If your DM does this, you should leave 

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The fact it was decided the player was found, because hitting a piton is an attack, and not, "They hear you hammering a piton in a wall" is a wild leap in logic

"No you cant eat the dice" left right after that. Truly disgusting

Two rules: 1. Shared storytelling 2. root for the players

"Was your expectation that we come in here and die." That sums up quite a few DMs

I once had someone call a handshake an attack, and wanted me to roll for it. I relate to this.

9:58 it really sucks for the person. But the mental image of a wizard, looking at a rat and then exploding is way too funny for me.

regarding the action surge one. the official ruling is that IT DOES allow you to cast another leveled spell. just fyi to players and GM/DM's out there

"The invisibility spell you studied was written by a wizard who wrote faulty spells. Little known lore."

The difference between a good DM and a bad DM is that a good DM owns up to bad calls. Every DM will eventually make a bad call. What you do after the call is what sets you apart from the truly bad DMs.

I always think I'm a fairly trash DM. Then I watch a vid like this and sigh with relief, confident that I can still wear my "World's Okayest DM" shirt proudly.

We finished creating our characters on session zero, and at the end the DM said "Now everybody roll for your alignments." He said it prevented everyone from playing murder hobos, but made made my Lliira cleric lawful evil.

Dms who never want you to roll for things they know you might roll well in because they want to 'win' against their players is the big one for me. I had a bard whose entire build was Charisma. He was terrible at everything else (I think animal handling was -4 or something crazy), because every option or subclass I could go with to benefit Charisma, I took. He hated attacking, always wanted to talk his way out of conflict. He was a sweetheart and never had an unkind word for anyone. We encountered a merchant once and I rolled high on CHA, and she gave me a deal on an item that I later used pretty cleverly to get us out of a jam. DM decided she didn't like that. DM started to have every new NPC hate the bard before he'd ever spoken (hated as in insult or verbally degrade him immediately, even attack him, even beat him up until knocked out despite him not fighting back). This was regardless of the city, circumstances of their meeting, etc. and it only applied to my bard, no one else in the party. After a while of this going on I started to ask if I could roll Charisma checks to see how new NPCs would perceive the bard. She said I don't get to roll for stuff like that and I couldn't roll high enough to make a difference anyway. I said well ok lemme roll just for funsies to see what it would have been. It was 30. She yelled at me and told me the only time I could roll dice ever (even for secret stuff or independent narrative stuff like to see how my character felt about something) was if she gave me permission, even if the roll wasn't counted or used for anything. She continued to never let me roll CHA in social encounters literally ever. This developed into basically constant in-game bullying (even forced me to RP familial abuse and belittled and guilted me when I asked to stop, because apparently this bard's family he didn't know existed also hate his guts enough to try to literally kill him). Needless to say, I don't talk to that DM anymore lol

It feels like “a world where any nat 1 could cause wild magic” is a pretty central part of the story, and to me that merits a custom wild magic table, especially making consequences more funny than harmful at lower levels and potentially changing some effects as the party levels and are more able to tank things like random fireballs.

The climbing kit one is so bizarre because he could have just said "The guards start to stare for a few seconds as a loud hammering noise is emitted and pitons magically appear from nowhere in their wall before moving closer to investigate" but instead, the hill he chose to die on was "item interaction = attack roll"

It didn't make me leave the table, but it did certainly upset me greatly. If it had happened more than just the once, I may have had a serious conversation with the DM. Another PC and I were trying to locate a magic item to buy when we got to a new town, the way we usually handle it is if we're looking for something specific, we roll investigation and the DC is set based on how likely that item would be found in a shop in this location. Well my character had expertise in Investigation and I rolled something around a 30 after adding my bonus. Both magic items were of similar nature and rarity, so should have had very similar DCs, but the DM ruled that my 30 did not find what I was looking for, but that the other PC's 18 did find their item. When I asked why mine didn't work, I was told "well your bonus is super high so I just bumped up the DC a bunch to make it an even chance for both of you."

I was playing a Pathfinder campaign and started seeing red flags from the dm right from the start. He seemed to have this "me versus the players" attitude. I (very narrowly) rolled high enough to persuade a shop keeper to lower his price on a ring of feather fall enough for me to be able to afford it. He would huff and roll his eyes and grumble every time I used it. One session, after using it to get around a trap earlier on in a dungeon (which annoyed him), we encountered a room with a reverse gravity trap and spikes on the ceiling. He started licking his lips and setting up to roll the damage for all of us (two party members were low hp and he always seemed to actively want to kill PCs). When I stopped him to ask for clarification that we weren't being pulled towards the ceiling but that (per the spell description) we were falling towards the ceiling (and that the ceiling was 25 feet above us), he practically jumped over the table. His response was: "look, I don't care. you're taking the damage." One of the other players was my ride or I would have packed up and walked out on the spot. Instead I mentally checked out, phoned it in for the rest of the session, and told the group at the end of the evening that I wouldn't be returning.

