Your WORST D&D ADVICE gave me psychic damage 

Giving -1 to girls isn't sexist xD it's just realistic, of course you should compensate with a +1 in constitution or charisma.

Couldn't it be considered sexist to assume that every girl could/would keep on par in strength contests with males?

If Bob doesn't pin this, I'll print it and pin on my wall It's such a basic social concept: say what you want

@@nairocamilo as my best friend is fond of saying: closed mouths don't get fed

Yes, I just think some DMs aren't on the same page as their players and may only find the game fun if they're dealing a lot of damage and killing players left and right. If your players don't get hit by a single trap, thats the point. And if you can *only* have fun if your players are taking hits, then perhaps you need to reevaluate what kind of fun you're having here and what your players(friends) are actually here for. Sometimes its okay to say that just because you're not having fun, that it isn't your players fault. They are not 100% responsible for your enjoyment just as you aren't for theirs. But you're supposed to work together to have fun together.

Yeah that's an important note!

Nothing is less fun than players who don't even bother to make things fun for each other.

As someone who got away with playing a multi attacker with an antimatter rifle, I second this.

@@kepler6873 I barely even allow black powder, though I do currently have a dwarf NPC who uses scattershot blunderbuss because he's missing an eye and the spread makes up for his lack of depth perception :D

Some players are adamant about that

The general advice of "don't say no, say no, but or yes, and" is good on paper, it encourages learning to improvise consequences of unintended actions, but, sometimes establishing limits actually helps roleplay and worldbuilding, especially when magic is involved. Kinda related, the "Natural 20 doesn't mean automatic success, but best possible outcome under the circumstances" fix does wonders here. "I bluff to convince the King that I am actually him, and he is actually my double" getting a 20, and resulting in a hearty chuckle from the king and a pouch of copper coins for the laugh, with a half "haha we have fun", half "try that again and I fucking end you" pat on the shoulder is the way to go.

@@aprinnyonbreak1290 "Yes and" is an improve technique. It works well in most situations when collaboratively building a story and can be a useful tool, but like an tool, there is a time to use the screwdriver, and a time to use the hammer. The DM needs to know when is the right time for which tool.

I did recall that video and found it to my liking. Though that is probably because I did the same thing 😎. For both professor dungeon master and I, It wasn’t that our girlfriends didn’t play dungeons and dragons, it was that they didn’t want us to play dungeons and dragons.

I haven't watched the video, or even seen this youtuber, but just from your description, it sounds like he didn't break up with her because she didn't play dnd, but because she was hostile/dismissive of a hobby he's really passionate about. If I'm misrepresenting the situation then that's my bad, but you really don't want to be in a relationship like that. You don't have to share the same hobbies with someone, but you should probably be with someone who doesn't disrespect your hobbies.

Yeah, the comment in Bob's video here wildly misconstrued the message PDM was trying to convey. lol

Yeah, PDM was not saying that you should dump your SO if they don't also play D&D he was saying not to stay with someone who does not respect your hobbies. Which is a good advice, if someone treats the things that make you happy like it's utterly unimportant, you should not stay with them, as they will constantly make you have to choose between your own happiness and theirs. Which is not healthy. He also bragged a bunch about how his wife not only respected his hobby but enjoyed it as well, which he said not everyone would be fortunate enough to have, even if it was the ideal scenario. It was mostly just him gushing about his wife more than saying that's what everyone should aim for.

Okay yeah, I have actually seen that video then. Seems like the comment I read kinda took it out of context

"WHATS THE ELVISH WORD FOR "FRIEND"?" *Gandalf looks pissed.*

"How'd you know which button to press?" "It was the shiniest."

That first is good if and only if it is also good for the barbarian to cut the rouges hand off for stealing because that's wht his tribe does to theives.

Also with TTRPGs sometimes (though maybe most times) it's better to have party cohesion than to only "play your character." You can be a selfish no-good evil guy, but perhaps find a way to do that without spoiling the game for your mates.

Excuses are literally just explanations you don't buy. If it's okay when agree it's okay when you don't unless it breaches a boundary established by the rule or the group. If you don't like pvp, make a rule. If you don't like solo actions make a rule. If the guy who like to steal from players doesn't like the no pvp rule it's better to let him know and quit day one.

@@lotlahzey people's reasons to play are diverse. I like being stolen from if it's in character. Conflict in party creates more possible outcomes. If you don't like that stuff it's best to establish a table rule so the player can chose to not participate, not to ban actions allowed by the rules when you don't like them.

