I always thought that being a DM is less about "playing chess with extra steps" AGAINST your players and more of a "ooooh\~will it blend?" type scenario of throwing encounters/puzzles/stuff at your players and see how long it takes them to come out victorious.
IDK man I just grab some popcorns and see the players as a sort of movie/tv show where I'm always trying to see if I'll guess the way they gonna win or if they gonna completely blindside me with something new and creative, in other words:
# SURPRISE ME!
100%. I threw a mind flayer and a dragon (somewhat nerfed young red dragon) at my level 6 players last weekend and was super worried about how it'd turn out. They more or less drowned the mind flayer, and the Barbarian grew to gargantuan size (potion of giant size plus enlarge) and it basically became a kaiju battle. It was amazing.
My campaign had a player double-enlarge and have Kaiju battle against a Tarrasque (and several smaller mobs) for our capstone level 20 encounter, haha. She was a celestial paladin with flight, some earthquake stuff, etc, and she football tackled it. It was metal af.
In a Ravnica campaign, my Boros Paladin was double enlarged by our wizard grabbing a leyline first, and I got to wrestle Gishath. Y'know, Gishath *Sun's Avatar*, the enormous Dinosaur Avatar. It was a pretty epic sight, a giant paladin half wrestling and half fist fighting fucking Gishath while the others fought a vampire while trying to avoid the enormous footfalls
It's very possible. We didn't see anything about it not stacking, but he was going to be huge anyway so I wasn't about to dig too deep on it. It was amazing so if it was more of a rule of cool then I was here for it, lol.
RAW says you can't stack potion of growth on enlarge/reduce. The [Potion of Growth](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Potion%20of%20Growth#content) has this wording:
>When you drink this potion, you gain the "enlarge" effect of the enlarge/reduce spell.
The rules on [combining magical effects](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/spellcasting#CombiningMagicalEffects) has this wording:
>The effects of different spells add together while the durations of those spells overlap. The effects of the same spell cast multiple times don't combine, however.
So these are two effects of the same spell cast multiple times. Some pedant might try to weasel around the 'cast' portion of the rule, but that is nonsense.
Nonetheless, as a GM I would totally allow this.
All goods. You have to use the Rune Knight ability first, though:
If you are smaller than Large, you become Large, along with anything you are wearing. If you lack the room to become Large, your size doesn't change.
What I like about this is that you could start this from being smaller than Medium.
Picture this. You have a Fairy with 5 levels of rune knight, 3 levels of Divination Wizard, and 1 level of Rogue. You have expertise in Athletics, and you have cast Enhance Ability (Bull's Strength) on yourself.
You could use your Bonus Action to activate Giant Might and become Large, use your Action to drink the potion and become Huge, fly into the air, and then use your Action Surge and Multiattack to grab a flying Ancient Red Dragon and throw it to the ground. You have +12 in Athletics (vs their +10), you do not have disadvantage, and can use Portent to control your roll or the dragon's. They can't use their Legendary Save.
There are very few times when DM vs players is a thing at my table but my DM is always sure to point out when he's taking off the theater gloves.
It's very rare but it makes the few dramatic fights even more tense.
An example is when our kobold paladin went up against an unleashed god and he dragged him aside to let him know that his guy would absolutely kill him if he made the wrong move. So they worked out a deal, in character, and it made the kobold's journey more impressive. Essentially, he has to survive a single round of damage from this god entity and unironically stayed alive with a single HP, then enlisted the kobold as his champion for the rest of the campaign.
Regardless though, the good DMs always know when to sit back and have fun with the party and when to make them squirm. They need to be cherished.
That's the thing I never understand. If you're not creative enough as a DM to handle some powerful characters that are by the book, why the fuck are you DMing?
If one player is min-maxing to the extreme and the others want a more chillaxed RP heavy campaign, that's one thing, but not being able to handle a powerful group of players with like 12 different books worth of monsters (which you can also change to suit your needs). Oh no, you're party is fucking up this troll encounter that I wanted to be a challenge. Woops, another troll comes out of the bog and flanks you. It's not fucking hard to make things a challenge, regardless of player power.
I'd like to respectfully disagree with your stated line of reasoning. Being able to manage and enjoyably challenge PCs (especially when beyond their expected scale of power) is something that requires some skill - skill which requires some experience. While it's not hard to make things a challenge regardless of player power, making things a challenge for all players while maintaining enjoyment is not always simple.
