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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/LucyAriaRose on 2025-10-25 04:01:00+00:00.
I am NOT the Original Poster. That is Ecstatic-Guard-1154. He posted in r/AmItheAsshole
Do NOT comment on Original Posts. Latest update is 7 days old.
Trigger Warning: bullying
Mood Spoiler: frustrating
Editor’s mood spoiler: as a D&D player, this pissed me the hell off
Editor’s note: D&D is Dungeons and Dragons. Some paragraph breaks added for readability.
Original Post: October 17, 2025
Using a throwaway account because my campaign mates know my main account.
So I’ve been playing D&D for about 2 years and have had a long string of player characters that have died during the campaign. I think the count is at 6 or 7. I genuinely try not to just put my character in dangerous situations, but I often feel like the rolls just don’t go my way. First one was a barbarian and I was going reckless for every attack and then the bad guy got some good rolls and just crit me a few times in a row. Then they finished me off during death saves. Then another one I decided to try being a bard, got silenced and immobilised. Then some generic low-level guys just came and beat me up and I was not able to fight back at all. (This one was actually a little funny at how useless I was)
In any case, I know I’m not very good and will often try to strategise and my group mates always seem to be on board and then the plans just don’t pan out at all. I play for fun and don’t particularly mind being bad, but my friends have been getting progressively more upset at me and even saying things like I’m an asshole for always dying and wasting their time. I will genuinely never try to go recklessly into a situation but it feels like no matter what I do, all the aggression gets focused on me and then I get overwhelmed. I have started asking them if I should just leave the group and let them do their thing. This would be sad for me, because this was a group of close friends and I thought we were having a good time. It’s only been in the last 3-4 months that they’ve started becoming more angry towards me and i genuinely don’t know why. In any case, all input would be appreciated and there may be a perspective I’m not considering, but am I the asshole for being bad at D&D?
Some of OOP’s Comments:
Commenter: INFO: How old are you and the other people involved (including the DM)?
OOP: Apologies, new to posting on Reddit. I am a 28 M and my friends are 25M, 31 M, 27 F, 33F. The DM is 32F and she says she is trying to stay out of it
Commenter: INFO: Have you talked to your DM specifically about why your characters die so frequently?
It’s really common for players to have a few PCs that die. It happens. Heck, there are even campaigns where the DM will tell players up front to make additional characters because the chance of PC death is so high. But 6-7 PC deaths is A LOT, especially if other PCs are not dying.
[…] Also, have you tried playing single-player D&D influenced games like Baldur’s Gate 3? While it’s not a complete match up, playing BG3 helped me understand battle mechanics and character builds much better. […]
OOP: I have tried to get some advice from my DM and her response is usually like “get good?”
I do feel like the odd man out because no one else has died more than once. I think the first 2 were my fault because I rushed in but I can definitely understand why that would be frustrating for everyone else. At the time I just thought that was my role as the tank. After that I tried focusing on only support characters (my bard character was in the back for most of the fights and focuses on buffing everyone). My friends used to laugh with me but then it felt like there was all this resentment towards me. They think I’m trying to “make it all about me” because every new PC needs a proper intro. Personally, I would love to have a backstory play out over time and it just never pans out.
I have played BG3 and I beat the game on tactician but definitely not honour mode. I just figured the tabletop version had nuances the video game doesn’t.
Commenter: NTA - D&D is about having fun with friends. At no point has any group that I have been a part of has ever been upset that someone’s character died.
There are only 3 explanations I can see for this:
- Your friends are jerks.
- There is something left out of the story above. You are taking forever to make decisions or you require 100% of the DMs time while you make a new character which stops the game or some other social thing that is causing the game to be un-fun for the group.
- This is fake/AI.
OOP: They never used to get upset and it felt like the last 3-4 months was complete about face. I try to be quicker with decision-making but these days I get more anxiety with each of my turns because I don’t want to be wrong.
My friends have all been playing for 10+ years and I was a new addition. I apologise, I should’ve mentioned that above but was having a hard time being succinct
Top Commenter: NTA this sounds like a DM issue as much as anything else. A dm shouldn’t be killing off players so easily. My DM, even when things get dicy there are always ways to get out of it, that’s what makes a good DM.
Also, your teammates should have been trying to help you. It’s a team game.
OOP: There have been a number of times where I felt like I could’ve done with healing or protection when someone else got this instead. But I really don’t want to just be this source of negativity when playing a game for fun, so I let it go.
Talking to the dm:
I haven’t spoken to her about her potentially doing more to help me out, but I have asked about what I could be doing to improve. Especially after the others started telling me how annoying I am to play with. I did ask if I should let them just play without me but then they tell me I’m being an asshole for trying to make them feel bad. I have tried to approach it really calmly and with understanding that it can be frustrating to play with someone who isn’t “on their level” as they’ve put it
OOP is voted NTA
Update (Same Post): October 18, 2025
EDIT/UPDATE: thank you everyone for your insights and support. I decided a few hours ago to reach out to the DM and just let her know I’m going to find a new group or just separate myself from this one.
After a long conversation it came out that actually this group was in fact doing this on purpose and the DM was in on it. She ultimately told me because she says she felt guilty that it went so far, but this explains her lack of insight or help I guess.
Apparently, this group had trouble getting through fights/encounters and the DM got frustrated that this was interfering with her storytelling. Then when I came around they found that having all the enemy attention on the new guy allowed the “real players” to explore their stories and encounters without having to retreat all the time.
Honestly it seemed like some convoluted logic to me and I’m assuming they started expressing this anger towards me as a way of keeping me useless via insecurity of my experience and decisions. This inevitably made me feel like it was my fault and then when my own decisions stopped killing me, they would just allow my character to gradually die off by not equitably distributing help.
In any case, I’m definitely out of this group and they definitely are not my friends. This has made me really confused because I just don’t really understand why they had to go about this in such a hurtful way. But I appreciate everyone for helping me get the courage to talk to them and push hard enough to actually get some truth.