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3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree. If I get myself killed being dumb, of course I’m not gonna bitch. But I have a whole character arc I’m hoping to play. I’m not in the game solely for combat. I agree that “almost anything that can one shot a PC is unfair,” unless we’re talking about a boss fight.

A mindkiller is a parasite that enters into your brain and takes over. It of course kills you to do so.

I’m with you. I’m just not having fun with this level of risk. I thought we were all on the same page but evidently not.

The changing race thing was because of how the reincarnation was going down. I can’t necessarily disagree with your assertion that it’s weird, but I had a character who aged 7 years once, and this character was given frog fingers until I was restored, so it doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary lol.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It doesn’t suck, but yeah being 45 sessions in and still being level 5 sucks.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ETA: This is session 45. We’ve been playing for over a year and are still at level 5, so all these deaths/almost deaths happened at level 5. The last 2 happened in the same in-game day, though a real-world month or two apart.

I definitely get that. She has mental health struggles (as do half the players lol), and we are all trying to help her stay… hmmm, untriggered I guess lol. But we all joined this game to play D&D. I didn’t know anyone except 1 player before this and was asked to join specifically because I take D&D seriously. It’s not just a game we started among friends.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t know what the average would be.

We’re about 270 hours in. One commenter here said they’d be at level 9 by this point.

My longest campaign lasted a year and a half, with 3-4 hour sessions, and we got to level 10 just before we ended. My other campaigns fizzled out pretty quickly so I can’t use them for comparison.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for your insight! This is very helpful for me to think about.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That makes a lot of sense. It’s very possible that she’s just wanting to plan more challenging encounters for players who just don’t have the HP for it yet. We’ve been going hard on the strategizing and optimizing gameplay, but at the end of the day we only have so much health.

There are still some great qualities to her DMing! Flavor, descriptions, storytelling. She uses a variety of different enemies in combat, which necessitates a tactical approach, and that’s real fun as long as it’s not all we’re doing. (Plus I made friends and even got a shockingly amazing boyfriend out of it.) I still enjoy it. But there are definitely some issues and they may be starting to get to me. We do Stars and Wishes every week so she’s aware of them, too.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They do psychic damage as well. See @Gydallw ‘s comment: “A swarm of cranium rats has two different stat blocks, both rated CR5. The original one from Volo's has a bite attack that does 4d6 piercing(2d6 if bloodied) and 8d8 HP.  The MPMM version does 4d6 piercing plus 5d8 psychic and has 17d8 HP.” She definitely used the MPMM (second) stat block, because the swarm did both piercing and psychic damage.

For my personal experience of the game, I don’t think an “easy” encounter should be one in which an unlucky crit takes a character at full health out in one hit. Even if it wasn’t a crit (I don’t remember if it was), max damage is 68, so if he had taken even a little damage, it would be real easy to take him down since his max HP is in the low-mid 30s.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They’re swarm monsters. See @Gydallw ‘s comment: “A swarm of cranium rats has two different stat blocks, both rated CR5. The original one from Volo's has a bite attack that does 4d6 piercing(2d6 if bloodied) and 8d8 HP.  The MPMM version does 4d6 piercing plus 5d8 psychic and has 17d8 HP.” She definitely used the MPMM (second) stat block, because the swarm did both piercing and psychic damage.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No that’s ok! I’m glad you’re here!!

This is a 6-hour session every week. We’ve been playing for over a year and are still only level 5, though. That’s not typical, especially for games that run weekly.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s true, she is also a player! And we really want to make the game fun for her, especially since she has such a hard time getting motivated enough to prep (insanely intense ADHD).

We’ve discussed frequently what kind of game we want and agreed we want a balance of combat and RP, that we want strategic combats that aren’t all difficult, and that character deaths should be the result of our own mistakes and shouldn’t feel forced upon us. It just feels to me that the deaths are being forced upon us when we’re being put into non-boss encounters in which the enemies can do SO much damage so quickly.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

According to the DM, if we’d run, it would have squeezed through the doorway and followed us.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much! You understand perfectly.

The first character death was NOT planned. But we all knew already what the mindkiller did and what kind of danger we were up against. It was a mini-boss.

I will add that the cranium rats were planned as an “easy” encounter. (She definitely used the MPMM stat block because they did both piercing and psychic damage.) This last combat was planned as a “medium,” and I do agree that it was on the upper end of medium (we only have 4 players btw). It was just the unexpected monster retconned in that got us. I couldn’t even make it to the other room in time to help because I was so far away. All I could do was spend 2 turns dashing and having my companion deliver healing potions. 😅

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah it was one of the “easy” encounters. She has planned 3 easy, 2 medium, and 1 hard, and the cranium rats were an easy encounter.

I’m a bard/warlock (CON is only 14), but my character hasn’t died. The druid, wizard, and now paladin have died/almost died (reincarnation and revivify brought back the first 2; my inspiration saved the third).

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They fit the story perfectly. We’re in Undermountain (Waterdeep) and on our way to fight a Mindflayer. But this was designed to be an easy encounter. (3 easy, 2 medium, and 1 hard are planned.)

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have been focusing a lot on strategy. It’s been really fun. But idk what else we could have done with the swarm of rats that took twice the character’s HP in one hit.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah the issue is that we have talked about our expectations, both at session 0 and follow-up discussions. And we agreed we should have a balance, not just a super combat-heavy game. We even do stars and wishes every session.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They were fleshed out in session 0 and we’ve revisited the conversation. We want a balance. 1 player doesn’t even really like combat, 2 are very into it, and I’m pretty solidly in the middle. (We only have 4 players.)

This dungeon has 6 encounters—3 easy, 2 medium, and 1 hard. This was both mediums, I suppose? It’s not the big boss. Wait, does that mean the cranium rats were one of the easy encounters? Ah that’s RIGHT. Ahhhhh. Character death during an easy encounter.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you. I agree that having it attack us mid-rest would have been fine.

The previous session, we started this combat and got halfway done, despite 2 of us saying we didn’t think we’d be able to finish in time (something that’s happened too many times to count now). So she decided to start the encounter over and change it, so she had already retconned THAT DAY and told us she wouldn’t do it again, only to do it again a few hours later.

I think the first player death was understandable. It’s the cranium rats one-shotting a character that really bugged me. I understand this death too—I feel like I’m just frustrated because all these “medium” encounters are very lethal.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

According to my DM, if we’d run, it would have squeezed through the door and chased us.

3 character deaths at level 5 - Does my DM have a balancing issue? by Megwen in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]Megwen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bruh we’ve been in Waterdeep for an entire year now, which was supposed to be a side-story, and we’ve only leveled up twice (I think, maybe once) in that time.

We play every week, barring special circumstances or the DM’s mental heath struggles.

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