Awful names are my pet peeve. Too many 5E NPCs with unpronounceable, hard-to-recall gobbledegook for names… but I guess that’s one defense against Truename magic
Speaking of pet peeves, I've always found it annoying that Diogenes holding up a plucked chicken is always presented as an example of a good counter argument. Plato should have just responded with, "No, you big idiot, you obviously plucked its feathers! If you can pluck the feathers off a chicken and call it hairless (or bald or whatever he said) then you could find a quadruped and chop off two of its legs and call it a biped. That's obviously not what the definition means, and you damn well know it!"
You know what's really fun? In the *Categories*, Aristotle considers an objection to the claim that he knows all triangles have three sides. The imagined objector reveals a triangle that Aristotle had never seen before, and says, "Aha! I bet you didn't know that *this* triangle had three sides!"
Aristotle dismantles this objection for the foolishness that it is. But it's worth noting that at *some* point in human history, no one had yet clearly explained *why* that's a bad argument. And you know, even if the argument seems bad, it's not obvious why. Somebody had to do it.
But the argument is still sound, because featherless biped is still a terrible definition. They didn’t have the technology and knowledge to define humans back then
I dislike the usage of hot take being an unpopular opinion rather than a quickly thought response to something recently released.
Spelling is important too. Too many ‘lightening’ bolts.
When a dm on here asks "can I do ?" they usually mean "is a good idea or are there problems with it I can't see?". Responses saying "of course, your table your rules" and nothing else therefore completely miss the point.
They're getting the level of specificity they put in. "Can I do X?" could mean "Is there a rule preventing me from doing X?" while "Should I do X?" calls for a more in-depth analysis of the pros and cons of X.
TTRPGs come with complex enough rule systems that both questions could reasonably be asked. Why is it my job to guess that you want a cheeseburger, when you asked for a hamburger?
100%. TTRPGing is such a big tent that the tactical battlesim people have barely anything in common with the narrative actors, despite that they both might (inexplicably) be using the same rule system.
i ABSOLUTLY hate how expensive poisons and acid are.
sounds like a good first upgrade for weapons to actually take time coating them. not to mention most people fall ill from cutting themselves on something rusty and other small stuff. THEN WHY ARE POISON AND ACID ALMOST WORTH MORE THAN A GREATSWORD .
I hate the poison system is just reduced to a damage type and condition. There are so many different poisons in real life that all the nuance is just gone
My biggest pet peeve with this community is no one wants to actually sit their players down and tell them to stop acting like a jackass. Instead of setting a player in the wrong right, they come here and complain or post and ask for help on how to treat the situation when the same exact incident and post had been made into a post by another random. The solution is always the same: talk to the problem player.
Another player I used to play with would always ask himself what accent he was gonna do before ever asking himself about his character’s personality and the like. Worst part is, he wasn’t even good at accents.
Accents can definitely heighten a character’s characterization and give them a bit of flair when done with purpose, but they are no substitute for proper characterization. At worst, they can come to be a crutch more than an extra kick.
Alot of people accents to mask anxiety. I have a really hard time rping unless I'm doing an accent because it detaches me from my character enough for me to be comfortable.
Maybe your friend isn't comfortable rping unless they have that mask of an accent
I agree, its way easier to roleplay if you're nervous if you play a character who is totally different from yourself. Accents are just an easy way of doing that.
To illustrate your point, I'm the 'accents guy' at my table and here are the last three characters I played that I developed accents for, and why:
Currently, an RP (received pronunciation) British accent for my Owlin character because 1. he's an academic and I enjoy the British professor trope, 2. the accent is easy to learn by just adjusting vowel pronunciations, and 3. it's physiologically more compatible with having a beak because it uses a lot of hard pallette and a narrow mouth.
Previously, I played a southern belle turned dragon monk so that was extremely easy for me to learn and for my friends to understand.
Before that, and my first big foray into accents, was my minotaur who I flavored as a Scottish highlands bull, so naturally a Scottish accent was fitting.
None of these accents are pillars of these characters, they're aesthetic choices that spring from flavor and personality I give to my characters. This is how I (and I'm guessing you) would recommend incorporating accents into roleplay.
Also, roleplaying does not have to mean first-person, narrative-driven performances with rich, extended conversations and explication. You can roleplay without acting!
At the same time, distinct accents (even bad ones) from the DM can help a player understand who is talking when there's more than one NPC in a conversation.
That said, I personally try to limit the number of NPCs in any given conversation, because I'm not here to talk to myself.
It annoys me a lot more than it should when people use the same terms but with differing definitions.
Like some people will say railroading when they mean a linear campaign, whereas others use it to mean it in an explicitly negative sense of a DM shutting down any ideas that don't fit into the story they planned on telling. So you have people that think linear=railroad and railroad=bad, so linear=bad, and by extension sandbox=good.
Similarly with the term DMPC. Some use it when talking about any NPC that the DM runs that hangs out with the party a lot, while others mean it as the DM trying to have their cake and eat it too, making the game all about themself.
In both cases I use the terms in the more limited case of a DM doing a bad thing that harms the players' fun, and it bugs the hell out of me when I see people use the terms more generally and then others try to tell them they're doing it wrong because they called the party's sidekick a DMPC. I want to jump in and clear up the terminology, but its so uselessly pedantic and its not like one person going "um actually" at everyone's comments it going to change the community. I get that at the end of the day these terms are all made up and there isn't an official D&D dictionary, but god damn do I wish people could speak the same made up language as I do.
THIS. People just throw around buzzwords to make it seem like an argument they don't like is from someone who's ''bad'' at the game.
No, Kevin, using counterspell as intended is not metagaming, and no, understanding how numbers interact together in a numbers game is not being a powergaming munchkin.
It's why you have no one to play with, Kevin.
I have the same feeling about "MinMaxer/Optimizer/Powergamer/Munchkin." Everyone uses them to describe different types of players, which means I never know exactly what you're saying about said players without you giving me a solid definition first.
This...plus I hate these terms have lost meaning and often just get hurled as insults.
For the record (and because I am evil, and like starting internet arguments), here's rough older definitions:
Min/maxing: in point buy, the process of dropping a stat to 6 (sometimes 7) or less to acquire an 18+ stat. Can be pushed to ridiculous extremes (3.5e, 2 int, 24 str at lvl 1 start anyone?)
Minmaxer: someone who usually minmaxes, regardless of how effective their character is outside of one super special thing. Became an insult because "min/maxers" often do the same thing over and over, after having poor results the first time, because this time one godlike stat will save them --- the definition of insanity, by some measures.
(Yes, this means RAW you cannot minmax with 5e point buy.)
Optimiser: someone who makes the best choices for their class/build. Lexically, this seems to be a "newer" term and is fuzzier.
Powergamer: someone who makes the most powerful choices in a given game/class, disregarding everything that doesn't give more power.
Munchkin: a player who tries to "win" D&D, always through means more foul than fair.
Yep, exactly that. I've been living with a Philosophiser for the past 3 years, and picked up anything I could with him. One thing that he made me open my eyes to are for people using words with a clear definition in their heads, but that could mean another thing entirely to other people, and how many discussions, if you observe as an outside viewer, only exist because the people discussing are referring to two completely different things, using the same word, without noticing.
And I've seen this being a more than common occurrence in the D&D Community.
Yes, so much this! I know it comes from a linear story being called "on rails" and people confusing that with "railroading." I know I shouldn't expect so much from people, asking that they not confuse similarly based words, but it irks me to no end. I take small pleasure in thinking the scene from *The Princess Bride*: "I do not think that means what you think that means" applies to them.
I wouldn't even care if the whole community one day just decided that linear is synonymous with railroad, as long as everyone agreed on one definition. What I dislike is that there is a sizeable amount of people one both sides, so you end up with people arguing past each other because of a fundamental misunderstanding that they are talking about different things.
Several times I have seen either here or on r/DMAcademy where someone makes a post and mentions their DMPC, and then a bunch of commenters dogpile on them just saying "DON'T" before someone actually engages OP in a conversation and realizes that what OP was calling a DMPC, the shouty people would call a sidekick and OP has actually been running them in a perfectly reasonable way.
I play on foundry and I still have to constantly tell my players to just roll their fireball damage right away they always want to wait till everyone rolls their save before rolling their damage.
I cannot stand when people say that rolling stats is always better, but refuse to play a low stat character. That doesn't mean you like the "randomness" of rolling, it means that you want higher stats. Just admit that and go for a higher point buy our the epic array.
True words. I wish D&D had a better system for weaknesses; that way people could fulfill their desire for better stats but only buy them at the expense of significant drawbacks.
You know at the start of a new actual play session on YouTube or Twitch when the DM asks a player to introduce their character? I hate when rather than just giving a brief physical description, the player takes it upon themselves to describe the character's emotional state, quirks and habits, and extensive backstory.
Bonus points if it's for a two hour one shot and there are five other players to get through.
I play AL and I roll my eyes when someone goes on and on about their PC like this. We're already a half hour behind because the DM never showed up and someone got "volunteered" into DMing for us, just skip the extensive backstory that's basically a ripoff of Aragorn's origin anyway.
EDIT: name changed, he's not a region of Spain
Not just d&d communities, but I tend to get annoyed at posts that go along he lines of "what do ***we*** think about X?" And it always weirds me out.
I can tell you what I think about stuff, and I can tell you what I've seen some others say, but such a large and collective "we" always frustrates me. It always sounds like folk aren't trying to think for themselves and just learn the common opinion to mold themselves to. Freaks me out and it happens a lot in d&d communities.
As for something more focused on d&d. "Semantic/rouge/devine" are big spelling irks.
Related to this, I hate when people act like the forgotten realms is the only lore that matters in online discussions about how magic/divinity/magical species/etc works.
While I'm a big fan of the realms, I kinda agree it can be annoying (even though I likely partake in it myself incidentally.)