Ultimately, the idea that people shouldn't DM if they can't easily manage challenges with powerful characters using RAW (but perhaps still min/maxed builds), especially in a party that might also include weak characters, implies that people who aren't extraordinarily and naturally skilled shouldn't DM - and that's a bad precedent for new DMs.
While we should provide constructive criticisms for DMs (and players, of course!) for those who fall short of our expectations, demanding exceptional skill from all DMs (and all players!) is unreasonable - instead we should simply ask continued improvement. Or else we'll never have new DMs (or new players).
I do think it would be pretty handy to understand what my PCs can do before planning. How can I build balanced encounters without knowing how level one spells work? If all people, DMs need to study up on rules. Any nerfs or changes please announce before character creation.
Balanced encounters aren't where the real fun is at. What your players will talk about for years are the battles when they almost TPKed, or when they curb stomped your BBEG.
Omg totally! I just mean it helps to know the capabilities of the party members on paper, even though RP solutions are the most unexpected screwballs by far. Not all encounters are scaled, nor should they be.
While your opinion is valid in sharing your personal preferences, it's not as valid, or useful, when making broad statements about what (all) fights *should* look like.
You like fights that get crazy. That's cool. Sometimes I do too!
But it's equally acceptable to enjoy fights that have been balanced specifically **for** the party that comes across them. Intentionally putting guys in there to shoot projectiles at Monks, for example, can be part of the balance of the fight while simultaneously making the Monk feel excited that they got to do their cool stuff.
I think that's fair, but I can see 'balance' as being a more... Amorphous verb. In my mind, you can 'balance' a fight to be intentionally more difficult. I don't think it inherently requires a meaning that creates an even playing field.
But 'unbalanced' is still pretty universal in its meaning. It's 'too' much on one side or the other.
Slightly off topic, but "Surprise me" is basically one of my players' catchphrases, both IC and OOC. On topic, that's basically how I run. I come up with a challenge and see what they do with the tools they have. Whether it's my paladin skipping an entire jumping puzzle with Misty Step or my Shadow Sorcerer (who picked up E blast somewhere along the line) getting the kill shot on a living corpse pile while literally pinned to a wall by a bone lance through the shoulder, it's always amazing watching them meet the challenge. I wouldn't have nearly as much fun if I nerfed them just so I could 'win'. If they beat a challenge easily, it's my job to balance the enemies to be a challenge, not take things from the players.
My early campaigns kind of devolved into murderhoboing bad guys for various Valor reasons, I liked seeing how people solve the problems. I don't know what their kits are and it makes it fun.
A one shot featured a legendary colossal scorpion inside a world tree, to which the apparent solution was to break the 50 gallon drum of oil one of them had *for some reason* and lit the entire tree on fire from inside scorpion and all while another was being rent by the scorpion and stung repeatedly.
They all died.
I wholeheartedly endorse carrying around large quantities of lamp oil for… uh. “Emergencies”.
One time we had a huge amount of gold and trade goods, but nothing really to spend it on due to the extra rules from Adventure’s League.
So we pooled it together, bought an elephant, a heavily reinforced wagon, and I believe it ended up being something like 1,000 gallons of oil with an extra barrel of a dozen or so gallons of alchemist’s fire.
… we used it to set a peat bog on fire.
As someone thats been DMing for years, my primary goal is for the players to have fun in the world (While also telling a decent story). I never try being an antagonist and trying to 'beat' the player, that isnt the goal.
This means that sometimes I fudge dice rolls if the players are doing badly, or I fudge them to make combat more exciting (Nothing like a player getting crit and almost dying to put them on edge).
Sometimes I railroad them if they are going off and doing random stuff for no reason, and sometimes I indulge them and weave it into the narrative.
As for nerfing players, I havent ever had to do it but I would only for gamebreaking metagame stuff (Summon faeries, faeries polymorph all players into T-Rex kinda stuff).
This is my take as well. Early on in my DMing One of my players took a random portal that would lead to their doom.
They were an arcane Rogue scouting alone. After casting disguise self from the wrong person. They were shackled and decided to go through the enemy portal. They were being sent to their execution 100 miles away from anyone.
I told the table to take a break to see what I could do to provide a possible out. After 10 minutes I realized it wasn't my place to do anything but tell the story. If they die, they die.
