I'll keep this short and to the point hopefully
I joined a friend's curse of strahd game, and after sessions 0 and checking with him and theb party I rolled up a twilight cleric drow, level 3.
First session starts with my character working a small temple/clinic in Barovia, and a monster disguised as a child comes in. After a brief moment the monster does some attsck the destroys every holy symbol on a 120ft radius. Including the one my chsracter wore and had kn their shield. Creature died to a basic rapier attack thar did 5 damage.
Afterwards I confronted him why the hell he keeps destroying every religious type thing players pick up in every game he runs. A cleric needs their symbol to be able to cast their spells. Youre in your 30s dude, get over it that the priest told you you were going to hell and didnt invite you to the special Jesus camp or whatever.
Have more to get off your chest? Come rant with us on the discord. Invite link: https://discord.gg/PCPTSSTKqr
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
While I've never played a Curse of Strahd game, I would be very surprised if it included a low level monster that can destroy every holy symbol with no save in a large area like that. Your GM is homebrewing with the specific intent to screw over your character. I would drop this game.
Already did.
recently finished CoS, there is no creature like that in the module as written. DM just has beef with the concept of religion.
Or just wanted his monsters to be unstoppable and destroying vampires' weakness is how you do that in barovia.
nah, because radiant damage through spells like Daylight (available to the non-religious Sorcerer) are still out there. Not to mention (CoS spoilers) the Sword of Sunlight, which requires no religious affiliation, only a good alignment, to wield.
And the Count has way more monsters at his disposal than just vampire spawn.
I’m pretty sure 5e 2014 Daylight doesnt actually count as sunlight, so depends on what version they’re running
One of the most important items of the campaign is literally a legendary item straight up called ”holy symbol of X” that has abilities you can use against vampires, even Strahd himself
The power to destroy holy symbols would be fine and cool in a game like Vampire or Call of Cthulhu where there wasn't a whole class of player character that is screwed over without a holy symbol. You say he did this other times, what was the context of those?
Regardless if you're all in your thirties, life is too short to be playing with a power tripping DM who does arbitrary rule of cool stuff in the monsters favour without regard for whether it will actually be fun for the table. He should have grown out of that about 15 years ago.
So far any religious symbol of a characters faith. My bard bought a trio of cheap, badly done religious paintings in another game to sell in a con artist scam. They got destroyed because a devil got unleashed.
I gave this game a shot cause he asked me to play and the party needed a healer/support. But ive already dropped this one cause of the childish thing with the symbols
Two whole classes. Paladins use holy symbols too (usually on the shield)
Time to roll up an Aasimar Divine Soul Sorcerer named Yeshua Angelgrace and get all your magics from your lineage and race and you just so happen to believe devoutly in your deity. Get Godblooded, eedjit.
[Edit as some folks have made some good points below. Petty revenge is seldom a good solution, take the high road. Still, enjoy the above purely as a theoretical, for comedic/amusement purposes.]
While fun and I love that idea, I dropped the game.
Good.
Good. As fun as “in-game revenge” sounds, it’s kinda like a good fight. If someone throws a French fry at you, the adult thing to do is walk away. If you throw one back, now you’re in a good fight and you’re both getting kicked out of the Applebees.
Yep, only respond in-character to an out-of-character thing if both people know explicitly that they're joking and having fun with it. If there's an actual problem, handle it accordingly.
As fun as revenge sounds, it's often not worth it. I'm still friends with the guy anyway. He might not be my type as a DM but hes been there for me any other time no questions asked.
That’s great! I have an irl friend who is a great guy but I’ve decided that I’m probably not going to like playing in one of his games. I might give him one more try if the opportunity arises, but I think we both quietly realized that we have incompatible play styles
Honestly, a French fry artillary war sounds kinda fun.
