New DM had us roll "suicide dice" for the worst party makeup ever
I play in a group of 7, usually as the DM, but one of my players wants to run a mini campaign. He won't give us details on what the campaign will be, other than that it's 6th level and it won't be a simple dungeon crawl. To make characters he had us roll "suicide dice" to completely randomize everything except subclass, background, and gear. We each had to roll d20s for stats, which had to stay in the order rolled, no rerolls, and he randomized the order in which the stats would be assigned, then a d12 for class and RNG a d13 for race. The spread of party members and stats are as follows:
Dragonborn Bard: Str 10, Dex 19, Con 1, Int 17, Wis 9, Cha 4
Aasimar Rogue 1: Str 12, Dex 14, Con 15, Int 15, Wis 18, Cha 10
Aasimar Rogue 2: Str 8, Dex 2, Con 16, Int 13, Wis 19, Cha 11
Human Rogue: Str 4, Dex 6, Con 20, Int 18, Wis 17, Cha 16
Dwarf Rogue: Str 19, Dex 5, Con 6, Int 18, Wis 17, Cha 14
Halfling Druid (me): Str 15, Dex 20, Con 5, Int 11, Wis 3, Cha 10
At first I was like "okay maybe it won't be so bad, I can increase to 5 wis with my background and maybe that'll be enough." Then I actually read through druid and realized that I would be basically useless to the party. I won't really be able to do spell attacks because I figure even with a Wand of the Warmage my bonus would only be +3. My spell save DC will be at best 9, so I won't be able to control the battlefield much. I can't even really heal because healing word and cure wounds would have a negative modifier added to them. I have a pretty good Str and Dex, but no proficiency with martial weapons, medium armor, or shields, and a negative Con so I can't be front lines either.
I asked about magic items and after a few days of thinking about it he said everyone could have 1 rare magic item but that "there'll be a twist so don't have it make or break your build." That's when I have the idea to multiclass into barbarian. Usually barb + any full caster isn't a great idea but I figured since wild shape is the one druid feature that doesn't require a high wisdom, it doesn't matter if I can't cast spells. I'll just take a few levels of berserker barb for the best rage damage boost, then put the rest into moon druid and spend all my time in wild shape as a brown bear. In wild shape I would get a multi-attack and could still rage for +2d6 damage per attack, and my low con wouldn't matter because I would get the con and AC of the brown bear stat block. I also consider taking the Wraps of Unarmed Prowess to overcome damage resistance and an attack bonus. I thought this was a creative solution to make my character viable, play a multiclass that usually doesn't feel optimal, and still respect the fact I rolled up a druid with 3 wisdom.
When I bring this idea to him however he says that if I multiclass I have to roll for another randomized class, and that I can't back out if I don't like the class I rolled. I would have to take at least one level of it, and couldn't try to multiclass again after that because it would be "against the spirit" of the suicide dice. So that's when I bring up the issues I have, just to emphasize that if I don't multiclass then I won't be able to use 90% of my class features. The most optimal thing for me to do would just be to stay in the wild shape I gained at level 3 through moon druid and/or do a single attack every round with a +2 weapon. His response struck me as extremely dismissive. First response was "Look at some feats or skills man. Try to enjoy the un-min-maxxed nature of it. Or try to roll the multiclass." as if the only feat I would be taking wouldn't be ASIs, and as if any skill I took wouldn't be outdone by one of the 4 rogues in the party. When I told him that the barbarian multiclass wasn't min maxxing, just making a half way viable character with the stat array I rolled.
There was a bit more back and forth with him just saying things like "take a special weapon, take an item that gives you a familiar." I just said flat out that a doing a straight druid with this stat array gives me basically nothing to do at the table other than be an additional pool of HP to target. After that he said he would think about it, but a few hours later messaged the group chat and hadn't changed his mind: multiclassing was allowed but HAD to be random. At this point I figured I would just roll and see what I get because if I got literally anything other than a cleric at least I could be a mediocre-to-good 5th level character in a 6th level game. I rolled a 4 which was apparently a warlock on his randomized table and that's when I actually went back and looked at all the other player's stats and realized that 5/6 of us had negatives in our main stats and 3/6 of us had negative con modifiers as well.
I will admit I got a bit upset at this point because this didn't feel like a fun challenge to figure out a way to make a viable character with completely randomized stats. This felt like just an extremely unbalanced party with dogshit stats. And when he took away basically the only meaningful method of customization by saying we shouldn't expect to rely on our magic item, it just felt like yeah: it's just a bad character with no way to make it work except taking ASIs to make the negative modifier less bad. I sent him a message expressing that in probably a more passive aggressive tone than necessary and said "I guess now I'm just playing a 5th level warlock though."
He messaged back "so do the barbarian if you want I guess. No one else is having a problem here." All I can say is that no one else has EXPRESSED a problem with it that I know of because no one else has messaged the group chat about it other than the human rogue who very much did want to multiclass and got monk on his random roll.
I don't know, maybe I'm over reacting but the dismissiveness I'm getting when I bring up that I'm not having fun due to a total lack of agency when building my character is really upsetting and it's because of that more than anything else that makes me not even want to participate in the mini campaign. I don't think any of us are going to have fun whiffing every attack and getting one-shot by enemies (except for the one player you miraculously rolled an average of 14 on his stats) with characters we had no say in the design of. Especially not when he is going to blame us for not being "creative enough" with what we were given.