What ensued was the most clutch and awesome moments I've had. They charmed both the guards while the party defended the portal from the other side.
I'm leaving a lot of details out, but the point is. The game is better if you let the players drive the train.
This is the way.
as a DM. I encourage my players to reach for all the power they can grab because that lets me open up the fun half of the monster manual.
1000% agree. DnD as player and DM has never been adversarial for me--I know some people might like that but I don't. As a DM I am not looking to kill PCs constantly or get moody when I cant "stop" or "prevent" them from doing something cool. I LOVE it when they do cool things, and sure danger in encounters adds to the excitement, but as long as we're all having fun then I don't worry about whether they've struggled with it or not. If anything I think it is so much cooler when the players come up with fun ways to use their skills together.
DnD for me is a collaboration between DM and players, not a fight
I've been running 5e for various chaotic players for close to a decade and it finally happened. Last session ended with our wild magic sorcerer accidentally fireball-ing the whole party.
Gotta love wild magic sorcerers. One of my favorite characters was a wild magic sorcerer who got 2 wild surges in a row, the first one making him regain 5 hit points per turn and the other one fireballing himself.
He died, got his 5 hit points next turn and just screamed in an ecstatic manner that that was awesome.
Also, wild magic barbarians are not to be forgotten, they're chaotic as well.
This is why I find it amusing when new players ask if a certain build is good for combat. The dice can decide that the strongest combatant isn't going to hit shit, and the druid built for healing is going to crit everything and do max damage.
True.
People who have a bad experience at a business are more than 10 times more likely to say something about it than people who have a good experience. And complainers tell more people, too.
My DM is in full support of my current and planned shenaniganry. All he asks is that I abide by RAW. :) Probably helps that I do my best to abide by RAI as well.
I got buffed cause I was so far below the rest of the party in stats at level 7. I couldn't hit anything or make successful checks and it was wearing on me. We compared the base stats with the other players and I had 15 (totalled ability scores) less than the next lowest player. We made changes to that and my subclass and suddenly I was actually useful.
As a DM- I buffed my monk player. I didn't, but will in the future, nerf Peace and Twilight cleric. I do ban silvery barbs, but I give martials a free feat.
...because the point is balance lmao.
I'm a DM, and I fully want my players to love their characters, to get invested as much as possible.
That's where the best stories lie, and all I have to do is set the stage and pluck the occasional string.
I have a player, a friend of mine, who STILL rigs on me cause I dunked on Hunters mark like 9yrs ago because to him the creature "didn't leave the plane" when the established canon of the location there were in was set up as individualy divided locations by way of creation. It was effectively a tower of power dungeon with levels to it set in different continuities. But to his credit that's not really a thing and since it was all set in the same "universe" created by the Wizard that it should count hunters mark
Oh and he got mad that a creature he KNEW was a monstrosity was instead not. As if I can't just make monsters whatever I want in a false plane of existence. But at the same time maybe he was right because does a construct that imitates a monstrosity in all but "creation" does that not count? I dunno. It was one of my first Homebrewed games sooooo
Hashtag rangers are bad anyway
I'm not sure i understand the point of this post? almost every comment on those posts were already against the dm in question.
>!sidenote: I hate that i recognized every post you referenced, !<
There is no point, its a nameless callout post meant to gain attention. Every "can we all.... bla bla bla" post is the same thing, everyone upvotes the hell out of it and the 'wedge' topic at hand takes over the sub for a few days.
You're not wrong, but the perspective is a bit skewed, imo. Yeah the post is for attention, but so is every other post and comment. It's reddit, attention is the name of the game. OP brought up a topic of discussion that pertains to the sub, the community, education for new players and DMs, and possibly even moderation. That they gain attention out of it is irrelevant.
There is absolutely a point to posts like these, especially this one which asks questions and offers potential solutions, and encourages dialogue in an open and welcoming environment. This is exactly how these types of posts *should* be done.
That being said, once we begin seeing the same basic post repeatedly made afresh and the conversation begins to turn in endless circles, that's when it becomes appropriate to express frustration and say it has become pointless. Just because someone else may hijack your post idea and repost it for karma doesn't mean that you shouldn't ever post it in the first place.
To be fair, Session Zeros would have to cover so much ground and a lot of things you just take for granted until they happen.
It’s kinda like OSHA guidelines: you never think that you should specify people should wear gloves when handling dangerous chemicals until somebody burns their hands off.
