Agreed but I still like the idea of risk, like the barbarian jumping to the lower deck I would have had him roll for the jump then strike and depending on the rolls determine outcome
@@conorpratt8404 I’ll sometimes allow it, it depends if it’s a goblin or “MECVISCHIK SORCERER SUPREME AND CONQUER OF 3 DEMIPLANES THE CONTOLLER OF THE HALBERD OF AGES AND FIVE TIME COOKING CHAMP AT THE WEST MAREFOLD COMMUNITY POTLUCK NOW THREE YEARS RUNNING!!!!
As a very experienced DM, let me give a bit of advice to DMs out there. When your players want to flavor their attacks by doing something reasonable, have them make a skill check using a reasonable skill. If they fail the check, they perform the action as they described. If they succeed, then they do something "extra". A little extra damage, a little better positioning, something cool but not game breaking. You WANT your players to be creatively engaged in the fight. REWARD that. You win at D&D if you ALL have fun.
Hey, not a bad idea. I just say "Well you could have done it the normal way so sure, I'll let that be how it happens." If a monk wants to "Jump up off the wall and leap over the troll, axe kicking him in the head from the other side midair!!" but has the movement to just move around and Unarmed Strike from the rear? I just say "Sure, sounds badass!" .. but now I like the idea of having him roll an acrobatics for it, and if they succeed the check and attack I get to say, "Because you did that, the lumbering troll's head reels! He seems dazed and has lost his reaction for this turn! No attacks of opportunity!" or if they fail just the check itself "Well, roll the attack and let's see if you hit!"
I'm making my own ttrpg game and have a couple players, i always check their skills, to see if they can succeed in their attack. (Ex, Normal punch, if strength is 1 or up, they succeed, if strength is over 7, double the damage.) Off topic, but one of my players decided to become a goose, they try to leg sweep my level 5 vampire with their goose neck. their agility, durability, and strength, were all level 2. My system for attacks where different, I would flip a coin for if the attack works or not, if it works, I'd flip a second coin for a crit. I flipped one coin, fail, I accidentally flipped a second, I was about to pick it up and put it in my pocket, but my player, said "wait, if its tails I fail to fail, and succeed." I said okay, We looked at it, heads. He critically failed. He tried to sweep the Vampires leg with his neck, got whip-lash, hit his head on the floor, had a concussion, and died.
Personally my #1 rule as DM is have fun. Ultimately you want players to be challenged, but rewarded by the experience. So one rule I have is that once per session, at any point in time mind you, the player can look at me and ask if X is a good idea. Must be something they are actually doing or intending to do. Then I answer them as honestly as possible. Sometimes it’s a stupid idea that might get them killed and I tell them so and why. Other times it’s a creative solution I hadn’t gamed out and I give them my best guess on how it plays out. Then after my answer they can either change or finalize their decision. Not game breaking, but story saving. My players have come to refer to it as the “common sense” feat.
"You can't freely move in reach of the ememy without triggering opportunity attacks" DM was my roommate and claimed that you can't physically do that. He took MY sword(we both do artistic fencing) and swinged it aroud to prove it. I fucking ran to his back and grappled him irl, he was pissed ever since.
I eventually settled for triggering opportunity attacks only if they are moving more than 2 squares away from the enemy, as you can take a step back in combat without opening guard to manoeuvre or increase separation (if you use a polearm), but if you're running away you're logically opening up an opportunity for an attack. Then again, as the narrator said, I talked to the players beforehand and they agreed!
I just openly tell my players "I would like to try this new way of handling X, because I would like to incentivize Y, if you feel it doesn't work, it's unfair, over/underpowered, we'll discuss it and change it or drop it completely come next session". Then again, I DM my own game and I've been clear we are playtesting at the same time we are advancing the story. Rulechanges and retcons to the setting are expected and accepted by the players, provided we discuss them and agree on them in advance.
I need to do a few test fights with this DR armor system I found more to see if it's worth playing with on a proper game, but 100% test crunch stuff with a small DM party soloplay.
Recently had a DM decide then when my Shadow Monk teleports through shadows he’s actually detouring through the Shadowfell. This resulted in my Monk being attacked by homebrew shadowy mist creatures when I try to teleport sometimes. Problem is they have over 90hp, +7 to attack, and deal an average of 33 damage per hit and drain your strength score. Meanwhile I DID figure out I could hit them mid teleport but only with one attack. Keep in mind that my character is level 7 and only has 46 hp. I’m pretty sure it’s just the DMs way of telling me to stop using Shadowstep…. and he said monks were the worst class.
Monks are not the worst Class - they are in Fact extremely Powerful when played and build up correct. What they are is "one of the hardest classes to play" because you need to balance on a Rope over a Canyon in Terms of Character Build vs Rule Mechanics. It all goes up and Down with Wisdom. This is one of the few classes aside a Druid where the "Spell-DC" has so much importance. But your GM is just an Asshole - tell him to stop this immediately of leave if he does not. Even if he claims "this beeing a Hook for a Storyarc" - it is Bull. Removing Core Mechanics is the worst as it would be to restricting a Caster to Lvl1 and 2 Spells because everytime they cast they get hit from the Abyss. Or a Fighter gaining Exhaustion and 50% actual HP-Damage by using Action Surge. Seriously, why does he have to nerf your Char this way when "Monk is so bad"? And, if he goes on Bitching: Play this - I proudly present: *"The Negasonic Hexblade"* Its Dark. It's Edgy. It's Multiclass-Madness. And *annoyig as Fuck* . Use at own risk. Basics: - Build uses Medium Armor - Mithril Half Plate (uncommon magic Item, 1250GP, no Dex Disadvantages) or Heavy Plate when having bullshite Dex. - Also, have a Shield and a Weapon of Choice - I recommend Longsword at first. Enjoy a 19 AC baseline. - Try to get a Ring of Spell Storage to expand the Lvl1 and 2 Spellslots for Spells for to have more of them free for Smites as well. - Have Charisma Maxxed, STR is not needed. - Dex is 14. - Have Intimidation at Hand to impose "Frightened" on enemys for a Action. - Have decent Intelligence(14) for later Wizzard. - Constitution is your Friend for HP and Saving throws. Luckily, we have proficiency as Figher in this (Concentration Spells). When Int and Dex have met requirement and a higher Roll is left, use him here. Meeting Requitements is primarily impoertant, but con is basically the secondary Ability. 1 - First Level, you choose *Fighter* and Superior Technique (Trip Attack). 2 - Devote yourself to Weapons. You love them. You Name them. You sleep with them. - *Hexblade Warlock(1)* (!) Get Hex (!) and Eldritch Blast. 3 - Go *Pally(1)* 4 - Then, go *Pally(2)* and choose Protection and smile about getting "Smite" - radiant Damage in a "Dark" Char. 5 - Choose *Fighter(2)* for Action Surge. 6 - Choose *Fighter(3)* Echo Knight. Have fun double Trouble now (Echo is an Ally, thus Flanking thus Advantage on attacks plus a bonus Attack when doing so for the Echo. Protection imposes disadvantage on Attacks on your 1HP Echo. As you can use opportunity attacks and attacks through it, logically your Protection should now also count for you.) 7 - Now, get *Warlock(2)* The Invocations allow you to choose Relentless Hex as the Level requirement is overall, not specified Warlock (as others are). Choose another you prefer, you swap it next Level. Keep in mind, you can Hex your Friends. 8 - Get Warlock(3) and swap for Thirsting Blade and Pick Pact of the Blade (Turning Weapons into Pact Blades). Doubles the Attacks when you take an Attack Action youself - counts as "Extra Attack". Have Fun having 2 Attacks plaus a Bonus Attack per Round on Advantage with Smite. 9 - Now, choose *Rogue(1)* . Get Expertise in Intimidation. 10 - *Rogue(2)* Again. Cunning Action makes Movements go wild. 11 - Choose *Wizzard* . It Expands Spell Slots and allows Spell Learning. Keep in Mind: You can learn any Level of Spell as long as you have a Spell slot for it. Mind the Multiclass-Slot-List here. 12 - Choose *Wizzard(2)* Divination and enjoy 2 D20 Rolls you can put wherever whenever you want. 13 - Go *Sorcerer(1)* Divine Soul. Acess to cleric Spells. Again, mind the Level as you can pick more potent spells - as Spirit Guardians. 14 - Get *Warlock(4)* Sentinel. 15 - Get *Fighter(4)* Warcaster for Sentinel Synergy. 16 - Get *Sorcerer(2)* and have even more Spellslots for your Smites - ans also you now can annoy the GM with Counterspell as well. 17 - *Sorcerer(3)* Metamagic. Quicken, Twinned. More Cleric Spells. 18 - *Sorcerer(4)* ASI and acess to the biggest Smites. Keep in mind, we level along the Paladin Spell Progression with this. 19 - *Sorcerer(5)* More Slots, more Sorcpoints.More Cleric Spells. 20 - *Sorcerer(6)* The End may seem bland, but is rarely reached by anyone. Acess to 1 Level5-Spell. This Char is made to lock down as much as possible, so choose Spells according to this. CC and such are great.
