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.
It’s all about that action economy. Survive a terrasque hit (or hits in the case of multiattack)? No problem. Survive 8 terrasque hits? Problems.
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 stamets@startrek.website 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.
No, they could kill an avatar of Bahamut, but not Bahamut itself.
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.
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The party is probably only mid-level
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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 even high level. Everyone’s heard of Tucker’s Kobolds.
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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.
Its a god with 7 dragons
thank
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.
I love this. Just drop a god in as a warning shot
Transcription:
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:
“You see an old man with 7 canaries”
(quotation marks included)
Should have added the Hobo with a Shotgun.
You know they would paralyse him or charm him or anything and take the shotgun for themselves. Then torture the hobo to know how to make more shells.
I am the DM
I speak for the NPCs
Murder hobo again, and I’ll break your fucking knees.
Is that not just the DM equivelant of being a murder hobo?
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
Precisely :)
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.
I agree entirely, I just offer a warning first. And either way, you don’t keep playing so you can throw Bahamut at them.
Nobody said they needed to attack the old man, they choose to do so themselves.
Nobody said “hey, maybe turn down the murdurhoboing?”, they chose to trick the players into attacking a god.
You see an old man with 7 canaries
WE ATTACK HIM LOL
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.
I don’t think I’m the one assuming a lot of stuff
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.
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.
“Don’t do x,y,z.”
Players do x,y,z
Party diesI don’t know what y’all expected.
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.
If you don’t want to play in the type of game the other players want to play in, you leave.
If the DM leaves the players are dead anyway. Might as well do it with a bang.
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?
Generally the frustration builds in that session. You don’t decide it will be the last session beforehand.
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.
Definitely met some players who seem to think the DM is only there to keep players having a good time
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.
Time for some draconic punishment then
I call this balance
