DM's, What have you banned or restricted and felt completely justified in doing so? #1 

My favorite character was evil, necromancer that believed in, what was effectifly post mortem community service. Because "Killing a bandit doesn't unburnt the town they destroyed, they deserve rest once they pay for their crime." Absolutely obsessed with burial rights and making sure the dead are put to rest outside of that though.

The way ripper says “simulacrums” makes me scream inside. Edit: woah that is a lot of likes, thanks a lot

On the subject of evil characters: I was talking to a friend of mine (a DM) about a character concept I had. He's a Tiefling cleric with a terminal illness that desperately want to extend his life by any means. The consequence of this is that he will end up being the party's healer and given his motivation isn't murderous. However, he is not above experimenting on the dead and dying hence a somewhat evil character.

A few notes on the “evil characters” discussion: Evil characters can be so much fun. The murder hobo archetype has really ruined the alignment, and doesn’t do it justice. Evil characters don’t have to be constrained to “steal steal stab stab”. Lawful evil characters can want the same things as a lawful good character, but with no qualms on how those goals are achieved. Quote Peacemaker; “I love peace, and I don’t care how many men, women and children I have to kill to get it.” Neutral evil characters (obviously) fall between chaotic and lawful, half way between being purely self-concerned and wishing to impose their ideas on others. Perhaps they’ve decided to go adventuring solely for the wealth and fame that’s promised. Chaotic evil can be the hardest to get right. People often interpret the alignment similar to the Joker; someone who steals and murders regularly without any qualms. However, I find this to be an edgy and quite boring interpretation. Think of the chaotic aspect as you would for a chaotic neutral character. They’re concerned only for their well being. However, while a chaotic neutral character may operate on the idea of “everyone do what they want, I don’t care”, a chaotic evil character would think more along the lines of “might makes right”. Chaotic neutral characters are just that - neutral. They’ll stay out of conflict that doesn’t concern them, and any harm that comes of it wasn’t out of malice. Chaotic evil characters know what they want and will step over anyone to get it. Now, the most important part of play an evil character is making a _smart_ character. Will killing the shopkeep really be beneficial? Could you really take on all 30 town guards at once? People often forget that being selfish entails having a lot of care for your own well-being. Now, be smart, have fun, and be evil!

The concept of a suddenly evil metallic dragon is so fascinating, given the nature of alignment in dragons is squarely divided straight down the Metallic-Chromatic divide due to their respective divine compelling their alignments to good and evil. It's like... if suddenly, in a crowd of humans, one person like three rows back suddenly began falling UP. the amount of sheer terror that would inspire in the rest would be AMAZING.

Me (the DM): I'm nerfing goodberry. Druid: "What? Oh, I guess that's fair, considering how I burn all my slots on it every rest." Me: "The spell now needs to consume one fruit, nut, or berry and produces clones of that item." The party: *FORAGE CHECK*

After a guy who used to be part of my group spent roughly half his starting gold in a 10th-level one-off on sheep, my group has had a standing ban on owning livestock.

Once had an paladin in a game who was evil because of his beliefs telling him mixing races was bad and technology was bad. Never hurt my character an artificer homebrew race. But always made it clear that he disliked her. That was until she sacrificed herself to save the party. He broke his oath when his god refused to let him bring her back. Coming to the conclusion that she saved him despite him being a jerk by switching his faulty teleport pack with her working one. And that nobody evil would have done that. So he became good in the epilogue.

I actually had an evil character that was implemented pretty well. It was a different setting (Modern world but with magic, mystery, and time collapsing so that different eras are colliding together). We had a party of three and my friends were playing as classical elf archer and a huge beast-hybrid who could create real items from drawings and they both were chaotic-good. Meanwhile, my character was a lawful-evil dark slime controlling a plague doctor costume. They had some special abilities such as taking a "mind" of any shape they take: if they wear a doctor's costume - they want to heal and research, if they wear armour - they want to fight, and if they happen to get a shape of, I dunno, a potato, they would behave like a potato. But when this thing loses any shape... it becomes a huge abomination of dark slime and teeth that mindlessly attacks and devours everyone around without discriminating, so one of the huge parts of the gameplay was to keep my costume safe to protect the allies. They also were insanely vulnerable to any light and fire and had the ability to learn the abilities of any dead creatures by dissecting their corpses to tiny bits and researching them deep to the cell level. As a result, they had a very simple goal: to grasp the ultimate knowledge of living nature... and they needed tons and tons of corpses for it. And yet, I balanced the creature in such a way so that it simply couldn't be a murder hobo or a betrayer by making it incredibly weak physically when having a form. Since it was a bunch of slime operating a humanoid costume, it didn't have any bones or serious force to move so basically even a child could push them away and one flaming spark could annihilate them in seconds. As a result, they really needed their comrades as they couldn't survive without them. And of course, a creature actively seeking the death of others and not understanding human morals caused some serious problems with authorities so they needed help with it, too.

I'm a player, though I think everyone at the table agreed to the rule the DM made: DO NOT RIP OFF GENITALIA AND THEN PROCEED TO EAT IT No, I shall not elaborate.

i think it's important to know that the evil alignment can simply mean someone is selfish, or uncaring, not that they're genuinely a terrible person or are MANIACALLY evil. i played in a campaign with an evil-aligned character who basically just didn't care about anyone but himself and his boyfriend who lived in the forest (log cabin, wilderness-y guy). he wanted to adventure primarily because he was bored, and ended up being sucked into our group's conspiracy to overthrow the tyrannical government (the player joined the group part-way through the campaign). a particularly impactful scene was when a village just outside the woods where the character's lover lived had been set on fire. this character tries to run away from the scene to go find and check on his lover, but my character stopped him and I had possibly my greatest improvised speech ever. summarized: "so what, you only help people close to you, and everyone else can burn? I wonder what your friend in the woods would say if he saw you right now? you're pathetic." the character silently turned around and came with us to help carry people out of the burning buildings, and over time began to change his ways, eventually becoming a great friend to the party and changing his alignment to good. personally i think it's a great way to write a character: evil-aligned person who either wants to redeem themselves or becomes willing to do so over time.