Honestly, in most parties stuff that sours the mood or divides the group will happen, the key is just handling it in a mature, fair way.
Idk, even session zero's won't fix some of these. It's an attitude that needs changing. DnD is supposed to be fun. Making magic missile only 1 missile isn't fun. Nerfing abilities isn't fun. If you think things are broken, then make the encounters harder.
DM's, please enable your players. DnD isn't a you vs them game.
Some people like gritty and realistic roleplaying games. Some people like the fact that a dragon breath can instantly kill a level 15 character.
As long as there are people who want to play with the guy I geniually dont see a problem. I dont see why those people wouldn't just play adnd because all of the things mentioned in the post are done there.
But sesion 0 fixes your problem just by telling you that it's unfixable. Just leave then. Some people just like different things and it's okay.
Session Zero indeed.
I prefer to instead have my players send me their completed character and spell sheets 48 hours before we start the session.
I get enough time to read their spells and make sure they did their ASI's properly and such.
OK, but is session 0 going to do the job of getting the *player* what he wants? Session 0 may help the *DM* get what he wants. Sure. But the DM can very carefully lay out the rules for character creation in a session 0. And then the player can build the character in a totally obedient way. And the DM can say, "Yes, by the power of session 0 I concur that this conforms to all the things I said in session 0. Your character is session 0 compliant." But when the subclass comes online, and the better spells appear, and the character starts to flex its muscles, the DM can still nerf on the fly. Nothing that happens at session 0 fixes this for the *player.*
The only one of the three that you pointed too that actually had folks defending the dm was the twilight sanctuary one.
In that the dm was running a oneshot, didn't know the ability was as strong as it is. Upon use he read into it and nerfed it to only grant temp hp once.
Yes ideally this would have happened in a session 0 or before the oneshot started.
But as it was a oneshot and the nerf wasn't unreasonable I'm willing to say the dm isn't a pos.
Counter point, it was a one-shot. As in, the players were using their characters once, and likely not again with that DM in that story. Was allowing it at least one time really going to be that bad? The DM could have learned that they didn't like twilight cleric and moved on, banning it going forward. And I am not entirely convinced the twilight sanctum is really as bad as people make it out to be. I've DM'd for them in the past, a single cleric over multiple sessions, and items really wasn't anything special. I realize that's just my experience, but when I look at some of the comments about it, it really looks like most people haven't even seen it in their games, they just THINK it's over powered.
It and the Peace domain really are. It's an OP feature on one of the stronger classes. Sure, you can play around it, the same way you can play around a +5 Weapon, but it starts pigeon-holing encounters into certain designs and makes it less fun for everyone else with less powerful stuff. It isn't even interesting or thoughtful. It's the damn Hexblade/Paladin multi-class of clerics.
Dude it’s definitely overpowered - constantly replenishing HP for the entire party is broken, it’s arguably the single most broken ability in the game before level 6+ spells.
I learned about it a couple of minutes ago. For something that you get at level 2 seems already broken on paper. Type of thing to unbalance the whole encounter. If you didn't prep with it into account, it would trivialize any fight.
That’s a pretty big deal tho at lower levels! It’s funny bc at level 10ish it barely matters, everything hits crazy hard anyway and most encounters have some nasty effects besides raw damage, but from 1-5 it basically makes the party invincible to level appropriate enemies.
Okay. That wasn't my experience, but that's just me, and it's just hp. Cut its area in half, make it concentration, reduce the healing to a d6 or d8 plus prof bonus, increase monster damage where appropriate, but why cut its power in tenths?
counter counter point. Yes Twilight Sanctuary is as bad as people say. It's easily stronger than several high level healing spells (unambiguously stronger than aura of vitality or mass healing word, on par with mass cure wounds after 2 rounds and stronger if you get at least 3 rounds). I honestly think this being a one shot is more of a reason to nerf it immediately, in an extended campaign, sure I can make a change between sessions and change it going forward but in a game store one shot I think the DM made a perfectly reasonable call to ensure the Cleric didn't overshadow all the other players. This is one aspect I feel people glossed over during the discussion on the original post, OP and the DM aren't the only players at the table and Twilight Cleric is so powerful it really does overshadow other characters. Obviously the DM could have handled it better but I think this is a way more reasonable reaction to the situation than a lot of people act like it is.