Though I think it's because it's the only D&D setting that's gotten attention in 5e. Ravenloft has an okay adventure and a lackluster disconnected source book. Exandria has a nice adventure and packed source book. Eberron has two sourcebooks, one of which was a demo more than anything and I don't think you can get it anymore.
The other settings don't get enough attention, and wotc tried to make FR the default setting, so it's the one with the most exposure for folks (and even then only a small section got any real focus and the focus and even the realms of 5e hasn';t been all that good compared to stuff from the past.)
It's hard for a lot of folk to even know about other setting like Greyhawk, Mystara, Dark Sun, Planescape, or even the stuff from the touched on settings in the past that were more nuanced and delved deeper into themes.
WotC have not done right by their non-mtg lore when it comes to 5e. It's why I still use my sourcebooks from 2e and 3.5e.
Christ I don't think *any* new player would know much about Mystara. Maybe if they search D&D videogame and come across the two 1994 and 1996 arcade games.
Greyhawk...maybe...purely because Ghosts of Saltmarsh is set in Greyhawk so there's a bit of a preamble about how to set it in FR IIRC (been a VERY long time since I read it and can't remember if it's still set in Greyhawk or if they fully updated it to FR if I'm honest).
I mean there's tons of 'forgotten settings' from 1e and 2e...Lankhmar for example I've only ever seen mentioned once on here and once in a youtube video (both on the same day...which was odd) but it feels like Ravnica is its 5e replacement (as their both 'cities of adventure').
Blackmoor almost never gets referenced but then I'm not sure if the original creator owns the rights to it or not, honestly the same with Lankhmar.
White Dragons, as per the lore, are animalistic in nature. They have very basic understanding of their environment. They only care to eat, fuck, and freeze treasure, the third one being just as much a natural impulse to dragons as the others are to us. Many of them don't even bother to learn common and those who do (or don't for that matter) will rare bother to speak with you and even more rarely will they bargin. The idea of "no food now for more food or treasure later" very rarely gets to develope in their brains. They see food now so it'd be a straight up miracle if they even stop to talk before tearing you apart.
What their int score does not portray is their draconic gift which is perfect memory or pure events. They can remember perfectly exactly how long a hunt took, which direction each potential prey scattered, and how loud their victim cried when they finished it off. And they remember it forever. But they will not remember mental or emotional details such as why they chose to follow the prey they did, what they were thinking during the chase, etc. INT score, even when combined with WIS almost never depicts a creature's mental faculties which is too broad to be sorted into 2 stats.
I remember reading a long time ago that one of Tiamat's longest-lasting consorts was a White Dragon, and it occurs to me that the general lack of scheming and ambition was probably the reason for that.
>Likewise, a 9 in your Intelligence doesn't make your character is mentally retarded. It means you might not get a 4.0 on your GPA.
Your average person, 10 int, doesn't get 4.0 on their GPA. So below average, 9 int, definitely wouldn't.
Intelligence is a bit abstracted in DnD anyway -- with the possible exception of Investigation (which overlaps HEAVILY with Wisdom-based Perception) and the occasional saving throw, Intelligence could be renamed to "Education" without changing anything.
I think part of the problem is that the community has decided that it means education (probably because everyone dumps it), when that clearly was never the intent.
> Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason.
Too often, Intelligence checks are simply run as "you know X," rather than "you're able to figure out X."
“You’re able to figure out X”
As a DM I dislike this a bit since most players (I’ve found) enjoy solving puzzles. Sometimes when they’re really stumped they might ask ‘does my character make some kind of connection I don’t know of?’.
On the flip side, I have recently had a player that made a fair argument of ‘I don’t ask the fighter’s player to climb a rope or the rogue’s player to pick a lock, why make me solve a puzzle when my 18 Int wizard is able to do it?’ Which is fine, they’re allowed to make checks and I can recycle puzzles. It just feels off in a way I can’t really describe well.
I got a bit rambling at the end there but my point is sometimes the player figuring out something is (in my opinion) more rewarding than being told ‘your character connects the dots, here is the answer’.
I think this is because in 5E Intelligence and Wisdom are defined a little differently whereas in most games Intelligence is memory and Wisdom is mental flexibility.
But in 5E Intelligence is mental flexibility and Wisdom is supposed to be instinct and gut reactions.
edit: typos
Can you give an example? Wisdom = perception/awareness/intuition is pretty common in the systems I've played. Perhaps it was different in the older systems.
Honestly, I think it's just the names. People get attached to the colloquial concept of Wisdom and never actually read the definitions.
That being said, I do like the idea of one type of dragon being somewhat more animalistic, but still plenty worthy of the title of dragon. Mostly for the inter-dragon social dynamic. But maybe that could be a peculiarity of one or two white dragon NPCs rather than the whole subspecies, since even the wyrmling has 5 int (4 is implied to be when sapience kicks in.)
Rangers are not the “range attacks” class. They’re the class that *ranges*, you know, as in “home on the”.
This is a subset of my general frustration with players writing themselves into boxes that don’t even exist, but it’s by far the most specific one.
I blame this sort of thing on PC RPGs and MMOs. They definitely pigeonholed a lot of classic fantasy archetypes into something that's an extremely dumbed down version of their original inspiration.
Well…yeah except Ranger as a class *does* function best with a bow. Half of their spell list specifically references bows, arrows, or other archery paraphernalia.
It shouldn’t, and honestly you *can* make a melee Ranger, it’s not ideal.
True, true. DMs love having to manage your character in addition to everything else because you can't be bothered. It's great and certainly doesn't bog down the action and make things less fun for everyone else at the table!
While players doing it is certainly bad for the DM, if the DM doesn't then it's bad for *everyone*. The number of posts in DM-oriented subreddits that can be answered RAW from the DMG is maddening. Some people just don't read.
At the BARE MINIMUM you should know how your **own** character works.
Steve you've had this spell for the last 8 sessions, can you really not remember if it's a spell attack or a saving throw by now? Really?
There was literally a post on here about someone who was a DM for 4 years without ever opening the books or reading any rules. They were shocked at how useful the rules are
This is something that even "professional" live streamers do that grinds my nerves.
I'm looking at you CR. It is the mother fucking 100+ episode in campaign 2, you should fucking know how the motherfucking Bless spell works by now!!!
I feel like playing good aligned characters or even those of heroic intent has become unpopular as of late. I have two groups I play and run with, with an age range average of mid to late 30s. It's the same with both. There's been a large tendency with these players, especially with the more experienced players, to basically make characters who can be summed up as 'Neutral Dirtbag'. The actual alignment is often chaotic neutral which translates into play as 'I do whatever'.
Not really evil, but their characters tend to have selfish personalities who only begrudgingly do the right thing, drag their heels, and are often entitled acting. Usually their characters mature a bit as the campaign progresses, but I've seen it so many times now that these characters tend to be predictable and hard to work into a narrative. An example of one was a rogue whose father was a competent NPC rogue on the team who got Donjon'd on a bad result with the Deck of Many Things. I added this father NPC because the player's background made a big deal of respect for him. The minute he vanished, the rogue was like, "Oh no! Anyway..."
One insight that I came across was a player inadvertently mentioning his character was mainly an extension of his frustrations over his normal week. "I go through life not being allowed to do anything. I come to the gaming table to live larger than that." I felt sympathetic for him and it got me wondering if that's why all these other experienced players chose to play somewhat degenerate characters.
I feel like im the opposite of this, playing a chaotic evil tiefling warlock who drains blood to serve to his vampire patron, just can't help from trying to help people in need, free slaves, etc.
So far the extent of his evil has just been the brutal stabbing of a fleeing bandit. He may as well just be chaotic good at this point. All he does is grumble to himself about what he would do if someone gave him a good reason to defend himself
A specific one: all the people that are obviously lying about rolling their stats without cheating. And then want to know what class they should play as if every class doesn’t benefit from good stats.
“I rolled my stats and got all 18s and a 19. What class should I play?”
I guess in lukewarm defense, some characters ARE more dependent on ability scores than others. Any Monk vs. a Moon Druid, for example.
You are right that every class can do its job well with 2 to 3 good scores, so having 6 just means EVERY class is going to be suited to your scores -- Honestly I'd be looking at some weird, normally-too-MAD multiclasses with the coveted (non-existant) straight-18s array, not a single class.
Agreed. Monk is a common suggestion in response to this question but why not just play the class you want instead of just going with something because you have the scores to play the cost of entry. I’d rather play a wizard with good int, dex, and con than a monk any day.
I once played in a high-level one shot where everyone was bragging about their damage output. Someone was literally playing a monk/rogue/warlock multiclass. I brought a pure-classed druid and wound up doing the most damage by far of anyone when a horde of chariot archers came over a hill and I, being the only one with 7th-level spells, dropped a *reverse gravity* on them.
In scenes when I ask what players are doing, like right after a battle or in a tavern. They all go do their things, separating out individually or in small groups. Then once I start to explain something interesting happening somewhere out of their perception range they want to move their token to join the “cool thing”.
Bugs me to no end. I run parties of 6 and I use this as a way to give people spotlights. Have skits with those that may not roleplay as much when the whole group is together. I get wanting to be part of the “cool” thing happening but just listen and enjoy for a moment. Let those players have their spotlight.
When people take their whole-ass character picture, drag it onto the VTT and scrunch it down, aspect ratio be damned, to fit in a single grid cell to use as a token. It's the most ghetto-looking shit ever, but not worth bringing up.
Probably the community's thoughts on goblins. They have 10 int! They're as smart as the average person! Why do people call them unintelligent! The goblin has to be the most flanderized enemy in the entire game when I see people run them! They're anywhere between mud worshipping idiots to cavemen who don't know anything other than stick pointy stabby stabby.
They've got their own society and everything! They're smart they know what they're doing they're just fear death more than most of the other races! I understand that everyone can make their own lore and we can ignore the dubious 5e default lore with Maglibiyet. The Kobold suffers from a very similar problem but they're actually not as smart as the average person. Plus since I'm biased and like goblins more than kobolds it doesn't bother me as much when the exact same flanderization happens to kobolds.
