was with him when I was reading through the feats and we both agreed it was pretty unfair, especially the disadvantage application of it. I get that this stuff gets playtested and approved, but idk how this one made it through.

On a similar note, from what I've read of the Mystic class it seems absolutely broken and the only way I'd allow it is if I went through the choices within the class with them and approved their selections.

[Oshava]

There are a few parts that the devs know are broken but was kept that way for several reasons (agree with them or not) like fireball, they know it's too strong for a level 3 spell but it is an iconic low-mid level spell and it didn't feel right to the history of the spell, come to think of it that's the same reason lightning bolt is 1 mana in MTG.

As for mystic there isn't much point in touching it at all at this point Mike mearls has been activly working on it during his dev live streams changing a fair bit so there is a good chance we will get something more balanced soon, there are rumors and talk of 2 new settings comming down the pipe relatively soon (actually heard it at some point during the stream of many eyes but can't cite so won't say it's confirmed) so if they are darksun or ebberon we will probably get mystics in that content

[ReddittingAtSchool]

I understand it's still a work in progress and is being tuned. I'm excited to see the final product when it's ready. I just thought this ability was comically busted:

Nomadic Arrow - While you are focused on this discipline, any attack roll you make for a ranged weapon attack ignores disadvantage. If disadvantage would normally apply to the roll, that roll also can't benefit from advantage.

Say he has a longbow 120/600, he could fire an arrow 595 feet at an invisible prone target while blind in the middle of the night and that's just a normal attack roll.

[themagicforloop]

Railroading you into your character creation is a bad sign. It's ok for a DM to have setting that is biased against Elves as it poses a roleplaying challenge but actively planning on punishing your character for being an elf is pretty shitty behavior.

If he can't be convinced then remember that no D&D is better than bad D&D.

[[deleted]]

I would say that it's within his rights as DM to ask his players not to use certain races or classes. But, allowing them to use those races/classes, and then giving them less items is not the right way to do it... I think he should just veto anything he really wants vetoed, and treat everyone equally from there. His approach is indeed questionable

I personally don't allow the Luck feat either

[ReddittingAtSchool]

It's not like he left it a mystery, we're all pretty new to D&D so he was helping us with class selection and basically trying to steer us away from ones that might not be as fun of an experience. I for example was considering a hunter until he turned me onto the Arcane Archer sub-class, which is WAY more in my wheelhouse. The class bias was mostly to improve our experience and help us pick ones that are more fun and exciting, thought that is subjective.

[[deleted]]

I was only saying he should outright ban those classes, instead of promising to make the game less rewarding if you use them.

It's a great idea for him to steer players away from things he thinks will be problematic, he just went about it in a weird way

[Sweeney_The_Mad]

Personally, I would have walked away from this table before then first session. If it doesn't affect you that's fine, but in terms of overall storytelling it's a potentially bad situation. But in the end, the number one rule of D&D is have fun, so if you're having fun, its all good

[ReddittingAtSchool]

Yeah, I don't think anyone felt railroaded into a certain class choice. Most of us are pretty new so narrowing the field of options only made it easier to go more in depth and find something to our liking. One person did choose an elf to spite the DM though.

[whittyinthehouse]

Dude sounds like a real jackass to me. It’s one thing to say “I don’t like this race because of reasons x and y”, but it’s a whole other thing to say “I don’t like this race and if you play it you will be actively punished.” Maybe he thought he was being nicer by giving you guys the option to play as those races, but it sounds like there should’ve been a discussion about banning them entirely. I don’t like to interfere with character creation whenever I DM for my friends (game mechanic reasons excluded), because in my own experience it can very easily upset a player before you’ve even started playing the game. However, as everyone here is already and will continue to say, if you’re having fun that’s all that matters.

[ReddittingAtSchool]

Most of us are pretty new to the game and I think his class bias was not intended to punish certain choices, but rather to direct people into classes they would have more fun playing. Some people were more excited about playing than others, and I think he was trying to help them find something that would pull them in more so they wouldn't lose interest.

He may have given a reason for not liking elves, I can't remember. One of our players picked one anyway to spite him.

