When I was the defender, I had pretty typical Knight AC, but it was several points higher than most of the party. Now all the monsters are super-accurate and never miss, so they can consistently hit high defender ACs (at level 13 it took a reflex of 33 and for the monsters to be blind in order to stand a chance of being missed)
He got mad when the "challenge" of one of his latest encounters got diminished by multiple players randomly deciding to switch to ranged characters simultaneously (it basically involved some raised artillery that got blown up really fast by some archer characters and was supposed to be hell for the defender and blackguard, the switch was a coincidence more than anything), and when he sees players invest in feats like superior will, status effects like daze magically disappear.
I'm being kinda complainy, but I guess the problem is it feels like every resource put into specializing your character is wasted when the thing you just spent all your feats to be awesome at gets taken away whenever you get a chance to use it. How do I get the DM to chill out on this stuff and make things that are just supposed to be there (where, like, if the goblins happen to be well equipped to deal with lots of ranged characters then oh no for us. if they're not then yay easy time for team PC), for a natural feeling adventure, rather than encounters that are super meta and render all our build decisions useless (where every creature is accurate enough to smack the defender's AC on a 6, immune to the party's major damage types and status effects, like the coach of team monster read our sheets and played his best guys for the job every fight)?
Not the most tactful approach, but it could be fun to see the look on his face.
Have you considered politely asking him why he's doing it? Perhaps he feels that he's just giving you a challenge and doesn't realize that he's hurting the game. Or perhaps he's one of those people that just wants to win. Either way, talking to him is the best way to go.
He's not just trying to win or anything, but he does seem deathly afraid of us having an easy time with a fight (I do recall him being upset that we happened to get like fifteen caustic whetstones right before a big troll fight and actually got through a fight in under two hours). I think he's playing Price is Right or something, see how close you can get to TPK without going over, haha. I'd like to see some of those good ol' 1 dollar bets now and then, though...
I should probably try the blunt-force approach (not rude, just exceedingly direct). Attempts at tact and working my way to the subject have proven ineffective, I'm not sure if that's been me not being clear enough/him being easily distracted or just a conflict avoidance mechanism on his part, but I guess being straight up is the way to go. Thanks for the advice! It seems glaringly obvious in retrospect. :P
The aftermath seems messy? I'm not trying to make an excuse to avoid the whole subject, but if I'm successful it's going to change the mechanics of his designs, frustrating him because our random fights won't be big dramatic setpieces (or he'll be upset that his monsters got chewed through so quickly), or I'll go ignored and be pissed. I'm a little afraid of the latter because if I do make it direct and it doesn't go anywhere, I'll probably just bail on the game, but if he takes any advice to heart he's gonna be upset that we're not struggling through our battles with 4 standard goblins or whatever...
He got mad when the "challenge" of one of his latest encounters got diminished by multiple players randomly deciding to switch to ranged characters simultaneously (it basically involved some raised artillery that got blown up really fast by some archer characters and was supposed to be hell for the defender and blackguard, the switch was a coincidence more than anything), and when he sees players invest in feats like superior will, status effects like daze magically disappear.
Mostly I'd support your cause, except I am concerned about the bolded part:
How much notice was the DM given of this radical change in PCs?
. . . I'd be pretty mad, irrespective of how much "challenge" I was trying to present, if I custom created an adventure to play nicely with a set of characters, and the players just brought new characters to the game without notice. I'd be mostly mad about my wasted effort in RP and storyline, and I don't go around building encounters to avoid PCs strong points (on the contrary, I keep notes of each PCs strong points as a reminder to put in some minions for the controller, some artillery for the harrying battlemind to bash etc etc). However, mad is mad, so tell me, did the players pull a new set of PCs on the DM without notice?
The game works very poorly if the DM and players play against each other. And this cuts both ways - if the players escalate or do odd things, rather than just sit down and talk to figure out what's wrong and fix it, then your group will become dysfunctional.
It was pretty fair, I think, when my switch was announced 3 months prior and the other guy declared his to be temporary, because the only thing affected by the session in question was the difficulty of the one fight.
I'm not sure that's the best thing to call it, but basically, our DM is adding "challenge" to the encounters by specifically avoiding things the party is good at.
This sounds like a classic "DM vs players" conflict but my instinct tells me there is something else here going on.
Social dynamics are so complex it's impossible to diagnose without seeing it in person, but my guess is the something else is:
♦ the DM is getting burned out and simply needs a break. He sees it's becoming a bit of a job; a TPK means the game is over for a bit. Maybe someone else will take over, he tells himself.