Just had another one recently. So long story short our group split in the dungeon and most of the party got captured by the bad guys. We remain party members find the resting monsters who beat them but they’re on the other side of a door. Can’t unlock it so I tell the wizard to burn it down and then after he does the dm tells us to roll initiative… however after I get the highest initiative the DM who had just told us we weren’t allowed to hold actions outside of combat to get a “Surprise Attack” on the monsters has the monsters in the other room surprise attack my character and only my character who hadn’t even entered the room yet. The DM just assumed before I could get a word in edgewise that I was entering the room we just filled with smoke in an effort to smoke them out. 100% the DM is just trying to kill my character
The DM who forced players to replace their dead characters with terrible ones designed by the DM reminds me of the Top Gear/Grand Tour producer's policy of allowing the hosts to continue the journey if their car was irreparably broken down, and it was always some horrible car the hosts hated (usually a VW Beetle.)
except it’s funny for the viewers and other hosts on top gear, in dnd it sucks for the player who has to use a shit character and the others because now they have a worthless party member
Now i will tell you about my half brothers 90s rusty opel estate that was practically falling apart. We still did 100 mph everywhere i have no idea how we are still alive and i still dont give a shit :)
As a DM, there's only one rule I enforce: if you declare that your character is going to masturbate, then you must roll a slight of hand check and deal with the consequences. It's usually good for a laugh.
@@lorenzocassaro3054 Not only do you fail at pleasuring yourself, the entire vicinity, including your party members, knew that you were doing that because you kept screaming in frustration. A troll raiding party who was nearby said "It's fine if you can't come to us, we'll come to you!" Roll for initiative. Your first attack is at disadvantage.
@@lorenzocassaro3054 You are able to pleasure yourself so well and so stealthily that no one is the wiser. You achieve a full body climax, and rather than feeling exhausted, you feel blessed and fulfilled in this moment. Gain one point of inspiration.
i had a dm who made my boyfriend sleep with and impregnate a slimegirl npc because he had gotten drunk. For the whole campaign he basically enforced two rules that led to this. 1) If you got drunk you had no control over your charecter having sex with someone, no matter if you wanted to sleep with them or not. 2) any male pc's got any female npc they slept with pregnant, no exceptions He also made it so the slimegirl bonded for life with my bf and forced us to take her along. And the incident in question happened in our first tavern Edit: We have replaced that dm and for good mesure stuffed the dmpc he had created into the bag of holding while it was in the form of a black cat. on the funny side our new dm now has a roll a d4 every time we reach into the bag for a chance of our arm getting attacked by a pissed off cat.
@@Spartan0430 yeah needless to say i was not happy with that. My charecter also had been flirting with my bf's charecter and he had been flirting back for two sessions beforehand. We replaced him with a different dm right after and the slimegirl is sitting in a convent due to my cleric pulling some strings to get her in one on a remote island.
@@kiarastardust weird question does that cat dmpc need to breathe? Cause it should be dead otherwise (good riddance, bad dmpcs should all be cast down into the abyss)
@@immortalmonk2891 other people to play with, I don’t know anyone in my small town that plays or is willing to spend money to play. Soon I’ll be going to college and I’m sure I’ll find others who play
@@alexinithegenie4359 you will, I'm sure they will have a gaming club, DnD became more accessible to me then as well. Best of luck to you when you start.
If I was that Dwarf Barbarian: "Um, Actually, rules as written, jumping greater than what I can naturally do with my Strength score, which is enough to vault down the ship, is actually an athletics check, not acrobatics... Did you even read the PhB?" all done of course in the most pompous voice I can perform.
@@DragonKingZero or add “you see a malnourished looking dragon in the distance. It is white” Gets the point across that you don’t want to say exactly what it is and doesn’t give a ton of suspicion other than for those that know that malnourished can mean boney
@@hawkecrail5186 that was the worse moment in that ridicolous session I spent watching a new group of people playing. That night, I left the DM's propriety by (and I swear this is true) climbing over the gate. I had not the patience to wait for that incompetent fool to remember how to open it. They never heard of me again.
@@DragonKingZero reminds me of a gag in an online comic. P: "i roll for a spot check. do i spot any traps?" DM: "no you don't." P: "ok, let's move on." DM: "roll for a reflex save." P: "what, what?" DM: "i said you didn't SPOT any traps."
One of the nice things I've found playing Exalted is that you can actually get rewarded for flavoring an action It comes in 3 levels, each level providing more bonuses than the last
This was one of the (many) things that caught my attention in Exalted 3e. Even as a GM (or in this case, ST) I just love how the system rewards players. Actually makes them feel important in the setting.
It's ok but has serious flaws. 1) They describe something happening in a way that falls utterly flat on the roll so it has to be immediately retconned as never happening. 2) They describe something happening that would otherwise require a special ability to do (parrying melee with brawl is common) thus invalidating the special ability. Then when they want to do it again you get to explain why they could do it before but magically can't do it now "because you already did that once". Makes no sense. 3) It ironically gives the highest percentile boost to people with small dice pools for the given action so you get ridiculous situations where someone with no melee (for example) tortures out an explanation about how their sorceror has a sword-king moment so they can get four dice to bonk the guard instead of two. 4) It snowballs until the players wont scratch their ass without trying to flourish a two dice stunt on how their fingernails gracefully graze their buttocks. 5) All of the above leading to a three round combat taking four sessions to complete. 6) If the storyteller tries to wind it back a bit they get accused of being controlling and "killing the spirit of the game".
@@bodesbodes9408 Case 1: The Stunt system is no different from a player flavoring their action instead of saying 'I hit it'. It is what the character WILL do. If the roll fails, the ST just describes what the player tried to do, but failed. No different from any d20 system. Case 2: The part of parrying with Stunt makes a good argument... If the abilities who let you parry without a Stunt only gave you that, but that is not the case, as the Charms also give 1 or even 2 extra abilities. The "cannot do it now" part makes no sense to me. I have no ideia what you tried to say and would love if you explained it (not being sarcastic here. I like good discussions). Case 3: The highest percentile boost makes no sense, unless I am reading it wrong (which is possible). All checks have a Difficulty and the bigger the dice pool, the better chance you have to succeed, not the other way around. A character with no melee (as your example) can still brand a sword, but will do it badly and with lower chance to hit than with a guy with 10 dice in their pool. As for the explanations we go to... Case 4: The game explicity says a long and boring description/explanation is not a Stunt. Is up to the ST and players to learn that, which can (as most RPG situations) be resolved with talk. Case 5: I'm part of a active Exalted community and myself was a ST from time to time. Every account is the same: Combat takes a long time, but is definitely not boring. Heck, I had DnD sessions with over 2 hours of combat in a single encounter (good times). If you find that boring, thats fine. If you had bad experiences before, hope you find a better group and have a fun time. Case 6: That, again, is solved just by talking. Exalted is a game with heavy focus on the players, so limiting their 'power' is counterintuitive. If what the player is trying to do is "too much" though, than a simple talk should be enough. If it's not, than it's a red flag of a bad player, who would not accept a 'no' in any other game. The other way around is also true. TL;DR: Nice arguments and hope you have fun with whatever system you play with.