You deal 7 damage to the wall. It’s dead. You killed the wall.

The one time I actually left a game because of a DM decision: We were on Roll20 on a 2D map and fighting some creatures in a river. Some of us went into the water to fight, but the wizard stayed on the banks to shoot spells from afar. On the wizards turn he decided to cast one of his strongest spells, he only had one spell slot of that level. He used the digital tools to measure and saw that he was just withing range. He cast the spell and the DM chuckles: "You fire your spell, but you miss. You forgot to calculate that the enemy is a few feet under water and because of trigonometry your spell doesnt reach". The wizard had a 20 INT and had all his movement left. He would have been in range mathematically if he just moved like 10ft closer... The DM did not allow him to move retroactivly and made him just waste his turn and spell slot. The part that made me quit that group was the aftermath. We the players argued with the DM that the 20 INT wizard would have known that he needs to move closer, its just hard to see on a 2D map. The DM started yelling and that was the point I decided to leave.

In my old club, we had a DM doing all kinds of shady stuff. Players are traumatized to this day and at least 3 players refuse to play his campains. - In a game of C.O.P.S. (players are elite specialized cops in a distopian ultra-violent Los Angeles), he warned two players because the pilot was always speeding to go to a crime scene (understandable: they're playing cops and one player was specialized in piloting skills). Since the characters received an official blame in their administrative record, the players decided to respect the warning: next call to a crime scene, the pilot stoped to every red light and never sped once. They arrived in a shooting, the criminal had already left, and they found a little girl hidden in a garbage bin, she was wounded by two bullets. They obviously called an ambulance, but the little girl died on their hands. The DM had a little smirk when he played the paramedic NPC telling players: "If only you had arrive two minutes earlier, we could have save her." - Same campain of C.O.P.S., one player had a strong character who decided to get really buffed, he saved his experience points for half a dozen sessions to raise his Stamina attribute (in this game, it's extremely expensive to raise your attributes, most players don't do it and raise skills instead). So his character could achieve the maximum natural Stamina score in the game, and It was allowed by the DM. Next game session, he was going to question the neighbourhood and knocked on a door and failed a perception test before knocking. He was saying "police, open u..." BANG, a shotgun tore a hole through the door and his shoulder, because the guy in this house was an accomplice ready to kill cops if necessary. The character suffered a serious wound, and was penalized by losing the Stamina point we worked so hard to obtain. The DM insisted it was a rule about wounds. A year later, when one of his former C.O.P.S. players decided to become the DM it with another group of friends, he read the rules attentively and discovered the "attribute loss after a serious wound rule" was an OPTIONAL rule, printed in a special insert with a warning "this level of realism is for hard mode only, make sure your players are cool with it". The DM ruined the progression path of a player just for the sake of it... - I played a scholar in the Game of Thrones roleplaying game, specialized in languages, calligraphy and cryptography. We uncovered a plot to assassinate a high-born we were supposed to protect, and after tracking the assassin, we found his notebook fully encrypted with a custom code. Of course, the group wanted me to decipher it, and I get to work: one success wasn't enough to decipher the whole code, it was a prolonged test, with several successes needed over time. The evening where I finally did the final success to decipher the assassin's code, another assassin stabed me in the back and stole the notebook from me. I never had to to a perception test, no one could help me because my character was alone in his study, the DM almost killed my character so I couldn't uncover the plot, at the exact second when my character was discovering the truth. It was exactly like being killed in a cinematic during a videogame. I stoped playing any game with him for years after this. All in all, the guy was mastering a bunch of different games and was excellent with description, so everybody tried his game sessions at least once. But he has this weird philosophy: "treat your players like trash, and they will come back for more", that made him quite toxic. Worst of all, he always had a rational ready at hand to dodge any criticism, so he never truly corrected his ways. With another DM, after spending a whole session creating characters, I wrote a full (but very short and well-defined) background and sent it to him by email. When playing the first game session, I mentioned a very important piece of my background, and he told me, laughing: "yeah, but I lost your email". I was so infuriated by the sheer disrespect, I quit the table.

I feel like a lot of these come from a DM vs players mindset. DnD is about the storytelling, not a game to fight your players. I have had my fair share of DM mistakes, its easy to get attached to the way you think the story should go, but its not a story you are telling, its the story of your group, and you as a DM are there to make the story interesting. Challenge your players, but never have the mindset of "I'm going to kill them"

Every time I watch these skits, I'm sort of looking for things that I might be unintentionally doing so that I don't do them anymore. And every single time, I'm shocked at how batshit insane some people's DMs and/or players are.

If these stories were consolidated into one recurring DM character, "Powergaming Wizard" vs "Rule-Misinterpreting DM" could be a fun formula.

I had a DM like this once and I'm pretty sure it's a carryover from old school DMing of the DM vs. the Players. Nowadays keeping your players having fun means just communicating the full information to them and then letting them decide: "Hammering the piton will make a lot of noise and break invisibility. Do you want to do that or do you want to stay hidden?"

