I actually did this once. The party was already pretty chaotic, but in a mostly fun way. They didn’t devolve into murder hobos, but they started to walk a route that made me more and more uncomfortable as a DM. So I put him into the game as a random one time quest giver.
It was a warning and the group understood it. Because the table suddenly got really quiet.
I like to drop him in as a custodian, street cleaner, or janitor. It seems fitting to me to have a lawful good god practice a profession that keeps society running.
So I have played 1 campaign with my brother and listened to a bunch of DND podcasts, I know how the game works but i’m not super familiar with the lore, whats the punchline here?
In some lore, a God named Bahamut exists. He’s generally a good guy. He occasionally goes on strolls through the material planes in the disguise of an old man. He takes his posse of 7 Ancient Gold Dragons with him in the form of 7 Canaries.
People pick on the old man because it’s just an old man with some birds. Then the old man unfolds into what is arguably THE good God in a lot of DnD lore (or at least the primary good God) with 7 immensely powerful creatures that start maxing out the challenge ratings.
The likelihood of surviving this encounter are very very very very slim. People talk about terrasques all the time. Giant mountain sized monsters but no. This is how you get annihilated.
So if you want your players to start RPing better (yikes that autocorrect) and playing more heroic people, you have the wrathful god spare them at the last moment or resurrect them with the threat of following through next time they meet if they don’t shape up? Or is this just a good way to wipe the board with a good ol’ TPK?
TPK. If you’ve gotten to this point then you’ve tried everything. At that point it’s just time to cleanse the board with holy fire because nothing is going to save it.
I like [email protected] explanation, but he neglected to explain why Bahamut does this and what exactly the canaries are
Each of the canaries is a dragon cleric, one for each color of the metallic dragons. So they not only are high-level monsters, they also can each throw high-level spells at you. Here’s the important thing for DM use: its only tradition that they are canaries. I usually have then be pidgeons or chickadees.
Bahamut essentially does this because he is bored. You see, he is a God of dragons, but dragons don’t actually worship their God in the way mortals do, so he doesn’t have a lot of duties. So, when he is bored and wants something to do, he goes to the mortal plane in the guise of a pathetic old man, and whenever someone helps him he returns the favor by giving them a blessing.
The problem with using Bahamut as a stick for your munchkins is that he really doesn’t need to defend himself. The dragons, of course, will be revealed if their polymorphed form is destroyed, but do you really think some random adventurers can even slightly harm the God of Metallic Dragons? Think about what could happen. Imagine some little kid stepping up to defend the old man, a bunch of other little kids back him up, the party kills them, and then Bahamut brings them all back and offers to make them clerics or paladins so they can actually do something about all the evil people in the world.
Practically speaking, yes, 99.99999% of creatures wouldn’t last a literal second against Bahamut, but gods in the Faerun pantheon are not omnipotent, or invincible. He could be harmed or even killed, but there are very few creatures who could do it. A large party of level 20 adventurers could possibly pull it off, but at that level they’re effectively demigods in their own right.
Or Ao could just decide to replace him or give his portfolio to another lawful good god, snap his fingers, and even Bahamut would instantly pop out of existence.
They'd also probably need to prep for it, including some sort of method for pinning Bahamut down so they can actually force the fight. Otherwise it's a fight that Bahamut chooses.
Honestly, this right here is why I don’t believe a party of murderhobos could take down bahamut in this situation.
The party is probably only mid-level
Sure, they could take down a god with prep time. My character in my D&D campaign is slowly working on just that. Do they have prep time, though? Do they even know what they are fighting?
I was in a campaign some years back where the ultimate goal was to defeat a god. To "warm us up" the DM arranged partway through the campaign for us to get into a vendetta with a lesser demon, and it proved rather illuminating. When we went to fight it in its lair it creamed us because it had been preparing specifically to fight us, we barely teleported out with our lives. Then when we sat down together and started planning how to make another attempt, it teleported into our lair (a mansion owned by an NPC ally) and attacked us. We were like, "how dare it scry-and-fry us while we were preparing to scry-and-fry it!?"
Many high-level monsters have high intelligence scores, if the DM actually accounts for that then they can be almost arbitrarily powerful.
When we eventually went to fight the final boss god we came loaded for bear, we had something like 8 different supernatural armies on our side and we dropped an artifact superweapon on the god's domain as the opening salvo. It was still a mighty slog, though, and at that point in the campaign Balors were essentially considered just "footsoldiers" against our party.