@@pedrooginio The campaign I'm in has a few experienced players and a few new ones (myself among the new ones) The experienced players keep comparing the game to anime in terms of how over-the-top it is in many ways
There was a DM in a group finder Discord that would always advertise "one-shots" or "encounter tests" and then use everything in his power to stifle whatever party was in his game. The most egregious one I saw was one of only two times I joined, where he suddenly started adding enemies to a naval encounter specifically to counter the wildshape druid. Just, out of nowhere, there are dragon hunters on that boat. On top of that, he never actually really MADE stat blocks from what I saw. He'd just rule "Yes" or "No" to whatever a player was trying to do. One-shot through a zeppelin because somehow a halfling would bore a large enough hole through twelve gas bags and somehow strike a fire without anything to make a spark? Somehow, that worked, because the DM didn't actually know how a zeppelin worked, and didn't bother to even make a health pool for it. Especially as someone who studies those sorts of machines, that made me crazy. Never again.
to be honest, i only see zepelins as flying death traps, because listen to me, the giant balloons that let the thing float are filled by very flammable and very unstable gas, and the moment the thing gets punctured by whatever reason, it will make a giant hole, and any kind of spark will set the whole thing ablaze, sparks that can be provided by hitting the railing with anything metal, would you like me to tell you about what material most of the weapons the party has are made of?, I only use zepelins as a joke... "sure you can take the flying ship" (thing floats thanks to magic flotation stones), oh no, you can't take the zepelins, they all got burned last time someone was smoking near them and didn't noticed the holes"
@@Dewani90 While that's mostly true, you also have to remember that zeppelins were highly tuned airships designed to take an absolute beating in World War 1. They became infamous due to the Hindenburg incident, but look up images of zeppelins that limped home after being shot to shreds. It's honestly more eerie than the burned skeleton of the Hindenburg.
@@WarChallenger Do you happen to have any links to images or video footage of those damaged zeppelins? i can't find anything on google apart from the Hindenburg incident
Some think this is an urban legend, but I sadly played with one of these guys. Quoth that DM: "Female characters have a -2 penalty to strength, but this is balanced because they can have children" The one woman at the table _glared_ and immediately rolled up a half-orc barbarian. Coincidentally, he ran a pretty awful game anyway, so 2 sessions later the entire group quit. Bad rules and encounter design _everywhere_
@@krinkrin5982 no, you can totally replace a stat modifier with a feature, it just doesn't happen very often in 5e. Look at some of the monster races in Volo's, they have extra negatives to make up for extra traits they have. The stat modifiers aren't the real issue in this case though.
See, this is actually a neat concept, IF you make it balanced. If women have a -2 in strength and a +2 in something else (which would be the opposite in men), then your character's sex has an impact on your character's stats. That's neat! But you have to make it fun, first and foremost.
Had a dm that loved crit fumble tables. Had made custom homebrew charts for nearly every weapon in the game. Problem being is fighters and other martials were the only ones that ever were affected by this being as they are the classes that make the most attack rolls. Roll 4 times to attack every round and your bound to hit a 1 eventually. And these crit fails weren't an oops i dropped my sword type. No these were " you slip during your overhead slash and bring the sword down onto your own leg. You are now crippled on that leg and your movement speed is halved" sort of fails. Oddly enough enemies never impaled themselves or anything from these charts. My champion fighter Didnt last long at that table and neither did I. Nothing i said about probability swayed him on thisb
Yep had a DM do the same :( I implemented fumbles but the most they could do was use ur next action to recover ( slip, fall, drop weapon, weapon stuck) and never does dmg
Tried the whole ideia of crit fail when I started DMing. Once I saw no one was having fun with it (even if enemies also crit fail), I just dropped it and never looked back. Nat 1 as a guaranteed fail is punishing enough. No need to make it worse.
@@schwarzerritter5724 That's the worst. It creates incredibly hostile treatment of "unlucky loos" and really poor effort. Crit tables are good as long as they make a little bit of sense at all times. My barbarian was in a castle's dungeon, rescuing prisoners from ogres. I crit missed and tossed my axe into the wall. Water began flowing into the dungeon from the outside moat. This changed the encounter entirely for the better and a memorable moment. I couldn't take my axe back or the flood speed would increase. I grappled and held the ogre's head under water while the wizard used control water to stop the leak. The sorcerer did lightning bolt and fried the Ogre and everyone else a bit. Best crit fumble ever. I hope the story helps make encounters understandably dynamic.
Heat metal dealing damage to both the person holding the weapon / wearing it (in the case of the redcap) and the person attacked. Those fights were a bit annoying.
@@dragonriderabens9761 yeah... But the homebrew ruling was made 'the weapon is hot, so it will deal extra fire damage as an attack.' Like ... No. The spell doesn't say that, and it's punishing the caster to use it.
What's wrong there ??? The spell says "Any creature in physical contact with the object takes 2d8 fire damage." PS: Couldn't therfore the caster use Action to Attack with weapon and use Bonus action for extra damage? Source: Roll20
@@Karak-_- yes. But they would only really be doing the damage to themselves by holding it, since they wouldn’t be able to apply it on a hit because that’s not how things work. However if you grapple and enemy and used it on your metal armor, it would deal damage.
My last DM was the exact opposite. I got a boss drop of a staff where you roll a D12 to see what level a fireball was. These fireballs were free, and did not use spell slots. I convinced him to let me use my casting stat to increase the strength of the fireballs further
As a DM, I also prefer putting gameplay before rules. Had my warlock enchant a bottle of ale with cross of the druids to hit a skeleton. He failed his attack, but the situation was too funny so I allowed the hit. Just having him Naruto run towards a skeleton to then blow em up with enchanted booze was hilarious. I also implemented an home-brew system of "swag points" : When your character does something cool, they get swag points. Then you can consume 10 swag points to have a temporary +1 to charisma rolls.
Monsters with class levels can go well, you just have to keep a lot of things in mind. Players earn their level ups, so if it's overused player characters' accomplishments get seriously downplayed. Enemies with high class levels have most likely had to make major accomplishments to earn those levels, so players should most likely hear about these powerful foes with legendary abilities well in advance. The DM is the storyteller, and enemies with class levels (or even just a class feature added to their statblock) can serve a really good storytelling purpose. After all, your party had to learn the ways of their class from somewhere, and it makes sense that others have too. Moderation and using it for narrative effect is the key to doing it right. But if your party is level 8 and you randomly throw a 20th wizard at them, with a bunch of grunts that also have class levels, it really cheapens the fight as the players know this is an enemy that was created by the DM to defeat them, not someone who really fits the narrative. The DM has infinite resources, the players do not.
Had monsters with class levels, but they were like the final bosses of an arc/saga. I also made sure to know EVERY little detail about their powers and class features. It led to memorable fights, but as you said, it needs moderation and a GM who knows what they're doing.