This filled me with such rage and a deep feeling of gratitude for my group's Dungeon Master. She always puts us first. She sticks to the rules religiously, but is always VERY respectful of cool roleplay choices that would induce something like a surprise round, etc. Tough but fair! I feel so bad for these other people.

"Uuhm, he casts a spell, and both of you are chained on a wall, and you can't move, and he beats both of you until you pass out" did it for me

Right off the bat, hammering in a piton obviously isn't an attack however it would also clearly make a lot of noise and kind of make your invisibility irrelevant

The wild magic one reminded me of a DM I used to play Pathfinder with. She LOVED "lolsorandom" bullcrap and would make stuff up just to mess with us. Our kobold ranger went down during a boss fight next to our sorcerer, who was then blinded. When he attempted to pull out his touch-range wand of healing, she didn't just force him to roll a touch attack to find the ranger, she forced him to roll a d8 to even make sure he could find the right square, as if his entire sense of direction was lost. He missed the square, Kobold died as a result. Later on, we missed a clue that would lead us to investigate a nobleman who was doing a demon summoning, and she didn't think of how to put said information in our way again. So she just decided our entire house was poisoned. The doors? Poisoned. The chairs, poisoned. My wizard's books, poisoned. And not even simple poison, Black Lotus Extract. This stuff cost 4500 gp per dose, DC 20 Con save, did 1d6 Con damage each round. We only survived by spamming Cure Poison and bolting. We bought a bag of flour to detect invisible creatures at random from a street stall and a random inn room to retreat into to plan. Inn room was poisoned. The flour was poisoned. I don't know what her plan here was, it took an OOC screaming match with her to know what to do so we could get back on track. And then, 1-2 sessions before the final boss, we were sailing to a lost ruin. Heard a noise in the hold. Went down, three Red Jesters in boxes pop out. No explanation as to why they were there or who they were working for. These are undead which can inflict laughter with a hit of their mace, scare you with a laugh, and were just tough customers in general. They also had the single most bullshit ability ever - they THROW THE DECK OF MANY THINGS AT YOU! You get hit with a thrown card, it's like you drew it. And that was all she'd have the jesters do. One of us got imprisoned just sessions before the end of the campaign, and she had to move the prison to be in our path in order to let us rescue him, because she didn't think about what THROWING THE DECK OF MANY THINGS AT US would do. We never finished that campaign, we dropped her after that.

-When DM railroad you and your decisions mean nothing. -When DM puts too much weight into NPCs that just feels like he's playing by himself for you to watch how cool he is.

The first example is why good communication skills are so vital to TTRPGs. I think if the GM had said "Hammering pitons into the wall will be loud, and I'll have to make perception checks for the guards", I don't think there'd be any trouble - unless the player is super unreasonable. But not saying anything and then breaking the player's invisibility is bad DMing.

God, the idea of "I failed so hard at looking for a rat that the energy of the universe recoiled against me and made me explode" is absolutely hilarious in the worst possible way Edit: Incredibly important that I share my friend's read of the event. "Imagine this from the party's perspective. The wizard squints really hard, and then explodes" fdha;slkfdkha;lsdk;hl

I had a GM that would state that if you are blinded it is impossible for you to hit an enemy or do any action, also if you are invisible you cannot be hit by any attack or take any damage. His logic is that to hit something you need to know where it is and if you can't see something then you can't know where something is, so you can't interact with it. I explained how with that logic no one has ever won a game or marco polo, blind people cannot do anything ever period, and it is impossible to turn on the lights in a dark room. For invisibility I stated how we have multiple other forms of scenes, it still will be hard to hit something but if they are making a noise, being very smelly, literally grabbing you, you can know something is near. Luckily for me, another player had the spell invisibility and showed how the GM is dumb (room is full of deadly gas, but I can't be seen so no damage. I jump off the tower, oh I am invisible so the fall does not harm me).

On the Climbers Kit - The DM could have said "You're hammering the piton in has drawn the guards attention, and they see the Piton in the wall" as sound would draw attention. Being Invisible doesn't mean Soundless

"My feet are attacking the ground," is my new favorite way to describe jogging. 😂

Never really a ruling making me leave but when we had a talk to our dm to fix some issues and they very casually say ""I never saw your characters as a part of my world" and that was a clear indicator for me I didnt want to stay. There were also tons of other issues but that was the eye opener to a lot of it.

My biggest red flag was when a dm was ruling that using cure wounds on a down person would provoke an attack from an owl bear. The justification was that since I have my hand within the owlbears attack when I heal, if I move my hand away I would be attacked if I tried to pull my hand back. BTW this was session 1 and we start at lvl 1, after we were already wounded from saving a child and unable to take a short rest because, "you just started your adventure and we are on a time crunch." After 2 more sessions, it was clear the dm just wanted to kill to TPK, and he did get what he wanted.

7:34 You've met the rules lawyer, now introducing the *rules prosecutor*

Somewhere in the rules it says "It's your game you can do what you want." Some GMs abuse that to the hilt.

