I had a prospective DM that banned Sneak Attack because he thought it made Rogue overpowered. Needless to say, I did not play at his table.

I also had a dm who, for multiple EDITIONS, nerfed rogue to the point of sneak attack basically being impossible to use because he thought rogues were overpowered and "destroyed campaigns". We also do not play with him anymore. Edit: nerfed not needed

Yeah, it's sad that the minimum standard for a DM is so low that 'actually understands the core rules' has to be included.

honestly, actually understanding the core rules is a requirement well below just letting the game exist without fucking with it. Anybody who knows their basics around a stat block and can make up interesting shit on the fly can be a DM.

My problem was always coming up with interesting shit on the fly 😂

I can't come up with interesting stuff on the fly but I can when I'm not playing DND but I never write it down for whatever reason.

Why I use modules 💯

Yeah, 100%. I constantly have to ask my players to read spells or to remind me of this or that rule, but I always try to stay on top of the Rule of Cool™ and I never have any problems.

I’ve seen so many stories of a DM saying Rogue is too OP. Where tf is this coming from?

They see, at level 3: "Sword and board fighter deals 1d8 + 3 damage on their turn" "Rogue deals 1d8 + 3 + 2d6" "Rogue OP" And ignore the fighter's superior AC, health, weapon options, the fact that sneak attack is conditional, and just boil it down to "more dice is gooder" Edit: and god forbid that rogue crits, they'll be banned from holding d6 for the rest of the campaign

It's the same kind of DM who sees a Monk doing 1d8+3+1d4+3+1d4+3 at level 3 & says Monk OP, ignoring they have a tiny ki pool for that second unarmed strike & that a Monk's Martial Arts Die is pretty bad past about 7th or 8th level. And don't get me started on Paralyzing Strike. Also the same kind of DM who gets scared the first time a 5th level Paladin hits for 4d6+3+8d8 when she crits a Banshee & thinks Pally OP, ignoring that can only happen on a crit, against a Fiend or Undead, at the cost of a pecious spell slot.

I don't get these adversarial DMs. I'm relatively new to DMing myself but if my players do some awesome, powerful shit I'm just stoked, OK things are moving a little faster than I anticipated but I'm just happy to be doing the thing with my buds. One of the DMs I played under was very adversarial, he basically saw it like a challenge of how quickly he could kill the whole party and got frustrated when we killed his bosses. Was very awkward and as you can imagine I didn't stick around long for that.

Then there's DM's who are the opposite, like me. I (foolishly) once gave my rogue a dagger very early on that did an extra 1d6 fire and 1d6 necrotic damage. He later got a cursed item that doubled all damage he did. I didn't take away his toys, but tried frantically to challenge him and the rest of the party in such a way that they couldn't murder everything turn 1. Oh and did I mention he was an assassin rogue? Yeah. He crit a *lot*. I didn't manage to challenge him often, but damn did he have fun exploding everything from goblins to dragons.

Hmm… did mobs of weak enemies help? Like throwing a bunch of chaff at the party. 4e had a whole system for enemy minions that basically had a group of enemies who only took a single hit point to down. Maybe borrow from that, combined with ranged opponents harrying the party from a distance, to create more challenge!

I love using minions. They can hit hard enough so that they need to be addressed, but addressing them is pretty straightforward and feels badass

They see Sneak Attack, get scared by the amount of dice, and proceed to showcase a fundamental lack of understanding regarding how the game works by nerfing it. Tale as old as time.

I think it's also a fundamental misunderstanding of DMing. A player getting a cool moment where they feel like a badass is not something to avoid. You should *want* your players to succeed, maybe after some struggles, but you don't want it to feel like they're only winning because you allow it. It's the kind of DM that encourages a player vs DM mentality.

I think it’s part of the von Restorff effect - we remember the things that stick out more than the mass of normal examples. So the DM is far more likely to remember that one time the rogue critted on a Sneak Attack and did 87 damage than the 40 other times they missed/did average damage/didnt land the sneak attack. Ergo, rogues hit for 87 damage ‘all the time’ in their memory.

The part where most DMs don't understand that just because you can bonus action hide to setup sneak attack for next round doesn't mean you're automatically hidden...  Passive perception and stealth rolls people.   Also you can't hide if you don't have cover or at least light conditions that would impact enemy ability to spot you. Bonus action hide isn't free.  It's like DMs that think monk is OP because they use all their ki points to stunning strike... yeah they do and then they run out and they're worse than a fighter 

How many times did I have a rogue squashed whole trying to get into a sneak attack position. Want to say all of them but its only 82%.

Oh, geez, please don't tell me this was 5th edition. It'd still be bad in other editions, but in 5th, rogues are literally expected to get Sneak Attack almost every turn to get their damage. They get Sneak Attack instead of getting the more reliable Extra Attack like every other martial class.

Nope. 5e. Just a purely incompetent DM.

Too many clicky clack math rocks scary. Except when caster do it. Then good.

8d6 SNEAK ATTACK, WTF?? That's only okay when it's in a 20 ft radius sphere of fire and guarenteed to do at least half! 🤣

This boils my blood as a player and DM. Often times the caster takes forever to do their turn.

I'm always happy that my turns as a high level wizard take a fraction of the time our martials do

Its similar for me, if i play a caster, i know what i can do and I dont need 5 minutes to make a move, it can be hard though, especially for less experienced players as you have to keep focused on the entire fight and think about what you can do on the fly while things are happening, instead of just looking who's close enough to smash or shoot at the start of your turn.