Him and Liam are crazy with the role play. They are all good but they seem like they just stay on it

I feel like in campaign 2 he rolled a character that could more openly do that. Fjord is basically the leader of the M9 (sort of)

Travis is a DM's dream player - never argues even if you are wrong, but will tactfully point out in case you missed something ... Cheers the other players, pays attention to the details, but role plays so well he won't meta game ...

@@cooterjesusWhen I used to watch, Laura even spoke like her character when it was just her talking.

oh that's GENIUS. As someone who plays a lot of dumbass characters, I do it on purpose bc I'm bad at puzzles, but sometimes I DO have a good idea. I get away w/it by having my character kinda...stumble into the idea by accident, like leaning on the right lever or choosing the correct rune bc "it kinda looked like a sandwich and I was hungry." of course the DM gets the real explanation ooc so it's still satisfying. the puzzle is for the PLAYERS after all, the pcs aren't real.

Yeah, I think the only time a "never" would make sense is that such a statement could never apply to every group/player! But if you're deriving fun from the thing, than the idea of choosing the thing over fun falls apart anyway

@@BobWorldBuilder How about “never put competition between players over fun”?

@@evannibbe9375 but what if my group enjoys competition between players?

@@Jimbo40000 i think he means don't let your players get in conflicts. characters are fine but actual conflict isn't fun

@@Jimbo40000 Then it's not putting competition over fun. Don't be obtuse.

True though - sausage party only, lol

You had very stupid friends, so sad to hear that. DnD is for everyone!

@@mateofantasma *had* very stupid friends 😉

I'm very glad that did not stop you!! :)

@@BobWorldBuilder My partner was an avid player in high school, so once I saw his book collection we’ve played nearly once a week ever since.

is the story that boring that the other players cant enjoy ?

@@devforfun5618 I'm playing dnd to take part in a story. If I'd only want to listen to someone else having an adventure, I'd go watch critical role

I don't even have a chance to play DnD so take this idea with the grain of salt that it is worth: Why not impose a time limit of sorts involving the split party? Even if the party is in the middle of a battle, remember where everything is, the stats and HP and turn order and all that, and move on to the other half of the party and their story and so forth. That way, a session is never just one half of the party, the other half of the session can be the other half. It also provides an opportunity for the action taking place to be a cliffhanger. Think like how a tv series with an A plot and a B plot that can have two parter episodes divides the time between the plots and can leave them for next week. That's maybe the best way to handle split party adventuring, and keep it limited so it doesn't happen every session.

@@anna-flora999 "Taking part" inherently implies "not taking all part". It should be fine for other players to have a bit of extra spotlight, just like it should be fine with them if you do. When you read a book, it can be really interesting to actually see what other characters are doing apart from the main group or how they handle those parts. Saying that you shouldn't split up because that would create those different interaction opportunities to experience sounds pretty sad to me. If your other players/their characters are that boring to you, is it maybe just the combat/core story you enjoy?

I’d like to throw in that it also can make it harder to follow what’s happening. My old group split the party once for a reason I didn’t hear, and I spent about ten minutes confused. I wanted to know what the other half of the party was doing, but the half I stayed with needed to discuss our own plans. When it came time for my character to to move around and do things, I didn’t even know where I was, or what the location looked like. I was surprised when we jumped out a window into a lake. xD (This isn’t to say that group was bad or anything- they were great and other than that I had a blast playing with them)

Sleeper agent.

No phone number, or email? or any way to contact him?

I saw that video too. Could work for a horror game maybe. Not something I would do on the regular though.

Back in 4e I played a campaign from Level 1-30 where the DM tracked everyone's HP. He had a custom initiative tracker that showed everyone (PC & Monsters) as well as color coded bar with Blue/Green/Orange/Red/Black for HP. Blue being uninjured, Orange or Red being bloodied or I think below 20% and black being unconcious. Mostly people didn't bother tracking their own HP and it was honestly kind of awesome, though I'd hate to have that responsibility as the DM.

Hiding character HP doesn't seem like the best idea. Hiding character death saves on the other hand, could be interesting and lead to some real tension when someone goes down

@@DandyGuy hiding HP expands that tension out to non-combat situations and into decisions on whether to engage the monster head on at all or not. This could help tone down the "heroic" aspect of dnd to an extent.

If you use a VTT like Roll20, it's easily possible to have a HP bar that doesn't have numbers, and I find that strikes the right balance: You don't know the exact amount of HP, but you can eyeball when something is having more of an effect than another thing, or when one enemy is barely scratched and another is half-dead. Players shouldn't be able to exactly mechanically quantify the HP of an enemy, sure, but they should be able to tell the difference between an enemy that is barely scratched and an enemy covered in wounds gasping its last few breaths. (And believe me, a bar is much less exact than you might think - I've looked at how much a bar went down after an attack, and said "these guys only have like 30 HP", and then DM said after the session that by the way, they had 48.)