Regarding player characters fighting other PCs, I am in a game where one player got stuck with an ancestor ghost-thing that routinely tries to possess him. This made for some great and tense RP early on, but it wore the player down because they were unsure if the ancestor ghost would make another attempt again. So the DM worked out with the player how to send the character off on a high note: he got possessed one last time, and the BBGG (Big Badass Good Guy) that brought the party together and only rarely shows up when absolutely needed literally sent the possessed PC to the shadow realm, and that was that for the character… for now. He was a character that had a good heart and nature, but kept messing up or getting into awful situations because of that ancestor ghost, so narratively there’s still the slimmest chance at redemption for the poor guy with all the shite he’s had to endure, while not subjecting the party to constant possession attempts. The player is happier now and is gonna bring a new character to the table, one not constantly consumed by angst and possession attempts.

Sex stuff in an RPG is only okay if EVERYONE at the table is into it, and generally, it's best if the game is upfront about that from the start. I actually got in trouble with a player because I was going to have a bait and switch. (Looks like sex, turns out to be a spy who is going to brief him) And the guy wanted to fade to black a BIT too soon.

I played an evil character once. He was fun. The trick is to, as you said in the vid, have the same goal as the party for selfish reasons. My evil character was a goblin who, due to events that transpired in a previous game with another of my characters, was forced to have to EARN his shinies. He was cursed to never be able to steal and so the only way he could get his hands on shinies was to help humans somehow and hope they would pay him. The thing is that he didn't care who he was helping, why he was helping them or what he was doing to help them. So he found a party of adventurers and since he was a rogue, he was helping them by doing "The Poke-Poke". He didn't care to remember anyone's names that he traveled with. He didn't care what the party was doing. He would just get excited when people would raise their voices because as long as he helped the party fight whoever was mad at them and they shared their gold with him, he was earning his shinies just as the curse made him.

I remember when going through a shop, and before buying anything my DM explained he banned buying a bunch of candles at once because a previous player a long time ago found a way to exploit candles to god hood levels of over powered. I tried to ask what it was but told me: "NO! I don't want you to destroy some other DM's game!" Considering the other stuff we did and how he's only shown mild disappointment but lets keep going with it, him being that serious about not buying a bunch of candles meant something. So to this day, I know that candles are super cheap and in large quantities can be overpowered, but I have no idea how.

I absolutely love playing evil characters that make their evil very subtle and hidden from the party I'm not disrupting the party, no, it just happens that our goals align in a strange way and many of the characters in the party don't mind messing around with evil things The dynamic just works I can't wait to see how they'll react once it's finally revealed Here's hoping I don't get caught before the grand reveal

On playing the same character multiple times: I've played the same character in three different campaigns: a drunken master monk who pretends to be a lush but actually is a spy (after all, who pays attention to the drunken fool in the corner?). The thing is, all three of those attempts the campaign ended (or I left the campaign) by level 3. He ended up a little different in each try mostly due to the interactions between the characters and the players but background/stats he was completely the same. I thought the idea was so interesting that I just wanted to keep trying to see where he would go. On evil characters: I saw a 'how to understand alignment' video somewhere that basically defined evil as 'enjoys the suffering of others' and that's stuck with me as my guide post for what to declare as 'evil'. On the other hand, if you have mature players you know well and are willing to make characters who have a reason to work with the party and not just be an ass, it can be quite the interesting time. There's a while Pathfinder Adventure Path that's centered around an evil party. Really want to play that with a good group of players one day.

Simulacrum is pronounced "Sim--you-lack-rum"

I had an evil character who's main motivation was acquiring power over others. Halfway through the campaign i had to retire that character. The Dm allowed them to set up shop as a tavern keeper who secretly at first, ran an information hub. Later we were playing in the same setting with new characters and my old character was one of the "optional benefactor NPCs" It was a cool call back.

As a GM for Warhammer fantasy and Warhammer 40k rogue trader campaigns it's hard to exclude certain grim dark elements. Especially when you start involving chaos forces like Slaanesh that have very torturous and overtly creepy and sexual overtone.

A great way to see how evil good and even neutral characters can work together really well in a party together is watching the Oxventure D&D campaign from the insane folks at outside xbox youtube channel, Their evil warlock is one of my favorite characters.

Hulk Hogan voice brings me some nostalgia in the form of my most memorable 5e character: Briken Bloodmist. Briken was a massive tiefling barbarian in a nice suit that fought using unarmed combat 99% of the time, and flavor-wise I decided that he's a demon that works for contract when he's not tending to his flower garden in hell. First session, first roll of the game he nat 20'd an unarmed attack roll to pimp slap two zombies out the window of a run-down mansion.

It is odd to me that so many DMs are against sex in dnd. Maybe it's because the only tables I've ever played at are me and my friends, who all know each others boundaries pretty well; I can certainly imagine it being weird with strangers I guess

My GM was sick of a player who had a history of seducing problems away, and she would be playing a bard in the new campaign. As a response, prior to session 1, the GM wrote an entire flowchart for how to calculate the DC of the Diplomacy check (Pathfinder), including sexuality, marital status, and ultimately leading to a percentile die roll. The player dropped out of the campaign early on, so we never got to use it, but it was an impressive level of effort.