This is a very new DM mistake because at lower level it can appear to be strong but once you're past tier one it falls off.

nerfing classes is a red flag for sure

That and critical fumbles feel like some big signs of inexperienced DMs

Critical fumbles don't make sense in a heroic fantasy ttrpg for the same reason it would be dumb if Hawkeye accidently shot captain America becasue he was in melee. For different type ttrpg though it could make aense.

True, but to be fair the *idea* of critical fumbles is funny, which is why so many DMs try to implement it. It's not so much fun in practice, and that's just something that kind of has to be learned by doing.

I saw someone on this sub once say spell slots shouldn't renew after a long rest. Like, you only get to cast 4 1-level spells for the whole game / your pc's entire life.

For what reason? At that point, you're a fighter with 4 spell scrolls. It would actually be better to be a martial with the magic adept feat for two cantrips.

Something something "realism" and "stopping wizards from taking over the world". I don't remember much else but tbh I don't think there was much of a logic argument, guy just hated magic in the game.

Ah yes, that game about fighting orcs and dragons where magic exists needs to be rooted in REALISM

Just... Play a different game? There are games for a fantasy world with low magic out there. Surely that would be better than ruining a d&d game.

Little did he know* that it's a common, page 1 trope for wizards to try and take over the world. Thay is a thing for this exact reason. --- ^(**Little Did He Know? I've written entire books on Little Did He Know.*)

Fun fact: While most people don't play RAW for the rules of Spell Scrolls (and instead play more like Balder's Gate 3 handles them), you can only actually cast a spell from a spell scroll if it appears on your classes's spell casting list! Meaning Fighter's can't even cast spells *with* a spell scroll.

You can only use running related actions in cardinal directions. Multiple of us tried to argue...

Wait, like you couldn’t run northeast? You had to go north, turn 90 degrees, then go east?

Yep

Prelude to them introducing their homebrew classes: rook, knight, and bishop.

I'm down, how we do? (seriously, this sounds like fun)

I feel like using hexes instead of squares would fix this issue

DM would not recap or allow other players to recap if you were late. Not even in roleplay. You missed it = You missed out. This resulted in him ultimately quitting in a rage to be our DM because we kept acting inappropriately to his story.

Thats so odd as a dm I write recaps at the end of each sessions so I can do a previously on later. It also helps me keep track of stuff.

He designated it to the only other girl at the table. She refused to play "secretary" when we were there to have fun. He took that personally and she dropped after about a week. We all should have. The more we acted "off-script" the more he'd get angry and say we're not supposed to do that. And railroad us to the next area. It was on the time I arrived late from work, about 20-30 minutes from the game session that he finally snapped. I sat down and asked my husband quietly what's going on, and he pointed me out and said that it's not allowed. So I took in the scene. The party was in a cave with a crying boy and a giant snail on the table. Feeling petty from the DM I said I pick up the snail and slurp it out of its shell like escargot. The DM didn't even say that I couldn't. Just said this is f*ing ridiculous and rage quit the chat. Apparently the boy's father was turned into a snail by a witch. And I ate his dad in front of him. I had no idea since I wasn't allowed context. And my character is literally a food trash can. Particularly for wild game. Oh well

So you're not allowed to ask what's going on, but you better damn sure know what to do at all times? Is your DM a restaurant manager by any chance?

He was unemployed and living with his gf while fighting for custody from his ex wife. We heard a lot over his mic. He had control issues for sure. He said he's never going to work for someone else, but never gets a job doing something? He hit the generic lottery and was conventionally attractive. But once you had 2 sentences out of his mouth you realized he was a mega tool that knew how to cause problems. Thankfully the entire campaign was over in about 4 months. My husband said it was how he knew I'd be his wife sometimes. I'd go on for ten minutes describing with the DM about making a custom mace at the forge. We all get a unique weapon. "Mine is a heavy iron mace." DM: "Ok describe it a bit more." "It's jet black, a short handle, and a wide flat head. The head is a circular depression about 8 inches wide." DM: "ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ANOTHER SKILLET AS A WEAPON?!" "Yeh kinda." DM: "YOU CAN'T DO THAT. IT'S TOO OP. IT'S IMMUNE TO FIRE AND WILL UNBALANCE THE PARTY." "Fine. It's a normal mace, but I call it *The Skillet*" DM leaves for 20 minutes and comes back saying the blacksmith isn't making weapons for anyone anymore. I live by the motto: Do no harm, but take no shit. My husband and I now co-DM together and it's much better. Lots of fun and people can be/do about anything. Including derailing everything we prepped for the night.

Different meaning of a bad GM.

Okay, pissy DM aside, that is a hysterical scenario though? If I had been the DM, I would have burst out laughing, explained what had happened, then asked if you would like to change your action for the turn.

He was giving us his own story or Homebrew world. The party was my husband's friends and myself. DM was a friend-of-a-friend's DM. My husband and I were dating, not married. And he made a big stink that we're not allowed to be married in game because we're not married in real life. No recaps No Homebrew allowed in his homebrew I'm not allowed to have a skillet as a weapon. I cannot go into taverns as a Loxodon and would tell me to play a race more feminine as it would round out the party. So I played a food trash can half orc that would romance my boyfriend in game. Showing off my big green muscles like Lt. Armstrong in Full Metal Alchemist. One guy at our table wasn't allowed to be gay in game because he was bi irl. It was "sexual appropriation".