Yes!

A "horror adventure"? Ooooo.... Imagine like, Resident Evil, but with DnD fantasy. I like that. I want that.

Yeah, I hate crit fumbles because they will apply one in 20 times, and I have never met anyone who I would call proficient at something that not only fails, but fails catastrophically one out of twenty times. I had a DM who had a rule that if you nat 1 you stab yourself and take minimum damage, thing is he has a history with HEMA and is legitimately proficient at sword fighting, and I asked him if he had ever, in his life, accidentally stabbed himself when fighting, and he told me no. So, I then asked him why our characters, who have at least as much experience with their weapons of choice as he does IRL, would not only accidentally stab ourselves occasionally, but one in twenty times, and apparently he knew it was absurd but thought it made the game more fun, but since we made it clear that it was taking away from our enjoyment he agreed to stop. Crit fumbles are absurd, whether we are talking about equipment breaking, dropping swords, injuring ourselves, or whatever, it makes no sense and punishes us for doing something we are supposed to be extremely competent at.

@@jacobbissey9311 i think crit fumbles are fun, although i think you’re right that it’s weird for them to mostly affect martials. I’m playing a sorcerer in my first ever game and think it makes a lot more sense to, say, hit an unintended nearby target with my firebolt on a crit fumble than it does for the barbarian to cut himself on his axe

@@nox9775 I actually have experience with both sword combat and archery (albeit range archery, not combat archery). Now, I am far from a first level PC, probably roughly equivalent to half proficiency with either, but I don't hit myself 1/40 times, more like 1/400000 times, I have fought uphill on icy gravel without falling, as well as many, many other situations with less than ideal footing, and I have never gone down without an enemy putting me down. I have also not had a bowstring break on me, and I've only witnessed it happening on an incredibly old bow that had never been maintenanced properly. I've only ever dropped my weapon when opponents have legitimately disarmed me, because I know how to properly grip my sword. Crit fumbles are absurd. Nobody legitimately competent at any activity should be failing that hard that often. Crit fumbles are a lose more mechanic, which is bad game design (some people enjoy them, but more often than not, for most people, it just results in a negative play experience). A first level fighter should be better than me by a significant margin, not worse by a significant margin. A 20th level fighter should be so much better than me that we're talking superhuman skills, not fumbling 1 in 20, or 40, or 100, or even a million hits. If you have fun with it, that's fine, it's your table, you do what is fun for your group, but I have never encountered a critical fumble system that wasn't plainly absurd, that didn't inordinately punish martials for trying to do what they should be good at, further expanding the martial/caster divide. Before telling me how realistic or reasonable a fumble system is, think about the single activity you are best at, then consider someone who is world class at that activity, and count how many times they critically fumble at that activity per attempt, then compare that to the odds you are talking about.

@@nox9775 enemies exploiting mistakes should be the result of their attacks succeeding, not mine failing. If my sword is leaving my hand it should be because the other guy succeeded at a disarm maneuver, if I'm getting tripped it should be from an attack they have in their stat block that puts me on the ground. Armor class is an abstraction, and your die roll even moreso, and since enemies and allies are all technically acting within the same six seconds any "exploiting mistakes" or whatever *should* be represented in how you RP the successful rolls.

@@nox9775 seems like you’re adding a lot of unnecessary bloat to your combat sessions by doing that, but you can do whatever you and your table finds fun.

Great ideas!

My dm does something similar for enemies

I think crit fumbles are good, but for me to feel comfortable using them, it would have to be a good table that doesn’t have a bunch of crazy stuff, and it would have to be a lower chance than 1/20, like if you crit fail, you then have to roll the 20 again, and if you roll a certain number or numbers, you roll on the table, or you roll on the table when you get a 1, but a portion of the table is that nothing happens beyond a miss

Yeah crit fumbles are dumb, they are also an optional rule so you really shouldn't feel pressured to use them,

Speaking of fumbles, in Cyberpunk 2020 you would fumble 10% of the time, if you played RAW.

Yeah this is the most valid argument I've seen against them. It really does affect the classes differently in 5e. I'm trying to introduce spell check in my next campaign so I can keep my fumbles more fair :)

@@Alex-sf5uz If you really want to get into it, all rules are "optional rules" in DnD. That's literally the first rule.