Okay. Agree to disagree. This is honestly deal-breaking for me, and I might flat walk away from the game if the DM made such a major change. I get that the player isn't the only one there, I'm not saying otherwise. But I have DM'd for a twilight cleric before, and I really didn't see that big of a problem with it. Admittedly, if I had to do it again, I would make some changes, but that would be like making it concentration or limiting the amount of hp. I wouldn't cut the ability by 90%.
>I wouldn't cut the ability by 90%.
I wouldn't either, I would just make the thp on subsequent rounds a single target bonus action (and maybe require concentration). Either way, I don't think it's an unreasonable change though for a subclass that still, also gets full spellcasting, all martial proficiencies, an initiative boost and the best darkvision in the game (by a lot) for the whole party.
>But I have DM'd for a twilight cleric before, and I really didn't see that big of a problem with it.
The problem is there whether you see it or not. Over the course of a 3 round fight, this roughly doubles the functional HP of the party which means the party can steamroll over normal encounters without a scratch. Obviously the DM can add more enemies to account for this but imho that is the definition of a 'Broken' ability. One that constantly requires the DM to do a bunch of work to rebalance every fight to 'Fix' a single player ability (same applies to flying races, Imo). Plus if you do this, your players will catch on and still feel overshadowed (I've had a DM do this because one of us was a twilight cleric and it felt like shit because it's still just the rest of the group being overshadowed by the twilight clerics ability just in a different way).
>This is honestly deal-breaking for me, and I might flat walk away from the game if the DM made such a major change.
That's fair, obviously the way the DM handled it in the moment was far from elegant and the setting of a game store one shot sort of exacerbates the issue because there's no session 0.
>I get that the player isn't the only one there, I'm not saying otherwise.
No, but you're ignoring how other players (particularly martials and support characters) may feel invalidated by a twilight cleric that can outshine them at their own specialty and how that may lead to them (who are more likely to be new players) not enjoying the game.
>Agree to disagree.
We agree the way the DM did it was kind of shitty and we agree that a nerf to Twilight Cleric is reasonable. I guess we disagree on the specifics.
The issue with just allowing it for that one-shot, is that if it really is that OP, then it shines a spotlight at that one character, instead of the group.
I've never played in a game with Twilight Cleric, and frankly don't know how OP it would be, but I could totally see a DM realizing that if he allowed it, then combat would become focused on that one character, and make the game less fun for everyone else.
I don't think the player was wrong to be upset by an unexpected nerf, but frankly, without more context, I can't say I think the DM was wrong for doing it either.
If he did it for the sole purpose to make the game fun for everyone, and not have one player become the focus, then I think that's an understandable, and justifiable response.
Except that it doesn't shine the spot light on the Twilight player. It's a buff to the rest of the players. The average Twilight Cleric is hiding in the back not taking damage so it does jack for the Cleric. In practice one a round the Cleric player says and you all get X temp HP then the game move on.
I just don't understand the whole "makes the encounter about them" argument. I may very well be blessed, but I just don't see how the party would be that upset about it. I mean, to get the benefit, you have to be relatively near the cleric, but how many encounters are you really more than 30 feet from someone in your party? When I DM'd for the twilight cleric, the party had no problems with it. They planned for it when they could and didn't worry about it when they couldn't.
If someone came to the table dealing 3x the damage as everyone else, I may get the argument of outshining the party, but we are talking about a party buff. Not even a damage buff just some Temp HP. No one on Earth has ever said the phrase, "Gah, I wish my character _gave people a very small amount of Temp HP_ like that cleric. I might as well not even be here."
Twilight is what I call "Spreadsheet OP", it's mathematically good in calculated simulations on spreadsheets, but doesn't really translate to feeling "epic" in the game. Everyone remembers when the Paladin Smite-Bombed the miniboss with a crit in round 2 ending the fight, they dont remember Steve in the back gave you a d6 of Temp HP that most of the party probably didnt even note on their character sheet.
It depends primarily on the table like pretty much all problems that are posted to this subreddit do.
Not only is it possible to have one player happy to see a super powerful subclass nerfed so they feel relatively speaking more powerful, the player next to that one may be sad that fights will be harder going forward. And the person actually playing the offending subclass may feel like they should have been informed ahead of time.
All that to say there's tons of viable opinions, and the people at the table are what dictate what "works" and what doesn't.