"As you say no, you say yes"

"Was your expectation for us to come in here and die?" 🤣

The sitpulation of "You can't cast another spell on the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action" is specifically in the description of the "Bonus Action" it is not stated as a rule of spellcasting in general which would imply that aquiring a second action would NOT bar the use of another leveled spell in one turn, I learned something new today

One of my friends was playing an aarakocra. A floating island that he was on was crashing down to the earth. He gets to the edge of the island and jumps off to fly to safety. The DM says "Your wings don't work." My friend was flustered but still asked if he could make an acrobatics check to avoid fall damage. He rolled high and had 5 HP remaining and the island crashed down away from him. The DM then says "a piece of rubble comes out of the sky and smashes into you doing 35 damage."

One of my friends wanted to try DMing, so he designed a one shot where we were all level 1 and explored a dungeon. The dungeon offered no rest points, with tons of encounters that theoretically a level 1 group should be able to deal with, but definitely not in a row. My character died to a minotaur in an act of noble sacrifice cause I was already so low I figured I wouldn’t make it out alive and would try to protect the other members, and they all died in the next room fighting a wivern. After the one shot my friend asked us what we could do better, but refused to hear any of our feedback about how difficult the encounters were, saying that “he already fudged so many rolls and if he hadn’t we would’ve died way earlier, we’re just bad at the game”. As a bonus, he also loved to leave clues that were impossibly cryptic (or even purposefully misleading) that were vital to continue and would lead to catastrophe if not correctly dealt with. It was extremely unbalanced, and he would keep blaming it on our lack of skills and intelligence. I’ve stopped talking to him.

In Pathfinder, a big gimmick Cavaliers (my absolute favorite class and by far the most played) can do with the right feat is basically the rider and mount can take hits for each other. This allows you to spread out damage between your two HP pools to tank for a while as a front liner. This involves doing attack rolls higher than the enemy's to get in the way of their attack. Many DM's have a STRONG preference for whether they want to attack mostly (or only) your character or their mount, and do not like this feat. The end result is I've actually experienced times where enemies have gimmicks (or just super high attack rolls that never miss and can't be beat) to disallow this. Naturally, removing such a critical feature to the cavalier has resulted in my character dying pretty much every time this happens the first time a critical hit rolls out, because I've been eating damage the whole time up front and cannot sustain hits the way a Barbarian can. RIP me =( Yeah I got the fuck outta dodge as soon as I realized what was going on. DM's. Please. Just talk to your players if there's something they're doing which you don't like. Don't just screw them over to feel better about how hard things are. This is not a versus environment. We are experiencing your story by being a part of it. Just. F*cking. Talk to us.

lol for the skit with the action surge wizard, that reminds me of the first rule my college DMs told us. “Never give the DM ideas.” Part of that ruling was that if the DM makes a call and it’s to the players benefit, DONT speak up. The DM will ALWAYS take the counter call if it’s reasonable and arguable. This was to help us work together and try ti be more creative without constant rule squabbling. If someone did speak up tho we all paid the price haha 😂 “Snitches get stitches” one of the DMs said when someone accidentally challenged a player positive ruling

in one of the first dnd campaigns I played in, the DM insisted you can't move between attacks during action and bonus action, no matter how much we quoted the rules. Piled a bunch (like 30) of 3hp rats on us in a crammed space that died from one attack and then we couldn't make the other with the bonus because we'd have to move. we couldn't even move to give somebody else space. we were level 3 with only 1 caster and quickly ran out of aoe spells, and the rats kept coming. The battle took hours and was incredibly boring and repetitive. Finally, the boss who was left on 1hp, ran into a cavern and we weren't allowed to follow without any explanations. Just 'no, you can't go in there'. After the sessin, giving feedback, we were all together trying to explain the problem and the DM just ragequit.

I've been playing tabletop RPG's for a long time and off the top of my head one of the wildest rulings that I've ever been involved in was a DM who had a standing table rule that player characters never wore armor for the course of the adventuring day. His standing rule was that if more than four or five minutes passed and you weren't involved in combat, or otherwise "on guard," your character became so hot and uncomfortable in their armor that they took it off. No matter what type it was. Even after I pointed out to him that, in the D&D 3.5E ruleset, full plate armor required several minutes to don and remove, and even longer if you didn't have help. Didn't matter, he said, his rule stands. According to one of the other players who was friends with the guy outside the game, the source of this houserule stemmed from one time several years ago that the DM wore a homemade chainmail shirt made out of soda can tabs to a Renaissance Faire and it was very itchy and hot. Never mind that we could show him videos of people doing gymnastics wearing full plate. He had "firsthand experience," and we were wrong. Naturally this only applied to us, the players. City guards and bandits at strongholds were apparently immune to this condition. I finally got so frustrated at the inconsistency that I had my character take a level in Binder, which is a 3.5E class that allows you to seek out otherworldy beings called vestiges and "bind" them to your soul in order to gain various minor supernatural abilties, in exchange for certain aspects of that vestige influencing your behavior (which you can roll to resist or just allow to happen). One of these vestiges was called Savnok, and his penalty for fully influencing you was that your character will never, ever willingly remove any item that increases your armor class (including armor, shields, and other magic items) for as long as you are bound to him. The look of utter disbelief and confusion on the DM's face when I pointed to this rule was glorious. After that campaign ended, I opted not to play in his next one but kept in touch with one of the players, who told me that he banned the Binder class in his next game because it was "overpowered." 😂