The good ol' Quantic Troll. I've seen many people talking smack of this narrative technique, but if the encounter fits, I see no problem with it. If it's an unique bandit encounter for example, you could move it to a sewer, a cottage, urban landscape... Then let common sense rule over scenarios where this encounter shouldn't happen

It really depends on what the encounter is. If they avoid a fight with no consequences to the adventure, then good for them, and they get XP for overcoming the obstacle! But if they avoid a fight that would result in them gaining an important item or bit of info, I have to either move the encounter or find another way for them to get the item/info. It's usually easier to move the encounter.

Haha okay yeah, accidentally avoiding encounters is different

@@nairocamilo A good quantum troll can also utilize the intelligence of the creature itself to justify its movement. A hit squad with a Ranger tracked the party, or the minions of evil had their boss scry which stairway they would use.

Ye if they put effort into avodoing the encounter then that was the encounter

Oh this is great advice! My group calls this type of hook "sticky ends" bc I'm a geneticist & they picked up on my metaphor LOL. The idea is that a "hook" is less interesting for the player & less helpful for the DM if it's /complete/; leaving an unfinished section of backstory allows the player to have some mystery & the DM some creativity! An example from one of my games: a pc's sister was kidnapped. Instead of just leaving it at that, OR telling me exactly who did it & why, she described what her pc witnessed: a man in a black robe leap out the 2nd story window carrying her sister. Why the robe? Just what he had on hand, or is it like a cult uniform? How did he survive jumping out the 2nd story window? Why kidnap the sister at all? She didn't know, so she got a fun mystery to solve, & I got a way to "stick" the unfinished parts of the story into the campaign's main plot, so it all tied together nicely!

I did this exact thing.I pregenerated this backstory involving a young girl raised in a temple, and then getting an evil step mother. I finally got her slotted into a game and the GM was able to mold my vague idea and give me the name of the temple, my parents, my evil step mother, the temple's patron and the religion. So i just slotted into his story. I was even able to become the missing Daughter of a key NPC the party has already met.

I like the "It sounds like you want to accomplish X so here's how I would go about it. Good initiative, bad judgement."

Great point!

This is what I use too!

I'd say use "no but..." really sparingly. Because if you overuse that tactic, failure becomes meaningless. Only use that if what they do actually does open a new opportunity.

If a DM said this to me unironically, I would make it my new mission to kill god XD

I believe this is why Arrau’s Destroy Universe is a thing someone made.

For extra help, those people should suggest what other system should be played. Simply being told "use another system" is not as helpful as "you want sci fi? Try (system). Oh, a horror game? Then (system) might be for you."

Yeah I think the thing is that people usually aren’t struggling. They create something to change up the themes or rules of 5e, and someone just says they shouldnt have bothered to do it

@@BobWorldBuilder personal I've known or been someone who was struggling with that, and the solution was to try a different system, or at least that's the one used and I was pretty happy

Also a lot of the time people give this advice it's more along the lines of you should check out "Insert System Here" which does not necessarily mean run it, it could also mean check it out and rip mechanics/ideas out of it.

Also many other systems (PbtA for example) are so easy they can be explained almost completely in 15-30 minutes. If you're looking for a specific genre of game, a PbtA game will probably serve you way better then hacking D&D. Want a tense but short game that emulate horror flicks where probably only one person survives to the end? Dread will do a much better job of that than D&D ever will.

SAME. My goal as a GM is to entertain my players damnit! And people generally have trouble conveying what kind of gameplay or stories would be interesting to play, and backstories can give so much on those fronts and even give you neat ideas for the types of npcs they could play off of/against really well! I feel like players not giving a backstory is potentially hindering the fun they could have at any given game. _Especially_ if it's anything more than a one-shot.

true, as long as you want to play anything other than a wr game, but most older players from older editions are wargamers, and backstories arent useful when there is no story.

Dungeon crawl classic funnel. Peon becomes the hero

@@tankatim13 cool, that's not what I run.

Yeah, some of my most fun sessions (as a player and DM) were highly improvised, but it has never felt sustainable in my groups. A little planning goes a long way!

Ehhh I stand by the idea that DM PCs are a "slippery slope" though. I feel like they can be easily and even accidentally misused

@@BobWorldBuilder it's frustrating how ingrained they are in official modules. I keep trying to remove them from the curse of strahd game I'm running, but the book keeps giving them more, like they're trying to build an army or something, first isek and and ireena, then the martikovs, then van richten, then whoever they're fated ally is, usually they'll end up with ezmerelds even if she's not a fated ally. It's kind of ridiculous

I think the most important thing to remember when using DMPCs is that they should be minimally involved in player decision-making processes. As the DM, your (friendly) NPCs should be used to facilitate the game experience, not compromise player agency by giving yourself, an effectively omniscient agent, a mouthpiece directly to the party.