The way this guy talks to us is pure serotonin I kid you not. Much love to y'all, I hope your week is fantastic

I just finished a homebrew campaign, with 3 PCs and me DMing. One of my players was WAY more experienced than the others, and knew how to build a ridiculously powerful character (at one point in the campaign, he beat a Balor in what was basically a 1v1 fight). He was a blade-singer wizard with a few levels in cleric. I ended up restricting which cleric spells he could learn. As I said to him: "I don't care that you're insanely powerful...I care that you are so much more insanely powerful than everyone else." Fortunately, my group has nothing but mature, reasonable people in it, and the wizard completely understood. The other players thanked me for it.

My variant winged Teifling, who is a wizard, got balanced by situations where having wings weren’t always the best solutions. Such as the earth crumbling down into the cavern of a sunken city in the middle of a salten desert. I could only help lighter party members, which is pretty much me.

At the start of a campaign one of my players casually mentioned that the weight of candles in DnD are not mentioned anywhere, so they started scheming with the idea of carrying thousands of candles and use them for all sorts of shenanigans. I quickly banned carrying more than 10 at a time. I normally don't care too much about carrying weight, but some of their ideas were too far-fetched.

As a DM, I will never have more than five people at my table at a time

My favorite evil character that started off neutral is raistlin from the Dragonlance novels. That's a perfect character who didn't intend to be evil at first but slowly converted.

Kind of related, I played an LE (originally CG) Fighter/Cleric in Adventurers League, he is lvl 20 and basically completely endgame with legendary gear, his own ship and exotic mounts. He was always gruff but tried to help whom ever was in need, regardless of danger (city watch background) in his CG days, before he was transformed into a yuan-ti and turned LE. I played it so he didn't care anymore for random people and the only thing that mattered to him was his mission/goal without regard for consequences (insanity acquired through the ritual) and the party, since they were his best bet to further increase his power and wealth. The party likes him and he even regularly explicitly protected the female warlock in the party because they became friends before. In short, evil does not mean be an a**hole murderhobo and can be played well :).

I had an NPC named "Brother Rocky" that was basically a combination of several wrestlers. He had Brock Lesnar's body with Randy Savage's head, wore a fancy robe like Ric Flair with a big gold-plated belt around his waist, and he talked like Hulk Hogan. He was a cleric that used wrestling moves when casting touch-range spells, so when he casts Cure Wounds its a Flair-style body chop or a big slap across the face like The Rock's "smackdown" finisher, Inflict Wounds is a submission hold of some kind, etc. The players loved him and were sad when they had to leave the town he was in because they wouldn't get to visit him anymore.

Talking about evil characters, I had one once. Cleric of some evil deity with war, blood, and deception domains. He was more a trickster type, very charismatic and presented himself as a well-to-do servant of a more acceptable god, ehile behind closed doors he regularly took time to note down guard routes and structural weaknesses in buildings in the event his church was sent to destroy the place he was spying on. Then, after joining the party tasked with delivering a set of daggers to a king, they basically got time warped backward a few hundred years because plot and were captured in these cages without their weapons. Naturally, since his focus is kept hidden, he still had it, and helped the mostly good party escape because he stood no chance alone trying to escape. It all culminated in them being stopped by the chief of these furry goblinoid things and finding out they worshipped the same god as he. Taking the opportunity, he turned coat and sided up to the Chief- only to grab him from being with a flatfooted Inflict Wounds for massive damage, that ended up instantly killing the chief. He knew these pathetic creatures were just that, pathetic- and that he needed to stick with the party for now until they could sort things out. So he told the goblin things to retrieve the party's gear lest they be judged 'unworthy' in their god's eyes, got their things back, and left the clan with instructions on how to properly worship their god before leaving. After all, he was no leader, he was a tool, a knife to be stuck into one important piece in the wheel of society to bring it crashing down. He was fun. Cruel but pleasant towards the party. Took healing spells to sell his whole 'holy priest' image, kept the party going, and was an amazing face. Never actually betrayed the party, either- every time he did it, which was rare, he never hurt the party and usually used it to do something he couldn't with them by their side, before going back for them.

My party has a kentaur fighter with polearm master + sentinel feat and a gnome artificer with a magical shield. During battle, the gnome almost always rides on the kentaur's back. Last time they levelled up, the group asked if the gnome could take the mounted combatant feat, which has the following benefits: •You have advantage on melee attack rolls against unmounted creatures that are smaller than your mount. • You can force an attack targeted at your mount to target you instead. • If your mount is subjected to an effect that allows it to make a Dexterity save to take only half damage, it takes no damage if it succeeds and half damage if it fails. I thought about it but said no because it felt exploitative to me, and this murderous duo is already incredibly dangerous in combat.

I ban 1 subclass when I dm. Twilight domain cleric. No need for justification. No need for regrets.

The "no evil characters" reminded me of the first campaign I played. Was with my friend group, and the dm had apparently played in college and wanted us to give it a shot. We all agreed to do an evil campaign, since the dm suggested it. Didn't really think about it at the time, but the fact that one of the players chose a lawful good paladin and the dm didn't stop that should have been a sign things were going to be a bit off the rails. Long story short, my second character (first one died 5 minutes into my second session) ended up being the only one to follow any kind of "evil" story, and after months of playing my character stayed with the intended story while the rest of the group split to join following the paladins God. One massive pvp fight later, with an npc on my side because they were part of this moment when we were supposed to follow the evil God's patron and the rest just noted out, and I'm making a new character again and we're off on whatever the dm could throw together for the derailed campaign. 2 or 3 sessions later the campaign ended with a total party wipe

Just found this page about a day ago and love the content, and tbh its given me some great, fun (albeit devious) ideas abt what to do with DMing, but HOW to DM as well (brand new and literally just DMing for my kids). I especially love and appreciate the positive messages at the end though. It's always good to see putting positivity into the world.