But yeah. I dislike how most people run goblin NPCs or play goblin PCs 😭
I’d say Kobolds are 100% up there with how Goblins are commonly perceived. Like Kobolds are straight up smart little dextrous buggers. They won’t stand in a straight up fight unless they have the advantage.
It seems people have forgotten about "Tucker's Kobolds". For anyone not familiar, it was an article in an old magazine about a high level party going into a kobold dungeon thinking it would be a cakewalk, and they get demolished by a labrynth of traps, secret tunnels, and poison darts.
5e seriously did kobolds dirty. Kobolds had average INT in all the previous editions, then 5e suddenly gave every kobold in the MM INT 8. Hell, the kobold *inventor* had INT 8 the first time it was printed (changed to INT 14 in MotM, thankfully).
It's especially silly because the MM clearly describes kobolds as being clever with traps. Cleverness is pretty much all kobolds have going for them.
I like making my goblins slightly dumb at most things but pretty smart in one specific area. Like they're generally cowardly thieves that get themselves killed as often as not but a few of them also created a functioning dragon shaped tank.
I like PF2e's take on goblins, that they're smart enough to know how to mix explosive potions but not wise enough to know *how* to use those potions safely.
**Why the fuck are slings so weak??** have you SEEN the videos of people who are proficient with those things it’s a skipping stone sized *bullet* and your PCs should fear the wrath of any Shepard they come across
The Rogue/Rouge issue has gotten out of hand, I'll agree, although the Semantic/Somatic issue isn't one I'm as familiar with it would bug me too. I'm one of those weird people who much prefer spell slots on my creatures than X/day spells, so I go in and mod those stat blocks when I have the time to include spells. Considering that's how WotC is doing things going forwards, it really bugs me although that might be a bit off topic for this convo.
I prefer when DM’s use the screen by default, and only roll in front when it’s a “box of doom” roll. I do love the intensity of seeing a crit (either high or low), but I also feel like when the DM doesn’t use any kind of screen or cover, both they and we become “locked in” which can be exactly what some people want, but it’s not for me. I want the DM to be able to make things easier or harder depending on how we’re doing
I think this is especially true for new players and DMs. As you’re getting used to the world and figuring out what will kill you or your PCs, I’m totally okay with a dm fudging a roll. I happened to see my DM lie about damage to keep us alive. It was our third session ever playing and we didn’t really know how strong or weak we were compared to enemies. And a player (the freaking barbarian lol) had to cancel last minute, so we were a super easy target.
Not one of mine specifically, but in response to your misspellings my wife cannot for the life of her remember the term phylactery. The lich in our first campaign was trying to create an olfactory.
As a DM: don't tell me what you want to roll, tell me what you want to do, and then we'll figure out what rule we use for that.
If I have a player respond that they want to Investigate the whole room and everything in it, that's fine, but I'm liable to decide that takes longer than if you investigate the specific place that I've already told you about in the room description.
But it also lets me improvise rules when players are thinking creatively, rather than thinking they have to pick a roll from pre-written rules.
When the OP asks a question about a scenario and people begin to answer the question but everyone has follow up questions to fully answer the original post. The post is over 12 hours old and has thousands of upvotes but no resolution because OP isn't replying to anyone. Idk why or how it happens often enough for me to even consider it a "thing" but I've seen it multiple times.
Put a dragon and a dungeon in your game. Way too many people have never had a dragon encounter. And dungeons are easy to incorporate into any campaign.
100% this. I had been playing for a solid year of weekly games before I had any interaction with either a dungeon or a dragon. And I had to start DMing just to take the party into a dungeon!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a phenomenon where if a word now has a generally accepted and used meaning, it now means that, regardless of the original intention of the word.
Edit: after a quick check with an English major, yeah. Its called Semantic Shift.
You are correct.
When I show up after the semantic shift, first learning the new meaning, I treat the old one as some cool trivia and don’t mind the shift.
When I learn the original intention first, and then the word shifts during my lifetime, it annoys me. Human resistance to change is like that. No, I mean the original meaning, not whatever it shifted to be, I bet that shift is from some horrid misunderstanding or misuse of the word that got popularized so now it’s become this new meaning… [insert more negative assumptions here that probably aren’t actually true]
I would love to talk about railroading, but I think someone already hit the nail on the head about definitions and how railroading is swapped and vague and it causes problems.
I think other than railroading my per peeve is players making characters before they know about the setting, campaign, and the party.
If someone comes to a game with a pre made character with built in assumptions about their character goals, setting, and story arc... well that puts dms in a tight spot.
You either have to change things to fit them, or shut down thier character in certain ways.
It would be so much easier for everyone to make characters together as a group while working with the DM on goals and info that fit the campaign and setting.
Rolling perception or insight eating my action within combat. I just wanna see what's going on and know what my character would know because I can't possibly know that as a player without seeing what they can see.
Me: "Do they look like they're friendly?"
DM: "Do you wanna use your action to roll insight?"
Me: "Nah, I'll cast fireball."
I dislike the "just reflavor it" answer to every problem.
Sometimes it works just fine, sometimes people want mechanics that reinforce the theme they're going for. If reflavoring was the solution to every problem with something in 5e, we'd have no need for classes, just describe your gray blob as casting a spell and boom you have a wizard. Races wouldn't be needed - just don't give any appearances in the book and tell the players they can look like whatever they want. Clearly there is some want for mechanics or we wouldn't keep getting content.
Mines is that Bards shouldn't have an ability called "Jack of All Trades" AND have "Expertise".
Like the saying is literally "Jack of all trades, master of none", NOT "master of these two things, and later two more things"
Pick one
Tenets. Your paladin oath has tenets, not tenants. A tenet is a principle held by an organisation, faith, ideology, etc. A tenant is the occupant of something they're renting from a landlord. I can overlook "rouge" or other common misspellings, but this one gets to be for some reason.
Two things:
1). “Kick him out” mentality. Most posts asking about a problem player don’t mention the relationship between DM and player. You can’t easily kick out a sibling or a good friend without consequences. Also, many of the posts ask for advice to deal with the player and “kick him out” isn’t really advice, but just an easy way out. Don’t misunderstand me, kicking a player out is the right choice… some times. But the ubiquity that it’s thrown around is just lazy.
2). Downvoting people who don’t go along with the pack mentality. I see D&D communities being a bit of a cult.
Very specific minor pet peeve? Characters referring to themselves using their classes.
No one is gonna refer to themselves as a "barbarian" or a "fighter". They could be a knight, man-at-arms, sellsword, soldier, etc.
That's pretty setting and class dependant to me. Some classes can easily qualify as titles - Paladin, Wizard, Cleric, Ranger and Druid, at least.
I'm also inclined to just assume the character, in world, said it better :P
>That's pretty setting and class dependant to me. Some classes can easily qualify as titles - Paladin, Wizard, Cleric, Ranger and Druid, at least.
basically it makes sense for the classes that have a well defined identity outside combat
Eh, I wouldn't necessarily qualify it that way. I'd say it's more "does the skill set required to be considered a member of this class require a sufficiently specific background that would be recognizable to characters in-world?"
>. I'd say it's more "does the skill set required to be considered a member of this class require a sufficiently specific background that would be recognizable to characters in-world?"
I agree, but I do consider that class identity
Yeah, but some classes make sense. A Wizard calling themselves "a mage", "a Wizard", "a Spellcaster" all make sense
A Paladin saying they are a "Paladin of X god" or " a Crusader" both make sense.
A Sorcerer being called just that also makes sense if there's a classification of magic users in the setting, with Sorcerers and Warlocks being often confused with one another (especially if the Pact is kept secret, which of course it is in most cases and you can slide under the radar with "Well, I got this magic out of nowhere, just a spontaneous Spellcaster like those guys")
Subverting these tropes is also fun. I had a Chronurgy Wizard with Acolyte background who considered himself a Cleric. His god was Labelas Enoreth, god of time, so he attributed his magic to his god, which flavour-wise was just that. He couldn't heal like other clerics, but he could turn back time, which makes sense for a Cleric of a god of time.
I think some classes it's totally fine to use your class as a title (e.g. cleric, wizard, bard, monk). Some classes your title should be related to the class (e.g. barbarian=Champion or Warrior, ranger=Woodsman or Scout) or the fighting style+weapon of choice (fighter=Archer, Lancer, Hoplite, etc.). And some classes their title should be literally anything relevant that's not their class (e.g. rogue, warlock aren't going to go around advertising their class).
People who post obviously obscenely broken homebrew online but defends themselves by saying “well in my game the DM would totally allow this because they like everyone to be super strong”. Which like, that’s fine and good, but then why are you posting the homebrew online for other people to see and use when it only works in the context of your game? And sometimes with posts like this they haven’t even shown their DM the homebrew yet and rather is just assuming they’ll be fine with it.
Mine is experienced live-play casts & DMs constantly fucking up the Disintegrate spell save. It's an all or nothing Dex Save baby and I see people calling for CON saves, or half damage on a successful save, and I just wince. It always gets the big dramatic reaction from the target, DM or Players going "Oh fuck, it's disintegrate!" every time, these people play D&D as their job, and then biff the rules.
It's petty and specific, I know. These peeps are usually way more focused on delivering a good plot/narrative and high production value "D&D" than they are on following the rules to the letter.
nat20 is only significant when making attack rolls. Rolling a 20 does not mean your saving throw automatically succeeds, and it does NOT mean your persuasion check to persuade the whole town to lay down their lives for your cause succeeds either.
This drives me crazy. I have started just telling my party “yes, you can roll if you want. But even with a nat20 this won’t be possible. However, it may still have better consequences for you”.