I like playing a DMPC Bard that is just obsessed with following the heroes around and giving them buffs while he tries to help out in combat a bit. The reason for my DMPC at all is just to help balance a smaller party slightly. When it comes to story stuff, he is pretty much non-existent. It does make it him kinda look like a dumbass but oh well :p

I feel DMPCs work the best as support characters- Making the Tank or the Healer, the least exciting roles, be DMPCs allowed my players to play the classes they wanted without worrying about party balancing.

I think the person who gave that "advice" was one of those DMs who just wants to write a novel about their OCs & doesn't care about the other players at the table tbh. also, personally i LOVE getting 40-page backstories from my players, as long as there's some gaps for me to fill in OR lots of discussion on how to work stuff in. I have one player in particular who, before every game, spends at least an hour a day infodumpnig me walls of text about their pcs, & I'm always able to do so much more w/their character because of it, to the point where I feel bad for the ppl who don't give me as much & so don't get as much story involvement. but I can 100% get how it'd be overwhelming to most DMs. it's worth noting that I play with established groups of long-time friends who I talk to frequently so I'm getting 40 pages a few paragraphs at a time over the course of a month, not a novel someone printed out & expects me to read overnight.

My party has a running gag where, no matter the game, as long as movies haven't been invented in that setting, we'll say things are "just like my favorite stage play, [real movie]!" It's usually a oneshot joke for a good laugh, but one time it snowballed into my pc's favorite stage play canonically being Indiana Jones, which he (in backstory) forced another pc to go see w/him 7 times

Here have a good berry 🍓

@@BobWorldBuilder I don't think good berries last three months... damn it, I was too late.

@@Arc115YT Maybe it is a legendary Very Good Berry?

Yeah I think that Yes, but and No, but both work better for dnd

Yeah, I always equate INT with "book learning." That way my INT = 8 characters aren't dumb, just uneducated. (My INT = 6 fighter, on the other hand, is dumb as a rock. He's really nice, though!)

yeah, my party uses wis for stuff like puzzles & generally not making a fool of yourself

I think every relationship where having a difference in interests means someone needs to give up their hobby is kind of unhealthy.

Dungeon Craft has some weird takes. Especially loves to make fun of people for being attatched to their characters or remotely upset when they die. He thinks it'a a "millenial snowflake" thing... I'm not a fan of him at all.

Or you know, find a person who you adore and doesnt impose their hobbies to you and actually has a life outside of your relationship.

If his take is that someone's interests being different from his won't work, then I'm happy he found a SO that fills that gap so he can't turn someone else's life into hell. Now, imposing over and projecting into someone's interest is just as toxic a relationship.

@@xionkuriyama5697 He really irked me the worng way. Really charismatic, but this way of thinking is close to gatekeeping and I ain't about that

Having a quest line to "Find the enchanted chalice"- you make them drink from it and they will return to life! Or supplanting a cleric or otherworldly patron! Owing someone your friends LIFE, and this entity has that hanging over them. It can be a really huge storyline depending on your setting :)

If you've killed your players? I suppose get fake ID, escape to a country with weak extradition laws, and hope there are RPGers there? :-D

hypothetically, abandon life as you know it to live in hiding or turn yourself into the proper authorities: in this case, Jeremy Crawford

Or tell your party to grow up a bit and don’t get so worked up over non existent characters in a combat game lol

@@skelitonking117 This is why reading comments _after_ the video is usually better

I'm a DM & I explicitly tell my players that I don't kill pcs, I just don't. This is bc I run very rp-heavy games where I expect characters to be developed & players to be attached to them, so killing pcs would be disruptive & counterproductive. Backstories are EVERYTHING to me, they are NECESSARY to run a game, the longer & more complicated the better! That being said, death-heavy brutal games are a valid way to play. If a player wants a game w/a strong possibility of death, & their DM is too much of a baby to kill them bc their ~backstory~ made them hesitant, that's...not a DM you want running that game anyway. Get a more brutal DM.

@@Pinkstarclan exactly! If a DM wants to run a brutal campaign, people should discuss that on a session zero and just than let the player decide how much they wnat to dedicate themselves on writing a backstory

Nice!

@@BobWorldBuilder thank you for your videos. You have great insights and the best positive attitude!

If your group finds it fun, great, but for most people fumbles don't work. They don't work because to punish players 5% of the time every time they attack for no reason, is for most people fundamentally unfun and just feels bad.

Critical fumbles punish martial characters way more than casters, especially those who make a lot of attacks, like fighters, monks, and dual wielders. Casters don't even use attack rolls most of the time. Also, with critical fumbles a level 20 fighter will drop his guard more often than a level 1 fighter and that doesn't make any sense at all.