Simulacrum = sim-you-laa-crumb

This was a good video mentioning several points i have to rethink for my game too. Also listening to you trying to read the word simulacrum made me giggle every time because you didn't get it right once. Reminds me of Toni from T&RP podcast and "ambulance"

Love you man, and everyone in the MrRipper community. Please be safe, take care

there is a 3rd party class called Mysterial, that when RAW, gives you access to all fey feats regardless of race, as well as all fey spells and 6 bonus attribute points every level. while I don't ban it from every game, as I tend to run very high-powered games, I ban it from more than one, and I have zero issue doing so.

I'm playing a lawful evil character and my dm loves it lol He often is the only reasoning character to not commit horrible crimes lol

One of my favorite interpretations of what an Evil PC in D&D could and should be is Haytham Kenway from Assassin's Creed III. You start the game introduced to this character, going about the usual Assassin business, and nothing is out of the ordinary from what you know of the "Good" faction. Sure, he kills people, but that's his job. It's only until after getting to know a bit about this character, with hints of his motivations along the way, that you find out he works for the other side. From then on, you play as his estranged son, and Haytham later rejoins the game as the main antagonist to the overall story, leader of the faction that his son opposes. At times they are driven to working together for common goals, but their ideals still clash, and they squabble about their personal ideological differences. It really shows that a character can be "Evil" while still being level-headed, cunning, and just. Good vs Evil is not Justice vs Bloodlust. Lawful vs Chaotic is not Written Law vs Destroy the World and Neutral is not I Do Whatever I Want

The "Lucky" feat. Too good. So good, you'd be nuts to not take it.

My original DM - Vet - had a rule - no 3rd-party or homebrewed races or subclasses, as he didn't want to deal with any over-powered issues. Only issue I had with this rule was that he only had the Core Rule Books - PHB, MM, DMG - and few had anything else. Then came the Celestial Incident, which you (Mr. Ripper) were nice enough to show, wherein I brought in XGtE, because, he also had, as a rule, bring in an official book, and he'd allow it. My current DM - Horse Trainer - currently has a "No" stance on Flying Races, but I think I could help get this allowed with saying that Flight comes at say Level 3. He also had an issue about Custom Origin's swapping of Stats and such around, as he felt that it could make a Min-Maxed character, to say nothing about some hesitancy with the new/revised races since Tasha's release, saying that it basically got rid of culture. Thankfully, he understands that it's a way in which a character could be made without making them weaker than normal characters in a class or having them pigeonholed into certain classes.

I think the best part of these videos is often the bits behind the curtain at the end of each one. They're always so incredibly sweet. I don't know how I missed this one until now, but the end this time made me tear up a little. Thank you for being so welcoming in your videos and community. I really needed that today.

My friend is currently running a kenku who’s had basically everything ripped from them and constantly getting rolled by life to the point of near emotional muteness.

Towards the end of the vid, your voice started morphing into swagger souls

One party I was in had an evil character. He was a necromancer, I don't remember the details of the his build, but as a CHA caster, he was able to keep the good party members convinced he wasn't doing any nefarious deeds, even after we straight up toppled the government structure in the area. Having players know what he was doing, but having to not meta-game it was a blast.

Had my player's Homebrew fire based barbarian worship Kossuth. None of the players questioned his obsession with fire and burning bodies, nor did they ever ask him about his warship. Why he was drinking dragon's blood even though it could kill him. They didn't even questioned his slow mutation to something more dragon then human, red mutations at that. Well once he drank the big bad Shadow dragon's blood, it was time to cast himself into the forever burning pit of fire made from a magical nuke. It was made from the dwarfs, to seal a huge rat man hole. That was the last part of the ritual to help release a part of Kossuth into him self, becoming a red greatworm dragon. So they get a new party member, and a new BBG.

I banned Chaotic Neutral characters in my good campaign's. The main reason being that they were often either unproductive or just playing Evil but claiming it was to bring the party closer to Neutral.

I played a Tefling draconic sorcerer. We were playing a homebrew campaign and were having a lot of fun. We had a paladin, rouge, ranger, and a monk with me in the party. My character started reading about undead powers from a book he found in a wizards keep. So he called apon The Great Pazuz to trade his draconic ancestry and make him a wizard school of necromancy. His wish was granted. Now the group was mostly lawful good. So raising undead was definitely looked down on. But that didn't stop my guy from making Hickory, Dikory, and Doc whenever he could. His three gouls with the create undead spell. This party also did not get along at all. We would often infight with each other even while in combat. It was all in game. We all were friends and loved the fact none of us could stand the others. But we all needed each other to survive till the end. At the end of the campaign we found out my character was a son of Orcus God of undead and my father wanted me to join him by his side. So I betrayed the party and made it my mission to kill our party's paladin and make him my undead captain of my hord. Was going to cast finger of death on him. It was fun playing an evil character among good.

I wanted to play a NE Deathmaster/Palemaster for a long time. The backstory was that it was a human that had 2 older sisters that were vampires. The PC would capture/charm/purchase (whatever fit the campaign best) people and send them to their sisters as food/thralls. Basically getting groceries for their family. Instead of becoming a vampire though, they were aiming higher and wanted to be a lich. They would use spells to disguise their undead minions though so they werent discovered as easily. Depending on how the story went, they might be the 'runt' of the family and wants to prove they are better, by becoming more powerful than their family, or they could just be doing it as way to elevate their family in society.