Depriving characters of the fundamental ability to use basic class features unless there’s an easy way to reverse it is the kind of thing you only do with big deal super dangerous opponents, not a casual throwaway, and there absolutely need to be saving throws involved. This is a huge red flag and you can absolutely expect it to happen again. Yeah there’s a setting reason why the vampire would be worried about holy power, but it shouldn’t be that easy for his minions to override, either, that’s exactly why they’re worried about it.
Perfectly normal thing to happen once in a CoS campaign. If it happens regularly however and you have no way around it yeah the DM is an idiot.
Maybe. But in session 1 by a monster that was killed by 5 damage from a sacred flame should not be it
Wait, so what did he say when you confronted him?
That it makes sense because Strahd wouldnt let a chaotic good cleric in barovia doing healing in his Goddess name.
Wow, he clearly has not read any of the previous editions of Raveloft or put any thought into how a domain like this would work.
I mean it's COS that's pretty spot on for a creature in Barovia.
Holy items pretty clearly work really well against Barovian creatures though. Holy symbols and remains of saints both function to repel Strahd’s forces.
Theres being a militant atheist and then there is this.
I think you have to remind this DM that Gods LITERALLY exist in the Forgotten Realms. You can actually just go and meet them on their plane.
I don't even know his argument against that. Probably something abiut "just really powerful wizards" or whatever. Its not worth getting into, and I'm out of the game now.
I don't get that reading on this situation. It sounds more like an adversarial GM -- they went directly for the spellcasting focii so you'd be forced to fight in melee. B-lining straight to disabling character features with no narrative buildup or telegraphing is a very adversarial move. I'd maybe suggest leaving a campaign if a GM is running adversarially. CoS is a more adversarial module than most of 5e, but this sounds well beyond what's in the module.
Were there other incidents before this one? I'm not really seeing how you concluded that it's for religious reasons.
I mean, Curse of Strahd is definitely a dangerous module with some tricky or mean moments (it was a lot of fun to run), but I can promise you that there is nothing that handicaps casters to that extreme. An anti-magic zone here and there, but that monster was definitely an addition made by the GM to be a dick.
If we're being generous, it's because Turn Dead is a little broken in CoS and can trivialize a good chunk of the encounters if the GM rolls poorly on saves. But I'd rather just fudge rolls or just give an excuse that holy magic is weaker in Barovia so Turn Undead isn't effective rather than do something so incredibly over the top as taking away the entire spellcasting ability.
Other moments had been a past couple games had been a "deal with a god" but refused to define the terms of the deal. I said no, and nothing came of it. Other was my character bought some cheap, junk religious paintings he eas gonna use in a scam, and they were destroyed by the mere presence of a devil appearing.
DM sounds goofy, but I'm pretty sure you don't actually need a holy symbol to cast cleric spells at all in 5e. It just does the same thing a focus does for any other class and bypasses material components that don't have a gold value. So you could just get the material components/component pouch and still cast, symbol or not.
It was session 1, and I had taken the focus instead of a component pouch. I doubt he would have made it easy to find a basic spell component pouch anyway. Because cleric.
I left the game.
Might want to anonymize this some more, DM could be half of reddit
I also need to edit this and stop typing on my phone. My spelling is horrible.
Typos help distinguish between real and AI content
They really don't. Not only can AI be edited and dumbed down, but assuming people who don't make many/ any mistakes are just AI is problematic.
Why spend time editing? Just tell the AI to dumb it down and add typos, it works like a charm.
People really want a holy symbol to ward against AI, but you can't Turn Undead on this one.
I have no issue with religion in D and D, my beef is with IRL organized religion, lol, sounds like your DM got it backwards.
Read quotes from the bible to explain why he is acting badly.
The way fedora tippers react to that is indistinguishable from the medieval portrayal of a demon
"Any sufficiently neckbearded redditor is indistinguishable from a medieval witchfinder's description of a demon"
Extremely Bill Maher "Religulous" energy, very embarrassing
And how did the DM respond to this confrontation?
That it makes perfect sense that strahd wouldn't allow any religious symbols or anythjng to flourish in Barovia .