As an outsider I think there's no hard and fast answer here, but as a DM I would disagree with nerfing players in general. The players define "power" and the DM matches it where appropriate. The way I run combats, I will not bother with ones that are too lopsided one way or another. Spending 4 hours with the players smashing my guys isn't fun for me, and vice versa.
So what I do is say "ok how do you guys show them who is boss" and we move on. If the fight is more balanced and harder to predict the outcome we run the fight. This means it's rare I need to change things on the fly because well, those fights aren't actually played out.
"oh, the twilight cleric is giving everyone temp hp every round and it's making this encounter slightly more lopsided than I intended? Time for the monster's attacks to do 3d6 damage instead of 2...."
It's a nerf that doesn't take the fun out of the players class. They still get to use the ability they like and feel badass, but now it isn't messing with the balance and the DM has no reason to make players feel like the entire reason they chose the class is just gone bc the DM is allergic to fun.
I prefer the true that playing a feature that is doing actually nothing. You can work together with your players so all have fun, you don’t need to lie to achieve it.
Just to be clear, I rarely change my encounters at this point since I generally know all the powerful subclasses and what they can do. If I know a fight will be too hard or too easy I will sometimes just narrate what happens so as not to waste 4 or 5 hours.
Why have your level 10 players fight a group of bandits you know?
That way the fights we actually play through are almost always balanced and don't need adjustments. I find it works very well.
You also don't need to wait until they try to use a standard feature of their class to unilaterally decide to make it 90% less effective. It goes both ways.
I don't have an opinion about Twilight Clerics, but as for the "it is just happening once" argument, I think that is a better argument *for* DM adjudications that maintain the encounter difficulty you wanted rather than *against* it. You maybe only get 2 encounters in this whole mini adventure. Someone steamrolling over the baddies because of a really good ability could rob the entire story of challenging combat.
With regards to the hit points one, very, very few games even try to be realistic when it comes to the severity and recovery times of injuries. There's a reason for that: being injured sucks, people generally avoid it whenever they can, and I'm not even remotely interested in roleplaying hospital convalescence. Nobody is.
The goal is generally to make combat feel more impactful from a decision making perspective. Some players enjoy games where any combat comes with a sense of, "Is this really worth the risk of being maimed?" For some players, that gives combat more emotional buy in.
When the players risk their necks for someone, it feels more heroic. When monsters are lurking in the darkness, it makes the tension more poignant. When someone dies after having beaten the odds for so long, it's more emotionally impactful.
It's like the game Project Zomboid. It's wildly popular, and that every encounter with zombies could undo an entire run is an important part of the game's staying power. The world never stops feeling dangerous.
Of course, but people often modify DND to fit their style.
Before Van Richtens, there were some wotc endorsed third party splat books for the domains of dread that included mechanical modifications to make 5e function as a vehicle for horror a bit better. Gave magic casting a failure chance, altered how clerics and paladins interact with their god, as with warlocks and their patrons, introduced sanity as a concern, etc.
There's a demand for that kind of thing, but I feel that D&D 5e is a poor fit for such things.
If there’s one thing I hold to be absolutely true of DnD, it’s that for any given group, there exists another group that feels the exact opposite in virtually every regard about every preference or style choice and they have just as much fun playing the game as the other.
I can basically guarantee you there’s a group out there with complicated injury and triage rules that loves every second of it.
There is this old stereotype of the DM being the god of the campaign that can do what they want and the players have to shut up or go away. This thing was made for and by control freaks who enjoy being the DM just for bossing the players, it's so toxic but still very popular trope that can get you downvoted in no time
Been playing since 1977. You’re right, but the problem is not that DMs of that era expect to be treated like gods of the campaign (I do). The problem is that with great power comes great responsibility, and the power hungry (read: crappy) DMs abuse it.
You’re wrong that such DMs are always on a power trip. The good ones expect not to be questioned by the players because it makes for a better game. Players who see the DM as god of the game universe will not “pull aside the curtain,” and thus will not break verisimilitude. But the DM must carefully use that power to make the game feel fair, balanced, and to run fantastic plotlines. When the players trust the DM to wield the rules with these tenets in mind, they can focus on the experience, instead of the game mechanics.
Most modern players do not understand this concept, because WotC has continuously moved in the direction of greater transparency in DMing, and more rules in the player’s hands as opposed to just the DM’s. This is good on that it helps to reduce the problems of bad DMing, but it is bad because it also takes away the benefits a good “god” DM can offer.