Class levels are just mechanics, and are definitely fair game for a DM to use as they see fit. And I don't see a problem with giving class levels to just about any enemy or NPC, as long as the DM can handle it without the mechanics bogging down the game due to the added complexity. Does ubiquitous class levels on enemies and NPCs make the player characters less unique? Yes it does, at least mechanically, but that does not make it wrong! There is no wrong fun, so if the players are okay with their characters not being anime protagonists and game being less of a power fantasy, then there is no problem. Adding class abilities to the DMs encounter toolbox also adds tons of variety. This is a godsend for longtime players who have a good amount experience with the vanilla versions of most monsters. The alternative is full homebrew, but that is more time consuming for the DM than just slapping some class levels in there to spice things up. For example, everybody knows the troll! Angry, hungry, and regenerates health unless burnt by fire or acid. But what about a Scandinavian style intelligent and cunning troll with magic? Just add some levels of Bard and that troll has both an entirely new flavour and mechanics! Imagine the seventh son of a priest, walking home late from a feast on midsummers eve. Maybe he's thinking quietly to himself about what will become of him, since his older brothers will inherit all? That's when he hears an alluring tune from under the mighty rock next to the old barrow mounds. Now, what can an ancient troll, who haven't spoken to a human since the olden days offer to the poverty-stricken son of a priest? And what will such a troll ask for in return? Very diffrent from the vanilla troll, no?
@@hamstsorkxxor perfect example of doing it right! This is a character who has a clearly defined space in the adventure, with well thought out implication: good narrative effect. It's also a moderated use of class levels, this troll has class levels to serve a purpose, and therefore you've described a bard and his own motivations behind his abilities, not what classes your party is playing and a multiclass setup guaranteed to trounce em, which has been placed on said troll because it's the next enemy they intend to face, even worse if they've done some research on that troll and there was no indication he was different than any other troll. Even then, if that's what the group likes that's their business. If the DM is considering what players want and expect from the game and balancing it with giving them a rewarding challenge, that is perfect. Side note: if the players know the troll well enough, they will also know that "their regenerative capabilities make trolls especially susceptible to mutation" so your example would be particularly rewarding to players who done their reading :)
@@goldeneyekiller101 Most people play 5e theses days. Also, some monsters have class features, like some ability or spell levels, but not full on class levels. In 4e and 5e, this can break balance real quick if the DM doesn't know what he is doing
That one with the elf princess; I'd find it unbelievably tedious to have to handle five extra characters in combat. Not to mention that the DM should've been doing that anyway if they were NPCs.
We are in an online campaign and we reached a point where our characters are separated a lot of the time because of how the story went , so i spend like hours waiting for my part (knowing the other pc litteraly plays like 7 characters and i play 2) sometime until 1am to be told that the DM disconnected. Like most of my day is on halt due to me waiting and unable to start long stuffs i need to do cause i don't know when i'm going to get pulled in the channel for my part.
I would suggest asking your DM to separate the party into different groups who play at different times. There's no reason to wait all Monday, just play on Tuesday or another day you might have available. As a DM with a very numerous party, allowing different groups within the party who play at different times solved the issue entirely
I did something like that and split the party into two across different regions. I opted to just have both groups show up on different sessions until they met up again.
I do something similar to the first story, but I give players a choice. You either just do it (and the flavor doesn't affect mechanics) or I can flip a coin. Heads, your flavor gives you a bonus of some form or fashion. Tails, it's a "yes, BUT" situation. That way, they're incentivized to flavor things, but they can choose to take a risk to wind up doing something even cooler. Then again, I also enforce Object HP. That means players can sunder, but also risk having their own items damaged. (To be repaired during rests or downtime.)
I gave my monsters class levels, and it worked great - an Ogre Ranger who dual-wielded human-sized Greatswords was one my party loved, alongside my legendary Dragon Barbarian who I hyped up and then my party took out in two rounds because of clever tactics. But the difference was, I didn't send MOBS of of them - I used them as leaders, or as individual encounters. It worked great, but I think I had no idea how close I was to disaster with that idea.
I think the DM misunderstood the characteristics of Swarmkeeper. Wanted to use swarm to push foe. DM ruled that swarm stayed within a certain distance from me, and could not push foe beyond that distance.
In partial defence of the DM at 14:00 (or thereabouts)- when it came to combat archery (in medieval Europe, at least), the point was to put as many arrows downrange as quickly as possible rather than try for pinpoint accuracy. They wanted as many arrows as possible in the same general area. The idea was to disrupt the formation of an enemy army, and then ideally hit them with your own melee troops before they could reform Where this defence fails, of course, is that many of those medieval archers *were* capable of pinpoint accuracy, even at rates of fire better than the 1 shot per 6 seconds of a D&D round, and most D&D encounters take place at much shorter distances than the battlefield "your target is that army" ranges. Some trained archers would undoubtedly be good enough to call a shot to a specific rivet on their target's helmet at typical encounter distances, but even if they weren't- as long as you aren't drawing LoS through an ally's space, you probably won't hit them.
I have a good story for you. Was playing in icewind dale, and the DM as part of my backstory let me have a Chardalyn Greatsword as a part of being a hexblade warlock, my character personally forged this sword. I never willingly set up a pact....which was wierd....and later found out there was a shadow demon in my greatsword. I had to roll a d6 at the start of each day, and on a 1 I had to make a charisma save. On a fail, my alignment would drop by 1 level. I was actually somewhat ok with this part, but wish the slow decent to evil would have been my RP not DM mechanics. I was half elf, tried to set up shadowfell connection in my background/family such as a shadar-kai or maybe a drow to justify a multiclass later, was told no by DM. Around level 6, I tried to do this multiclass into shadow sorcerer, DM struggled for long time to justify it in his head, then decided on "every single time you put a level into shadow sorcerer, you have to roll on indefinite madness table" No....just...no Now shortly after this I find a Chardalyn spear, and I figure will be nice addition to the sword, and give me ranged options. When I failed the charisma check on it, he tells me my character is now chaotic evil and under the control of the DM. and copy pasted the thing from the book. When I asked why it works so different from my greatsword, he said it was because my sword was "Refined during crafting"....like the spear....just...wasn't? Same DM also ran an absolutely brutal injury table, but when he asked for the player approval to run it, he refused to show it to us. Like we had no idea what we were agreeing to, and we couldn't get it taken off because it needed to be unanimous and one of the players said "I like it, because I like to suffer" in a completely non-joking way. This campaign was a bit of a nightmare.
I find it so lazy when DMs have to resort to stifling the PCs or outright punishing them because they're getting too strong or find a good weapon or multiclass, etc. They can't dig in the monster manual or spell lists and think of ways to challenge PCs or enhance encounters (occasionally, sometimes you gotta let PCs blow shit up and feel powerful) so everyone has fun. Dm was straight lazy af.
I have a rule where you can start off as strong as you want but it comes at the cost of having 1 or more opponents being scaled to your level or power. That means your going to be at least having some form of a challenge.
Does that mean I can actually be a lvl1 fighter with an artifact sword from my parents? Or a demigod but lvl1? Or insert a million "One high level thing" inexperienced characters from fiction get that D&D doesn't cover because of it's hyper dedication to characters having no backstory?
@@woomod2445 yes but if your a demigod your gonna be fighting with those level stats and that means opponents can technically gear themselves up with items to make it challenging. Your artifact can be used yes but don't expect smooth sailing all the time. And your back story thing could work but its said in weird way so I'm probably misunderstanding that.
@@redacted606 Most fantasy fiction doesn't have "level 1" characters starting with nothing there's usually some "high level" thing on their sheet, which is a defining facet of their journey. (most not all) and it's a long time bugbear of mine that D&D doesn't support that. Look I'm all for the diablo experience, but sometimes I just want my level 1 paladin to have Excalibur. (tbf, i've been a forever GM until recently, and I do just let my players play demigods and have Excalibur, heck I straight ask them "what do you want your one big thing to be") So what i'm saying is I approve.
@@woomod2445 I balance it out with low level characters with high level gear being hunted by assassins who want their loot. If any of their items mess with time, then the time police shows up to eventually confiscate the items, and they can teleport instantaneously to wherever they want. Anyone can use guns, but non-Gunslingers have a chance of gun failure ranging from the gun not firing when the trigger is pulled, misfiring the gun, or the gun blowing up in the user's face, and this chance should scale with the power of the gun being used. Okay great! Your level 1 paladin has Excalibur! But now the Black Knight just put a bounty on them and their sword. Bandits, bounty hunters, sellswords and mercenaries will be inbound daily until this matter is dealt with.