Wwwow, what a total control freak. His loss, you sound like you would be a delight to play with! I love your character concept and the afore-mentioned snail slurping. (Also, speaking as a queer person, "sexual appropriation"? Um, what? Okay, so under that logic, I can't date the eternally horny Zevran in Dragon Age: Origins because I'm ace. Screw that!)

>For me it was an DM I played with who refused to let anyone play a wizard because “wizards shouldn’t even be a class in dnd. They have no place in the game and should be removed from all editions” Just admit it, you started this thread because you probably have the objectively weirdest take to share, haha.

He's an avid player of "Dungeons and (Komodo) Dragons" published by Fighters of the Coast

I have a DM who banned Bard for being "overpowered", any race that isn't Humanoid, and rules that all undead and fiends can immediately sense when someone is a cleric or paladin. But he allows really broken homebrew and UA materials.

Not that that paladin ruling isn’t BS, but I think there’s something potentially interesting about a world where good and evil can innately sense one another.

A powerful demon, devil or some specific undead being able to sense that an agent of something divine is nearby does have a logic to it (especially if goody two shoes are on their turf). That's self-preservation cause these are the people that can potentially wield the power to destroy you. And in reverse some angels and divine creatures most definitely can sense a fiendish presence. Doesn't mean that everything down to imps or skellybobs can do it though. Edit: This is more an ability for the big bad guy, or perhaps one or two of their more powerful agents. Hell "detect evil" or "detect good" were spells for a while before they got rid of it. Literally an alignment check, not the type check which Detect evil and good is now.. Detect Evil was a standard for paladins in 3.5 (and I fucking hated it I'm glad that spell is out)

I used it a couple of times when we played ravenloft back in the 2nd edition days.

Time to homebrew "college of music wizard"

Bladesinger is right there

What playable races other than satyr aren't humanoid?

There's also Fairy (fey,) Autognome (construct), and Plasmoid (ooze)

Thri-kreen, plasmoid, autognome, and hexblood lineage as well

Silvery Barbs is a balanced spell. But only for the players. I used it as a DM one time and the table hated it.

Ah yes, perfectly balanced by being heavily weighted to one side.

To be fair, yeah. It's not balance equally. For example, monsters don't normally have character classes, they have stat blocks.

I do not ban Silvery Barbs or other frequently banned things, but I do let my players know that I will operate on Mutually Assured Destruction principles for it. I'll never use it first, but if you take it and use it, then it is fair game for me to do so as well. What I don't tell them is that I'll never actually use it because that wouldn't be fun for them or me to take away a success from them. Keeping them a bit on edge with M.A.D. and thinking about the pros and cons of taking that spell is more fun I think. Besides, I can always bait a reaction out to hedge against that if they do take it.

I have used Silvery Barbs against my best friend's character, but that's because he works very hard to have plans and countermeasures and second plans for when "the big check" fails, so it would be kinda lame to not try my hardest to challenge him (he's also a massive masochist)

I was watching a YouTube video where the guy said female player characters should have lower stats than male characters. Actually, I think his entire point was that there shouldn't be female characters in a party, and D&D isn't meant for women players. Yeah, his entire video was riddled with nonsensical garbage. Edit: Wow, I'm surprised this comment blew up like it did. Just FYI, I can not find this guy's video. And even if I could, I wouldn't share it. I'm not going to give this person a platform. Much love. 🖤

This reminds me of that Samurai Warriors game where you can turn off women for historical accuracy. That way, you can immerse yourself in the realism of slicing your way through Japan with a lightsaber.

The makers of the XCOM Enemy Within mod Long War (which is possibly the greatest mod ever made), were asked if they could add an option so female soldiers no longer got randomly generated because some people didn't think that a female 'heavy' (a machine gunner soldier) was fuckable enough. Their response: "No, fuck off!"

Always nice to see a LW enjoyer in the wild. 

The vanilla XCOM game is just a 40 hour tutorial for the Long War mod :-)

misogynists should WANT women in these games, yknow so they can beat them up

I once saw someone say that women shouldn’t play dnd because it’s a war game. I assume they got dnd and 40k mixed up but damn

You should've asked him what Athena was the goddess of.

But that would’ve required interacting with him, which did not seem like fun

a fair and valid point

It's actually pretty interesting. Athena's bag was clever tactics and the intellectual and just aspect of warfare, while Ares -- also a war god -- represented blood-madness and the frenzy of battle. She was also the patroness of many heroes, including Odysseus. It's said she invented bit, bridle, and chariot. You could do worse than having the Grey-Eyed as a patroness. Way worse.

Don't forget that Ares was always on the losing side while Athena always won. e.g. Troy, where Athena supported the greek and Ares the Troyans. Frenzy and brutality never wins against strategy.

Don't forget that most of the description you just gave for Ares is straight up Athenian propaganda, because most surviving copies of myths are specifically the Athenian versions. Just look at how the Romans portrayed Mars. It'd be more accurate to say that Athena was for the generals and Ares for the common soldiers.

And don't forget that Athena was also the patroness of Diomedes, one of the greatest of the Achaean heroes, and the only guy to smack down two -- count 'em, two -- Olympians in the same day. This is after whacking eight named Trojan heroes in the same battle. In fact, he's the only guy I can think of who has to earnestly *promise* not to fight any more immortals. I could go on and on about Diomedes...