I've lost track of the youtube channel, but one of the really good D&D channels recommended Jayne Cobb from Firefly as an excellent example of an interesting evil character. He usually bans evil PCs in his campaign because he's just sick of the crap. But if a player came to him and said "I want to play a character that's like Jayne Cobb" he would be all for it. This is the channel that has regular skits where he plays every person at the table, and he's both hilarious and informative. If anyone here knows the channel, please help me find it again!

Was playing in a campaign that was getting fairly high level when my female blade bard (2nd Ed bard handbook kit) died while the party was in the underdark. I had a chaotic neutral with evil tendencies 1/2 drow fighter thief from previous campaign run by the DM who was about the same levels as the party and so was allowed to bring him in. He came in an hour or so after the bard’s demise; about 3 days game time. He was trying to get out of the underdark as well so they teamed up and eventually got out and by that time he had become invested in the ending of the BBEG as well. He was to become a helpful NPC with contacts, but the bard failed the resurrection check. He never betrayed the party but he definitely did some evil crap behind their backs. Best example is that he followed and eliminated the bards two followers for equipment, money, and prevent them from being used against the party. So yes I think evil can be used in a campaign but have to be played right.

This was an Evil GM Moment for me and I loved it: The players had just finished clearing out a bandit hideout in the sewers of a town. While investigating the crates and barrels, I described the Goliath Barbarian as finding "a small leather pouch, with a golden clasp emblazoned with a star snapped shut. The pouch feels as if there are contents, and is about the size of a deck of Tarot Cards." The players immediately started freaking out. For obvious reasons. But, no, I am not about to give a party of seven LEVEL TWO PLAYERS the Deck of Kany Things.

I think you get one "it's almost like we never lost landfill" per session

"safety tools", as a DM, I've found they tend to limit communication rather than aid in it. lose expectations are set in the first session and campaign announcement with the understanding that players should be comfortable enough to call a time out and speak up if the scenario or another's actions are making them uncomfortable. The vast majority of the time however they can do something in character to pull it back. By gamifying or making a worksheet of it, it paradoxically tends to exacerbate the problem leading to players dwelling on it rather than moving on similar to what happens when you become aware of your breathing and blinking.

I had an anti-hero Lawful Evil Renegade Fighter once. She never turned on the party, and always fought on their side, but the thing that made her Evil was her goal to exterminate Polythropes, Vampires, and Hags, and it was all because her father turned her into a Lycanthrope.

Hey, long time lurker first time commenter. I GM Pathfinder 1e for a bunch of friends (as well as a bunch of one page ttrpgs but that's a different story). Personally, the only thing I ban from my tables are characters playing witches and shamans. I've allowed basically everything else. Homebrew? sure, within reason. Massive wild multiclassing? bring it on. Custom magical weapons? if you can figure out the in game costs and acquire that money, have it. But witches and shamans have mechanics that take up too much time for me, personally, and i'm already bad at keeping track of things (I have like, 4 whiteboards and we play online).

I've got a good Evil Character for you: Timble, the Red Mantis. A halfling baby lost their parents to a goblin raid and was adopted in secret by one of the soldiers. He grew up in secret, but one day the chief discovered him. The clan rallied against them and executed his adoptive parents too. In a rage, he cried out for vengeance and two curved blades shot out from the spilt blood. He passed out and awoke the next day to see the whole clan was dead by his hands. He followed a new instinct inside him and arrived at the Cult of the Mantis Queen, the assassin's guild for this world. There he made a new family, and he would do ANYTHING for them. I felt like Timble was a good example of an evil character because he was lawful evil. He would taunt other party members by hinting that their "righeous orders" had used the Mantis Assassins before, but he never looked down on them. He was ordered by his Queen to aid the party in aquiring a cursed sword to stop a demonic invasion. The first thing he did was swear to never harm another party member. When the paladin became corrupted by the cursed sword and attacked Timble for being 1/64th demon, that meant he could not attack back, only run away.

i soft-banned the warlock class and turned it into a prestige system to award characters for completing difficult social encounters against powerful creatures, or otherwise negotiating pacts of otherworldly power. because the class itself already stands apart from literally every other class in the game due to pact magic, a diverse array of patrons for almost any possible alignment, and build-a-class invocations, it can slot really nicely on top of basically any class, including martials. to further separate it from the "core" classes, you can't gain levels in the class through experience or milestone, only by completing specific quests assigned to you by your patron. you also don't gain any hit points, feats, or ASIs from leveling in the class, keeping you otherwise on par with the rest of the party (who has to deal with a level cap of 10). it really is just the boons granted to you by your patron, nothing else. you can also, of course, have those boons revoked should you at any point cross your patron (how much you lose depends on how merciful they are and how severe your betrayal)

PANR has tuned in.

No secret relatives after our poor fighter somehow found himself related to his love interest, the ranger and the warlock, and paladin.

How to keep your party on track? The DM gets a one per session to roll a unexpected event to guide the party back on Track Ex: A Nat 20 the DM can say the party suddenly got a tingle in their brain marrow that THIS is not what they where supposed to do and head to the nearest location to continue the original quest. A Nat 1. A Duck is trying to pass the party but get yeeted by (insert Player) because it was in their way. But every time this player yeeted a duck, two more would show up. (It’s up to the DM on how far they will go with this, )

On the subject of evil player at one point our gm tried to turn sides and make a big reveal and the group just kinda said no. The person we were suppose to be rescuing had just died so our mission failed in a way. But there was still this large demonic force to fight who used to be possessing our ally to get to said character. Instead of avenging that guy we all agreed it would be better to change our alignments (which was true neutral to neutral evil). We had some of the best convincing rolls of our game and suddenly we were gonna be fighting the main boss with an eldrich entity on our side

One DM banned me from being an arsonist. I would catch houses and inns on fire sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident by playing with fire in my room. The party members took a long time to figure it out in game bc they rolled bad at investigation and perception. The DM got frustrated at my characters secret obsession messing with the campaign. It wasn't untill I suggested using fire or burning structures with enemies too many times that the party out two and two together and turned me in for all my crimes after getting a confession. I was to be executed but the party members took into account all the good stuff I did in helping stop vampire infestation, rescued kidnapped folks ECT. I spent the rest of my life in prison but put to labor. I was banned from ever playing an arsonist again. I just enjoyed playing someone with a deep flaw.

