I made a ruling that made one of players drop immediately. (We play online, so walking away from the table means dropping from the game).
It was a tough fight and the players’ ambush didn’t work out as well as they’d hoped. Anyway, one round, the party Bard decides to cast one of his high level spells at the enemy adjacent to him. Now, that enemy happened to have the Mage Slayer feat, so I ruled that he got to take an attack on the Bard as a reaction.
“20”. (crap). Critical. In hindsight, I should have lied and said it was a miss - I knew the player was already getting frustrated. But I didn’t think clearly or quickly enough. I roll damage and the Bard goes down. (We use Fantasy Grounds, so a lot of this is automated, or I would have reduced the damage to keep the Bard above 1 hp).
Anyway, the already frustrated player immediately logs off without a word. Granted, he’s a bit like that sometimes, and had been going through a lot of stressful and difficult things in real life. I immediately regretted it and wished I’d thought to say the attack was a miss.
It was even worse in hindsight, when I realized I misruled on Mage Slayer. The attack happens after the triggering spell. So the Bard’s spell would have gone off and dropped the foe before the foe was able to react and counterattack.
It was 4–5 months before the player came back to the game.
It was a tough fight and the players’ ambush didn’t work out as well as they’d hoped. Anyway, one round, the party Bard decides to cast one of his high level spells at the enemy adjacent to him. Now, that enemy happened to have the Mage Slayer feat, so I ruled that he got to take an attack on the Bard as a reaction.
“20”. (crap). Critical. In hindsight, I should have lied and said it was a miss - I knew the player was already getting frustrated. But I didn’t think clearly or quickly enough. I roll damage and the Bard goes down. (We use Fantasy Grounds, so a lot of this is automated, or I would have reduced the damage to keep the Bard above 1 hp).
Anyway, the already frustrated player immediately logs off without a word. Granted, he’s a bit like that sometimes, and had been going through a lot of stressful and difficult things in real life. I immediately regretted it and wished I’d thought to say the attack was a miss.
It was even worse in hindsight, when I realized I misruled on Mage Slayer. The attack happens after the triggering spell. So the Bard’s spell would have gone off and dropped the foe before the foe was able to react and counterattack.
It was 4–5 months before the player came back to the game.
