Paladin Loses Powers And Is Gaslit By Everyone

Have you ever experienced a situation where you were gaslit by everyone in DnD? Today's dnd horror stories from r/rpghorrorstories is called The Forgotten Paladin and about a group of bad players and a bad dungeon master who try to tell him it is okay that a Dnd paladin has no recoverable spell slots over the course of 10 levels!
_______________________

This video contains affiliate links. If you click on one of them, I'll receive a commission.
_______________________
_______________________
0:00 Intro
0:14 The Story
18:33 My Thoughts
20:19 Outro
_______________________
Special Shoutouts!
_______________________
#dnd #dungeonsanddragons #rpghorrorstories #dndstories

[_pitako]

"Your class has more features and hit points" but he can't use any of the features

[ethanbell]

This is far from the main issue, but DMs, if you are gonna strip powers from a player, always include a way to get them back and crucially GIVE THEM A REASON WHY YOU TOOK THEM.

[monosito]

This sounds to me as a perfect origin story for an oathbreaker paladin, killing the party, telling the DM to shove it and then walking off. The whole god of death not taking the time confirming the kill and instead just re-absorbing the power granted is especially BS. If anything, a god of death would have MORE use for a faithful warrior who had crossed the threshold of death.

[BlyssOblyvion]

this is one of those stories that truly demonstrates the meaning of "may the bridges you burn light your way"

[rixaxeno]

The first red flag was that the DM never asked for consent to make these sweeping changes to his character. But that can be chalked up to ignorance or immaturity. The nail in the coffin is the magic item situation. Every single one of the other players ended with tailor made magic items that help their characters become who they want to be. Loot tables have nothing to do with being forgotten about by your god. If the DM was being honest, he would have given the paladin proper gear to compensate for his lack of features.

The DM made custom loot for everyone but one party member, the DM took away the party member's agency to play their character, and then the DM has the NERVE to give him a sweet taste of progression after starving him for months, only to rip it away from him immediately...

This isn't a campaign. This is bullying. It is organized and malicious. These people kept him around for the sole purpose of feeling more powerful by comparison. The DM had zero intention of giving his features back under any circumstance.

If anyone deserves to be abandoned by their god, it's the man behind the DM screen.

[BarrakDraconis]

"You lost your paladin powers because your god assumed you had died."
But... but I prayed the following morning. I told him that I was still alive, personally.
And holy shit, Kelemvor? *Kelemvor* assumed he were dead. Are this GM's gods all monumentally stupid?

GM strips a player of basically their character's entire class, for reasons that aren't the player's fault *and* aren't a valid reason to lose paladin abilities. DURING AN ACT OF HEROISM!
Nope. That's where you start a fight and demand to know the *real* reason you've been crippled.
Then you either have your paladin "leave the party, wandering, searching for answers" and roll a new character, or you leave the table entirely.


Honestly "You don't have to heal him yet, he'll live", "Okay I guess I should Healing Word or something", "The bard immediately lands a crit" was a chain of red flags. The GM was trying to instakill him and failed.


"You can multiclass into cleric but won't be able to undo it."
[Gains cleric level]
"By the way you get basically nothing."
The rest of the party: "Hey stop complaining you're still better than our fully-powered characters."
Yeah. Should've left the table.

GM: "By the way this climb down was designed to kill you."
I still have two spells to prevent that.
GM: (Oh. Shit. Better *make* *up* *some* *bullshit* to make him use up the other one).

And it just keeps getting worse. I can't even comment anymore.

Okay no, one more comment. Finally leaving, setting some boundaries, and setting a hard "No, I mean it, I'm gone, this is too much" was 100% the right move.

[YashesLP]

Mildly astonished how *no one* seems to have noticed this gem of a line: "I was isolated at university".
Now, OP didn't mention if the other players attended the same university but if they did they *knew* what was going on. If they knew they invited OP *solely* to continue tormenting them outside of university.
Even if they didn't know, if everyone laughs at "guess I gotta be a team player to this one guy" they know why they invited OP to join. They invited OP to have an easy victim, simple as that.

Not a single person was on OP's side in this. Not. A. One.
The cleric was a bint to OP almost as an appetizer to the horrible, the warlock told OP to stop complaining about being made the buttmonkey and arguably worst the Rogue and Barbarian tried to keep OP around *right* after OP said they feel like shit because of the game by telling them that they "like hanging out with OP".
No "what, why", no "but DM said they talked it out with you and you were ok with it" or "DM said the de-powering was your idea so we thought you were fine with how things were going", no "can we change anything".
Instead they went straight to emotional manipulation so the Barbarian offering to walk OP home just comes across as "hey, lemme gaslight you into not leaving".

Waste of carbon, the lot of them.