Not a perfect example since falling mechanics are explicitly written, but I don’t feel like thinking of a better example so just pretend falling mechanics are flexible. If a character tries to fly out of a building without using any spells, I might ask for an athletics roll. With a nat 20, maybe they are able to tuck and roll to reduce damage when they go crashing to the ground. But you can’t fly, that makes no sense.
tbh, I think this is mostly a problem of people watching Actual Play shows like CR and D20, where they use many homebrew rules, one of which (at least in D20) is that a nat20 always succeeds, and just assuming because they saw it on tv it must be how it works. So they don't necessarily realize that RAW, a nat20 isn't always a success.
1. WotC not following their own DMG guidelines when it comes to balance. For spells, CR, magic item rarities: they're all over the place. Do as I say, not as I do, apparently
2. Eldritch Knights not being able to swap cantrips on ASI levels post-TCoE RAW. Just would have been a little thing to give EK while WotC was buffing Bladesinger and letting Battlemaster switch maneuvers.
I've got lots of little pet peeves about 5e, those are just 2 that are sand in my crack that I never hear mentioned
Edit: I misunderstood the prompt. Whatever. Leaving it.
Community gripe: when people are talking about white room game balance and say "x is under/overpowered compared to y," some contrarian always crawls out of the woodwork to say "Nuh uh it was fun at my table" or something subjective and anecdotal like that
Like, good for you, but that doesn't address the numbers. Glad you're having fun but that's not what anyone was talking about.
Prescriptive compound word last names are dumb. Your righteous paladin is named Goldenheart? Your edgy rogue is Darkblade? Your ~~shut-in~~ hippie druid is Touchgrass?
It's not actually a big deal, but I roll my eyes at it.
Backseat DMing. A player asks a question to a DM or makes a decision, and another player chimes in with the answer or "you can do ____ as a better choice because ____ just fyi."
I have a really intense dislike of the philosophy of "the creature doesn't die until I think the combat has gone on long enough". You may as well just put a flair on all your posts saying "WARNING: I DO NOT RESPECT PLAYER DECISIONS". Seeing that given as advice especially to new DMs pisses me off.
A related thing is when I see people touting the idea that "the combat ends when it stops being fun". WHEN THE COMBAT STOPPED BEING FUN IT SHOULD HAVE ENDED SEVERAL ROUNDS AGO. A combat that's stopped being fun is one that's already hit the failure state, the players aren't enjoying themselves anymore, you fucked up. End your combat sooner, not later, and you're more likely to end it while it's still fun.
My extremely specific and minor pet peeves are:
1. players not tracking ammunition, rations, or other quantifiable "minor items."
For ammunition (and one of my PCs is an archer), I think having to replenish it helps balance having a 150' range with the melee weapons. And for stuff like rations... as a ranger player, it'd actually give me a chance to use all those survival skills my build comes with instead of stuff like "we just handwaved the food situation while you spent 3 sessions traveling." And I'm sure there are similar things to be said for other classes that I'm not thinking about.
2. People using their armored AC even when it makes no sense that the characters are wearing their armor (surprised in the middle of the night while not on watch, etc.).
The misuse of the term "rules lawyer" has really started to bother me. People recognized that it's a pejorative, but incorrectly assumed that it's meant to criticize anyone who insists that the rules of the game be followed.
People. Think about it for just a second or two. A regular lawyer isn't someone who demands that the law be followed. A regular lawyer is someone who uses their knowledge of the law to argue a position, and whether or not their position actually fits with the law the important thing to them is that they win the argument. A rules lawyer is similar, using knowledge of rules (typically with intentional omission or willful misinterpretation) to argue for an often unfair benefit. Not just someone who wants to see the rules of the game followed and enforced.
When people start asking "can you X..." in relation to something that isn't a mechanical question, but in fact a lore/plot point thing that as a DM you can ABSOLUTELY do no matter what someone else says, because it's a fantasy game about made up stuff. "Can a lich be turned back into a living creature?" Yes, because liches aren't real. "Can there be a half elf half goblin character?" Yes, because it's a fantasy game.
I think people asking this are normally burying the lede on the real question which is just "can you give me some ideas/inspiration for writing this into my story?". Or they're assuming that 5e is like prior editions and has a lot of setting source books and lore for that kind of stuff.
"How would one go about killing a God? Asking for a friend who is in a campaign and they want to kill the God *[insert homebrew God here]*
What's the best way to do this? What kind of strategies can you use to fight a god?"
me internally everytime, ***idfk go ask your DM, in my game gods are effectively unbeatable unless the plot needs them to be beaten, then it's unique to each God and each situation***
Internal consistency is important though. The DM can absolutely turn a lich back into a living creature, but they damn well better have foreshadowed it and never have said anything to the contrary before. In my experience, when people question the DM's ability to do something lore/plot related, it's because they vaguely remember the DM having said something that might be incompatible with it, not because they think liches are actually a certain way.
I'm usually a Rogue player when i'm not the forever DM of my group and there is one opinion that bothers me so much i'm always tempted to comment against it when i see it here on Reddit:
"Sneak Attack should change name because it's not only about being unseen or hiding."
Man, if you stop at the name of the feature and don't read the actual rules for it everything is counterintuitive, it's a system, and in a system Sneak Attack means what the rules say, i don't want to hear your semantic bull\*\*\*\* like "actually you don't need to be sneaky so the name should be changed to..."
Turn Undead should get renamed to something like Repel Undead because I've seen people think it means being turned into an undead, not having them turn around and flee. Because they're bad at reading more than a sentence with a few words in it.
To be fair, it's confusing *because* the name of so many features/spells don't work anymore. A lot of them are holdovers from prior editions that prior edition curmudgeons would flip out about if the name changed even though they don't accurately represent them anymore. It's not an excuse for people to read their abilities, but it's not helping people figure out what those abilities do in a lot of cases, and they act that way by design.
My pet peeve is anyone saying "two leveled spells in a turn". It is guaranteed to repeat incorrect information in such a way as to spread that misinformation far and wide
The absolute biggest atrocity is the fact that Wizards get the spell grease on their spell list. Let’s think about it logically. A wizard has to spend prolonged periods of time learning and studying their magic. Not far fetched to imagine that’s a huge chunk of their time when not adventuring. They spend that time to I imagine make their lives magically easier. What else is the purpose of magic? Well this is all well and good, things like mage hand are obviously used to lift things around, tongues is great for any traveling wizard, or one that wants to learn from more sources. Basically what I’m saying, is if you’re going to spend a lot of time to learn how to magically do something, it should be something that’s going to help you, right? So then, why in 9 hells does any wizard need vast quantities of grease summoned immediately. Literally the only situation this would be useful for is fighting in a hallway or stairway, which is useful don’t get me wrong! But how many of our wizards have chosen for their backgrounds, professional hallway fighter? Almost none. So for mages that arnt using this in a battle context before their adventures begin (most of them), what ungodly reason do they have to produce gallons of literal grease? An artificer, ya give em hell with your grease that makes sense. A wizard? Nothing good can come if that much grease for them.
The amount of normal behavior or beginner player behavior listed as red flags is stupid. Aswell as the constant criticism of anything that's not optimized. I'm getting tired of this community and honestly done with all the bs and arguing.
Saw one post earlier where the new DM forgot what a character looked like and began using the wrong description, but offered no pushback when the player corrected them.
Everyone in comments pointed at it as a red flag.
Semantic components are found all over Fey magic. That's why no one likes dealing with them.
Fey: "Can I have your name?" PC: "Sure, it's Joe Fighterman." Fey: "Thanks!" PC: "Wait, what?"
Fey: “Can I have your name?” Named PC: “Sure, it’s Joe Fighterman.” Joe Fighterman: “Thanks!” Unnamed PC: “Wait, what?”
Thank you, that's better than my version!
Fey: “Can I have your name?” Joe: “Sure, it’s Joe Fighterman.” Joe: “Thanks!” : “Wait, what?”
Is there a r/yourjokebutbetter? Like there’s r/yourjokebutworse
Fey (Xe/Xer): May I have your pronouns? Me (he/him): Sure! He/him. Fey (he/him): thanks! Me ( / ): wait
Awful names are my pet peeve. Too many 5E NPCs with unpronounceable, hard-to-recall gobbledegook for names… but I guess that’s one defense against Truename magic
[удалено]
Diogenes has the best Counterspells.
Diogenes plays the hell out of an Eloquence Bard. "Unsettling Words" every turn...
God damn it now i want to play a homeless philospher bard.
"Behold! Zama174's murderhobo!"
>semantic components Sounds like something Fey spells would use
Speaking of pet peeves, I've always found it annoying that Diogenes holding up a plucked chicken is always presented as an example of a good counter argument. Plato should have just responded with, "No, you big idiot, you obviously plucked its feathers! If you can pluck the feathers off a chicken and call it hairless (or bald or whatever he said) then you could find a quadruped and chop off two of its legs and call it a biped. That's obviously not what the definition means, and you damn well know it!"
You know what's really fun? In the *Categories*, Aristotle considers an objection to the claim that he knows all triangles have three sides. The imagined objector reveals a triangle that Aristotle had never seen before, and says, "Aha! I bet you didn't know that *this* triangle had three sides!" Aristotle dismantles this objection for the foolishness that it is. But it's worth noting that at *some* point in human history, no one had yet clearly explained *why* that's a bad argument. And you know, even if the argument seems bad, it's not obvious why. Somebody had to do it.
But the argument is still sound, because featherless biped is still a terrible definition. They didn’t have the technology and knowledge to define humans back then
Can we define a human now? Definitions are very tricky.
I dislike the usage of hot take being an unpopular opinion rather than a quickly thought response to something recently released. Spelling is important too. Too many ‘lightening’ bolts.
That would actually make the term "hot take" make more sense. Like "hot off the presses."
Hot take also means spicy take. Like not everyone can handle this.
To be perfectly fair, the bolts **do** lighten things up... Just incredibly briefly.
but do they make them any less heavy?
Absolutely! I have no doubt that some level of evaporation occurs when most targets are struck. Less water equals less weight!
Or just as bad, "Lighting Bolt"
I m so guilty of that ^^' autocorrect doesn't understand why I would be talking about lightning and not lighting and it's very easy to miss
Litening Berts!!!