@@woomod2445 I had a magical heirloom sword that had been my mother's but I needed to speak a special pass code to attune it to me. I didn't know the about the pass code because I had never met her or her side of the family and my father didn't know about it either. It worked out well as it acted as a normal sword until I had gotten far enough through the story to find out was the pass code was and activate it's magical abilities, so it kind of 'levelled up' with me.
My DM has decided to rule that Haste takes a few years off your life. He explains that in universe it's like your character has a finite amount of life energy and you're borrowing from the future to use it now, effectively shortening your overall life. As far as storytelling is concerned it's a neat idea, but in practice it means that your character can only do it a number of times before they die, especially if you choose a short lived race. So for players it becomes a calculated choice, but enemies can use it with wild abandon because what does age matter to faceless fodder? It just feels like a weird way to limit players while enabling yourself.
@@timemonkey I wasn't aware of that, do you know which edition used that ruling? And I understand it's probably just a me problem, but I personally dislike the idea of making spells more costly than RAW because the price is only applicable to the players at the table. I'm fine with the fact that it could potentially take me a very long time to get an expensive spell component that an enemy NPC would just have "for reasons". I will tolerate variant encumbrance despite the fact I have to live out of a backpack and enemies we find in the wild usually don't have anything necessary for wilderness survival, as though they apperated just to spite us. But I disagree with taking something I can do and making it harder when it will not affect how the DM functions. Enemies already have so much power in that they exist with the purpose of fighting us and are adequately equipt to do so without any time, effort, or sacrifice on their part. Why make something harder for your players when the same cost will not affect the DM at all?
The way I've always seen it is that you age equivalent to the amount of time experienced. So if you do 1 minute at double speed, you've just aged 2 minutes. There does, however, appear to be a 14 year time period in the Forgotten Realms where the 1 year aging effect takes place.
Anyone had to deal with instant death environments? Having to scrap a character without any kind of saving roll just because they dodge and have their head below a certain level (acid lake nearby) doesn't seem fun. That misfire rule seems like it would be interesting outside of combat (with room to change directions back as intended): Role on Persuasion - Bring up crib notes that would progress or inflame bargaining/diplomatic talks. Should certainly keep bards in check and bring in unintended allies and enemies alike.
Had a session revolve around avoinding traps, but using only the worst saves we had in our party. We, as players, could feel the GM was just trying to kill us, not challenge us.
We were in a pretty serious-toned campaign (dark fantasy world, grim story, hard encounters and so on) and we were loving it. Then we realised that each time one of us made a nat 1, he would make us fail to do what we were doing in the most ridiculous way imaginable, even when it vastly contradicted what our characters were supposed to be. War veteran and expert swordsman being killed by a starved peasant because he "wasn't used to fighting against spears"? Check. Level 15 mage casting fireball on himself while out of combat and detonating his own runes, exploding and dying in the process? Check. Werewolf ranger tripping over a root during a chase encounter and being massacred by low level wolves he was supposed to naturally frighten? Check. Having critical failures is okay. Having them being goofy and out of character, or using them to downplay their character's abilities even though they were refined through countless in-game years is not. As a game master, you should know in which situations it's okay to have ridiculous consequences to your player's actions, and when it's better to make them catastrophically fail because of something out of their control. It feels more logical than having a water elemental basically drown in a lake because "funny situation lmao".
Had a DM like this that literally not only railroaded, but legit killed my LEVEL ONE character in 3.5 using a 5e monster manual, and instead of allowing me to just roll with it so I can just get on, decided, "I'll bring your character back." Brought me back as the exact OPPOSITE of my alignment, no one remembered my character "Because he's dead." etc. It was annoying. Oh, dropped your sword? If you didn't state you picked it up, its gone :)
DM confession: I used the 3E rules for limited visibility. In a fight with a enemy that cast darkness. Those rules just _sucked_ on so many levels. It was a flat percentile dice roll, depending on how little light there was. Going up to 50%. On top of the attack roll. So half of the attacks missed - on top of needing to beat the AC - even if you rolled a NAT 20. 5E's Disadvantage. So much saner.
Ima give a confession if a bad dm myself though, I used to love “realism” so I’d track weight and make my characters need to track ammo and even have spells materials that didn’t cost money, it clunked the game down. Ever since I’ve just hand waved logical stuff and focused on the fun of my players, seeing them laugh or cry in joy at a moment makes my entire week amazing Edit: it was these videos that woke me up and helped me learn how to properly dm by doing the opposite of what the bad dms do and copying what the good dm stories do
For the third story in the first post: pulling out the D&D Jump Calculator a 20 Strength character could jump 10 feet into the air if they had a running start. Not everything has to be a check! We literally have rules for jumping!
If I was going to have a dex check for that, just roll an unmodified 4 or better. Not much chance you screw it up, but even a slim chance isn't none. Besides, if you slipped, I would let you roleplay it. And if nat 20, could be really fun.
@@sherylcascadden4988 Not Strength? There are already way more skill checks tied to Dexterity Strength and there are more Dexterity based classes. And in real life, weightlifters can jump much higher than basketball players.
@@sherylcascadden4988 Personally, I'd allow either Athletics or Acrobatics. The DC is somewhat irrelevant, as long as they didn't roll a nat1 (assuming they judged their distance right). If they nat20, I'd give them a bonus to damage equivalent to the falling damage their character would have taken dropping that height. A pass, no benefit, no penalty. If they fail, the remaining distance between their landing point and the target enemy is considered Difficult Terrain. Nat1, on top of the terrain penalty, they'd take an appropriate amount of falling damage
@@schwarzerritter5724 can confirm. I'm a 5'4 powerlifting competitor and I had the highest vertical compared to several taller guys 6'0 and above at a local PT. I can touch rim on regulation basketball hoops.
I had a DM who was a co-worker run Curse of Strahd for a bunch of us at work. Started at level 1. My very squishy wizard cast mage armor before a fight began. After the fight, we looted some things but DM said I wasn't allowed to interact with anything or equip a new weapon or even loot anything because I had mage armor up and that would prevent me from doing so. So I could either drop mage armor, wasting one of my 2 spell slots, or not be able to interact with anything. Needless to say, that campaign fell apart shortly after we hit level 2.
Played Feng shui the action is simple “you kill a minion two more runaway” you narrate the battle like “I hit with my roll, the shot hits one of the spell casters hands burning a zombie” so zombies fearing fire run away. I also like D&D but sometimes being a rules games as opposed to a narrative one with a single roll makes people over think using a cool way of mechanically achieving identical result.
Dm implemented a house rule that you aren't allowed to describe a killing blow. In his mind it was to have more control over the game and practice his cinematic kill descriptions...in practice it resulted in getting the same killshot fifteen times in a row like a friggin game of Skyrim.
Wait a second, class levels mean something in DND. There is an in lore reason you have class levels, you are an extraordinary individual. I repeat, only people who are akin to ten year veterans of constant war or dedicated scholars/priests of the highest quality get one class level. Having every NPC getting class levels just means EVERYONE somehow either destroyed a massive enemy or was in a long drawn out war.
Set initiative, my DM judges initiative based off of your bonuses to initiative and wouldn't let us roll for it, he did this so his DMPCs could always go first and we wouldn't be able to do anything. Same DM also makes people play multiple characters at a time, this has resulted in me playing three characters at once, in the same combat and roleplaying scenarios.
Set initiative is actually an alternate rule in the books that sounds like this GM is abusing. Not cool. Antagonistic gamemasters just breed Antagonistic players.