@@DvirPick well, we do not have any casters in this group and they like it. Each table will know what they like and what they don't

The most likely reason people say 'play Pathfinder' when they see certain homebrew a person is making is due to the changes to the system they're making are already baseline in PF1e/PF2e

Nice!

The approach my DnD-ish group generally takes in this sort of situation is to metagame a little bit. Basically, we divorce the player who solves the puzzle from the character who solves the puzzle. Like, I'm really good at solving logic puzzles, but if my character isn't and someone else's is, I'll pass the in-game solution to that character. Or at the very least give their player some really pointed hints. "What was it the jester said? 'To find the answer don't be cross, the prayer will give you your word. It really isn't a difficult puzzle, if you but read it top to bottom.' She really emphasized the last word of each line. Could that be a hint itself?"

Have him make a new character with the group in a session zero and if/when the new character dies he can have his bad ass character take over... Or have him start with the bad ass character and wait, P.C.S always die somehow.

Ooof that's frustrating

Low stats helps to make characters more fun. Watching a super intelligent wizard fumble their way through a conversation due to their low charisma is fun. Or better yet, having that same wizard roll insanely well and watch them become an absolute chad for a moment is also fun.

@@NoalFarstrider Not in 5e they dont lol. At least not in my experience.

I always find it confusing that there are DMs who allow characters to roll stats unsupervised. Just don't. Even if your players ARE all super-trustworthy and would never dream of fudging stats, just always have them witnessed. If someone does then roll super-well, lucky them. Also, the suspense of watching rolls can be part of the fun of rolling.

That’s awesome! RU-vid doesn’t really like positive videos though :/

The warlock of Pathfinder is the Witch but yeah, always wished that there would be a pure Warlock in Pathfinder but copyright and all that

Tiny dungeon, 5 torches deep, dungeon world

In what system could they even get +20, and how as that not spotted by the DM prior to being imported? Surely they looked over the sheet right? Honestly though, a better solution would be to force them to make Saves in their weak stats and basically ignore their Armor Class entirely. Teach them that high AC doesn't make you invincible.

I actually really like that! Obviously, it’s very clear to the players what is going on, but it just shows how a skilled DM can keep the flow of a game going even when players try to exploit it.

@@demomanchaos You could have a pathfinder 2e character with 40 ac, but then again the attacks would be conning at you with +30. I actually had a level 11 character with 35 ac, it was the most fun character I had played until the next 2e character I made :)

@@AlexPBenton Most of that AC comes from Skills/Feats/etc with (As far as I recall) armors never getting more than a +2 or +3 magic bonus unless the DM is an idiot who throws around absurdly strong magic items willy nilly. Even then I don't think it actually goes past +5 for anything. 99% odds kid who claimed that made up the +20 armor and other stuff entirely, and if he is that dumb I am betting he wasn't clever enough to make sure his Reflex/Will saves were buffed either. Or if you wanted to be upfront you could just send a couple of Rust Monsters to just delete his kit entirely.

Armor enhancement bonuses CAN NOT exceed +10; idk what game he was playing, but it wasn't d&d, especially because no level 8 is going to be able to afford +20 anything lmfao it would be around 500,000 Gold lol

Thank you, JF! I really appreciate it :)

Sorcerors and doubly so Warlocks where deliberately created to be "The Easier Wizard", though admittedly the Sorc has strayed from that identity over time.

Yeah my first character was a actually a spellcaster too and it worked out okay :)

My mom made a Wild Magic Sorceror (also a Changeling!) for her first character in my campaign, and it was great! We even altered the Wild Chance mechanic to be similar to one I'd heard in a podcast (each time it doesn't go wild, it gets a cumulative +1 to the next roll, until it is guaranteed to go wild then when it does happen it resets to +0); SUPER helps the DM by not forcing them to remember to activate a PC's abilities for them and makes it so an interesting mechanic can actually happen). Anyway, she loved it! Light and Chaos Bolt were her favorite spells; the first because she'd make her shirt glow and the second because it was fun damage! Did I help her out a lot until she got more of a hang of how to play? Sure! Do I have to do that with ALL my friends when they start playing, regardless of their characters? Of course! And I enjoy helping them learn because it helps me get better at D&D as well!