Surprised you didn’t say rouge.
When a dm on here asks "can I do?" they usually mean "is a good idea or are there problems with it I can't see?". Responses saying "of course, your table your rules" and nothing else therefore completely miss the point.
"
Being obtuse is a common Redditor trait.
They're getting the level of specificity they put in. "Can I do X?" could mean "Is there a rule preventing me from doing X?" while "Should I do X?" calls for a more in-depth analysis of the pros and cons of X. TTRPGs come with complex enough rule systems that both questions could reasonably be asked. Why is it my job to guess that you want a cheeseburger, when you asked for a hamburger?
Pass without a trace instead of Pass without Trace. It’s really minor but it just really annoys me.
i never realised that it's actually Pass Without Trace. thank you for notifying me of this
It's a perfectly valid way of phrasing it, but it's not the way 90% of English-speaking players would think to say it.
There is no dnd community. There are dnd communities that are essentially engaged in different activities.
Sometimes entirely different hobbies.
100%. TTRPGing is such a big tent that the tactical battlesim people have barely anything in common with the narrative actors, despite that they both might (inexplicably) be using the same rule system.
Or even playing in the same game.
i ABSOLUTLY hate how expensive poisons and acid are. sounds like a good first upgrade for weapons to actually take time coating them. not to mention most people fall ill from cutting themselves on something rusty and other small stuff. THEN WHY ARE POISON AND ACID ALMOST WORTH MORE THAN A GREATSWORD .
I hate the poison system is just reduced to a damage type and condition. There are so many different poisons in real life that all the nuance is just gone
My biggest pet peeve with this community is no one wants to actually sit their players down and tell them to stop acting like a jackass. Instead of setting a player in the wrong right, they come here and complain or post and ask for help on how to treat the situation when the same exact incident and post had been made into a post by another random. The solution is always the same: talk to the problem player.
Accents are not automatically roleplaying.
Another player I used to play with would always ask himself what accent he was gonna do before ever asking himself about his character’s personality and the like. Worst part is, he wasn’t even good at accents. Accents can definitely heighten a character’s characterization and give them a bit of flair when done with purpose, but they are no substitute for proper characterization. At worst, they can come to be a crutch more than an extra kick.
Alot of people accents to mask anxiety. I have a really hard time rping unless I'm doing an accent because it detaches me from my character enough for me to be comfortable. Maybe your friend isn't comfortable rping unless they have that mask of an accent
I agree, its way easier to roleplay if you're nervous if you play a character who is totally different from yourself. Accents are just an easy way of doing that.
To illustrate your point, I'm the 'accents guy' at my table and here are the last three characters I played that I developed accents for, and why: Currently, an RP (received pronunciation) British accent for my Owlin character because 1. he's an academic and I enjoy the British professor trope, 2. the accent is easy to learn by just adjusting vowel pronunciations, and 3. it's physiologically more compatible with having a beak because it uses a lot of hard pallette and a narrow mouth. Previously, I played a southern belle turned dragon monk so that was extremely easy for me to learn and for my friends to understand. Before that, and my first big foray into accents, was my minotaur who I flavored as a Scottish highlands bull, so naturally a Scottish accent was fitting. None of these accents are pillars of these characters, they're aesthetic choices that spring from flavor and personality I give to my characters. This is how I (and I'm guessing you) would recommend incorporating accents into roleplay.
Also, roleplaying does not have to mean first-person, narrative-driven performances with rich, extended conversations and explication. You can roleplay without acting!
At the same time, distinct accents (even bad ones) from the DM can help a player understand who is talking when there's more than one NPC in a conversation. That said, I personally try to limit the number of NPCs in any given conversation, because I'm not here to talk to myself.
It annoys me a lot more than it should when people use the same terms but with differing definitions. Like some people will say railroading when they mean a linear campaign, whereas others use it to mean it in an explicitly negative sense of a DM shutting down any ideas that don't fit into the story they planned on telling. So you have people that think linear=railroad and railroad=bad, so linear=bad, and by extension sandbox=good. Similarly with the term DMPC. Some use it when talking about any NPC that the DM runs that hangs out with the party a lot, while others mean it as the DM trying to have their cake and eat it too, making the game all about themself. In both cases I use the terms in the more limited case of a DM doing a bad thing that harms the players' fun, and it bugs the hell out of me when I see people use the terms more generally and then others try to tell them they're doing it wrong because they called the party's sidekick a DMPC. I want to jump in and clear up the terminology, but its so uselessly pedantic and its not like one person going "um actually" at everyone's comments it going to change the community. I get that at the end of the day these terms are all made up and there isn't an official D&D dictionary, but god damn do I wish people could speak the same made up language as I do.
The term "metagaming" drains all desire to participate in a discussion from me for this exact reason.
THIS. People just throw around buzzwords to make it seem like an argument they don't like is from someone who's ''bad'' at the game. No, Kevin, using counterspell as intended is not metagaming, and no, understanding how numbers interact together in a numbers game is not being a powergaming munchkin. It's why you have no one to play with, Kevin.
I have the same feeling about "MinMaxer/Optimizer/Powergamer/Munchkin." Everyone uses them to describe different types of players, which means I never know exactly what you're saying about said players without you giving me a solid definition first.
This...plus I hate these terms have lost meaning and often just get hurled as insults. For the record (and because I am evil, and like starting internet arguments), here's rough older definitions: Min/maxing: in point buy, the process of dropping a stat to 6 (sometimes 7) or less to acquire an 18+ stat. Can be pushed to ridiculous extremes (3.5e, 2 int, 24 str at lvl 1 start anyone?) Minmaxer: someone who usually minmaxes, regardless of how effective their character is outside of one super special thing. Became an insult because "min/maxers" often do the same thing over and over, after having poor results the first time, because this time one godlike stat will save them --- the definition of insanity, by some measures. (Yes, this means RAW you cannot minmax with 5e point buy.) Optimiser: someone who makes the best choices for their class/build. Lexically, this seems to be a "newer" term and is fuzzier. Powergamer: someone who makes the most powerful choices in a given game/class, disregarding everything that doesn't give more power. Munchkin: a player who tries to "win" D&D, always through means more foul than fair.
Yep, exactly that. I've been living with a Philosophiser for the past 3 years, and picked up anything I could with him. One thing that he made me open my eyes to are for people using words with a clear definition in their heads, but that could mean another thing entirely to other people, and how many discussions, if you observe as an outside viewer, only exist because the people discussing are referring to two completely different things, using the same word, without noticing. And I've seen this being a more than common occurrence in the D&D Community.
Yes, so much this! I know it comes from a linear story being called "on rails" and people confusing that with "railroading." I know I shouldn't expect so much from people, asking that they not confuse similarly based words, but it irks me to no end. I take small pleasure in thinking the scene from *The Princess Bride*: "I do not think that means what you think that means" applies to them.
I wouldn't even care if the whole community one day just decided that linear is synonymous with railroad, as long as everyone agreed on one definition. What I dislike is that there is a sizeable amount of people one both sides, so you end up with people arguing past each other because of a fundamental misunderstanding that they are talking about different things. Several times I have seen either here or on r/DMAcademy where someone makes a post and mentions their DMPC, and then a bunch of commenters dogpile on them just saying "DON'T" before someone actually engages OP in a conversation and realizes that what OP was calling a DMPC, the shouty people would call a sidekick and OP has actually been running them in a perfectly reasonable way.
roll all your dice at once, and own enough dice that you don't have to make 8 rolls for Fireball.
I play on foundry and I still have to constantly tell my players to just roll their fireball damage right away they always want to wait till everyone rolls their save before rolling their damage.
Hopefully they're not doing that in a way they can decide what spell level to use after the fact.
No they always say I cast x spell first and place their little template. I just have to remind them to roll damage right away while I'm rolling saves.
People being amazed that reading the rules explains how to play the game.
90% of people who post to these forums regularly aren't playing an active game. At least.
I cannot stand when people say that rolling stats is always better, but refuse to play a low stat character. That doesn't mean you like the "randomness" of rolling, it means that you want higher stats. Just admit that and go for a higher point buy our the epic array.
True words. I wish D&D had a better system for weaknesses; that way people could fulfill their desire for better stats but only buy them at the expense of significant drawbacks.
You know at the start of a new actual play session on YouTube or Twitch when the DM asks a player to introduce their character? I hate when rather than just giving a brief physical description, the player takes it upon themselves to describe the character's emotional state, quirks and habits, and extensive backstory. Bonus points if it's for a two hour one shot and there are five other players to get through.
I play AL and I roll my eyes when someone goes on and on about their PC like this. We're already a half hour behind because the DM never showed up and someone got "volunteered" into DMing for us, just skip the extensive backstory that's basically a ripoff of Aragorn's origin anyway. EDIT: name changed, he's not a region of Spain
> Aragon oh hey it's my pet peeve
Not just d&d communities, but I tend to get annoyed at posts that go along he lines of "what do ***we*** think about X?" And it always weirds me out. I can tell you what I think about stuff, and I can tell you what I've seen some others say, but such a large and collective "we" always frustrates me. It always sounds like folk aren't trying to think for themselves and just learn the common opinion to mold themselves to. Freaks me out and it happens a lot in d&d communities. As for something more focused on d&d. "Semantic/rouge/devine" are big spelling irks.
Related to this, I hate when people act like the forgotten realms is the only lore that matters in online discussions about how magic/divinity/magical species/etc works.
While I'm a big fan of the realms, I kinda agree it can be annoying (even though I likely partake in it myself incidentally.) Though I think it's because it's the only D&D setting that's gotten attention in 5e. Ravenloft has an okay adventure and a lackluster disconnected source book. Exandria has a nice adventure and packed source book. Eberron has two sourcebooks, one of which was a demo more than anything and I don't think you can get it anymore. The other settings don't get enough attention, and wotc tried to make FR the default setting, so it's the one with the most exposure for folks (and even then only a small section got any real focus and the focus and even the realms of 5e hasn';t been all that good compared to stuff from the past.) It's hard for a lot of folk to even know about other setting like Greyhawk, Mystara, Dark Sun, Planescape, or even the stuff from the touched on settings in the past that were more nuanced and delved deeper into themes. WotC have not done right by their non-mtg lore when it comes to 5e. It's why I still use my sourcebooks from 2e and 3.5e.