My DM removed free actions, and also made it so healing spells and potions did not both stabilize and heal a person. If they were unconscious, it would stabilize, and then you'd have to waste another spell/potion to get them healed. Needless to say, our very first battle against freaking goblins was a one-sided fight that nearly TPKed us. 💢
My NPC big bads had character sheets and were very formidable, but that’s kinda the point. However, in the long run, the game is about telling a story with the players as a group of friends. One of the main reasons I did it that way was to show case how crazy and powerful you could make your character if you wanted to. Certainly never wanted to kill anyone simply because I could. I did from time to time, but it was to make sure the players knew there were stakes…most of the time I saved them from themselves :P
I do occasionally have my players roll checks for their flavor, but it never prevents the action or punishes them, it's basically a check on just how cool it looks
Compared to the horror stories featured in this video I’m hesitant to even share what I don’t like because it’s not in the same area of badness. I only have one rule that in hindsight kinda annoyed me: You couldn’t roll certain knowledge checks unless you’re proficient with requisite skill, which isn’t particularly bad since it does prevent every every magical, historical, religious, and natural question being brute forced by 5 people rolling, however I was playing Bard and according to my DM Jack of Trades isn’t Proficiency which kinda undermines the entire feature.
Worked at a gameshop and one of the most annoying ones i witnessed was a group who would come up with really creative cool stuff in combat, and they were a big well balanced group. DM would constantly add "self destruct" ablities to baddies when the group did too good. Would be like a dc21 reflex save to avoid being evaporated (because "thats how explosions work") for the frontline characters who are typically not dexterity classes. Was funny to watch that guys group quit showing up
I'm running my very first campaign, and I have taken the "You're not against your players" and "The point of D&D is to have fun" to heart. So much so, that I allowed my players water-based Reborn to quote "water bucket clutch from the top of the Necromancers tower"
Confession: I used to give important (NOTE: IMPORTANT) NPCs player class levels. I did it because I didn't yet have confidence in changing statblocks. To be fair, these NPCs weren't meant to be fought at their levels. Thankfully, they never did, but it took me a few VERY long combats for me to realize that if NPCs were fighting alongside the party, they could fight in their *own* skirmish and not fight the PC's skirmishes. I've since learned how to do it all a bit better. c:
I was playing Halo Mythic and our GM was hyper focused on lore accuracy to the point where he deadass harassed the developer of the game that one of the vehicles dimensions didn't match the wiki and that the plasma grenade's blast radius didn't match the lore. The worst part is if anyone reading this knows halo lore, the lore and the games are wildly different as a Plasma Pistol in the game does bugger all while in the lore it can effectively 1 shot a normal person. *Guess which interpretation he went with?* On top of that you had other shit like how plasma would degrade our armour and how every enemy used plasma meaning that after 1-2 encounters our armour just didn't do anything. He then had bullets do half damage to shields rather than having plasma do more damage to shields *despite that's how it works in both lore and games*. Finally, during Chargen when we decided all our weapons and stuff, he then forced us to switch with other players to recreate the scene in Halo 3 and while this was all well and good (we just gave each other our weapons back immediately) one of the players just disappeared from the game entirely (don't blame him) which meant he never had a chance to give our Spartan back his shotgun, the shotgun he had spent all his starting money on. The game just wasn't fun and I left pretty quickly. Especially after all this he tried to make some rando human hit on my elite and he got pissed off when I said my character would absolutely join Jul Mdama's Covenant after the events of Halo 3. I think he just really wanted his own Chief and Arbiter between the Spartan PC and my Elite but my Elite was staunchly anti-human.
I hate critical failures. I made a polearm master echo knight. At 5th level it was already able to make 4 attacks per turn, 6 with action surge. It was painful. It died in a battle where I got 3 critical failures. I made the same character as a halfling instead, rerolling all 1s and lucky feat.
Confession of a bad DM: Player was complaining after the session that the game was boring, unrewarding, and his character was useless - because he kept failing STR based rolls trying to do actions such a: lift a heavy grate, drag a fat barbarian across the room, power lift a stone slab to use as a barricade, pull up rope with a lift attached to it etc. He kept failing because his STR was his lowest stat, as he was playing a DEX based character, and his complaint was I made his character feel underpowered, weak and useless because I kept asking him to roll STR instead of giving him a DEX option. Here's where my bad DMing comes into play; I snapped at him and told him that maybe he is playing the wrong character or playing his character wrong since he didn't even attempt once to do any action that would have involved finesse or a DEX roll, and opted to try and brute force through the problems every single time. Yeah in hindsight I should have worded my response differently - still feel kinda bad for that (though I still don't know what I could have done differently in the game in that situation - possibly emphasise more on climable vines or whatnot I dunno)
If they do something stupid, let them face the consequences! Also, remember to vary the difficulty, not too much, but not too bland. It’s boring when the GOLDEN DRAGON is as easy as a pile of goblins!
@@Aaa-bi8ly Well they did just steal a relic that turned the entire city into a horde of zombies. The issue was that the Barbarian was lifting up stone grates and pushing open massive fort doors with STR checks as they were running for their lives. The ranger wanted to do the same things as the Barbarian was doing and complaining that I'm asking him to roll STR and not DEX. So how can I be creative in that situation without invalidating Barbarian's rolls, stats or class if I let him roll dexterity on what is fundamentally a strength check? I might be wrong here, and I've definitely made mistakes in the past, but I honestly think that my failure as the DM was with how I handled the feedback at the end, not how I ran that particular session as the other players in the group were raving about how awesome it was. And yeah, they did escape, barely.
I would have my players roll for a jumping attack ie. Roll for Att first then the jump with DEX or STR depending which is higher. They land a great hit with a bad jump makes for a funny awesome narrative moment and they still hit!
The other week I finally got one of my characters resurrected after he was disintegrated by a zombie beholder. That took a lot of our gold and a bunch of other things. I did not care about losing the treasure. After all, if it is never spent then it is just dead weight. My bard who was disintegrated has replaced most of his spell components but I still need to find a simple glass bead for the tiny hut.
I don't have any IRL friends or know enough people for a RPG game but I still like the idea of a "pen & paper RPG" game. Give me something to write on, a few dices & a miniature and my imagination will do the rest (I hope).
Not D&D, but my worst DM had us keep track of every single object in our inventory (With "on your person", "in your backpack" and "in storage at home" categories). We had to manage up to ten pages of inventory. He loved that way of playing and there was no talking him out of it. If you used your six feet of rope to tie an enemy's hands you had to erase it from your inventory and if you forgot to mention that you retrieved your rope and wrote it down into your inventory again you didn't have any rope anymore.
Always Critical Fumbles. Luckily I was able to talk my latest DM out of it by explaining the “hitting cover” rules and that creatures provided cover to creatures behind them, and that satisfied his inexperienced DM urge for friendly fire.
Had a experience a week ago, we were a lv1 party of 6 with 4 spell caster (Very squish), for the first encounter, the DM MADE us travel in a line for no reason, then he have 18 modified zombie (higher health and ac) plus a mini boss (28hp and 19ac) surrounded us. If it wasn't for my paladin a somewhat high AC monk, it would have been TPK on session 0,5. It was fun at first, me and the monk standing on opposite sides, guarding or team mates behind us while the dish out spells (mostly miss). Perhaps the Dm was pissed because his rolls were very bad, like out of 20 hits or so on the two tank, he only landed 4, and our rolls are good, so he start pulling this trick: "the boss (A giant zombie? he just gave us it's stats, nothing else) mind controll you (and a turn later, the other member that was also doing well) and make you commit suicide" with no saves what so ever. When I asked him about it after the session, his respond was "well duh, it was suppose to be difficult". Unsurprisingly, I left. Kudos for the 4 guys that left right after session 0, maybe they could have foresaw that.
