For players, there are different ways in Dungeons & Dragons to become stronger by proving their worth to their DM. A player even manages to become immortal, but not because he truly deserves it – he’s just otherwise too bad.
What makes the player so “bad”? A DM reports on Reddit about a friend and fellow player who is part of an already 5-year-old D&D campaign. The only problem is that he is “absolutely terrible” at the game.
“The guy is great, it’s fun playing with him, but being a DM for him is a nightmare,” writes the desperate author of the post. The player in question plays a ranged spellcaster that he keeps trying to use in melee. It takes him ages to decide on a spell, and when he finally does, he doesn’t understand how the spell works.
The DM admits that he feels terrible about it, but sees no other way to keep the game running properly, except to … make him immortal.
Here you can see the trailer for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves:
When “Are you sure?” doesn’t help anymore
What solution does the DM have for this problem? Another Reddit user (BryceJonathan) asks the DM how exactly he manages to make the player immortal. Whether he keeps an eye on his HP or pretends he can’t surpass the player’s armor class and just doesn’t hit.
The DM explains that he either incorporated role-playing moments to pull the player out of combat before it gets critical or generally ensures that attacks never end fatally.
“He still manages to break through my ‘Are you sure?’ walls occasionally,” the DM admits.
Another user (Suspicious_Roll834) responds: “The ‘Are you sure?’ question doesn’t scare players if you haven’t proven you’re willing to kill them.”
This is an opinion that the user does not stand alone in. Sendmeyourgundams also writes: “I mean, if you don’t establish real consequences for your decisions, you’re not giving him any real incentive to change his behavior.”
What other tips does the community offer? While many players advise the DM to impose stricter consequences for the player’s behavior, it seems that this has not helped. In response to a further, almost pedagogical suggestion from nanadoom, that the DM shouldn’t protect him from the consequences, the DM explains that he has already let some characters die as a consequence. However, that didn’t help either.
For this reason, some other players have further ideas:
- darkslide3000: “Can’t you persuade him to play a barbarian or something? Sometimes it can help to adapt the character’s intelligence to the player’s intelligence …”
- GlimmeringGuise: “I feel like he’s more interested in a martial spellcaster? Something like a Hexblade, a Blade singer, a Sword Bard, or an Eldritch Knight … I’d suggest the Eldritch Knight because he has more HP and fewer spell options.”
- thekylem: “If he likes role-playing, just let him pick up a sentient weapon/object that prevents him from screwing up.”
However, the most important note comes from the Reddit user darchangel89a: “Are you having fun [with it]? If so, that’s all that matters.”
It is worth highlighting the length of the campaign. Since the author’s group has been playing for 5 years and all involved have been having fun with the situation so far, this group doesn’t have to break apart. However, in another D&D group, there were not just one issue player in the friend circle, but several. And this led to such problems that the campaign couldn’t even reach the upcoming finale: D&D does what it always does: It divides friends – One campaign even failed just before the finale