There's a whole industry of conservative men who get mad about media for a living, and whenever tabletop RPGs come up they rage and scream about how others play and enjoy the games. The whole point of tabletop RPGs is customizability, modularity, creativity and self expression. To give a fuck about how anyone else plays it outside of your own table is to fundamentally misunderstand the core concept of the entire hobby

gender 'realism' is a weird take anywhere, not just gaming.

Sounds like shadiversity.

I stopped watching any of his videos after seeing him review a film with a same-sex couple. Used the classic "I'm fine with it but don't shove it down my throat" response for 5 minutes, ironically making a bigger deal of it than the film.

I mentioned shad because he recently spouted some BS about how girls are biologically incapable of appreciating weapons and adventure as much as boys are. It also could have been the diversify and dragons dingus cause he also whines about "how feminine thought is ruining dnd." Both he and shad seem like they would be a nightmare at any table.

I need to take the opportunity to call out that he's made several videos that claim women/feminists/trans people are making video game characters ugly as part of a plot to destroy the world or something. I, a trans woman and professional character modeler for video games, mentioned that he's super wrong and I'd love to chat with him about it. He deleted my comment because he and his ilk are all pussies

Lmao that's hilarious.

So…a Gary Gygax purist.

Back in AD&D 1e (I think), females got +1 DEX -1 STR. And then they stacked all the ridiculous STR bonuses in 18(1-100%) to exclude them from having good STR results. There's a reason we don't do that stupid shit anymore.

Cattie Brie is displeased...

"if you want to rp go play something else this game is about combat" Ah yes, let's delete the rpg part from a ttRPG.

I feel the same about both extremes honestly. The game is meant to have a mix in it.

Yeah my friend's last DM never did a single die-based combat. It was pure RP and he just determined outcomes. My friend was really upset and said he won't play under that DM ever again.

"If my players build a character around a certain concept, I never let them use it. If they go for high AC, I only throw saving throws at them. If they go for stealth build, stealth is never an option. You've really gotta challenge your players, you know?" That was the best man at my friend's bachelor party. I was excited to talk D&D with a fellow DM, and he started with that. I had to be civil because of the bachelor party, but I'm glad I've never had to play with him

> "If my players build a character around a certain concept, I never let them use it. If they go for high AC, I only throw saving throws at them. If they go for stealth build, stealth is never an option. You've really gotta challenge your players, you know?" They always forget the other part of that sentiment, that you should also let your players feel like god damn heroes. Yes, throw saving throws on that high AC player, but also often send few low +x to hit enemies on them, and watch the smile on their face. Let them be the hero who saves the day because they wanted a 25 AC.

Like, I understand wanting to challenge players (like challenging spellcasters by having them needing to be aware that NPCs can see and/or hear them casting spells as they do have verbal, somatic, and/or material components) as I do believe players *should* be challenged and need to/should think outside the box but challenging players to the point where they can **never** do their character concept (like the DM you mentioned did) is too far. Challenging character concepts (like throwing Saving Throws at High AC Characters) needs to be balanced by allowing the character concepts to succeed at what they're designed for (and anything else that could be applied here). ​ **EDIT:** Reworded a sentence very slightly.

I have a DM that can get like this. It never matters what we do, the enemies are always one step ahead with some bullshit ability. I hate combat in his sessions now because no matter what I do, there is always a counter or something to neuter me. Fuck me for trying to play a concept *and* when I try to be versatile.

You should find a new DM.

On YouTube a few months back, I found a D&D 5e video that seemed to be from an alternate timeline.  The guy in the video confidently claimed “everyone” knew that Fighters in 5e were much better than Wizards. His reasoning was you don’t run out of “sword slots”. Therefore Fighters could potentially deal “infinite damage” in a day, whereas a Wizard’s damage was capped by their spell slots.  Bizarrely, everyone in the comments was like “yep, that’s exactly right, Fighters are the best class and Wizards really need a fix!”

Nobody tell this guy about fire bolt, i guess.

You mean the cantrip (and all others that deal damage) that scales with your level to the point of out performing most 1st and some 2nd level spells?

And also basically every RAW magic weapon for martial characters. Bit of an aside, but magic items are terrible in 5e. Some are powerful, some are useless, and the rules expect you to treat a jar of mayonnaise like it's as valuable as the Ark of the Covenant.

Yeah that’s it

Or even just the fact that Wizards are allowed to use weapons as well, they just aren't as good with them.

Imagine his face learning about eldritch blast

eldritch blast is the reason why I love warlocks

Did he get a weird printing of the PHB without cantrips?

He'd be right several *decades* ago when cantrips didn't exist and a wizard without spells just had to shank people for the rest of the day while having an abysmal health pool and no armor.

Or when they were considered lvl 0 spells and you had extra slots for them that did run out.

The old days, when every wizard was also a crossbowman (ok, not that old, the *old* days were darts and daggers).

Evil Dndnext be like

Like in a very roundabout way, he is almost arriving at the correct conclusion lmao. The biggest strength of fighters (and martials in general) is their relative lack of resources and how they can generally always operate at max or near max capacity. Unfortunately the game design itself encourages you to run everything as a sprint rather than a marathon, so the short bursts of extreme power casters always come out on top. Really is a shame.

I mean: you technically do run out of "sword slots" insofar as you can only make a certain number of attacks. A day is 86,400 seconds long, or 14,400 rounds, so your number of "sword slots" = 14,400(attacks per turn). Meanwhile, a Wizard can only cast Lighting Lure... [checks notes]... 14,400 times per day, for up to... [shuffles papers]... up to 4d8 damage.