The "Yeah I know" at 4:49 is so perfect. Very much conveys that the DM was fed up with the players getting saved by it

My best friend is an infuriating DM as well. She's the queen of Railroads--if she didn't want something to happen, it wouldn't happen. I could roll investigation in a dungeon room but because she "didn't plan any loot" it would always, ALWAYS fail, no matter how well I rolled. Each and every building she found important to her story would lock indefinitely behind us the moment we entered it, and no amount of brute force would break us out. Once I played a drow with her hands tied and a blindfold over her eyes being led down a hall, but no anti-magic forces bound her at all. I couldn't even cast Darkness, an innate drow spell. I once played a Beastmaster Ranger and *she literally took my panther companion away and canceled out any rolls I made to look for her.* So yeah, she's never DMing for me again.

Against popular Opinion, I was playing a Whip wielding Rogue. I used my Crossbow primarily, waiting for an opportunity to use the Whip when my damage contribution would matter least. When the moment finally arrived, it was persuaded by my party. Collectively, they were waiting for me to use the Whip also. I was reluctant at that particular moment, but I did it. I rolled a Nat 20 to hit. DM said roll the Damage, and after I did, he began to explain how I missed the target. Instead, the Whip snap back, and I hit myself. Critical. I was already hurt, and thus, I actually killed myself with that hit. I left shortly after. I never got over it. DM said nobody can be that proficient with a whip, and that was the price I paid for using a Whip instead of a Dagger at his table. /shrugs

To be fair to "Climbing Kit breaks invis" DM, you could instead rule that the noise made while hammering pitons into the wall attracts significant guard presence to the area over outright making them lose invisibility. If you've ever heard people using those, they're definitely not silent.

That Wild Magic rule implementation is nuts. ~_~

Had a DM literally change my class. No saves, just : you get corrupted by the grim reaper’s daughter, you are now a warlock instead of a wizard.

To be fair, invisibility does not block sound. And the guards would have noticed the tapping sound. Wouldn't have made him turn visible but absolutely would have rolled a perception vs stealth (sound) check

it doesn't count as making an attack but the noise of hammering something and see a dent in a wall getting bigger surely attracts attention...

Watching these skits make me glad i play with the group i do. We all do our best and my players are merciful to my less than professional DM skills.

Backed that kickstarter before you even finished describing it 😂 love the excitement for it.

I like the way the DMG handles critical skill checks. It doesn't say 1s auto fail or 20s auto succeed. It says "take into account exceptional rolls." In the case of the rogue, since I know they're a rogue and probably arent adept at detecting magical traps, I would have told them something along the lines of "you notice the gold shimmers in an unusual way in the light. You know how gold shimmers, you love gold, and that gold aint right."

From the "Casting Time" section of the Sage Advice Compendium, p. 12: If you cast a spell, such as healing word, with a bonus action, you can cast another spell with your action, but that other spell must be a cantrip. Keep in mind that this particular limit is specific to spells that use a bonus action. For instance, if you cast a second spell using Action Surge, you aren’t limited to casting a cantrip with it.

Not quite left the table, but caused the largest uproar at the table. A wizard is doing a ritual, if anything disturbs him the spell is reset.... aka we are defending him. cleric tries to put a spell to shield/protect the wizard. the gm tells us that, that to also will distub the wizard, and we don't have any spell that'd last super long aka open easy to hit target, against a portal of spewing enemies who are fire based and all have flight, and/or ranged stuff.

I really hope this is gonna turn into a regular Format ❤

One DM ruled that if you feed an unconscious person a healing potion there is a 50% chance they drown and die instantly. Everybody from that group thought it was a real rule, and so when I encountered them in different groups, and they tried to enforce that shit, I had the thankless task of deprogramming them.

I feel like the wild magic one could be fun in an environment charged with chaotic magic. Or a cursed item’s downside. Just not the entire game’s default rule

I had a bard with a background of sailing (I like writing so I get pretty detailed about my backgrounds, and wrote about three pages bridging her sailing background to how she ended up in the fae wildes for this campaign). A party member fell into a river from a cliff, there were rapids. I expected to have difficulty with the current because my str was low, but i go "i want to use acrobatics to dive," in hopes that a good enough acrobatics would help expedite grabbing the party member and using the momentum to reach a shore, or at least not hit my head on rocks. The DM tells me to roll *athletics*. I ask why do i need to roll athletics first. The answer was that there were rapids and so I reminded the DM that I want to dive into the water, she has a background that involves living at sea, they go "yes, make an athletics check." I roll, its low, the dm say "You jump, land in the rushing water and hit your head. I guess you're not very good at swimming." I was ready to leave the game for good.