♦ one or more of your players is of a 'player type' (power gamer, watcher, etc) the DM personally doesn't like (or maybe he just personally dislikes someone?). The progression is: don't like the play style --> don't like the character --> don't like the player
♦ the DM has tried to make challenging plots/encounters but gets 'foiled' by clever players and their (totally legal) tactics and use of resources. He didn't think of it, you did, and now it is too easy. Feeling cheated, he resolves not to get "foiled again", which usually requires focusing on what the players can't do well
Good luck! If I was in your group I'd volunteer to DM a 'one shot' and let him play from the other side of the screen for a while.
what's a watcher? we're all kinda power-gamey sometimes, but i think it's a bit of leapfrog to keep ourselves alive and a bit of the fact it's not that hard to do. we're fighting ecl +3 or 4 now, and have to keep optimizing to even stay alive, then the DM ups the challenge, then we have to op harder, etc. we basically just built some random dudes and they worked out i guess. my girlfriend is the mage and she just picks spells that she can imagine as being a ton of sparkles flying around and still kicks ass, though. it's kind of hard to mess the gaming part up...
i think the last one was definitely the case, though. it got the worst after we nearly won a fight he had designed with the intention of completely annihilating the party (story purposes, we were supposed to avoid the fight, before you jump on him got it).
i think things might be a bit better in the near future, we ended up going back and fighting some stuff designed for when we were level 11 (so level 14 fights for our level 14 party) but just all of it at once instead of over a couple fights, and after that and a short talk he sort of understood how actually being able to do the things you designed your guy to be good at is fun for the players, and he's been kind of taking a "mathematically possible to succeed" sort of mentality with the last game. hell, our next campaign is gonna involve olympics so i think it'll be a bit more fun now and the fast guys can be fast and the smart guys can be smart instead of trying to hit dc 40 checks all the time
A watcher is defined as that player who is more passive than average (the DMG on p8 has a section on common player types that is worth a read) and also less invested in the game than average.
story purposes, we were supposed to avoid the fight, before you jump on him got it
This is a DM experience issue. Like players have to learn to deal with character death once in a while, DMs have to learn to deal with 'plot death' sometimes: the players circumvent plans and you need to adapt. As DMs gain experience this gets easier and easier. It's human nature to want your to see your ideas come to fruition and also human nature to react poorly when you are stymied.
Sounds like things are looking up though
Cheers! A few things I've learned:
-Combat looks different from the DM side. You know the player abilities and the monster abilities, so it is pretty clear to you how easy or hard the combat will be after a round or two. However, from the player side, they don't generally know how tough the monsters really are. What looks like an easy fight from behind the DM screen can feel very tough on the player side.
-Different players have different expectations. I have a group where 2 players freak out if they can't curbstomp every encounter while a third player is annoyed that the combats are too easy. I try to balance this out by mixing in easy and hard encounters so that at least some of the time everyone gets what they enjoy.
-Sometimes encoutners don't work the way you expect. A string of really good or really bad rolls, poor tactics, or even unexpected synergy. One encounter I designed without realizing that all the monsters attacked reflex, which was the defenders weak spot. In addition,the party tried to hold the line with the defender while they repositioned (a good tactic in most cases, but poor in this instance). It turned what was supposed to be a moderate difficulty encounter into a very tough one.
-The biggest mistake most new DMs make is that they think every encounter needs to be a nail biter. 4th edition is different in that respect because managing resources (dailies and healing surges) can be as much of a challenge over a series of encounters as a single big fight. Players aren't always good at that. I've frequently seen parties where the defender is suddenly out of healing surges, but no one has used a daily power. Over time I've moved from 1 or 2 tough fights between extened rests to a string of 5 or 6 different difficulty fights between extended rests. This gives the players the ability to feel more heroic, but still provides a difficult overall challenge.
I have a feeling your DM doesn't realize just how unfun a constant stream of really tough fights can be.
There could be a hundred reasons for him acting like this, but those are unimportant, if it's hindering your enjoyment of the game and other players enjoyment of the game then you need to let him know, as poilitely as possible.
Just speak to him out of game and tell him you're not happy with the way it's running, explain what you want out of the game. But remember DM's are people too, they want to have fun as much fo the players, if he is putting in a lot of work into trying to kill you it may not be malious but him trying to create a game he thinks you would enjoy. If you have been waltzing through previous adventures beating everything in your path and never dying then maybe he sees this as a way to push you to limit. Of course its the wrong way to do it and he needs to see that.
DM's rarely spend hours preparing an adventure just to try to kill all the players, if they wanted to do that they have ye olde rocks fall you all die to pull.