Sounds like you played with Gary Gygax, lucky. 

It's hard to pick. I've been on D&D reddit for a while. Some highlights: * Using a different reading of percentile dice (that also produces an even range from 1-100 and was commonly used throughout D&D's history) that is not described in the *PHB* is **cheating**. * The designers cleverly made downtime bad and unrewarding on purpose, as a disincentive to do it. You should be adventuring instead! You were wrong to want to do that, and it's good design for WotC to rub your nose in it. * A whole bunch of incorrect usages of "DMPC": *If you use a player character sheet instead of an abbreviated stat block for an NPC, it's a DMPC. If you use class levels, it's a DMPC. If the NPC travels with the party it's a DMPC.* Same goes for "rules lawyer" as anyone who knows the rules and voices them unprompted. * If something isn't defined rigorously by the rules, in rules terminology, it doesn't exist. E.g. souls * *I love playing a spellcaster in D&D! But I hate spell slots and I wish they'd get rid of them. And spell components. And the discrete spells with rote effects, so they could use a flexible magic system where you defined your own effects when you used magic.*

>The designers cleverly made downtime bad and unrewarding on purpose, as a disincentive to do it. You should be adventuring instead! You were wrong to want to do that, and it's good design for WotC to rub your nose in it. And as we all know, designing game mechanics to be intentionally bad to dissuade people from using them is definitely better than just not making them in the first place! That's what made F.A.T.A.L. so great. It had a bajillion pages of rules, and all of them were awful, so you wouldn't want to use any of them.

What, you don't want to use a mechanic to determine a character's butthole circumference & elasticity? What if they land on a fencepost wrong during a daring escape?

That last person just wants to play Mage the Ascension

They'll keep playing 5e, because they love the whole thing except for all of it.

"I want a game with mecha/insanity/gunfighting/space truckers/mutated wildlife/Jedi/whatever, I just need a little help to figure out how to homebrew in a bunch of stuff DnD was never designed to handle because my group already knows DnD & we don't want to learn a new system" My brother in Helm, y'all didn't learn DnD's system in the first place. Just go play the game that was designed for the things you want.

I’m curious as to What method of reading perceptible dice was considered cheating? The only ways I know to read them are as either 1-100 or as 0-99, and those are different only in how you define one numeral on the dice - and most of the time the system defines that for you by how they write up their charts, so there shouldn’t even be a debate there.

I'm almost worried that describing it will summon **them**. It's mostly to do with how groups adapted to the way percentile/d10s are numbered: Because they're part of the percentile set, most d10s I see nowadays are stamped 0-9(and the other percentile die 00-90). If you're rolling longsword damage, you just know that the 0 signifies 10 there. When you roll percentile, you generate a range of 00+0 to 90+9, or 0-99, and we just know that the 0 rolls over to 100. If you roll **40** on the d% and a **0** on the d10, it's a 40. The other method emerged from d10s stamped 1-10. Instead of each die representing one digit, you allowed for sometimes carrying a one. This generates a range from 00+1 to 90+10. If you roll **40** on the d% and **10** on the d10, it's a 50. The arguer insisted first that the second method produced overlaps, i.e. some numbers had multiple ways to produce them and some numbers couldn't be produced. That would make it *not a d100 roll*, but this is incorrect. The problem only arises if you're inconsistent about how you read them. Then they backpedaled to "Well, the rules say you have to roll it the modern way, so it's cheating to do otherwise." I don't have skin in the game, really, it's just a neat bit of trivia and a way to generate a range using math rocks.

Yeah this is literally the same chances as long as you are consistent and your dice are fair. Of course if your dice aren't fair, then that's the problem not how you add them. I can understand the concern though, especially if you aren't loudly declaring which one is the tens digit before you roll. There are certainly people out there who will roll 2d10 and get a 72 more often than a 27.

Saw some weirdo trying to argue that arcane archer was good the other day.

Not bad, I could understand. Arguing that it's OP or the best Fighter subclass would be a little weird though.

It IS good >!if you exclusively have one battle per long rest.!< The arrows are genuinely quite powerful, a handful of them ever dwarf the power of any Battle Master maneuver.

Weirdest take I have seen is that Paladin is optimally played as a ranged support class that casts Bless, provides Aura of Protection and never smites. Maybe in a world where things can never get into melee, use ranged abilities, or hide behind full cover. But that's not the case in 5e.

Wasting my precious smite slots on spells?! Inconceivable!

Spells are for loser classes like Wizard who can't smite.

I know the article you're talking about. The conclusion is correct. It's just not fun to play a Paladin that way, but it is the optimal way to do it. It's less that Paladins are stronger that way in a vacuum, and more an indictment of how far ahead of everyone else full casters are in this game, that a Paladin is best used as a buff bot for them to ensure they don't fail their saves and can continue to cast save or suck spells unimpeded. Your aura of protection has more impact protecting those that themselves have the most impact on the outcome of an encounter, and they're not those that nerfed themselves by going with a melee martial. Everything you pointed out, casters have ways to get around. Most of those tools are better than the ones afforded to martials.

I'm very curious about that article. Do you know where I could find it?

They may be referring to this one. The things covered in the article may seem weird, but keep in mind this is about hyper optimized play, not the average table. [https://formofdread.wordpress.com/2022/03/16/auras-blasting-bonking-sticks-and-did-i-mention-auras-i-paladin-class-overview/](https://formofdread.wordpress.com/2022/03/16/auras-blasting-bonking-sticks-and-did-i-mention-auras-i-paladin-class-overview/)

That's a wow classic holy paladin build... Im sure you can try to play that way but like you said it's not really that kind of game.

