On this particular night, there were only 5/8 people present. The DM suggested we play a board game, but we decided to press on.
We had just massacred a large number of Kuo-Toa inside a black dragons lair, but we now had to rest. I suggested we go back into the swamp and rest there rather than risk it in here. In the swamp we had fought a band of trolls, a few crocodiles, but nothing lately. The only thing we'd ever seen lately was this:
Character: "I'll look outside Leomunds Tiny Huy"
DM: "You see only darkness, but for a second, the darkness is darker"
Character: "O.K"
The character who cast Leomunds Tiny Hut was not present this particular night.
We marched back to the swamp and became fatigued, so we decided we would have to rest.
After that we decided we would have to rest another day (We were down an animal companion)
That night, a Nightwing attacked us. This is where a number of problems arose.
1.The party were level 10, 10, 10, 10 and 8 vs CR 14.
2. Half of the party were casters. SR 27 is surprisingly difficult to get through, as is AC 30.
3. The DM eliminated almost all of its abilities. It had no DR 15/Magic and Silver, No summon Undead, No Magic Drain, No Spell Like Abilities, and no profane aura.
4. After the encounter (In which I died allowing the wizard to teleport the other three out) the DM simply said it should have been an easy encounter as it was near death and had no abilities.
5. My character's purpose was use feats and armor+defending weapon property to achieve a massive AC. Due to the Critical Fumbles Table, my plan is flawed, as if I roll a 1, I pretty much cop 2 free hits. I have 71 Hit Points and he was doing 20-29 a hit. Even though we have had numerous arguments over the fumble table and how it punishes certain aspects of characters, he refuse to budge and says he likes the random chance and its fun. In that encounter, I died because I tripped over and copped a AoO when standing back up.
6. I told the DM that one of my problems was problem 3, and that if he was always going to not use abilities, why use it in the first place? He says I told him he should scale down encounters with less people.
Essentially, after the night, we were asked why the hell we went back to the swamp when we could have rested in the Dragon Lair. We answered because the Kuo-Toa could kill us un our sleep. He says we killed them all and should have know that. He also says we were stupid enough to go back to the swamp even though we knew something was there. Apparently that was conveyed through the "It is suddenly darker" quote.
Now, does anybody see the problems I'm having? Or am I crazy?
What your DM should have done-
1. If there are less people make the combat less challanging. loseing DR and abillities doesn't make sense. If your going to tear shreads from the monster like that, why not go for a lower CR monster?
2. If He thought the swamp was too dangerous to rest, he should have made you make Knowledge checks (or at least wisdom). Thats what I do when my PC's are heading for trouble.
What the players should have done-
1. Ask for Knowledge checks to see where would be the best place to rest.
2. If your missing half your party is it the best idea to play without them? I know you turn up to your group to play D&D (and I get upset when players don't show up as well) but maybe you should have just played board games. Maybe for the future, keep back up character sheets incase players don't show.
But no-ones to blame here. Its just a few simple mistakes.
Hope this helps
They're one of my, "Do I really need to play in this game?" tests.