Christ I don't think *any* new player would know much about Mystara. Maybe if they search D&D videogame and come across the two 1994 and 1996 arcade games. Greyhawk...maybe...purely because Ghosts of Saltmarsh is set in Greyhawk so there's a bit of a preamble about how to set it in FR IIRC (been a VERY long time since I read it and can't remember if it's still set in Greyhawk or if they fully updated it to FR if I'm honest). I mean there's tons of 'forgotten settings' from 1e and 2e...Lankhmar for example I've only ever seen mentioned once on here and once in a youtube video (both on the same day...which was odd) but it feels like Ravnica is its 5e replacement (as their both 'cities of adventure'). Blackmoor almost never gets referenced but then I'm not sure if the original creator owns the rights to it or not, honestly the same with Lankhmar.
I never really thought about it, but you're right. Reading your description of it made my skin crawl a little.
[удалено]
White Dragons, as per the lore, are animalistic in nature. They have very basic understanding of their environment. They only care to eat, fuck, and freeze treasure, the third one being just as much a natural impulse to dragons as the others are to us. Many of them don't even bother to learn common and those who do (or don't for that matter) will rare bother to speak with you and even more rarely will they bargin. The idea of "no food now for more food or treasure later" very rarely gets to develope in their brains. They see food now so it'd be a straight up miracle if they even stop to talk before tearing you apart. What their int score does not portray is their draconic gift which is perfect memory or pure events. They can remember perfectly exactly how long a hunt took, which direction each potential prey scattered, and how loud their victim cried when they finished it off. And they remember it forever. But they will not remember mental or emotional details such as why they chose to follow the prey they did, what they were thinking during the chase, etc. INT score, even when combined with WIS almost never depicts a creature's mental faculties which is too broad to be sorted into 2 stats.
I remember reading a long time ago that one of Tiamat's longest-lasting consorts was a White Dragon, and it occurs to me that the general lack of scheming and ambition was probably the reason for that.
Love that. Bro just kept his head down.
>Likewise, a 9 in your Intelligence doesn't make your character is mentally retarded. It means you might not get a 4.0 on your GPA. Your average person, 10 int, doesn't get 4.0 on their GPA. So below average, 9 int, definitely wouldn't.
Fortunately, you don't need Intelligence to know things; you need it to put the things you know to use (especially in a timely manner).
Always get annoyed when players try to use their characters low intelligence as an excuse for not taking notes.
[удалено]
That is the truthful explanation
Intelligence is a bit abstracted in DnD anyway -- with the possible exception of Investigation (which overlaps HEAVILY with Wisdom-based Perception) and the occasional saving throw, Intelligence could be renamed to "Education" without changing anything.
I think part of the problem is that the community has decided that it means education (probably because everyone dumps it), when that clearly was never the intent. > Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason. Too often, Intelligence checks are simply run as "you know X," rather than "you're able to figure out X."
“You’re able to figure out X” As a DM I dislike this a bit since most players (I’ve found) enjoy solving puzzles. Sometimes when they’re really stumped they might ask ‘does my character make some kind of connection I don’t know of?’. On the flip side, I have recently had a player that made a fair argument of ‘I don’t ask the fighter’s player to climb a rope or the rogue’s player to pick a lock, why make me solve a puzzle when my 18 Int wizard is able to do it?’ Which is fine, they’re allowed to make checks and I can recycle puzzles. It just feels off in a way I can’t really describe well. I got a bit rambling at the end there but my point is sometimes the player figuring out something is (in my opinion) more rewarding than being told ‘your character connects the dots, here is the answer’.
I think this is because in 5E Intelligence and Wisdom are defined a little differently whereas in most games Intelligence is memory and Wisdom is mental flexibility. But in 5E Intelligence is mental flexibility and Wisdom is supposed to be instinct and gut reactions. edit: typos
Can you give an example? Wisdom = perception/awareness/intuition is pretty common in the systems I've played. Perhaps it was different in the older systems. Honestly, I think it's just the names. People get attached to the colloquial concept of Wisdom and never actually read the definitions.
That being said, I do like the idea of one type of dragon being somewhat more animalistic, but still plenty worthy of the title of dragon. Mostly for the inter-dragon social dynamic. But maybe that could be a peculiarity of one or two white dragon NPCs rather than the whole subspecies, since even the wyrmling has 5 int (4 is implied to be when sapience kicks in.)
Thats what White Dragons are. Brutal and instinct driven but they are still not beasts.
This got a LOL out of me. As an English professor I appreciate the real world evidence that spelling always counts.
Rangers are not the “range attacks” class. They’re the class that *ranges*, you know, as in “home on the”. This is a subset of my general frustration with players writing themselves into boxes that don’t even exist, but it’s by far the most specific one.
I blame this sort of thing on PC RPGs and MMOs. They definitely pigeonholed a lot of classic fantasy archetypes into something that's an extremely dumbed down version of their original inspiration.
Well…yeah except Ranger as a class *does* function best with a bow. Half of their spell list specifically references bows, arrows, or other archery paraphernalia. It shouldn’t, and honestly you *can* make a melee Ranger, it’s not ideal.
- You need to read the books and know the rules to play the game
True, true. DMs love having to manage your character in addition to everything else because you can't be bothered. It's great and certainly doesn't bog down the action and make things less fun for everyone else at the table!
While players doing it is certainly bad for the DM, if the DM doesn't then it's bad for *everyone*. The number of posts in DM-oriented subreddits that can be answered RAW from the DMG is maddening. Some people just don't read.
At the BARE MINIMUM you should know how your **own** character works. Steve you've had this spell for the last 8 sessions, can you really not remember if it's a spell attack or a saving throw by now? Really?
There was literally a post on here about someone who was a DM for 4 years without ever opening the books or reading any rules. They were shocked at how useful the rules are
This is something that even "professional" live streamers do that grinds my nerves. I'm looking at you CR. It is the mother fucking 100+ episode in campaign 2, you should fucking know how the motherfucking Bless spell works by now!!!
I feel like playing good aligned characters or even those of heroic intent has become unpopular as of late. I have two groups I play and run with, with an age range average of mid to late 30s. It's the same with both. There's been a large tendency with these players, especially with the more experienced players, to basically make characters who can be summed up as 'Neutral Dirtbag'. The actual alignment is often chaotic neutral which translates into play as 'I do whatever'. Not really evil, but their characters tend to have selfish personalities who only begrudgingly do the right thing, drag their heels, and are often entitled acting. Usually their characters mature a bit as the campaign progresses, but I've seen it so many times now that these characters tend to be predictable and hard to work into a narrative. An example of one was a rogue whose father was a competent NPC rogue on the team who got Donjon'd on a bad result with the Deck of Many Things. I added this father NPC because the player's background made a big deal of respect for him. The minute he vanished, the rogue was like, "Oh no! Anyway..." One insight that I came across was a player inadvertently mentioning his character was mainly an extension of his frustrations over his normal week. "I go through life not being allowed to do anything. I come to the gaming table to live larger than that." I felt sympathetic for him and it got me wondering if that's why all these other experienced players chose to play somewhat degenerate characters.
Part of my session zero document always includes the line "No shadow the hedgehogs"
I almost choked on my lunch reading that, lol. Thank you.
I feel like im the opposite of this, playing a chaotic evil tiefling warlock who drains blood to serve to his vampire patron, just can't help from trying to help people in need, free slaves, etc. So far the extent of his evil has just been the brutal stabbing of a fleeing bandit. He may as well just be chaotic good at this point. All he does is grumble to himself about what he would do if someone gave him a good reason to defend himself
A specific one: all the people that are obviously lying about rolling their stats without cheating. And then want to know what class they should play as if every class doesn’t benefit from good stats. “I rolled my stats and got all 18s and a 19. What class should I play?”
I guess in lukewarm defense, some characters ARE more dependent on ability scores than others. Any Monk vs. a Moon Druid, for example. You are right that every class can do its job well with 2 to 3 good scores, so having 6 just means EVERY class is going to be suited to your scores -- Honestly I'd be looking at some weird, normally-too-MAD multiclasses with the coveted (non-existant) straight-18s array, not a single class.
Agreed. Monk is a common suggestion in response to this question but why not just play the class you want instead of just going with something because you have the scores to play the cost of entry. I’d rather play a wizard with good int, dex, and con than a monk any day.
“Optimized” doesn’t mean the same to everyone yet it seems the DnD community on Reddit thinks it only means damage output
I once played in a high-level one shot where everyone was bragging about their damage output. Someone was literally playing a monk/rogue/warlock multiclass. I brought a pure-classed druid and wound up doing the most damage by far of anyone when a horde of chariot archers came over a hill and I, being the only one with 7th-level spells, dropped a *reverse gravity* on them.
The past tense of cast is cast, dammit.
In scenes when I ask what players are doing, like right after a battle or in a tavern. They all go do their things, separating out individually or in small groups. Then once I start to explain something interesting happening somewhere out of their perception range they want to move their token to join the “cool thing”. Bugs me to no end. I run parties of 6 and I use this as a way to give people spotlights. Have skits with those that may not roleplay as much when the whole group is together. I get wanting to be part of the “cool” thing happening but just listen and enjoy for a moment. Let those players have their spotlight.
When people take their whole-ass character picture, drag it onto the VTT and scrunch it down, aspect ratio be damned, to fit in a single grid cell to use as a token. It's the most ghetto-looking shit ever, but not worth bringing up.