I feel some DMs forget you're telling a collective story with the players and not just trying to outwit them like an evil overlord. You're not competing

These remind me of the time when we were infiltrating a bandit’s cave and came to a sheer wall we needed to climb. Our party looked around to see what we could see (perception), and the DM told us about how tall it was, the texture of the rock, etc. When our rogue tried to climb it, a saw blade came out of the wall and cut him up. The DM then told us that there had been bloodstains all over the wall the whole time. When we asked why he didn’t tell us until now, he said, with a smile, “Well, you guys never asked!”

I had a DM who called an Arcana check when I casted Find Steed. Instead of a steed I can adventure with and mount I got a rat because I rolled 3. If I wanted a familiar I would've casted Find Familiar

7:44 Yeah, something like that shouldn't come up suddenly during combat. Stuff like that should have been discussed during a session 0.

That opening rant about the climbing gear was such a mood

Had a DM who gave one of the BBEG's main underbosses "Multiattack"... only it wasn't. He had multiple *actions.* He gave this enemy six actions. So even though I dashed and Misty Stepped to get 150 feet away from the enemy, he "just so happened" to have six actions (which he hadn't actually used before that at any point in the fight), so he could dash three times, attack me three times, and do triple my HP in damage. Oh, and he could cast Haste on himself at will, apparently, because even with his 30-foot movement speed, three dashes was enough to cover 150 feet. It was the second-to-last session of the campaign, and totally broke every bit of interest I had to play in that game.

The piton example is interesting because it reads a lot into intent and how "gamey" certain mechanics are. You can gently hammer a piton into a guard without intending to attack them (say as a prank while invisible) and if you lack a small hammer and time you could absolutely hammer a piton into a wall with a single strike of a warhammer. Rules as written, neither of those are an "attack" and would not break Invisibility. The real issue is that consequence was not properly communicated. If the GM had said "If you want to do that I'm going to rule that as breaking Invisibility because this would be too overt. Do you still want to?" That way the GM has communicated clearly the consequence and reasoning without jumping to punishment, where the player feels unfairly treated. So long as the precedent is enforced fairly from that point on there should be no issues.

new here, i see you have WONDERWALL prepped and ready to go behind you. i appreciate that kind of preparedness. sub earned

I love this style of video. A collection of short ditties with the inspiration tweet at the end

I love how even the skits are immersive. Like "can i borrow a dice." It shows what a good DM he must be

11:52 the real crime here is a rogue only having a +1 to perception

bro, him just moving the PNG of him pointing at the book around was so good

5:12 - I like how you're wearing an adult red dragon on your shirt as well

For the first one I could see the DM asking you to make a stealth role since hammering the pitons into the wall would make a loud noise but that should not break invisibility.

I feel like the wild magic surge could be fun if as part of a high level campaign players went to the Fey Wild for a session or two. But in your normal setting, if your gonna do that you might want to use a table for it other than the standard one. Or somehow make it less likly to ruin the campaign. Especially at low level where they can’t do as much to compensate for bad effects.

I like to play with what I call the "Close enough" rule. If I call for a check and your character is proficient in that skill but you miss the check by 1 or 2, I'll still give you the information, or action attempt but your character will struggle a bit, for information checks your character has that annoying feeling of it being right on the tip of your tongue, for you to recall the information a few minutes/hours later. For action checks that's a bit more situational, usually a stumble/fumble but still succeeding with a minor penalty on your next turn probably half speed for the turn as you recover. I also use the rule that if you asked to do a different check than the one I call for and you can explain how you would use that skill logically I allow it

Thanks for the DMing tips, I will start using all of these rules and judgement calls in my future games....

A DM used Strahd’s legendary actions as reactions. I was a melee fighter and every time I got into melee range he would say “When you move there, Strahd sinks into the floor and vanishes.” Over two hours and he didn’t allow me to swing at Strahd once. No attacks allowed, no opportunity attacks allowed, nothing. When I called him on it, he said “If you’re gonna question how I run Strahd, just don’t. You know what? He runs away and escapes this game is over.”