One thing, Forbiddance. Curse that spell to the nine hells.

Polymorph into t-rex. Its just so devastatingly strong. I've had encounters just curb stomped by that thing. It makes other level 9 characters look like toddlers throwing a tantrum.

Going to try to summarize the first campaign I played in as a player. It became a rather large party as we had many people including myself want to play for the first time, we did have some more experienced PCs. Had a range of PCs created, half elf ranger, human paladin, halfling rouge, two elf druid twins (seemed to want to just collaborate on their chars), half elf druid and my trifling cleric. Backstory to the campaign was that the "good" races and "evil" races had completed a long standing war and were now at a time of peace but the evil ones didn't want to keep it that way. As Tieflings were phrased in this homebrew setting as evil, my character was a medic within the evil army, seeing his brothers in arms animated as undead he eventually left the army to start wandering around to find himself. This is what lead him to eventually become a cleric of a being that would help him combat the undead, the Raven Queen as God and became a grave cleric. My character made it a point to seek out and destroy anything that would defy the natural cycle of life and death, which the rest of the party was all for. This majorly derailed the intended campaign because the main forces we were supposed to face was Demons rather than Liches, DM just had to swap out some of the main baddies which wasn't anything to crazy. But after finding a hidden necromancer layer, that was only found after a handful of high rolls and nat 20s, it was cemented that we would seek out and destroy the Liches.

For wrath and glory we have barred using the psychic power 'grav warp'. There is only so many times you can describe the boss de jure splatting against the floor at terminal velocity before it gets boring.

I have some strict limits on PC/NPC relationships, because of what happened in a campaign I was playing in. Cool story concept, but it was purely online via discord and dnd beyond, with 7-8 players too many. DM was cool tho, just bit off a bit more than he could chew with this one. Other party member, who I'm gonna refer to as "Player", took things in a weird direction and way too far with an NPC (he's actually kinda like this irl too, and I no longer associate with said player). Player (human fighter) wanted to get some info out of one of the bar maids in a town we were at, and is rolling really well on persuasion and insight. So well in fact, he rolled a f*ing 20 to sleep with her. DM let it slide since he rolled that high, and the rest of us thought it was a one night stand, DM included. The next day, after the party had a shared dream, this f*ckers first priority is to go back and HIT ON THE BAR MAID, cuz I guess he wanted to take this "relationship" further (yeah, further than it needed to). DM is trying to tell player (rp'ing as the bar maid) that that's not gonna happen. Player keeps pushing. Eventually another party member gets sick of it, and in character, walks up tells and player to "stop being a horny d*ckbag and help us figure this sh*t out." Player takes this personally, even outside of the game (like, he was ACTUALLY offended) Fight ensues, and lasted for a SINGLE round as player rolls a nat 1 to hit, and proceeds to get hit with a nat 20 mage fist from the other party member, and sent flying into the nearest wall. I threatened to get my Blood hunter into the mix, and Player eventually dropped the whole thing and moved on. TL;DR : 1st campaign session almost got derailed because one player couldn't keep his blasted hormones in check, and I refuse to let that happen to my campaigns.

To the last story: Chaotic Evil character based off of Zaeed Massani from Mass Effect. All I have to say. An egoistic, "end justifies the means", vengence consumed mercenary with zero regard for collateral damage and innocent bystanders. Still a loyal asset to the party, but bad to the bone.

Character throwing up acid at the sight of the color red

My roommate/best friend has a chaotic evil warlock I’m letting her play in an upcoming campaign. Except, there are 2 things that make it a bit more complex than that. -He’s not really like, chaotic evil. He sure acts like he is, and he does have the criminal background, but it comes from covering up depression and nihilism. Basically his patron told him that the world he’s in isn’t “real” and that is was all fake. Fourth wall awareness, but from Nyarlathotep who wants you to feel bad. -He’s paired up with a lawful good paladin who is seeking to clear his name of murder (yeah he’s a thief and a mafia member, but he didn’t kill his lover). She’s also about the only thing he really cares about at all. So of course I’ll be exploiting that when the time comes. Also, I trust my friend to not make him a murder hobo. She’s not the type to find that fun or interesting and wouldn’t do that at my and the rest of the party’s expense.