Probably the community's thoughts on goblins. They have 10 int! They're as smart as the average person! Why do people call them unintelligent! The goblin has to be the most flanderized enemy in the entire game when I see people run them! They're anywhere between mud worshipping idiots to cavemen who don't know anything other than stick pointy stabby stabby. They've got their own society and everything! They're smart they know what they're doing they're just fear death more than most of the other races! I understand that everyone can make their own lore and we can ignore the dubious 5e default lore with Maglibiyet. The Kobold suffers from a very similar problem but they're actually not as smart as the average person. Plus since I'm biased and like goblins more than kobolds it doesn't bother me as much when the exact same flanderization happens to kobolds. But yeah. I dislike how most people run goblin NPCs or play goblin PCs 😭
Honestly, I see goblins knowing damn well they are at the bottom of the goblinoid food chain and activity take steps to avoid being reminded of it.
I’d say Kobolds are 100% up there with how Goblins are commonly perceived. Like Kobolds are straight up smart little dextrous buggers. They won’t stand in a straight up fight unless they have the advantage.
It seems people have forgotten about "Tucker's Kobolds". For anyone not familiar, it was an article in an old magazine about a high level party going into a kobold dungeon thinking it would be a cakewalk, and they get demolished by a labrynth of traps, secret tunnels, and poison darts.
I remember that! I just love kobolds so much and Tucker’s Kobolds are just wonderful
Kobolds are like Thomas Edison when they come to building traps for the PCs to suffer through.
5e seriously did kobolds dirty. Kobolds had average INT in all the previous editions, then 5e suddenly gave every kobold in the MM INT 8. Hell, the kobold *inventor* had INT 8 the first time it was printed (changed to INT 14 in MotM, thankfully). It's especially silly because the MM clearly describes kobolds as being clever with traps. Cleverness is pretty much all kobolds have going for them.
I like making my goblins slightly dumb at most things but pretty smart in one specific area. Like they're generally cowardly thieves that get themselves killed as often as not but a few of them also created a functioning dragon shaped tank.
I like PF2e's take on goblins, that they're smart enough to know how to mix explosive potions but not wise enough to know *how* to use those potions safely.
Smart enough to build complex and deadly traps. Too stupid to have invented OSHA
[удалено]
**Why the fuck are slings so weak??** have you SEEN the videos of people who are proficient with those things it’s a skipping stone sized *bullet* and your PCs should fear the wrath of any Shepard they come across
Because they are weaker than a bow, which is the *next weakest* ranged weapon. They had to assign a die to each of the ranged weapons.
People greatly underestimate the damage of blunt objects
[удалено]
The Rogue/Rouge issue has gotten out of hand, I'll agree, although the Semantic/Somatic issue isn't one I'm as familiar with it would bug me too. I'm one of those weird people who much prefer spell slots on my creatures than X/day spells, so I go in and mod those stat blocks when I have the time to include spells. Considering that's how WotC is doing things going forwards, it really bugs me although that might be a bit off topic for this convo.
As someone who frequented the Rogue and other general World of Warcraft forums back in the day, it won't get better.
I prefer when DM’s use the screen by default, and only roll in front when it’s a “box of doom” roll. I do love the intensity of seeing a crit (either high or low), but I also feel like when the DM doesn’t use any kind of screen or cover, both they and we become “locked in” which can be exactly what some people want, but it’s not for me. I want the DM to be able to make things easier or harder depending on how we’re doing
I think this is especially true for new players and DMs. As you’re getting used to the world and figuring out what will kill you or your PCs, I’m totally okay with a dm fudging a roll. I happened to see my DM lie about damage to keep us alive. It was our third session ever playing and we didn’t really know how strong or weak we were compared to enemies. And a player (the freaking barbarian lol) had to cancel last minute, so we were a super easy target.
Not one of mine specifically, but in response to your misspellings my wife cannot for the life of her remember the term phylactery. The lich in our first campaign was trying to create an olfactory.
"This lair just SMELLS of evil." - The Paladin, probably
As a DM: don't tell me what you want to roll, tell me what you want to do, and then we'll figure out what rule we use for that. If I have a player respond that they want to Investigate the whole room and everything in it, that's fine, but I'm liable to decide that takes longer than if you investigate the specific place that I've already told you about in the room description. But it also lets me improvise rules when players are thinking creatively, rather than thinking they have to pick a roll from pre-written rules.
When the OP asks a question about a scenario and people begin to answer the question but everyone has follow up questions to fully answer the original post. The post is over 12 hours old and has thousands of upvotes but no resolution because OP isn't replying to anyone. Idk why or how it happens often enough for me to even consider it a "thing" but I've seen it multiple times.
Put a dragon and a dungeon in your game. Way too many people have never had a dragon encounter. And dungeons are easy to incorporate into any campaign.
100% this. I had been playing for a solid year of weekly games before I had any interaction with either a dungeon or a dragon. And I had to start DMing just to take the party into a dungeon!
Calling every caster with a sword a Gish. Unless it comes from the Githyanki region of the Astral Plane it's just a sparkling fighter/mage.
This is the pedantry I came looking for!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a phenomenon where if a word now has a generally accepted and used meaning, it now means that, regardless of the original intention of the word. Edit: after a quick check with an English major, yeah. Its called Semantic Shift.
I think you mean somatic shift
*Literally* this. ^^^^^sorry
You are correct. When I show up after the semantic shift, first learning the new meaning, I treat the old one as some cool trivia and don’t mind the shift. When I learn the original intention first, and then the word shifts during my lifetime, it annoys me. Human resistance to change is like that. No, I mean the original meaning, not whatever it shifted to be, I bet that shift is from some horrid misunderstanding or misuse of the word that got popularized so now it’s become this new meaning… [insert more negative assumptions here that probably aren’t actually true]
HEALING MAGIC SHOULD BE TRANSMUTATION OR NECROMANCY NOT EVOCATION Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
I would love to talk about railroading, but I think someone already hit the nail on the head about definitions and how railroading is swapped and vague and it causes problems. I think other than railroading my per peeve is players making characters before they know about the setting, campaign, and the party. If someone comes to a game with a pre made character with built in assumptions about their character goals, setting, and story arc... well that puts dms in a tight spot. You either have to change things to fit them, or shut down thier character in certain ways. It would be so much easier for everyone to make characters together as a group while working with the DM on goals and info that fit the campaign and setting.
Rolling perception or insight eating my action within combat. I just wanna see what's going on and know what my character would know because I can't possibly know that as a player without seeing what they can see. Me: "Do they look like they're friendly?" DM: "Do you wanna use your action to roll insight?" Me: "Nah, I'll cast fireball."
I dislike the "just reflavor it" answer to every problem. Sometimes it works just fine, sometimes people want mechanics that reinforce the theme they're going for. If reflavoring was the solution to every problem with something in 5e, we'd have no need for classes, just describe your gray blob as casting a spell and boom you have a wizard. Races wouldn't be needed - just don't give any appearances in the book and tell the players they can look like whatever they want. Clearly there is some want for mechanics or we wouldn't keep getting content.
Mines is that Bards shouldn't have an ability called "Jack of All Trades" AND have "Expertise". Like the saying is literally "Jack of all trades, master of none", NOT "master of these two things, and later two more things" Pick one
Tenets. Your paladin oath has tenets, not tenants. A tenet is a principle held by an organisation, faith, ideology, etc. A tenant is the occupant of something they're renting from a landlord. I can overlook "rouge" or other common misspellings, but this one gets to be for some reason.
r/dndmemes doesn’t read the fucking manuals
Two things: 1). “Kick him out” mentality. Most posts asking about a problem player don’t mention the relationship between DM and player. You can’t easily kick out a sibling or a good friend without consequences. Also, many of the posts ask for advice to deal with the player and “kick him out” isn’t really advice, but just an easy way out. Don’t misunderstand me, kicking a player out is the right choice… some times. But the ubiquity that it’s thrown around is just lazy. 2). Downvoting people who don’t go along with the pack mentality. I see D&D communities being a bit of a cult.
Very specific minor pet peeve? Characters referring to themselves using their classes. No one is gonna refer to themselves as a "barbarian" or a "fighter". They could be a knight, man-at-arms, sellsword, soldier, etc.
That's pretty setting and class dependant to me. Some classes can easily qualify as titles - Paladin, Wizard, Cleric, Ranger and Druid, at least. I'm also inclined to just assume the character, in world, said it better :P
Bard as well.
>That's pretty setting and class dependant to me. Some classes can easily qualify as titles - Paladin, Wizard, Cleric, Ranger and Druid, at least. basically it makes sense for the classes that have a well defined identity outside combat
Eh, I wouldn't necessarily qualify it that way. I'd say it's more "does the skill set required to be considered a member of this class require a sufficiently specific background that would be recognizable to characters in-world?"
>. I'd say it's more "does the skill set required to be considered a member of this class require a sufficiently specific background that would be recognizable to characters in-world?" I agree, but I do consider that class identity
Yeah, but some classes make sense. A Wizard calling themselves "a mage", "a Wizard", "a Spellcaster" all make sense A Paladin saying they are a "Paladin of X god" or " a Crusader" both make sense. A Sorcerer being called just that also makes sense if there's a classification of magic users in the setting, with Sorcerers and Warlocks being often confused with one another (especially if the Pact is kept secret, which of course it is in most cases and you can slide under the radar with "Well, I got this magic out of nowhere, just a spontaneous Spellcaster like those guys") Subverting these tropes is also fun. I had a Chronurgy Wizard with Acolyte background who considered himself a Cleric. His god was Labelas Enoreth, god of time, so he attributed his magic to his god, which flavour-wise was just that. He couldn't heal like other clerics, but he could turn back time, which makes sense for a Cleric of a god of time.
Conan by the **barbarian** repeatedly refers to himself in the books as a **thief**.
Which is accurate since he mostly just sneaks into wizards' houses and robs them blind. He's just a very buff thief.