That advice comes from early editions of dnd where it absolutely did mean "never under any circumstances should anyone be separated from the rest of the party" It was a brutal time and too many characters have been lost to a succubus disguised as a tavern wench or thieves in an alley or city guards who caught them pickpocketing alone or monsters that were supposed to be a challenge for the whole group

It comes from Challenge rating my guys lmfao if i make a CR for a full party, and you guys split, you’re going to die

@@skelitonking117 work on your reading comprehension. I made exactly two points in my earlier post 1: things that the whole group can fight are too much for one person 2: in games run in older editions it was far more common to run into a fight literally anywhere so you couldn't trust that it would be safe to split up *this time* (That's where the never comes from)

I mean you're right but it's still bad advice. It's like "said is dead" - people say that bc newer writers overuse "said" in every single line of dialogue. Telling them to never use it doesn't lead to them using it smartly & sparingly while exploring other options, it leads to them using DIFFERENT dialogue tags every single line of dialogue, which is even MORE exhausting & distracting. It may come from a good place, but just explain the problem w/a paragraph like your comment there instead of a quippy line that people are bound to take literally, bc how else are they supposed to take it?

Top notch!

Or based on the players. I have several very young kids who play, but not D&d. There are great pictures in the book, but too many rules for a six year old. Other systems are much easier to learn and present rather than redoing 5e. Also, Fantasy Flight has a great Star wars system, why try to hack up and when a simple system is there.

1st one... Yeah making DnD Modern or sci-fi or even mideval Fantasy does take hundreds of hours and for the first 2 they are more or less new games which might not even be DND clones/like but just D20 games. And the last you can get an 3rd party expanstion now. The point of DND in the first place as I know it was to be a fun fairy tale/chimatic medeval fantasy expernce with friends so it has a genre. It's not that you can't stray from it you can but it can get really hard and time consuming if you are not carefull.

@@jeffreykershner440 PDM has a good video on Tiny Dungeons for young kids, curious if you've given that a try? After looking at it, I've picked it up for adult players.

Or they could enjoy changing dnd 5e into what they want because they like the base mechanics.

Haha xD

Yeah I think it's difficult to avoid at this point :P

Dark vision: Role-playing the low charisma human fighter who thinks he's born to lead going into a cave where literally EVERYONE in the party can see better than him was lots of fun, /because/ it was so frustrating for the character.

agreed!!!

I think its largely a matter of taste. Pathfinder has a flow chart for grappling rules. Some people appreciate that and some find it needlessly cumbersome

It's my pleasure!!

That depends heavily on how you define "disruptive" because I have definitely justified making decisions that weren't the best option or that potentially put me at odds with the party with "because that's what my character would do". However, I haven't built a character to be an excuse for dicking over the party, and I don't go out of my way to cause problems, even when I'm playing a more problematic character. My characters have goals, and sometimes the DM puts me in a situation where my goals run counter to those of the party, so choosing to go against those personal goals would be breaking character, which I don't want to do. Also, sometimes in game personality conflicts crop up, because we are playing larger than life characters with strong personalities, and sometimes it gets ridiculous when adventurers who's go to method of problem solving is violence and murder *don't* resort to violence when dealing with each other. I make sure that my character's personality and goals are made clear to my party early on and consistently throughout the game, so on the rare occasions where we get into conflict it is clear that it's the natural progression of things. Some people have told me that what I do is just as disruptive as the dickhead who consistently builds characters to cause conflict, but it was never someone who I've actually gamed with. Some people think that any conflict is disruptive, but personally I'd rather play the characters like they are real people, or as close as we can get, and thus respond in a relatively consistent manner when challenged. My characters have goals, desires, flaws, etc. and sometimes that results in pvp, sometimes that results in the character leaving the party, and sometimes that results in doing something that gets somebody killed (usually themselves). Obviously build a character that has a reason to care about the plot, and has a reason to be with the party, but sometimes through the course of play, those reasons change, and if disagreements arise, sometimes that ends in violence. I have a character right now that gets into arguments with another character all the time, because his character frequently does things in a stupid or disrespectful manner, and has straight up insulted healing. I play the healer, so the next time he gets in over his head, I'm not gonna heal him if I think the rest of us can survive the encounter without his contributions. Why? Because he has made it clear time and time again that he is actively seeking death, and if we keep following him he's gonna get us all killed. I've played another character that was a pirate captain, as well as devoutly religious in his worship of a homebrew ocean goddess, and for him being part of the crew basically meant entering into a contract, and for him to uphold his end he needs to prioritize the safety of the ship/crew overall above basically anything else, and since one of the party members had a habit of casting AOE fire spells without making sure they wouldn't ignite the surroundings, when we finally got our ship I flat out told her that if she set my ship on fire I would kill her, and then I reiterated that to everyone else that if they break my ship, or risk sinking or stranding the ship, or whatever I will kill them myself. Why? Because the safety of the crew is paramount, and if I allow someone to endanger my crew like that I am failing to uphold my sacred duty as their captain. It never came to that, but if it had, I would have followed through, and had specific plans in mind for how to fight each member of my party, just in case I needed them. Because Captain Thunderclap keeps his word. In either of those examples, am I being disruptive? I don't think so, I'm just doing what my character would do.