[thatguythere]

I find it ridiculous that the DM said that they couldn't change their fighting style, even through training, because it was outside the rules. THE ENTIRE REASON THEY ARE THIS WEAK IS BECAUSE THE DM BROKE THE RULES. The paladin didn't break their vow. The DM made up a reason that they would lose their power, so why not make up a way they can change their fighting style?

[Cynidecia]

Unless a paladin willingly breaks their Oath there is no reason to take away their powers.

[Johnny]

The ONE bit of gear the Paladin got was literally only useful in keeping the other characters able to do their stuff. The entire thing was calculated to push the player over the edge.

Glad he got a good group later, but sad he got strung along so long.

[darkestccino]

This story reminds me of one of the most brutal flavor texts I've seen in a video game.

"The king's eye returned from the west. 'Fertile pastures lay just beyond sight. Just a little farther, ' he said. It was always just a little farther."

In the DM's case, he told the player "The story will give you your full powers back, in just a little bit." It was always in "just a little bit".

[TheMightyBattleSquid]

OP, if you're reading this, you have NO REASON to feel bad about burning those bridges, you are totally justified in how you've felt. Like you said, if those people couldn't bother defending you before then and even made it worse then what worth was that bridge in the first place? The barbarian at best realized too late how they were acting was unacceptable (because these were months and months of game time and you saying something even out of game). At worst, they're just trying to fool you again into thinking they're being reasonable to give them another undeserved chance. I hope you feel better and I hope you find only groups that treat you right from now on.

[Neddyhk]

Yeah, I had a group like this: The DM needs to do something *with* you, not just *to* you. I basically cheated by awarding myself gear appropriate for my level, and swapping out class features that the DM arbitrarily declared no longer worked. When the DM called me on it, I just looked him in the eyes and said "If you don't let me use the mount, or get gear, I'm just going to give it to myself." For some reason, a lot of DMs just have a hate-on for paladins. I've never understood it.

[couver]

I hate gaslighting with a burning passion. Especially if people try to make YOU out to be ungrateful. It's despicable and disgusting. I also can't stand people that drag you along for exuberant amounts of time with no sign that a resolution in underway. It's like if you don't have the money to pay something and you're told "you can work to pay it off!" but they refuse to let the debt be paid or give any signs of progress, working you to the bone like a slave and calling you ungrateful when you lash out. That's beyond unacceptable. Good on OP for getting out.

[Raganui]

Yea, no, this was terrible. This felt like the DM had a hate-boner for Paladins and took it out on some newbie. And the other players weren't helping. Then again, based on the cleric's attitude during the Bard fight and other stuff later, they were all dicks anyways. Also the Barbarian could totally wear armor! He just wouldn't get to use his natural AC if he did. And Fighters get more than a Paladin that has lost everything!

[luise.londono]

I once was a LG Paladin in a chaotic evil party, but the "chaotic evil" part of the PCs were just childish things like stealing daggers or making mean jokes to npcs, so I didn't see any in character reason to "correct them". My Paladin goal was to retrieve some kind of magical object (a sphere of evil or something like that) in order to prevent a full-scale demon invasion of the material plane, the rest of the party wanted the same artifact, for unspecified "evil" reasons. I played along with the party, as long as they didnt make genuine awfull stuff, i was more than happy to collaborate with them. One day we entered a city, i cant rememeber why, but one of the PCs got badly wounded, we didnt have means of healing so i sold my scimitar for 2 healing potions, in order to save the PC, the Gm looked at me and hand me the stats for the Anti-Paladin "i can make you an antipaladin, i even have a backstory for him if you want to" i ask ¿why would i want to be an antipaladin? he replies "because you are helping a chaotic evil charcater" The session goes on, eventually the same PC gets himself in trouble again (if I remember correctly the PC attempt to steal back the same symithat I sold to heal him) and an angry mob was chasing him to stone him alive, I intervene and manage to find him before the mob did, so he was saved for the day. After that, my GM says "the next morning, you didn't feel the divine aura that normally surrounds you, you have lost your Paladin powers" I ask ¿why? He replies "you helped again a chaotic evil character" the Gm spected of me nothing less than killing the pc for being chaotic evil, despite them not making any especial evil deed. I didn't come back to that Gm table.

[isaiahlozano]

honestly, I'm surprised after everything this OP went through, his oath didn't respark a new kind of Vengeance on those who mistreated him throughout this entire campaign (this is truly ironic).

[byronsmothers]

"You're basically a fighter now"
With everything OP is lacking from daily benefits, and mid-late class features, they're closer in comparison to the warrior sidekick, a class intended for intro campaigns or supplemental gmpcs, and that still has more benefits and abilities than what OP was given!

[TalkativeHands]

Holy hell, what the hell is wrong with that party?
OP had way too much patience for that BS. Six levels of nothing?

[shadowhog]

I'm SO glad OP bailed before the end. You just know that toxic group was taking him for a ride.