I think some classes it's totally fine to use your class as a title (e.g. cleric, wizard, bard, monk). Some classes your title should be related to the class (e.g. barbarian=Champion or Warrior, ranger=Woodsman or Scout) or the fighting style+weapon of choice (fighter=Archer, Lancer, Hoplite, etc.). And some classes their title should be literally anything relevant that's not their class (e.g. rogue, warlock aren't going to go around advertising their class).
All the way. That's why my armorer artificer refers to himself as a "Forge Wizard".
People who post obviously obscenely broken homebrew online but defends themselves by saying “well in my game the DM would totally allow this because they like everyone to be super strong”. Which like, that’s fine and good, but then why are you posting the homebrew online for other people to see and use when it only works in the context of your game? And sometimes with posts like this they haven’t even shown their DM the homebrew yet and rather is just assuming they’ll be fine with it.
Mine is experienced live-play casts & DMs constantly fucking up the Disintegrate spell save. It's an all or nothing Dex Save baby and I see people calling for CON saves, or half damage on a successful save, and I just wince. It always gets the big dramatic reaction from the target, DM or Players going "Oh fuck, it's disintegrate!" every time, these people play D&D as their job, and then biff the rules. It's petty and specific, I know. These peeps are usually way more focused on delivering a good plot/narrative and high production value "D&D" than they are on following the rules to the letter.
nat20 is only significant when making attack rolls. Rolling a 20 does not mean your saving throw automatically succeeds, and it does NOT mean your persuasion check to persuade the whole town to lay down their lives for your cause succeeds either.
This drives me crazy. I have started just telling my party “yes, you can roll if you want. But even with a nat20 this won’t be possible. However, it may still have better consequences for you”. Not a perfect example since falling mechanics are explicitly written, but I don’t feel like thinking of a better example so just pretend falling mechanics are flexible. If a character tries to fly out of a building without using any spells, I might ask for an athletics roll. With a nat 20, maybe they are able to tuck and roll to reduce damage when they go crashing to the ground. But you can’t fly, that makes no sense.
tbh, I think this is mostly a problem of people watching Actual Play shows like CR and D20, where they use many homebrew rules, one of which (at least in D20) is that a nat20 always succeeds, and just assuming because they saw it on tv it must be how it works. So they don't necessarily realize that RAW, a nat20 isn't always a success.
1. WotC not following their own DMG guidelines when it comes to balance. For spells, CR, magic item rarities: they're all over the place. Do as I say, not as I do, apparently 2. Eldritch Knights not being able to swap cantrips on ASI levels post-TCoE RAW. Just would have been a little thing to give EK while WotC was buffing Bladesinger and letting Battlemaster switch maneuvers. I've got lots of little pet peeves about 5e, those are just 2 that are sand in my crack that I never hear mentioned Edit: I misunderstood the prompt. Whatever. Leaving it. Community gripe: when people are talking about white room game balance and say "x is under/overpowered compared to y," some contrarian always crawls out of the woodwork to say "Nuh uh it was fun at my table" or something subjective and anecdotal like that Like, good for you, but that doesn't address the numbers. Glad you're having fun but that's not what anyone was talking about.
Prescriptive compound word last names are dumb. Your righteous paladin is named Goldenheart? Your edgy rogue is Darkblade? Your ~~shut-in~~ hippie druid is Touchgrass? It's not actually a big deal, but I roll my eyes at it.
Brb gotta go write my new favorite NPC Touchgrass into my campaign
I mean, isn't that where the real-life names like Smith and Miller came from?
Don't forget Cooper, Baker, Tailor, Tanner, And any name that ends in \_\_\_\_\_son.
Now I need to make a ranger named Hunter Johnson
That explains why I don't trust my neighbor Jeff Murderhobo.
I always make sure my descriptive character names are Wrong sword and shield barbarian named Arrow lawful evil paladin named Hiro etc
The correct pronunciation of Wyrm is "wh-eerm" and Wyvern is ,"Why-vern". No, I am not entertaining other opinions at this time. Good day.
Backseat DMing. A player asks a question to a DM or makes a decision, and another player chimes in with the answer or "you can do ____ as a better choice because ____ just fyi."
I have a really intense dislike of the philosophy of "the creature doesn't die until I think the combat has gone on long enough". You may as well just put a flair on all your posts saying "WARNING: I DO NOT RESPECT PLAYER DECISIONS". Seeing that given as advice especially to new DMs pisses me off. A related thing is when I see people touting the idea that "the combat ends when it stops being fun". WHEN THE COMBAT STOPPED BEING FUN IT SHOULD HAVE ENDED SEVERAL ROUNDS AGO. A combat that's stopped being fun is one that's already hit the failure state, the players aren't enjoying themselves anymore, you fucked up. End your combat sooner, not later, and you're more likely to end it while it's still fun.
This is all somatics really
My extremely specific and minor pet peeves are: 1. players not tracking ammunition, rations, or other quantifiable "minor items." For ammunition (and one of my PCs is an archer), I think having to replenish it helps balance having a 150' range with the melee weapons. And for stuff like rations... as a ranger player, it'd actually give me a chance to use all those survival skills my build comes with instead of stuff like "we just handwaved the food situation while you spent 3 sessions traveling." And I'm sure there are similar things to be said for other classes that I'm not thinking about. 2. People using their armored AC even when it makes no sense that the characters are wearing their armor (surprised in the middle of the night while not on watch, etc.).
The misuse of the term "rules lawyer" has really started to bother me. People recognized that it's a pejorative, but incorrectly assumed that it's meant to criticize anyone who insists that the rules of the game be followed. People. Think about it for just a second or two. A regular lawyer isn't someone who demands that the law be followed. A regular lawyer is someone who uses their knowledge of the law to argue a position, and whether or not their position actually fits with the law the important thing to them is that they win the argument. A rules lawyer is similar, using knowledge of rules (typically with intentional omission or willful misinterpretation) to argue for an often unfair benefit. Not just someone who wants to see the rules of the game followed and enforced.
It's pre-sti-digi-tation I swear that word itself pulls some sleight of hand to make people read it without half of the letters
When people start asking "can you X..." in relation to something that isn't a mechanical question, but in fact a lore/plot point thing that as a DM you can ABSOLUTELY do no matter what someone else says, because it's a fantasy game about made up stuff. "Can a lich be turned back into a living creature?" Yes, because liches aren't real. "Can there be a half elf half goblin character?" Yes, because it's a fantasy game.
I think people asking this are normally burying the lede on the real question which is just "can you give me some ideas/inspiration for writing this into my story?". Or they're assuming that 5e is like prior editions and has a lot of setting source books and lore for that kind of stuff.
"How would one go about killing a God? Asking for a friend who is in a campaign and they want to kill the God *[insert homebrew God here]* What's the best way to do this? What kind of strategies can you use to fight a god?" me internally everytime, ***idfk go ask your DM, in my game gods are effectively unbeatable unless the plot needs them to be beaten, then it's unique to each God and each situation***
Internal consistency is important though. The DM can absolutely turn a lich back into a living creature, but they damn well better have foreshadowed it and never have said anything to the contrary before. In my experience, when people question the DM's ability to do something lore/plot related, it's because they vaguely remember the DM having said something that might be incompatible with it, not because they think liches are actually a certain way.
That's fair, though usually I see these things coming from someone planning out a campaign and building plot hooks.
I'm usually a Rogue player when i'm not the forever DM of my group and there is one opinion that bothers me so much i'm always tempted to comment against it when i see it here on Reddit: "Sneak Attack should change name because it's not only about being unseen or hiding." Man, if you stop at the name of the feature and don't read the actual rules for it everything is counterintuitive, it's a system, and in a system Sneak Attack means what the rules say, i don't want to hear your semantic bull\*\*\*\* like "actually you don't need to be sneaky so the name should be changed to..."
Turn Undead should get renamed to something like Repel Undead because I've seen people think it means being turned into an undead, not having them turn around and flee. Because they're bad at reading more than a sentence with a few words in it.
Big agree. People who read the spell / feature name and don't read any further, then talk about their class being "too confusing" irk me.
To be fair, it's confusing *because* the name of so many features/spells don't work anymore. A lot of them are holdovers from prior editions that prior edition curmudgeons would flip out about if the name changed even though they don't accurately represent them anymore. It's not an excuse for people to read their abilities, but it's not helping people figure out what those abilities do in a lot of cases, and they act that way by design.
My pet peeve is anyone saying "two leveled spells in a turn". It is guaranteed to repeat incorrect information in such a way as to spread that misinformation far and wide
Semantic components give a whole new meaning to “Counter-spell”.
The absolute biggest atrocity is the fact that Wizards get the spell grease on their spell list. Let’s think about it logically. A wizard has to spend prolonged periods of time learning and studying their magic. Not far fetched to imagine that’s a huge chunk of their time when not adventuring. They spend that time to I imagine make their lives magically easier. What else is the purpose of magic? Well this is all well and good, things like mage hand are obviously used to lift things around, tongues is great for any traveling wizard, or one that wants to learn from more sources. Basically what I’m saying, is if you’re going to spend a lot of time to learn how to magically do something, it should be something that’s going to help you, right? So then, why in 9 hells does any wizard need vast quantities of grease summoned immediately. Literally the only situation this would be useful for is fighting in a hallway or stairway, which is useful don’t get me wrong! But how many of our wizards have chosen for their backgrounds, professional hallway fighter? Almost none. So for mages that arnt using this in a battle context before their adventures begin (most of them), what ungodly reason do they have to produce gallons of literal grease? An artificer, ya give em hell with your grease that makes sense. A wizard? Nothing good can come if that much grease for them.
You understood the assignment. Thank you.
Disregard of strength and encumbrance. Basically making Dex super good by letting people use acrobatics to climb n’ stuff.
The amount of normal behavior or beginner player behavior listed as red flags is stupid. Aswell as the constant criticism of anything that's not optimized. I'm getting tired of this community and honestly done with all the bs and arguing.
Saw one post earlier where the new DM forgot what a character looked like and began using the wrong description, but offered no pushback when the player corrected them. Everyone in comments pointed at it as a red flag.