That’s just how we roll…
(Tyler this on mobile sorry in advance)
This is a story that happened during the height of Covid and I was just reminded of it as scrolling and closing my massive backlog of old DMs. Friends of mine were all busy to play so browsers LFG for a game to play. I found a game that advertised itself as massive community project that had multiple DMs creating an ever expanding world that was influenced by the players. I thought that was cool and joined the discord server.
Everything looked fine, the rules were, the DMs were nice, and after a quick back forth I rolled a changeling sorcerer. I was ensured multiple times that their may be level disparity as there were a lot of players in the server that the game will be balanced and the disparity wasn’t to bad. The first game came around as one of the DMs in the server was hosting an intro game and the owner was sitting in to watch. It was all pretty simple we talked while the DM set up and then we began to introduce our characters. It was a party of 5 I was second to last in the introduction order. Now everyone when introducing who they are and what they are playing as. Me and another person was level 1, another level 2, and another was level 3. Then we got to the last guy who confidently said they were a level 15 orc barbarian.
This was treated as being completely normal and a ok thing to do. But the DM again ensured he’s just here to help and the game will be balanced around lower tier play. I was already feeling off because I never liked level disparity in DND as I always felt one level difference we so much of a difference even seen there was a level three was already making me feel off before the the level 15 introduce himself. When I brought up some concerns I was always met with the DM and owner saying in unions “that’s how we roll”. But we moved past this and entered a dungeon to clear of monsters can’t remember the exact reason but we were now there.
After some exploring we encountered our first encounter a human with a blunderbuss who was upset that we were in the dungeon trying to take the treasure he was searching for. We then rolled initiative and somehow the level 15 was last in the turn order. The other level 1 was first and he was playing fighter he walked up to the enemy. Did standard role to attack got a lucky crit and did 9 damage with him halberd. Then came the enemy’s who now being in melee tried to walk away as to not use a range attack with disadvantage. The fighter seeing this tried to attack of opportunity but was met with DM and owner telling him nope you can’t do that. The owner was their explained that he thinks reactions are stupid and overpowered so now you must declare your reaction a turn before as a bonus action. When the fighter confused and rightfully upset the DM chimed in with “That’s how we roll”.
The combat the continue the enemy attacked with a 1d20 plus 18 to hit aimed at the fighter and it did hit the DM 3d20+15 as damage. Needless to say he died instantly. Then the enemy shot again an extra attack and killed the level 3. It was after seeing this and just hearing the other players complain about how unfair this combat is and their weird rulings. I excused myself tell the DM it’s been fun and left the server before I can hear my fifth “that’s just how we roll”.