Back when we were just starting to figure out how D&D worked, we all misunderstood that 3rd level spells could be acquired by reaching level 3 in a given class. My little brother played a real problem character who was a wizard and thought that fireball was the solution to everything. Shamelessly giving in to that dumb stereotype. Not only did he try to cast firebolt at an enemy while everyone was in a cloud of noxious gas (He thought that because it was just a fire BOLT and not as powerful as a fireball, that they would be fine. And I as the DM had to tell him that it was a stupid idea that would kill everyone.), cast fireball on the branch that the bard was hanging on to for his life over a ravine, causing him to fall only surviving because we misunderstood what blade ward was, and directly attack the cleric with magic missile because she shattered into pieces the flying sword that he wanted to keep but was trying to kill them, but he would NOT under any circumstances ever want to give up his 8d6 fire damage at level 3. None of us knew that our magic level and our class level were 2 different things, but I knew that this was super unfair. So I tried to tell him very nicely that I was nerfing the damage of fireball down to 3d6 for this campaign, but he would not relent. We agued all day out of game until our mom said that he would go by my rules as the dungeon master or she wouldn't let him play. (Which is what I would've done, but she has those mom powers, you know?) Even after we found out that we were in fact wrong about the leveling system, fireball continued to be a problem. One campaign ended in disaster after he decided to cast fireball on a devourer that was standing right next to the other wizard. I decided to teach him a lesson and give him the consequences for his actions. The devourer, the other wizard, and the other wizards snake familiar were all ingulfed in the flame, which he should have known would happen since the other wizard had just casted burning hands on the devourer, (You know, requiring him to be close enough to touch it.) but apparently he "wasn't paying attention" to his teammates turns. The snake died, the other wizard was knocked unconscious, eaten by the devourer, pulled out of the devourer's corpse after it was killed, and carried back to a hospital where he woke up to hear his pet was burned to a crisp. We decided to end the campaign afterwards. But he still didn't stop. Just 2 days ago, his character (Jeff Hoxton, another human wizard.) almost killed himself in the first session of our Curse of Strahd campaign. He was inside the room of a house while a shadow had wrapped itself around him. HE TRIED TO CAST FIREBALL ON THE SHADOW THAT WAS IN THE EXACT SPOT THAT HE WAS STANDING!!! I legitimately had to tell him that if he casted fireball, he would not only hit himself, but the house would burn and he would die in the rubble, but he didn't listen! He tried to cast fireball regardless of what I had just warned him. I had the ghost that he had interacted with a little earlier cast counterspell, telling him she doesn't want him to burn down her house. Throughout the time we have played D&D together, I've had to either nerf this spell, or hold his hand so that he doesn't kill himself and everyone around him.

Actually, I had a funny moment regarding torture. The party was going to crack a Simic scientist for information regarding their recent arrival to the Material Plane and the monster in the lake. But Coins, the Kenku got a low roll and I played it that he had forgot to wake him after he was KOd. So the party ended up using him as bait for the Cat 2 Krasis.

Being late without bringing proper snack offerings

Whenever I would ban or restrict something, it would have to be campaign specific.

3:37 That's such a great Rick impression!

I once played with a guy who would do a stupid in-game thing that got his character killed, then just... change the name on the character sheet and start again. No clue why the DM allowed this. No clue why it got under my skin. No clue why the player lost his temper at me the first time my character died and he tried to talk me into picking up the same habit. So yeah, that's the type of "re-do"s I don't allow at my table now that I DM. I also don't allow torture or SA in my games. It's amazing how offended some people get when you draw those boundaries and reactions like that is why I make a Session Zero mandatory. If a player is going to whine to me over how I was unfair and didn't let them "commit a r*pe" then they are not a player I want at my table. Yes, that conversation happened. No, I do not play with them anymore, thank f*ck. They are no longer in my life and I prefer to keep it that way.

Humans as PC's in my last campaign. You play a human irl all the time. So now is your chance to do something different.

PVP. The closest my party has ever come to any sort of PVP was they were sent to check in on an NPC who wound up being a PC (long story). They wanted to bring Macreadus to Copper so that they’d get paid for checking up on him and Macreadus refused to meet with Copper (backstory reasons). The wizard was about to cast Hold Person on him when he pulled out a letter and did some artificer tinkering to so Copper would know it was real and from him. And that’s the closest I’ll ever let it come unless it’s a whole big plot thing (I.e. 2 PC’s are heirs to a kingdom and they both know betrayal is on the table). Another thing banned is torture. The party did some unsavory things to a captured Duergar and after that I basically said, “ok so we’re gonna have some rolls and some ‘basically they say xyz.’” There’s never really a reason to let your PC’s RP out torturing a character. Also a small red flag (would never refuse a player over it, but it flags my attention) is when someone wants to play some variant of Elf but they’re like 20 years old. 20 is to elves what like 5 is to humans. Elves aren’t adults until around 100, so no, you’re not playing the elvin equivalent of a 5 year old. I’ve only run into it twice, but 1 was a really bad problem player I wound up kicking.

To avoid having people create characters with no backstory my DM friend created a story wich would go: The character was an orphan who had been kidnapped by a Troll and kept in a cave hidden from the world. The troll would, every day, make said character do "favors" for him and in return the creature wouldn't kill him. One day the troll leaves the orphan in the cave and never comes back, leaving behind some above average beggining gear to the PC. No one ever created an orphan/backstoryless character again to avoid having that as a backstory.

That one at the end really spoke to me. I like to play evil characters - not to be a murder hobo or to betray the party. In fact, I don't even like PvP. I just find evil characters to be infinitely more interesting than good or neutral characters. Like, what drove them to be that way? And how can I make it work in a game that is cooperative? So many good questions, so very few opportunities to answer them, unfortunately.

the hulk hogan voice fucked me up because my next session is gonna introduce Hork Hogus and Macho Woman Sandy Ravage and I was almost done prepping their monologues when I clicked this video

I am personally no longer allowed to play cleric with a certain group. The backstory: Our group choose to start our campaign over after a couple players left for one reason or another. I was the only one who didn't want to. I had really grown attached to my current character (a fighter bugbear who was a big softy and just wanted friends). I asked if I could just use him and keep his levels (wasn't high. Like lvl 4 or 5), and the other players could start with lvl 5 characters as well. Everyone agreed to that so I didn't make a new character. I didn't expect to keep loot or found gear. 1 day before we start our new campaign the DM asks me why I have not created a new character. I reminded them that I was going to keep playing my bugbear. DM said they and the rest of the party changed their minds and wanted everyone to make new lvl 1 characters. I was pissed. So I volunteered to be the cleric after I found out no one else choose a character with healing abilities (their class may have allowed it but they didn't go that route). So I made a cleric with no healing spells who was also a kenku which made communicating tricky at best. For other reasons I am also no longer allowed to play a kenku with this group.