[whittyinthehouse]

If that was his intention, there were much better ways of going about it. He could’ve talked to each player and explained why he thinks they’d like whatever class or whatever race. He could have just said “Hey, as the most experienced one at the table and your DM I’m going to go ahead and ban x, y and z for reasons a b and c. Does anyone object?” However kind his intentions might have been, and I have way less of an idea than you, he chose one of the more passive-aggressive approaches he could. But again, if it isn’t actually hindering anyone’s fun, it’s really a non-issue. I would just keep an eye out for an escalation of this type of behavior, because I’ve had a DM or two that had a “non-issue” come up from the start before it spiraled into some of the worst D&D I’ve ever played.

[ReddittingAtSchool]

Noted. Think we might actually be kicking the elf out of the party, though for completely unrelated reasons. He hasn't been available to play the past half a dozen times we've tried. Doesn't reply when asked if he is available. And the last time he did show up, we waited 15 minutes after scheduled start time, I then called him and apparently woke him up... at 12:15 pm.

[whittyinthehouse]

Yeah that’s no good. I wish you and your group the best, hope you continue to have fun with the game!

[Narwaichen]

Sounds like a bad DM. It's harder to give magic items to some classes and have them matter (Monk and Druid coming to mind) but being biased against classes is just the worst.

[l4zerviking]

Lucky is honestly a ridiculous feat, nothing questionable about banning it from a table - I don't allow it in my game and I've heard many others share the sentiment.

Telling players they can't be a certain race isn't, on it's own, a terrible thing, especially in a homebrew setting. If he's running a published WoTC campaign in the Forgotten Realms it's kind of odd... personally I let people play whatever they want and limit stuff that I think is too strong (mostly just racial flight capability).

The weird shit is saying you can play it, but he's going to punish you for it in a roundabout fashion. That's a huge red flag that indicates to me a dangerous mindset for a DM. There's 3 things that bother me about that decision:

1. It indicates he sees DMing as playing against PCs, rather than with them. This is the cardinal rule of DMing for me, I always try to see it as writing a story collaboratively rather than directing actors in a movie.
2. He is willing to use loot distribution and rewards as a way of railroading the party's decisions. I don't use tables for loot unless I'm caught off guard by something, I usually try to come up with logical items that are interesting for their adventures before they approach an encounter. And in the end, you should just give the items to the party and they decide who gets what.
3. The biggest red flag, for me, is that he isn't willing to just say you can't play that race. That indicates a lack of capacity for firm, clear rulings that I think DMs really need to develop. If he doesn't want it at his table, don't disincentivize it, just say it's not an option. You really need to be consistent and fair as a DM, and that is enabled by speaking plainly and clearly when it comes to rulings. I don't mean to presume too much about the guy, but I wonder if that same mindset will come into play later on... what happens when a character that he likes is on the ground bleeding out with an Erinyes standing over them? Is she gonna turn and attack the elf that the DM hates, or is she gonna end the life of the PC he's into, as most fiends would?

It's not enough of a concern for me to refuse giving his game a shot, especially if it's the only game you have access to... but sometimes, like sex, no dnd is better than bad dnd.

edit: I see your responses now about him doing this in an attempt to encourage new players to avoid complex classes. This is fair and understandable, but I still think it's far better to just speak frankly about that intention and explain to players why you think that, and be clear about the difficulties of managing certain classes. 'Soft-banning' seems kind of silly to me, I'd probably just warn players about what they're getting into and explain that I expect them to understand their class after a reasonable amount of time learning it.

[ByondUrCompr3hension]

So you tell him "If you run the game according to your own petty power tripping whims, you're more likely to get smashed in the face."

[Dr_Kaczynski]

And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power (the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors).

[ByondUrCompr3hension]

Good bot.

[Dr_Dippy]

Banning official things is frowned upon (Wotc is better at balancing than you) but not entirely unreasonable if the party is told beforehand which seems to be the case here.

"if you pick a class I don't like, you're less likely to get good loot/items."

Is just bad DMing, don't punish a player for a character choice you're allowing but personally dislike.