I once made a conjuration wizard focused on minor conjuration, trying to get the most out of a weak feature. I took keen mind to remember keys or documents and was completely transparent with my DM before the campaign started. We started at level 1 did a small adventure, level up and start to sail away. For a bit of flavour I said I would conjure a telescope to look into the horizon. This is when my DM hit me with their rules for minor conjuration, it can only be one object, according to him a telescope is multiple. It's a metal tube filled with different pieces of glass, so it's multiple objects. A stool is 3 pieces of wood stuck together, etc etc. So I have a conjuration wizard who could only make small cubes of materials that instantly disappear when they take any damage... Quit the campaign there and it all died before session 2.
Ooo I got a story. As a DM in a homebrew setting, I liked introducing new mechanics to my players all the time and my players knew this and gave in real time feedback to which I'd modify based on suggestions if need be. Anyway during the campaign each of my players had acquired a symbiote, like venom (look up 5e rules it's cool), each provided in addition to 5e rules a once a day Ult ability. Each was modeled after a small creature such as a cat or axolotl or salamander or one of those mini Talos mobs from BOTW. Each were considered a celestial or primordial that were kind of blessings of homebrew deities. One day I had a crazy idea, pitched to my players that for storyline purposes what if they became incapacitated and were given some pre gen characters they could use to save themselves. They all were curious and agreed. A few months passed before I implemented this and by then my players forgot or abandoned the idea. They were all in the lair of the BBEG who was not necessarily evil but was doing questionable things to meet some ends. He was mid negotiation with my players and was pulled away from a servant and left the players in medical lab. To which they all suffocated and knocked out due to oxygen being vacuumed out of the sealed room. Cue the script flip, everyone thought they were gonna play as some NPCs they made friends with a long the way which was not necessarily wrong but..... I then proceeded to hand them all note cards of "pre gen" characters with the names of their Symbiotes on em and a few abilities significant to the symbiote. My players were thrilled, they got to play as cute/cool creatures and do a stealth mission around the Lair to save themselves and get some information pertaining to the campaign that they otherwise could not have gotten and have a fun couple of battles with mini cleaning constructs before finding their unconscious bodies. Though the cost was to lose their Symbiotes to revive them back, they readily accepted it since they got a good story out of it... And post game content had a couple of them revive back after all said and done.... But it goes to show, talking with ur players to add new mechanics can make a great story and other things possible
I had a DM who ruled all improvised weapons did one damage. This didn't really reflect our party much as we weren't the improvised weapon type of people anyway but I thought it was because he is a really by the book kind of guy. Guess he must have missed that part of the PHB
To be fair though, those "Worst rule enforced #1 & #2" are not that bad. Nat 1 being a critical fail for everything and Nat 20 bein a critical success for everything is something that usually works as an unspoken rule in a lot of tables, and it never "ruins the fun". What i think it happenned is that the player had enough of the dm's bs and the huge encounters, and the fact that, well, fighting against 60 baddies means that they mathematically *will* roll higher than you.
Requiring a creative concept like the college of creation bards “Song of Creation” feature to be dependent on “things your character has seen and know well.” It’s one thing to say I can’t use things from published adventures, but that one limitation had me constantly having to ask the dm if my character knew XY or Z well enough; and lead to incredible inconsistency and lack of ability to really fulfill my fantasy of this character being a problem solver and explorer. It’s not the Conjuration wizard, and putting the same restrictions on it makes the subclass feel like it’s reduced to only the extremely weak “Mote of Potential” feature till level 6, and even then I tried to persist till level 8 to no avail. It got to a point where I gave up on creativity and asked to change subclass because it was clear that creativity was more a problem we always had to arbitrate where nobody else who optimized basically for combat ever had these issues.
Oh I have one, "persuasion checks need to be trades." We were trying to evacuate people to the citadel of a town under siege and the DM flipped when they decided that words were not enough to convince townsfolk to come with us and we decided to walk off rather than bribe the clearly suicidal people to go to the only safe place in a 10 mile radius.
(This may be better in a thread about games that take to long or something) I am part of a long running campaign (over 10yrs and we just hit lvl 13) my DM is amazing, creative, and often let's us be very creative. However sometimes the pace of the game can get... frustrating. Like going 4 or 5 sessions with only role-play and no combat can equate to 6 months or longer in real time. And without combat we don't reach that all important milestone to lvl. It also means that any negative effects last for a long time. Like the time I sacrificed my cube of force to trap a badguy while my party healed. I took a crit that blinded my monk. We eventually won, but my monk was still blinded. He talked with me later about if I wanted to try to play my monk as a blind monk. I thought, yea it sounds kinda cool and unique, and it fit my character's personality really well ( he liked to overcome all challenges placed in his way to become stronger). Unfortunately I not only suffered the 5e blinded condition (disadvantage on attacks, advantage on attacks against you, and failing ability checks involving sight) but several others he added to make it more realistic. I was at 1/2 speed, I could still run up walls but would run out windows or knock over flaming sconces, my polearm master feat was useless since I couldn't make OA nor could I use deflect missiles. He also decided that grappling was an attack not a contested skill check, so it also had disadvantage. I slowly learned to overcome many of these disadvantages over 2 lvs and 2 1/2 years! He did apologize, saying he never intended it to take that long to reach the end of that particular arc (it took almost a year and a half to get through 1 day in game while we were storming the BBEG base) I don't regret it from a story perspective now, but man I wasn't having fun for a bit there.
The line of sight thing feels alot like a warhammer/warhammer40k table top idea.... but even they don't do 'head to head' line of sight. They eyeball it and if they can reasonably see the enemy model from the units max range or less they can consider it an attack(unless there's other properties like peircing ammo. idk if that exists,I know very little but I do know range attacks work with generally being able to see the enemy model)
Yeah, that and the archer having to roll if he hit enemy or ally are definitely Games Workshop constructs, cause I use both of those all the time with Lord of the Rings SBG. And yeah, it's much more up to interpretation than just 'head to head line of sight'.
my current DM has ruled that the Spell Identify is no longer a just a spell a player can use. instead its something rather rare to find someone who can identify magic items and it requires a place designed to do so. i was perfectly fine with it, its just something for the sake of keeping things mysterious, the rest of the group was not happy with it and constantly bring it up and its really killing it for me
I think I'm missing context here. My players usually start by argumenting their point and if it's good enough they get bonuses or don't have to roll, so I don't see how this is a bad rule per se.
@@krinkrin5982 Basically for me this means, don’t make me say what my character would say. Just let me say I choose to intimidate rather than coming up with the lines. My character may be a very social butterfly and know what to say, how every I may not be.
In a campaign atm where the DM insists that ALL concentration checks are made as a flat roll against DC17. While not destroying the game persay it does somewhat change thje way my character has been built. Not a big thing really, just frustrating that I can get no bonus at all to such a relatively difficult check.
The best critical realism models are the ones that look at critical checks. You rolled a Nat 20? Nice! Can you confirm? Okay so you rolled a 3. That doesn't hit, but your Nat 20 landed. So you did land an attack, but no a critical. Roll normal damage. Woah, Nat 20?? Nice! Alright roll to succeed. 17? Well you only needed a 12 to land, so you succeeded your critical! Roll x2 multiplier! Daaaamn, Nat 20! Roll to succeed. WTF A SECOND NAT 20??? Alright, as your axe comes down, the blade finds the smallest gap in his armor, right at the elbow. As though it were like gliding your hand though water, the axe glides without resistance from one side of his arm, clean through the other. You severed his arm in half.
I use something like the "Roll to see if you hit the right square" but only on a miss. My rational is that when you miss with an arrow, it's gotta land somewhere. And if there's enough bad guys, you might miss the guy you're aiming at, but hit a different bad guy.
Notably, that's only "If you miss the ac of the thing you aimed at" then you roll to see where it landed. If it lands in the square of a creature, your attack roll is compared to their ac. If you hit them, you hit them. If you miss them too, then it hits the ground and is destroyed.