Me and my crew were doing a homebrew campaign and had quite possibly the most humorous solution to a problem that I have ever encountered… My crew was tasked with the mission of intercepting an unknown magical item that was being shipped to an enemy city, well we figured the best way for us to go about preventing its entry was to have half of our crew go up into the city and protect the gate while me and my companions would stay in a ship and guard the port, one of my team members had forged documents to make us, by all appearances, be merchants it worked enough to get us into the city but it failed to prevent the enemy shipment (Who rolled a nat 20 on perception) from seeing us and no sooner had they saw us then they began to flee at superhuman speeds away from the city the magic item was a feather that granted remarkable speed to anyone close to it. This was intended to be a setback by the dm, but we had other plans. My friend (who was in the ship) upon seeing that they began to flee used a fully charged max level spell to summon two frog familiars to pull our ship, our wizard had a unique ability to change one letter of any of his spells and if it makes a real word then the spell would take the effects of the new title, given this he cast FLIGHTBEAM (originally light beam) onto our giant frogs causing the unique spectacle of a flying boat being charioted by two, giant, super frogs who were able to help us catch the fleeing troop. In the end we were able to easily outmatch the carefully handcrafted leader (who wielding the feather had super speed) by having our wizard throw our dragonborn unto the air and with some frost gloves he had equipped freeze the leader in a block of ice while he was temporarily submerged in the ocean a very creative solution by by team and a great lesson on limiting the power of spells you give your players.

One D&D game I'm in has the players creating a D&D adaptation of a character from an existing IP, like Goku from Dragonball, Garrus from Mass Effect, or Artorias from Dark Souls. Naturally, our DM has a list of characters he has explicitly banned, which includes such characters as Spongebob Squarepants, Garfield the cat, Pepsi-Man, and the Kid Cuisine Penguin.

I banned one race from my pathfinder 1e game. Drow nobles. Drow are a strong race with a ton of abilities in pathfinder, like spell resistance, a few spell like abilities, weapon proficiencies, the standard elf immunities, and a couple other things. Drow nobles have everything Drow have except they also have, if I remember correctly, way higher stat bonuses (+4 Dex, +2 to Int, Wis, Cha and I think a -2 to con), their spell resistance is DOUBLED, And they gain like 9 more spell like abilities, and many of them go from once a day to at will.

My personal favourite at our table is no oodies, 3/5 players have tried wearing it for warmth (room we play in is always super cold) and have fallen asleep so it got banned from the table. Rum is also banned

This is a weird one, but I ban using D&D Beyond for character sheets. It just doesn't explain so many things that are vital to classes or has them laid out in a way that's borderline hiding them, plus it creates bad habits in new players, so I don't allow it. I do offer to help people make one on like, a Google Drive sheet or something to compensate

My DM banned me from ever playing a warlock/rogue again. Walk Unseen + Move Silently + Flee The Scene + Sleight Of Hand, and I picked that town CLEAN.

Once my players wished for infinite simulacrum, the light around the simulacrum began to bend and fade as it morphed into a black hole, this changed the goal of the campaign as this black hole began slowly devouring the realm

I had an lawful evil noble who joined the party of various good aligned characters because the main villain had thwarted his plans for world domination so he was “returning the favor”

There two things I ban in my games: Mind Control and similar effects on PCs by PCs and the 'lone wolf' characters. Experienced a situation where the GM allowed a chaotic cleric to cast a spell making two PCs in the middle of a tough fight to stop fighting to have sex. Not only did this almost kill off those two PCs because they were distracted but the player only did that to be able to deal the killing blow to gain more exp, it was a crappy rule the GM used where you gain more exp when you kill an enemy. The lone wolf character is something that I really hate because they tend to hi-jack the game. The GM mentioned above was also a terrible player and is the sole cause of why I ban those type of characters. He would always play these characters that had zero interest in working with others, wanted to go off alone all the time, and had no social skills. In some games other GMs would allow him to do that but I drew the line. The one time that he said that he was taking off by himself because he had no interest in working with the party I had him roll up a new character. Now you can RP a lone wolf but the moment you separate from the party with no intent to come back is where I step in.

"Simulacrum" is pronounced like "simulation", except the mighty Krom decided to steal "tion"’s place.

11:36 OMG I can't stop laughing, this is outstanding. I think all future videos should be done in the Randy Savage voice 🙂

Me: Ah yissss nice relaxing video to fall asleep to. Also me: *Hears the word Simulcarum instead of Simulacrum.* Okay now I need to google this to see which one of us is dumb.

I made an evil character myself one time, a while ago. But they weren't like some horrible monster, they were just very sadistic to bad guys. For context, he was a ranger who specialized in medical practice. His story was that he was a physician and acupuncturist (that comes into play later). He was lawful evil, he helped the party, and he took joy in the combat and bloodshed, but he never went out of his way to stir up trouble. The sadistic side mainly came out during interrogations, He would purposefully botch an acupuncture with an enemy to make them spill, I never described the pain and gross stuff, I just said I botched it and asked my questions. Making an evil character who can't mesh well in a campaign is just stupid and annoying, nobody actually has fun because you get yelled at for screwing things up, and the party has to babysit you constantly.