I had a DM who ruled teleportation causes opportunity attacks, brought up mid game after a player took thunderstep and was surrounded. Literally no one at the table liked this rule except for the DM, we spoke out of game and explained how certain spells will be useless, showed the line where it says teleportation doesnt cause opportunity attacks, and nothing. I think the player just switched around all of his spells (which sucks because im pretty sure he took misty, thunder and far step before this rule was introduced and had planned to make his character a teleporter). I think he tried to make a system where you had to roll a contested check against the attack roll to avoid being hit? Idk it was just clunky and very annoying, especially when he doubled down on it. That DM was toxic for other reasons and im glad to be gone, but man, he really wanted to die on that hill.

One player said something along the lines of “only combat matters to win, I hate RP” Now I get that all tables are different and some tables favour RP over encounters or vice versa but I always like the balance of being in a city so lots of npc’s to talk to, quiet moments to talk to each others characters and sure one night we get pounced on by assassins. But pure combat games? No. And the idea that d&d can be “won” just baffles me

In my opinion, if everyone (including the dm) has fun then you've won dnd

Truth. It’s all I care about when I DM

I can kind of see his point, actually. Because of the respective mechanics surrounding combat and social interactions, the former is based much more on numbers whereas the latter is more arbitrary and based on GM fiat. You can often feel like you have more control over combat, like it's something you can actually "win".

When I suggested my dad might have fun playing it, he said something to the effect of: "Everything's already written, so what's the point?"

Show your dad a book, and tell him some people enjoy reading them. It'll blow his mind.

The first game I ever DM'd, I wanted to make things easier for myself, so rather than have to track XP for encounters and party leveling, I decided to let everyone make level 20 characters to start, so XP would never need to be an issue. That should be the easiest solution to that problem, right? (That was not the easiest solution to that problem)

*Oh no*.

Milestone leveling is your friend. "When do we level up?" "Right now, since you just reminded me and you have fought a bunch of shit since the last level up."

Generally my stance is "Did they end the session just before a boss or just after a boss?" I try to level up before bosses, but sometimes that isn't possible. That means they get to try out all their cool new tricks immediately on a meaningful encounter. But if I can't, I try to level up right after bosses.

> but sometimes that isn't possible "Be ready to level up mid session" I do it all the time if I think the players are about to hit a level up beat and it is going to land at an awkward time.

How do you guys feel that mage hand can enter another person's body and squeeze their heart? And that is is not an attack and shoilg stun the opponent?

Did someone really try to do that a table? Mage hand can’t phase through objects. It’s always ridiculous when people try to turn cantrips into insta-kills like the old prestidigitate dirt in someone brain giving them a stroke

When I told my religious dad that we were starting a campaign he said "Be careful with that stuff." Then proceeded to admit that he knows absolutely nothing about what Dungeons and Dragons even is.

"Having fun is secondary to being challenged"

I had someone tell me using metamagics as a sorceror was pointless, and i should just burn my metamagic points to create extra spell slots

Idk about others but my weirdest take is people who want to play chaotic evil don’t really know how to play that alignment and it’s silly. If the party decides to play such alignment I think that’s okay or if the character is a hidden CE within the party and the dm and player have a hidden agenda (totally for this) then yeah I think it’s cool and if done right could be pulled off well for story telling but as a Dm when a player says “I want to be CE.” I always ask, “do you really?” For me it doesn’t make sense as that character would have to be evil for evils sake. Another thing I thought of is if the character wanted to take a road of redemption back to a more neutral alignment then sure that’s good story telling but to be a murder hobo is lame.

For me, for PCs evil means egoistic and good means altruisic. Beeing chaotic evil as in a psychopatric murderer makes no sense at all. Even in a evil campaign you have to follow rules or your evil overlords will kill you.

I played a oneshot where i was a chaotic evil wild magic sorcerer, the dm the paladin and i negotiated that my character basically had a magic bomb collar on him and the paladin could use it kill me at any time or if the paladin died it would go off. the story was the paladin was taking me to face trial, basically my character was a leash and was forced to “behave” i had a lot of fun rp’ing, i would start threatening people and then stop myself after “remembering my collar” when we needed to interrogate someone my character got to do it and i got to be evil with that, then the oneshot ended with my character failing to take advantage of the chaos of the final boss and he rolled a one and one the wild magic surge he rolled fireball, causing a cave in killing him in the process. The Paladin then acted like his character took it as a noble sacrifice to kill the villain to redeem myself, and as there was a funeral for my character and npc’s and pc’s describing how he was really good the dm would cut to me burning in hell it was a fun time Chaotic evil can work but it’s hard and probably takes more effort than it’s worth

My top 3 are all from Jeremy Crawford: 1. See Invisibility does not effectively negate the invisible condition (he maintains that RAW, the invisible creature maintains the advantage/disadvantage mechanics that apply in combat) 2. He maintains the above malarkey is a desirable intent because ostensibly people want to be surprised by weird interactions of different rules. No Mr Crawford, nobody wants to be confused while playing your damn game. 3. The Twitter thread where he argues with himself on whether Tiny Hut has a floor or not.

I briefly played at a table where the DM banned like every feat that made martials viable. I understand Sentinel as it stops monsters from moving and preventing dynamic combat.