One campaign I was in, I played a Conjuration Wizard. The character was successful enough as an Adventurer to acquire 3 Rare (and rather pricey) Spell Tomes: An Atlas of Endless Horizons A Planecaller's Codex And a (+2) Arcane Grimoire Things weren't going that bad at first, until we went to a Desert region for a quest. At which point, we kept drawing the attention of huge Sandworms. Turns out, they're drawn to magic, specifically my Spell Tomes. What's worse, if these Sandworms swallow you, all your equipment had to made a saving throw or be destroyed by stomach acid. Including your magical gear. Armor & Weapons got a bonus to the save because they were naturally more durable, but other stuff (like MY SPELL TOMES) did not. I got lucky, and avoided getting swallowed. My Tomes were safe. The 6,000 Gold's worth of shiny jewelry on our Rogue, however, did not survive. I chalked it up to a unique feature of a unique monster, and moved on. Then we got to the hidden valley home of a Sphinx, and had to fight a horde of mummified undead. A mix of warriors & casters, not too unreasonable. . . . until one invisible bastard, a rogue-type undead, tried to backstab me. Then he used a Bonus Action to hit me with a magical spray of Acid . . . which forced a saving throw for each of my Tomes, which would destroy them on a failure. . . . um, what? I used inspiration to avoid losing my Tomes. Then I used my Conjuration Wizard features to teleport away from this bastard, because screw that nonsense. . . . THEN THE SOMBITCH TELEPORTED AFTER ME. THEN CAME THE ACID, ROLL SAVES FOR THE TOMES. I got VERY lucky, rolled no failures. I teleported again back to my comrades, who ambushed it when it teleported after me, stopping it before it could spray Acid again. The DM was quite proud of this creature, saying he created a "custom feat" to allow for the acid spray. I asked him to stop trying to destroy our Magic Items, but he flatly refused, saying "That happened ALL THE TIME in the older editions, you just learned to live with it." I should just get better. Fine. Whatever. I had a plan. After talking to the Sphinx, we went to some mountains bordering the Desert. We had to locate a hive of large Beetles, and procure a larva. Seemed simple enough. . . . until we saw the Beetles. Picture a Beetle the size of a Rhinoceros. Give it roughly 90 - 100 HP. Put it in a group of about 3 or 4 other Beetles. Now give it 100 feet of movement per round. Definitely strong, but we made plans and laid a trap. We tilted the field to our advantage as best as we could, even setting up a Tiny Hut as a safe refuge if it all went sideways . . . which, of course, it did. Turns out, these Beetles can teleport themselves and one friendly creature as a bonus action (we couldn't find a range on that) also they could do that every single damn round. Also, get this: THEY SPEW ACID AS A BREATH WEAPON, ROLL A SAVE FOR YOUR GEAR & MAGIC ITEMS. Oh, and DID I MENTION WE WERE ONLY LEVEL 6?!?! I had refused to put myself (remember, Wizard) or my Tomes in jeopardy again. So I was hiding in the Tiny Hut while using summoned creatures from Tasha's to run out of the Hut and fight for me. Let me tell you something: trying to fight as a Wizard & support your allies from inside a Tiny Hut you can't leave is NOT EASY OR FUN. But that was the ONLY way keep my VERY EXPENSIVE Magic Items from being destroyed. I brought this up to the DM, told him that I DON'T WANT to be the guy who cowers in a Tiny Hut when initiative is rolled. I hate doing that, it's not fun for me or fair to my Party, can you PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OR DESTROY OUR STUFF. He reiterated that older editions did this ALL THE TIME, that it would keep happening, and nothing I said or did was going to stop it. . . . and that's when I had enough.

The wild magic world sounds fun if run properly, like you look for a rat but fail miserably as a fire ball explodes into the other wall, distracting you and scaring any rats.

I learned a lot as an early dm. Please don’t try and set up a cool story by doing your players for what to do. Even if you both agree it’d be super bad ass. Trust me it makes everything streamlined. Sure when you look back you can be able to look back at a cool story. And yes it’s collaborative story telling. But over doing it breaks the fun of the game. Another thing was putting pressure on a player who was leading the party. I didn’t know he didn’t want to be the party leader. He never told me he felt uncomfortable. So towards the end he was unhappy and left. I know now to give them grace and relax and not be overly hyped up. As a dm we have to share our stories secrets and I have to many story secrets away. It hurt me in the long run. But we all decided to have me as the first dm to test the waters and see what we liked and didn’t like. 3 more sessions tell the end of a 3 year campaign. Also DONT RUN CURSE OF STRAHD AS YOUR FIRST CAMPAIGN!!! it’s depressing and gloomy

A buddy of mine was playing D&D for a college course (as he majored in Game Design), and he had a bad DM experience within this group project. The party was supposed to deliver a chest or something to someone, but the chest was not allowed to be opened (as requested by the quest giver.) Another character wanted to open it anyway, and he resisted them. The GM called for a contested strength check, and my friend rolled a nat 20. The DM ruled that his attempts to keep the chest closed were strong enough to break the chest, revealing the contents anyway. He nearly quit on the spot. He succeeded so well that he failed. What?

The way you play a nice DM who misunderstands the rules and is terrible at DMing is so unnervingly accurate. Like, you hear stories online of the DM who does things that make you rethink your friendship, but sometimes the DM is not a bad guy. He just sucks at making the game fun, and you leave the table, because you aren't having fun. For example, the DM who misunderstood invisibility basically made the player feel like invisibility was a useless spell, but he said it in a way that was nice and not a shouting match. It's a certain type of incompetence, but not malice.