I once played in a gritty, low (almost non-existent) magic campaign, so leveling/development was slow and character deaths tended to be final affairs. Our DM decided that death should also be a source of hardship and required that all new characters begin at level 1, regardless of current party level. I promptly quit after my first death.
AOE gets no saving throws. So fireballs basically do true damage if you’re in the radius. Made that little banger up on the fly and it took all I could muster to not drive to my DMs house and smack him
Had not played in years when a friend offered an invite to his roommate's campaign. Asked who was playing what and found they didnt have dedicated healer in the group. Not my top pick, but W/E cleric it is. Cleared the rolling style for stats/ what level/ what equipment and showed up ready to go. I've been playing a long time, got a lot of mileage off that glut of wisdom boost 2e cleric spells. Pretty much set most of the combats that session up on a platter, heals were icing. Everyone at the table was stoked what a machine the party was. Session ends and XP is divided up. DM gives XP for kills. Looks up at me and says "OH, well you didnt actually kill anything so no XP." I pushed back a bit, but "You SURE about that? You saw how much I contributed to those kills, rite?" just got a head shake. The following session, I changed out every spell. I helped the party exactly 0 times. My strategy was 100% kill stealing, and I had set myself up quite well for it. It even devolved into a potential PvP situation when I used hold person on my own party member to keep him from getting a kill blow. House rule of XP for kills got shifted to an even split for the party when I explained exactly why I was playing that way and pointed out I was on pace for most of the XP this session by doing so. Point made. Interestingly enough, I became very good friends with that DM. I'm STILL running campaigns in a world he and I created almost 30 years ago.
I've designed enemies by converting them from class levels before... But I've always used them sparingly and more often than not they were for Major NPCs (and were also massively simplified). . Yet in my head... Level 5 is an "elite" enemy. Level 10 would be what the boss of those elites would be... and level 3 is where I'd put them (any weaker than that and I might as well use the normal stat blocks). . I also gave them lower attribute blocks. Even my Barbarians never have strength above 16.
Close one, didn't actually happen thankfully, but my DM wanted to add a rule that I must spend an action to reload a gun I was wielding, which not only means I wouldn't be able to attack every turn, but also that multiattack and a bunch of other abilities wouldn't work. My character had the ability to ignore loading property from a feat, but that DM didn't care until I told him I won't play as an unplayable character and will resign from the game unless we use different rules. Eventually we settled on my character's weapon having 6 bullets and me having to spend an action to reload all of them (So with multiattack I need to make no attacks every 4 turns).
Lemme just say I respect the rule of cool, but if someone keeps trying to break the game in a poor way (I jump across the gap to get a ton of extra damage advantage and can’t miss) then I enforce can’t take back actions rules. But if they say “I jump off a sail to land on my opponent and run them through” I might just happen to “forget” movement speed fall damage and to hit” to make it possible
Hopefully there is one that is "What is the most creative/hilarious way the DM ended a session/campaign/one-shot?" I still love one my buddy did where my character in a one-shot fought this massive battle and expended all of his spell slots and was at 4hp but survived. He limped to the tavern and was helped into his room by some people in there. He was so tired that he plopped onto the bed, not even bothering removing his armor. "Roll to escape." The bed was a mimic and he had been eaten. Laughed my ass off the way he explained it.
My former DM would only allow two classes to be able to multiclass into. Another made it so you absolutely had to describe how and why your character was going into a class.
Nat 20 and nat 1 auto success/failure on skill checks. This isn't and never has been a rule in D&D for those who do not know. Nat 20/nat 1 are ONLY auto success/failure on Attack Rolls, critical confirmation (depending on version) and saving rolls/ability checks. It has always been that if you rolled a 1 on the d20 but your skill check was still higher, you succeeded and if you rolled a 20 on a skill check but got a lower total result then you failed. This is important because people can occasionally do stuff like "I roll to intimidate the king and his entire army so that they support me instead" and the GM, not knowing any better, is derailed immediately because the guy rolled a natural twenty, and the GM BELIEVES he has to allow it. Or how with a player making a persuasion check rolled a 1 but had a positive result above the check and still failed.
Little correction, in current d&d rules the critical success or failure rule actually ONLY applies to attacks. Nat 20 and Nat 1 mean NOTHING elsewhere.
If you can roll a 1 for a check and _still_ succeed, and a higher roll doesn't change the outcome, then why is it even being rolled for in the first place?
Having to roll a flat d20 to revive a character with any of the relevant spells, and if you roll too low they're dead forever even if you try taking them to a temple. I know it was implemented to balance out the fact that we were getting a little too powerful for our own good, but it made me (the cleric) absolutely terrified of trying to revive beloved companions lest they be lost forever and the party blames me. The paladin ended up being our revive person while I did my best to make sure no one died in the first place, and if we weren't sure we could make the revive roll then we'd just take the person to a temple and pay the people there to do it because that was a guaranteed success. He eventually relented to make the DC lower if you were using higher tier spells, but it felt kinda sucky to have to waste a slot on True Resurrection just so I had better odds of not accidentally putting a character into permadeath.
Oooo, I have a new rule.. Every round I as DM have go through all my notes for my 705 DMPCs and 14,608 NPCs and adjust their momentary actions. Oh and we'll reroll initiative every round even when not in combat. Literally crying in laughter while typing that.
'The Personal Trajectory Rule'. If we did anything to move more than 25 feet in a turn, changing direction at any point during that movement carried a risk of penalties of varying severity. The most common was a reduction in maximum movement speed depending on how fast you moved and how sharp the turn was (he had a whole table for it), and if that was all, it might've been fine... but the rule was also applied to the strafing tactics that our squishy ranged combatants needed to use to survive combat in tight spaces; ranged attacks had disadvantage if your target was more than 45 degrees to one side relative to your trajectory at the point where you took the shot (ostensibly this applied to all attacks, but in practice it never came up in melee). As you might imagine, that was hell on the rogue in particular. The justification for all this was that it takes extra effort to make sharp turns at higher speeds, but no allowances were made for racial speed bonuses, or the monk's unarmored movement, or anything else that could be reasonably assumed to have been the result of years of practice, so my personal theory is that he was salty about his favorite halfling not being as fast as the rest of us.
To be fair some tables (players and DMs) prefer the realism rolls for acrobatics on actions such as a short dwarf flipping over the railing to make an attack. The PCs and DMs should be in agreement and it needs to be more fun for the majority. Some house rules are for campaign play styles however the entire group needs to agree this is ‘more fun’ however otherwise the rules need to be what’s most fun for all players, PCs and DM. Some people also prefer harsher more difficult play. Everyone needs to have a conversation and agree however.
DM: "The entire stone fortress has an aura of abjuration that is too powerful for you to identify." Player 1: "Can I earthglide?" DM: "No." P 2: "Can I teleport?" DM: "No." P 3: "Can my monk punch stones through?" DM: "No." P 4: "Can I use my X-ray vision spell?" DM: "No." Cool so I guess we're going to avoid using the characters we built in the ways that we built them so we can do your specific version of what a dungeon is for ELEVENTH LEVEL PLAYERS...
I have a house rule with crit successes and failures in games; minion type enemies don't get them, period. Players, baddy leaders, BBEG, lieutenants and stuff did, but not minions. Smooths combat out a bunch, no matter the game system and brings the PCs on parity with enemies for how often they are subjected to them. How I would have ruled the vaulting; it's either a Jump or Acrobatics check and if the character succeeds, they make their attack with bonuses as if they were charging, failure means they can move up to the monster but not attack, or they can move normally. That way a player has a chance to do something really cool with a bonus, but they're not completely screwed if they mess up (I'd give no penalty to defense and they still start the next turn with a full attack option, even on a failure). I like to run encounters that have risk/reward conditions. If you take a bigger risk, you get a bigger payout if you succeed, but there will be some penalty for failure, without being wholly screwed. Alternatively you can play it safe, take minimal risk and do mundane things that will eventually lead to success, but will take longer and you get no bonuses to do so.