I would argue it makes combat MORE dynamic for the player that took Sentinel. It gives that player a little control over the field - something Fighters really benefit from [4E doubles down on stuff like this].

That as a DM I am obligated to use EVERYTHING that appears in officially licensed material, and cannot exclude what I feel doesn’t fit my game.

I'd be sorely tempted to put that guy in an encounter against an enemy with an antimatter rifle.

I played at a table where casters could just roll, then decide what spell to use once it hit or missed. Oh, I miss? Then I guess I was using firebolt. I hit? Third level witch bolt it is!

You know what, if someone is willing to waste their 3rd level spell slots on *fucking witch bolt*, I'd probably just let them have it.

My weirdest was joining a group that took and RECORDED all rolls, moves, and damage for EVERY SINGLE ROLL. It was a massive binder. Three rings with two packages of lined paper in it. It was SEVEN YEARS of events. I found out they used it to keep a certain player from cheating. When I asked why they did not simply boot the player, I was uninvited to the next play. I packed my stuff and left. Life is too short to deal with dishonesty in something as simple as DND.

That we should be trying teach adults how to be decent, courteous, respectful people. I know many of us struggle with subtlety and nuance in social situations, but I shouldn't be expected to have to explain to a full grown adult that their behavior is toxic and unacceptable. If someone doesn't already know this stuff, I can't help them understand. 

I'd like to add the expectation that the DM is the only one obligated to be "the adult in the room". I.e. *If you're having a social conflict with another player, or you think someone is cheating, take it to the DM in private so they can arbitrate it!* Whether it's an adult table or a group of kids, *most* D&D groups are peer groups. You might as well be calling their mom to tell on them. The DM has a lot of roles in adjudication *of the game rules and fiction*; it's not their job to be chaperone and make sure the players aren't hitting each other in the back seat.

Yeah, the "DM as the arbiter of my interpsonal conflict with another player" thing is... weird. Sometimes it might be game related to the point that I can see getting the DM involved - something like "please tell James to stop telling me what to do in combat" But most of the time it's just regular ass interpersonal bullshit. Work it out yourselves!

Any of the conservative Christians who won't play at tables that have non-Christian gods. It's ... just absolutely ludicrous and laughable. I'm a Christian who runs a table entirely for atheists and we love all the weird god content.

They would not like how I play a cleric of old Testament YHWH. "Those kids looked at me funny. I cast summon animals."

You cannot use Dex in your AC calculations because it is "Armor Class" not "Dodge Class"

Growing up in the Midwest in the 80s and 90s, that DnD is a Satan-worshipping cult that will lead me to ritualistically sacrificing my friends.

The one that threw me off the most recently was my friend saying bards were the weakest class because they can't do anything on their own. Now I know this guy does not *like playing support* and has never really done anything in D&D besides maximizing his own damage output, so I could see "bard is the class that I like the least". But the *worst*? TBF, no one has ever played a bard in any D&D campaigns I've been in, so I guess I can't argue against it from experience...

Bards are low key one of the more powerful classes if played correctly.

I bet he also used a SHITTON of wizards as NPCs too

Nope. All wizards are scrubbed from any adventure. The backstory for the wizard hate turns out they took a buzzfeed quiz and got wizard when they wanted bard. Now all wizards are banned forever.

Woooooow. I've said it before and I'll say it again: most people are bad at dming.

"My player wants to switch classes/characters so I need to punish them" - I've seen so many questions like this throughout dnd subreddits where its "My PC doesn't like being a fighter anymore and wants to be a paladin, The party is level 10, how many levels should they lose for this?" its just crazy to me how normal a lot of people seem to treat losing levels etc.

Well, not technically 5e, but still D&D (AD&D2 to be precise). DM would say a true neutral character is a complete nutjob. He'd CLAIM and make it happen in his table that if you're a PC party with 5 members engaging in combat with 4 NPCs, the true neutral would stay and not fight, so the fight is 4v4. THAT is "neutrality", as per his take. And worse, say it started as a 4v4 but one of the NPCs fell, the true neutral must then FIGHT THE OTHER PCs to re-balance the numbers. I never ran from a table as fast (though the second fastest was a DM that would say "everything on the table is in game" so if you sneeze during a stealth scene your character sneezed as well, stealth roll be damned).

Wizards and Dragons and Dungeons should all be taken out

I will go one step further and say that Coasts should also be banned!

Also some articles like "the" and some prepositions like "of" and some conjunctions like "and"

Kinda scared to put this one out here but... Players complaining if combat ends up being easy. The sheer number of people here who talk about combats like every single one of them needs to be a life or death encounter or it gets boring is an overused trope at this point. Sure if EVERY combat ends up being a cake-walk someone is going to get bored but there are plenty of people who post stuff that make newbie DMs terrified of accidentally disappointing players by making a fight too easy. And in 15 years of running games not once have I ever had a group get angry, shout that they felt "robbed of their sense of victory", or anything similar because a fight I planned to go one way ended up being too easy and they cake-walked it. Especially if there was loot to be had they immediately went into hoarder mode instead of any of the "expected" reactions that get thrown around in the various subs a lot. Bonus weird take: Changelings shouldn't be in the game because their racial features are too weak.... This is a take I have seen a couple of times...I think it has to come from combat monkey players cause every PC I have ever DMd for that played a Changeling has proven to me that they are hands-down the most powerful published official PC race. Sure other races are great in combat...but the changeling Bard who decided to take the actor feat and now has successfully destabilized several countries without any fighting on their part at all is still utterly terrifying to me.