Not necessarily. Bahamut himself was known to spar with his followers in his true dragon form to prove their worth. While it’s highly unlikely, it’s entirely possible to destroy him on his home plane. No god in the Faerunian pantheon is completely immortal or invincible, in fact a fair number are mortals ascended to godhood. Bhaal, Bane, and Myrkul were mortals who l killed a primordial god, then traveled to the domain of Jergal, the original god of death, to kill him. He instead offered his three portfolios to them, ascending them to godhood. Bhaal was later slain by the mortal Cyric who then took over his portfolios and ascended to godhood. Gods in Faerunian pantheon are not omnipotent or omniscient.
The first panel has the text: “POV: The party has devolved into chaos and murder hobos” over a picture of Napoleon sitting, looking stern or unhappy, in front of a burning field or city. Napoleon is labelled “DM”. Napoleon is taken from the painting “Napoleon I at Fontainebleau on March 31, 1814”, superimposed upon a different painting.
Below that is a panel zooming in on Napoleon’s face.
Below that is a panel zooming right in on Napoleon’s eyes, under the text:
No. By that logic, a DM would never be able to balance the game, wouldn’t be able to have a powerful BBEG, and wouldn’t be able to have powerful non-killable NPCs.
It’s the DMs job to control the world and guide it. Reacting to them slaughtering people and destroying towns doesn’t make the DM a murderhobo. It’s simply part of the job
But you’re not balancing the game. You’re not adding a powerful BBEG. You’re putting a GOD in their path specifically to threaten the players into submission, even goading the players into action with that little “try it, bitch”. You’re showing the exact same antagonism, desrespect for the world and propensity for violence as the players are. I don’t care who did it first.
Just fucking talk to them. Like people do. Say “hey, maybe turn down the murdurhoboing?” instead of jumping to killing them. It’s the DM’s job to mediate the game and solve disputes as they arise so everyone has fun. Do your fucking job.
Edit: It’s always funny how unreasonably upset people get when you suggest talking through problems in a game played entirely through talking.
When I start I have a session zero with my expectations. If you cross those, I just drop you from the table. I don’t have murder hobos because I don’t let them murder. If they try I let them go. Only takes one to test that and then your game plays smooth. They know how I want to play and if they aren’t happy with it, they can run their own game.
When I'm a DM I reward people being clever or following through with hints I give them. I like having those little puzzles in the middle of a game.
If I am running a game where I kill a party it's because they didn't listen to anything and were basically cutting anything that I wanted to do out.
I don't want to be in a dungeon crawler. Video games tend to do those better.
I don't want to run a dungeon crawler. I could just set up a module for people to do.
I tell players before hand what I expect of a player. If they like it they play, if they don't I'll find another. It's that simple.
I expect an amount of bullshittery, that can be fun. But I never enjoyed participating in a murder hobo session. If my game starts out fun, then goes murder hobo direction, I'll get my fun.
If you don’t want to play in the type of game the other players want to play in, you leave. That’s the same for regular players and the GM. If it’s just one or two people making it less fun for other people, you kick them. No need to keep playing with them so you can punish them in game. I never get far enough in the game to punish that kind of player, because they’re already gone.
Honestly, this runs on the same logic as murder hobos. You’re not having fun, so you decide to get your fun by ruining someone else’s.
Why? You’re not having fun playing that game. What you want to do won’t be fun for everyone else. You didn’t like the game to begin with, so there’s no point in giving it a satisfying conclusion. There are better things you could do, like setting up a game you’d prefer. Why waste your time playing that last session?
The DM doesn’t need to trick the players into attacking if that’s exactly what is expected of them. This is no different from a trap in a dungeon. If the players’ first reaction to anything is killing and looting (and the game wasn’t about that from the get go), it’s a valid reminder that they better watch out for consequences.
“We attack this random old man!”
“Gotcha! It was a Dragon God in disguise!”
You see how it’s a trick? You see the deception?
If you live in a high-crime area and put a shotgun trap behind your door, then you are guilty for the murder of anyone who dies trying to break into your house. Should they have tried to break into your house? No. Should you have killed them? Also no. You’re not in the right just because they’re in the wrong. It doesn’t work that way.
Why is throwing Bahamut at the players knowing they’ll pick a fight with him a better solution than just talking to them?
Just in case this wasn’t clear, we’re talking about a meme. There’s no “full context” behind it, it’s a quick setup for a laugh. You can’t expect to take the meme at face value, that the party became muderhobo out of nowhere and that bahamut also comes out of nowhere because the DM is a bitch.
In a real situation, the more likely thing to happen is that the many other things the DM threw to get the players back in line failed, so it’s time to bring the big guns. It’s likely that the group had a talk out of the game discussing their situation and their possible future. Likely being the keyword here because, again, you’re assuming that this comes out of nowhere, but there’s no “real” table being discussed
Why is throwing Bahamut at the players knowing they’ll pick a fight with him a better solution than just talking to them?
