Trust issues is right. I wouldn’t want to play with a DM who does that. This is not just fictional cruelty, to take a player out of the final battle just to rub in how evil and clever the villain is just feels unsportsmanlike to me.
But I see there is a whole genre of posts that’s all about suggesting awful things for D&D games because it makes for spicy social media content. Same goes for, say, the False Hydra, a monster that does not fit with the games mechanics and imposes a metagame threat that bypasses the characters abilities and resistances entirely. I hope it’s all just memes at the end of the day.
The only part of it that I think is really out of place and would make me unhappy is that it’s the first counterspell he used.
If that’s been a pattern and it’s a higher lethality game in general, then all’s fair. But springing a counterspell on them at the last moment might make me a bit… bitter.
I dunno. Even in the sense of a high lethality campaign that the BBEG would use that reaction and spell slot for denying recovery rather than defending, counterattacking or causing further harm seems petty, and not in the way that it makes for a fun BBEG.
Because of that, the dead PC’s player can only sit there idly and wait for the next attempt, or they might be fully taken out of the conclusion, over an interaction they had no input in participating. It isn’t really the caster PC who faces the consequences.
Trust issues is right. I wouldn’t want to play with a DM who does that. This is not just fictional cruelty, to take a player out of the final battle just to rub in how evil and clever the villain is just feels unsportsmanlike to me.
But I see there is a whole genre of posts that’s all about suggesting awful things for D&D games because it makes for spicy social media content. Same goes for, say, the False Hydra, a monster that does not fit with the games mechanics and imposes a metagame threat that bypasses the characters abilities and resistances entirely. I hope it’s all just memes at the end of the day.
The only part of it that I think is really out of place and would make me unhappy is that it’s the first counterspell he used.
If that’s been a pattern and it’s a higher lethality game in general, then all’s fair. But springing a counterspell on them at the last moment might make me a bit… bitter.
I dunno. Even in the sense of a high lethality campaign that the BBEG would use that reaction and spell slot for denying recovery rather than defending, counterattacking or causing further harm seems petty, and not in the way that it makes for a fun BBEG.
Because of that, the dead PC’s player can only sit there idly and wait for the next attempt, or they might be fully taken out of the conclusion, over an interaction they had no input in participating. It isn’t really the caster PC who faces the consequences.