So I'm learning how to be a dm and this is extremely helpful stuff! Love the content

I could see the Action Surge ruling going either way, since while RAW doesn't have anything to say about it, it's likely because the book writers never thought of someone multiclassing to use Action Surge for spellcasting. Spellcasters are already really powerful, and being able to cast two spells in one turn was supposed to be limited for that very reason. On the other, Action Surge is a very limited resource, so you'd want to get as much use out of it as possible, and being able to fire two lightning bolts in one turn is really cool in concept. I think the way I'd rule it, is that if you do make Action Surge able to do that, you're kinda stepping on the toes of the Sorcerer, whos supposed to be able to do something similar with their metamagic. I'd let you cast a Cantrip, and maybe a 1st or 2nd level spell as you get to higher levels like 10, but being able to fire 2 3rd level spells in one turn at level 7 feels like a bit much to me. Then again, I don't DM, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

To be fair I've done something similar to the last example. In my case however they were looking for traps on a very suspicious door in a dungeon, got a nat 20 and I told them " ... as far as you are aware it is a completely normal door with no traps of any kind nor are there any in the vicinity." They refused to get anywhere near the door and took a different path. The door was in fact just an door, it wasn't even locked.

Imagine overseeing a game and not wanting everyone to have the best time possible. Sad.

Its been a real treat watching you grow up on youtube!

I was in a group (we met in person, pre-pandemic), where one of the people wanted to try their hand at being a DM. FANTASTIC! Always want to support people trying that. There was no communication about house rules, so all of the players assumed it was straight up rules from the book. The DM ignored the fact that people were rolling high on their stealth checks, and just made every encounter start with a surprise round (in favor of the NPCs/monsters). When someone made a protest about it (and was supported by other players, including myself), the DM just said it's house rules. Rebuttal was that there was no discussion or agreement of house rules, and that the DM cannot just MAKE UP rules on the fly as the game progressed. The DM was also cackling every time the NPCs/monsters landed an attack. The other people in the party saw how toxic they were being, and said that they will not play any game that that person is running ever again. This lead to everyone kind of going their own way, disbanding the group.

"You use the spell slot for divine smite before you roll to hit, if you miss the spell slot is wasted." Was the first step in my own path to becoming a successful DM xD

This was my first video of yours and I gotta say, I really enjoyed it. Especially the rogue on the last one. I've sub'd and left a like, now I'm off to binge watch some more. Cheers and happy new year mate.

I joined a new group and it struck me as weird cause I always worked with my DM to create a character, so he can fit into his world with ease. Maybe give the DM ideas for future stuff, etc. Well we didn't do that. All we did was have him say I can play a Paladin Noble. That's not the red flag. No it was when I hit lvl 3 and chose Oath of Glory. He groaned and told me how terrible that is and I should be Devotion instead, or even Redemption. Ignoring how we had a very evil murder hobo...then he even said I could just be an Oathbreaker! Like, I beg your pardon!? I literally only hit lvl 3 and had not done anything questionable and he wants me to be an Oathbreaker because it's "just better." He also tried making me an OB because we got kidnapped into hell by Asmodeous himself so "My God can't reach me here." So when I told him that's not how Paladins become Oathbreakers, he grumbled something about seeing how long it takes to break. Like wtf man...

About the last one, I actually managed to make "for the total of" good. Our Artificer finds a eldrich stone with weird marks on it. He makes an Investigation check, and rolls a nat 20, for a total of 29. The DC was 30. He immediately takes a bunch of psychic damage, but he LEARNS that this thing has something inside and that it's possible to solve, he just needs more power. A few months later, the whole party desided to crack this thing. They used everything they had to buff the Artificer. And he actually managed to beat the DC! And now he has a Ring of Marid, that is supers scary, strong and extremely loyal to the artificer. And only to him. Party loved it, and it changed the whole campaign.

The most egregious ruling I've ever experienced was when my DM in a westmarches server dropped us into a setting where we were supposed to save a city that we quickly found out was built on slavery, which made all of us uncomfortable, and when I tried to come up with a solution using 9th level spells to make an interplanar passageway to evacuate the city to minimize casualties and possibly free as many slaves as possible as they had been "promised freedom once they finished fortifying the walls," a pretty obvious lie. I talked to the DM for days between sessions going over my plan and trying to integrate my character's backstory into the plan, and he seemed agreeable, but the next session he told me the plan was impossible because "you're not in the same universe" and when I tried to change the plan to evacuate people to another location in the same world he still wouldn't allow it because "it would be too chaotic if you made an exit inside the city." He literally tried to railroad me into supporting slavery and probably also watching slaves die and pretended to support my plans to engage with his game only to turn it into an argument at the table....

love your content mate, keep doing what you enjoy doing

My personal big one was about Carts and Wheelbarrows. You're meant to be able to double your drag weight if you have something to make it easier. Cool, simple, makes sense. My low strength character had a small cart, to drag useful loot out of a dungeon. DM argued that didn't count. I asked if it would be easier to use a wheelbarrow if I cut it's wheel off, because that lowers the weight. And he Immediately said "Yes."