Low level game "killed" a troll, meta knowledge you need fire/acid to kill it, character was a "knight" and would perform cremation rights on any humanoid that wasn't an elf/dwarf [xenophobia] (it was a "my character" instead of meta knowledge). So I get your point, but at least for me, my character often will do things that are suboptimal [because I find moralistic characters/play fun] like ignoring treasure, because "it's what my character would do." It's kind of the "paladin" thing, but without the fire and brimstone in you don't follow through, they [the character] just finds the action disgusting reprehensible, it's not some oath to destroy evil or anything.

I think the problem people have with that statement isn’t the sentiment by itself, but rather how it is often used as a motte and bailey to defend selfishness. “It’s what my character would do” is on its face just roleplaying, something that shouldn’t be that controversial or frowned upon in a roleplaying game, however when it is invoked there is often an unsaid “and my character would do it since I designed them for my enjoyment alone at the expense of everyone else”.

Unless if it's a Tortle bard pulling off his pants before jumping into an orgy pit with succubus. That's good context :)

"I'd like to go with all of you, but it's not what my character would do." - Me, explaining why my (Chaotic Neutral) character is splitting off from the party to defend a town in the crossfire of two armies, rather than go off treasure hunting with the rest of the party. Disruptive? Totally. A good context? In my mind, yes.

Yep that's the other one I hear all the time lol

That would be an interesting flaw! Adding that to my list of actually-good/fun/interesting flaws.

That is super kind! Really happy to hear this video may have improved your day a little

Clues can only go so far with a bold party haha

@@BobWorldBuilder fortunatly it was in a 1-shot for a new group to introduce them to D&D, a good learning experiance!

@@crisisOstrich For you, right? …For you, right?

@@stormcloudsabound for everyone involved :)

Because as he said if you already know 5e well you can run it to fit other settings, it's a very versatile system, and learning a new one isnt the goal of tweaking 5e

@@christophercrafte yes, and you can also live in a car if you want to, but that doesn't make a car a good home. D&D is adaptable but only to a point. XP, HP, levels, and AC are not terribly useful in, say, a horror game, which 5e does poorly no matter how you tweak it. I don't understand the idea of sticking with one system for everything

Thanks! It was fun to throw in a longer video after doing a bunch of shorter ones. There will be another longish one coming soon!

I'll be ready sir!

Also I just wanted to say thank you for your dragon of icespire peak videos. I'm In the middle my first time DMing and I have such an easier time prepping and just DMing in general because of your channel. Thanks Mr. Builder

Too real

Awesome!

Thank you! That's also from a very nice company that sent me some stuff and there's a link to their apparel further down in the description if you want to check em out!

Right it definitely treats classes differently. I'm trying to incorporate spell checks in my next campaign to even it out!

Lol sounds like you may just be an unlucky roller if you’re getting that many double 1’s regardless of how many dice you roll; unless your dm just had it that of you roll 1 you instantly fail, in which case criting should have been easier

Yeah it's all about how it's been used

A fantasy world still has rules. He was making a new fantasy world and hadn't changed the rules of biology yet. It's good that mechanic isn't there anymore, but it's not that hard to understand why they did it that way at first.

Pretty much this. I won't say why they put that stat difference. But if you're twisting my arm. I'd say it was more of a realistic take, when it simply wasn't needed

​@@dahelmang Not that your wrong, but this is also the good old days, when every race beside humans had level restrictions, and every weapon had a 13* point chart for the bonus or penalty based on the opposing armor class*, not to mention you can't be a low dex wizard, but you can be a priest, and you can't play a good rouge, which is fine, it's the only class you can play with a low wisdom. IDK mannn, I just find it hard to say they meant ill when the weapons/armor/weapon range etc. hold up really well today, they were really passionate about the little stuff. *Axe, Battle Length c. 4', Space required 4', speed factor 7, Armor class adjustment 2/-3, 3/-2, 4/-1, 5/-1, 6/0, 7/0, 8/+1, 9/+1, 10/+2, it also includes such long forgotten names for weapons as godentag, bohemian ear-spoon, chauves, sauris, rhanca [I'm assuming this is a Ronca, like katana just means sword, this is just the name of polearms from this area], roncie, tulwar, Korseke, because this is a pre internet era, so their wasn't such Consonus on names*. Like scemitars don't reeealy exist, like it's either things like sabers or kilij, or katana or even stuff like Kopish etc.

@@IrvineTheHunter good times

That stat doesn't account for the societal reasons and such behind that,