Because it gives the players an opportunity to acknowledge that in game.
TLDR - you’re missing the point because you’re assuming a lot of stuff that isn’t even hinted at anywhere.
You assumed my assumption, but it honestly doesn’t matter if it came out of nowhere or not. Step one is talking to the players like adults about the problem. Step two is removing a player from the game, possibly yourself. There is never enough buildup to justify introducing an OP enemy to guaranteed kill your players as a punishment. Even if there was, you should have left the game long before that point, and should leave the game now instead of firing that big gun.
Why do players need to acknowledge it in game? That’s not where the problem is. The problem is among the players, not the characters. You don’t solve OOC problems within the game.
I don’t think I’m the one assuming a lot of stuff and missing the point here.
Nobody said “hey, maybe turn down the murdurhoboing?”, they chose to trick the players into attacking a god.
2 assumptions here, one that “nobody said…” and also one that the DM “chose to trick the players”.
More importantly, there’s your implicit assumption that a chaotic murderhobo party facing bahamut in disguise can only be the result of “things going wrong”, that “someone” is making the experience bad for the DM. This is pretty clear from this bit:
Step two is removing a player from the game, possibly yourself
And how you’re replying elsewhere: “if it’s bad, just leave”. To reach such conclusion you have to assume that:
"something is going wrong"
nobody talked about it out of the game
nobody did anything else to try avoiding the “wrong” situation
there were zero “warnings” (nothing else happening in game could be said to be a hint of escalation of a problem to godly level)
all players are completely oblivious to any traps or tricks the DM could set up
setting up bahamut in disguise like is meant solely to kill the characters, ignoring the many different possibilities as to why he could show up (“teach a lesson”, give a warning, setup for plot)
There is never enough buildup to justify introducing an OP enemy to guaranteed kill your players as a punishment. Even if there was, you should have left the game long before that point, and should leave the game now instead of firing that big gun.
Just because you cannot think of an escalation that leads to a god showing up in a game doesn’t mean that nobody else can. Just because you can only see this setup as “rock falls, everyone dies” doesn’t mean that everybody else will use it exactly for that.
What the hell is the meme you’re looking at? In the meme I see, the DM is annoyed by the current environment of murderhoboing and responds by introducing a Bahomet in a way where the players clearly don’t know who he is and haven’t met him before. The DM chose to add him, just like they chose every element of the campaign thus far and they chose to continue playing among murderhobos. The only reason Bahomet was included was as a punishment, and it’s fucking baffling you insist that’s not what’s happening.
I can think of several reasons to have a god show up in a game. I can only think of one reason to respond to the players being murderhobos by introducing a god in an innocent disguise and saying “try it, bitch”. What do you think is the point of the meme if not “the players are being murderhobos, so I’m going to punish them by making them pick a fight with a god”?
Yes, the party all snapped at the same time and started murder hoboing and it definitely wasn't talked about before hand by the party or the dm.
Listen, it sounds like you've been traumatized by some passive aggressive dm. I cannot think of a reason you're so passionate about this.
It really feels like you'd be a part of the "doms don't need aftercare" crowd too.
One of the closer examples of this actually happening is a party was underneath an alchemist shop in the sewers which I said smelled of sulphur. The newest person to the party their first move down there was fireball. I literally said "are you sure?" While giving him the look. Anyways most people made their dex saves and it was a lesson in fuck around find out. They became a great player and meshed really well with the game. But saying something and doing something are two different things. I told them before this event I will reward them for being smart and punish for not being observant. You need this ability to do things like this in game in order to smoothly, without breaking the flow, push the players in the right direction.
You don't have to be in that style of game, you also have the ability to ask the DM how they want to run the game.
There are games out there for any type of player and dm. If you think it's the dm's JOB to make you happy then I do not want to be a part of any game you're in. This is a group game.
Holy fuck, are you not paying attention? It does not matter if it was sudden or not. If it got to the point that the DM was willing to twist the narrative to kill the entire party, they should have already left.
I haven’t been traumatised. Heck, I’ve barely ever been a player. I just don’t know why people are being so defensive of vindictive DMing. It’s deeply unhealthy. Doms do need aftercare, but they also shouldn’t go into their fun with spite on their mind.
Your example is NOT an example, because that player was not murderhoboing. You weren’t vindictively adding an element to the game to get him killed, you were organically reacting to their actions with details that had already been established. Your consequence made sense, and it made the game more fun for everyone involved.
It is a DM’s job to make sure everyone had fun at the end of the session, DM included. Technically, that’s everyone’s job, but the DM is the one with more authority. This doesn’t mean bad things can’t happen, but nobody should be outright miserable. If one person’s fun would detract from someone else’s fun, then either a frank conversation is needed or someone should leave to find that fun elsewhere.