He got annoyed I said strahd is just a super powerful vsmpire, not a god nor should a monster so weak it dies to a basic rapier attack have any level of power to destroy that. Then told him that I'm out and good luck with the game.
Bro can’t even handle fake religions. Did he take “I won’t respect your fake book” literally?
Apparently so. To a point it means never play a religious character in his games it seems.
I like how there’s only one instance of this happening (and with good in-game reason ) but OP jumps to the conclusion that the DMs antitheist.
R/OPwasthehorror
Even still, there’s nothing wrong with a GM not wanting to include triggers. It’s more the failure to be upfront / allowing you to make a cleric then sabotaging you.
If I joined a session 0 wanting to make a Cleric and the GM said “I don’t really like religious themes or imagery that’s something I am not comfortable running.” I would probably say the table wasn’t for me but I wouldn’t hold it against them.
How old was this GM? So immature.
Hes in his 30s. Ive already dropped the game.
Oh sorry I see you mentioned his age in the original post. Wow, that’s ridiculous. Good on you for leaving.
How is someone having a "trigger" of religious symbols different from the traditional portrayal of an evil vampire or demon possessed person. That's hilarious and hard to believe.
I’m sure some people are though. Like we’re all entitled to our mental handicaps and holdbacks. If I wanted a wolf pet and the GM was like “I have a phobia of wolves I’m sorry I can’t”that would be cool by me.
But ‘religion’ is veeeery broad, true. And you’re not wrong s our vampires and demons. Plus this is CoS which has a lot of that as you say. Crazy lol.
Also, "I don't like religion because my parents had the nerve to drag me to church on Sundays, and as a result I'm weirdly biased against religion in DnD even though it has basically no commonality with any currently practiced religion in the world' is a fairly ridiculous take on its face, and probably deserves public mockery more than most things.
I think the DM does dislike religous things. even if they had a religious truama with it the items are important to the characters and I don't think the DM should make their trauma the running aspect of the game.
Stating he doesnt want religious stuff in the session 0 would be an easy way around this. Acting like a 15 year old that just became an atheist is juzt annoying. I left the game.
Good on you!
I agree and I probably wouldn’t play with a GM that told me that I couldn’t play a Cleric because that have triggers around religion.
All I was saying js that the situation would be different if the GM was upfront in session 0. It mystifies me that he’d let OP pick Cleric and then do that
And there was no way to talk about this like adults?
I tried. He has a thing agsinst religon. Any setting, any game, real life. Its not worth arguing him over a low level home brew monster with a bullshit ability because he still has a 15 year old atheist mentality to religion. I just left the game.
Is your DM Adi Shankar
I dont know who that is. But I am guessing they are similar?
Guy who helped make the Castlevania and Devil May Cry anime. It’s a running theme in some of his stuff, especially castlevania, where all the religious characters are either being manipulated or are actively acting like jerkoffs.
I don’t really give it too much attention even as a Catholic but it’s funny to point out and I don’t mind it.
I honestly love both those series. I never picked up on it in those. Mostly cause I was having fun, unlike the DnD game. But it makes sense. I just always assume anything heavily Christian theme out of Japan os going to be a trip cause of culture.
It has nothing to do with being Japanese, Shankar is Indian. He just tries to excise any religious justification out of anything in the crappy adaptations he makes. So like in Castlevania, crosses still work on vampires, but not because they invoke the power of God, it's because vampires are apparently hyper autistic or something and can't stand looking at right angles, even though Dracula's castle is almost entirely composed of right angles. And Shankar wasn't even creative with that, he ripped it off another story where vampires did exist as a mutant strain of humanity with some extreme level of autism, which is why I referenced it, and that was the justification for why they didn't like crosses.
Never played any castlevania games but the anime was alright. Didn’t like the devil may cry one though, it started just having completely different lore than the games.
This is why the homebrew forward aspect of DnD5e is infuriating to me.
He just made up this monster to fuck you. It does not exist anywhere in the text of the game that you are playing.