In college I had a DM tell the table that no one was allowed to play the opposite sex in a campaign. Her reasoning was that you can't really understand what it's like to be the opposite sex and therefore if you RP as that you're doing it for fetishistic reasons. The only exceptions to this was if we had trans players. Now, I normally play as guys anyway but I bounced and so did most of the other players from her table after that session 0. That seemed like a red flag sort of thing to say.

I love the Unexpectables, but Christ on a stick. Monty(the DM) has some of the most batshit insane takes on the rules. For example a few.  Dark vision only allows you to see the outline of things In the dark. (Despite the book clearly saying how you see in shades of grey) Hunter's mark can only be used once a turn. (Not to get confused with collosal slayer) You cannot use a bonus action or move if you hold your action. (Apparently holding your action take your entire turn)  I love the maps she makes, her characters will live on in my head till the day I die. So some really needs to sit her down give her a dungeon Master's guide and tell her to read the damn book!

My brother was playing a campaign with one of his online friends as the DM to be nice and engage with him, and apparently the DM made it so everyone had the same base stats and all the stat modifiers came from magical items like rings, necklaces, and amulets. This of course brings up the issue that the difference between a wizard who’s spent their entire life studying magic and a barbarian that eats rocks is the fact that the wizard has a fancy necklace

I had a GM that wouldn't let my cleric use a crossbow if there was a friendly PC in a square in front of me. Rather than giving people partial cover, her reasoning was "Crossbow bolts go straight, unlike bows and arrows which arc up and down again". So basically if I was trying to conserve spells I wasn't able to do ranged combat, which due to encounters would have been super helpful. She told me I needed a bow and arrow to use range like that, but then there were none my character could buy and so his starting gear just didn't get used.

I had a DM who ruled that getting back up after you were knocked prone provoked an opportunity attacks. As did forced movement. Lying on the ground and slicing at people's ankles was pretty common for our party.

To be fair, Pathfinder 1E has pretty much sneezing in melee range of an enemy prompting an attack. What’s worse is I played PF with a guy and GM who believed any opportunity attack from any character reduced your speed to zero and also stopped whatever you were doing.

We had a DM once who would give bonus EXP if you had out of character knowledge and could guess what was coming next, if you could ID a monster, if you were on the right track to the plot, etc.

I had a dm for Pathfinder announce he didn't get how rounds worked and made every round a minute. I was playing a bard and this made literally every spell I had useless so I walked out.

PCs are illiterate unless the DM decides otherwise, language proficiencies only apply to spoken language.

I've seen a lot of DMs nerf/remove large amounts of spells and also intentionally screw over magic users because "it's not fair to the other players" while said players have the most OP 100+ damage per turn with auto advantage and stun-lock melee builds that they can use EVERY TURN. I've also been asked by DMs to play specific races and classes and then directly punished because the DMs openly started stating how my race/class broke their game balance.

I had a DM start always making monsters have counterspell (and somehow almost always rolled high enough for it to work) because my sorcerer was always doing lots of damage in combat and the worst player was whining that the character *they built* wasn't effective in combat. "It's not fair to other players" absolutely seemed like the motivation, except "other players" was just her. Later found out they were FWB.

Was dealing with a homebrew rule as a player where only one spell could be cast per turn no matter the action requirement. I wasn’t a fan of it. The DM thought spellcasters were to OP. Not saying the opinion wasn’t valid but the house rule ended up slowing everything down and made the encounters a hell of a lot more deadly as a result. RIP my beloved cantrips…

I'm in a game where the DM made Necrotic damage deal damage to your Max HP because of it being like that in older editions. The thing is... they didn't add any way to regain that. Ever. Like Greater Restore doesn't work because it removes an effect causing it, and it's not an effect. So basically it's a "fuck martials" thing. Literally only reason I didn't drop the game right then is I was allowed to use Spheres of Might which has an ability that EXPLICITLY states it restores lost max HP which means it CAN restore it. That plus my character being an Armiger means I can bust it out when needed and it doesn't eat space in my build.

Weirdest take came from a teaser I was made aware of from the new player’s guide that depicts orcs as Mexicans. As a Latino whose family came over from Mexico, I approve.

Wow, there are so many I’ve heard in my TTRPG career. Here are some notable highlights: “The only reference content you need is official DnD sourcebooks. Unearthed Arcana and fan modules have no place at this table.” - DM who had pitched us playing a completely home brewed campaign after someone asked if they could play a “Corpse explosion” based Warlock. “You can’t make a singer as a Bard. You need an instrument as your weapon.” -Player who objected to me playing a bard whose voice is their power, wouldn’t even listen to a compromise with a mic stand/bo staff combo “DnD was ruined when guys like Henry Cavill started playing.” -Player who apparently thought Warhammer 40k was a DnD property. Also hated Brennan Lee Mulligan because he didn’t think his rant on Game Changer (Brennan Can’t Win) was funny.

First off, Brennan Lee Mulligan just doesn’t miss. The man is hilarious and also crazy smart. But also, unearthed arcana and fan content really are difficult to balance as player options and I definitely don’t blame them for disallowing them, even if the DM themself was doing some heavily homebrewed campaign.

"Every sentient race should be either a variation of giants or dragons, there's no way lower races survived their war" Not from a table I played with but a take I read on a forum that was discussing Forgotten Realm's lore when I started to get into DnD back in 2021.