If it got to the point that the party was willing to twist the narrative to kill the entire campaign, they should have already left.
Then why are you so passionate about this if you don't have experience? I have experience both as a player when another player goes all murder hobo, and a GM when people have gone full murder hobo. It isn't fun, there was always talk before hand and the GM tries to not break flow of game. I'm not "defense of vindictive DMing" I've just been in plenty of complex situations similar to A NINETEEN WORD MEME that you are refusing to understand that people with experience are laughing at, not because "being mean is good" but people trying to make the best of a shit situation they've been PUT in.
It's a perfect example of what I have been talking about.
DM explains expectations
Player ignores everything
DM does in game thing to enforce expectations
My experience is definitely people wanting to play/GM with friends and I haven't ever directly paid/been pain for sessions. So when I say job I'm definitely implying a soul crushing 9-5 and not a session between friends. It's a group activity, everyone should be trying. If it is solely the DM's job to keep the peace, it is a failing game.
Correct. Both the players and the DM are being arseholes. Why the fuck are you defending the DM for doing what the players are doing?
You’re comparing the nineteen word meme that frames vindictive DMing as a natural consequence, rather than an unhealthy response to antagonism, to an experience you had that was, as far as I can see, entirely unrelated. Making the best of a shit situation you’ve been put in is to leave that situation. If you’re in a pit full of shit, don’t make marshmallows and sing songs. Either remove the shit or get out of the pit. Stop trying to argue that it’s fine to remain in the shit pit.
It’s a perfect example of something ONLY YOU have been talking about. The enforcement of expectations in your example was made using things that were already in the game in order to make the game fun. That’s not what other people have been talking about.
Please fucking read my comment. I did not say it was SOLELY the DM’s job. I said it was EVERYONE’s job, DM included. Please respond to what people ACTUALLY SAY. Yes, it’s a group activity, but if everyone in the group wants one thing and one person wants something else, they should leave that group. It doesn’t matter if that person is a DM or a player.
You really haven't experienced this have you. I usually recommend the German version of funny games because Americans don't recognize the actors, and it's easier to just put the movie as "just people" in their heads. The whole movie is about using social expectations in order to torture and kill a family.
If you get up and leave when people do this, you're probably going to become unfavorable and not invited back.
If you just rip out the role playing to address every small thing people will just stop role playing, and become murderhobos anyways.
It's good to go over the game in a kind of want/will/won't list. Because sometimes in order to get what you want out of a game you need to go through things you're only willing to do. To me, it seems like you've been saying this whole time "if you don't do what you WANT, then quit" which would explain why you've "barely ever been a player."
You've been screaming, in not direct ways, a lack of social experience with things of this nature. I wish you the best of luck. And as a recommendation, try not to get upset at a nineteen word meme that you haven't experienced. There is a good reason why the most comments in this, besides you, have been people telling you that you are wrong.
Unless you explain to me why you're so passionate about this, I will not care to respond. I hope you have a lot of fun in the games you play and I hope you get the best out of them. I hope you have a wonderful Sunday, I'm going to go play a game where the DM wants me to back stab the party.
From the example you gave, you haven’t experienced it either. And the reason I haven’t experienced it is because, as the DM, I didn’t throw Bahamut at a problem player and just warned them to either cut it out or be kicked from the game. The game then improved for everyone remaining.
Hold on… If I leave the shit pit, I won’t be invited back into the shit pit? And that’s a bad thing?
You wanna know why I’m so passionate? Because you’re infuriating. Because you’re writing entire essays about things nobody has been talking about and calling ME passionate about it. Because “rip out the role playing” isn’t something anyone has mentioned directly or otherwise. Because everyone keeps replying to me without responding to me. Nobody has explained why it’s good to remain in the shit pit for a second longer than absolutely necessary.
If you’re in a pit and it’s full of shit, either remove the shit or leave the shit pit. I don’t get why that’s controversial to say.
Nobody. I just don’t approve of vindictive DMing. I don’t like spending time doing things that make me miserable so long as it makes others even more miserable. It’s weird that so many people disagree.
Reading horse shit like this turns me into such a boomer. Even when players are misbehaving these days you’re supposed to coddle them and never question their right to a power fantasy, where absolutely nothing bad ever happens to them, they’re never challenged and they’re never tricked. It’s pathetic, and why the balance of DMs to players is worse than ever.
You absolutely ARE questioning their right to a power fantasy. The “hey, maybe turn down the murderhoboing” is the “are you sure” before you kick them from the table. I’m not going to coddle them and never question their right to be at the table, or their right to have their characters die satisfying deaths. I’m removing all power they have in the game in a single sentence.
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