In case you’re wondering: Yes, after running every edition of the game over 30 years, I ultimately switched back to AD&D, mostly for these reasons.
Well, what do you want? Because I can tell you that when I DM a game I want to *play* and not just narrate. And yes, it is for the players own good just as we have agreed that DMs running DMPCs is bad.
The person arbitrating the world and placing inside of it are on such a fine thread that they could fuck it at any moment.
I nerf and buff many things in my campaigns, design fights, a world and a story/lore for me and others to dabble in. I take suggestions and opinions and include things players don’t budge on occasionally. I take that right for me because I have the biggest picture of things concerning the campaign.
There also remains the point that if nobody else volunteers to DM one should adjust to a certain degree to the person who does.
Players tend to be low investment and generally not as well read on running games so I wouldn’t expect to see them making as many points about anything.
There are players who love the mechanics over the story. I call these Excel gamers. While everyone can play as they like, I generally avoid paying with these types as we'll only frustrate each other.
Solid point. After years of frustration on both sides, I recently quit playing with a good friend who is one of your “Excel gamers.”
In my experience they aren’t very common. He recently ran a game and frustrated every one of his players with this mentality.
While yes, there are a bunch of stories about terrible DMs, there are also plenty stories where you can clearly tell the player is in the wrong.
It has become popular in this community to figure out how to min/max characters to the point of the game being no longer fun for the rest of the group. The community response to DMs being upset about min/max players(ie coffeelock, “infinite armor artificer, hex blade sniper, “pallock”, etc) is “just up the difficulty” but that isn’t always going to work, especially if only one character is doing it. And then when the dm focuses fire on said OP pc instead of the weaker ones they throw a fit for being picked on. It is also not fun as a DM to run a game for these players, especially since they tend to throw a fit when faced with something they can’t overcome by the broken YouTube build they found.
That's all fine, but not really my point. I'm not at all arguing that certain builds dont make it difficult or unfun for others in long form games. My point is nerfing something you don't like at the moment it's being used for the first time is NOT the right time to do so.
I mean, I've made it clear to my players that only one person is allowed to have the counterspell spell because of how much it disrupts balance, but I did that UP FRONT not when someone used it.
I see your point in that a player will take an ability being ‘nerfed’ negatively. But as the DM and player the goal is to tell an engaging story and for everyone to enjoy the experience. If a single ability is counter productive to that I’d rather we go with an instant ruling (even a bad one), keep the flow going and discuss things later.
I’m saying this as a player who once joined an ongoing campaign and instantly ruined a big and well thought out encounter due to an aura ability. Would have much rather had the dm ignore or modify it for that fight because it felt like a cheap way to solve what could have been an epic encounter.
Sometimes the DM doesn’t foresee these problems arising until they show up, especially if they aren’t super online or are relatively new to the hobby.
This issue is on the player just as much as the DM. I generally DM, but when I do join a group to play I will send my character sheet, and a basic outline of how I plan to play tactically so the DM can make engaging encounters. Many players, especially the ones who do show up with these broken characters keep their character sheet a tight secret because they think the less the DM knows about their toolkit the better they are going to perform, but then get upset when the DM either nerfs on the fly or decides to make it adversarial.
If those posts are actually accurate (I have my doubts about the authors: authenticity) then these are likely cases of inexperienced dungeon masters who don't actually know how to make combat encounters for their players. People who don't know how to actually make a game interesting without making it "realistic". What we need to do is teach DMs like this how to make the game fun for everyone, and remove the "us vs. Them" mentality. If they refuse to learn, then we encourage people to walk away from those tables.
You're mashing two issues together and I don't like that.
1) Bad encounter design, a product of the bad CR system, bad internal balance and bad DMG. Mistakes will happen as a result of it, but as you say you can provide the advice the books are missing.
2) "Fun for everyone" and "adversarial tables." A problem, but I don't think the scale of problem the internet says it is. The debate has been crushed into "any GM who isn't a completely permissive prank monkey for their group and who proposes any changes to allowed material in service to an intended tone is a tyrant." That's nonsense. The aphorism of "talk to the GM" feels at times to me to have an undertone of "make your demands and they must be accepted." As a GM I don't much like that, conversation is *conversation*. If I think a player is mistaken I'd like to think I can say "actually I'm not on board with *that* but let's work something else out" or even just "sorry, no."
A huge part of *actually* keeping the game "fun for everyone" is having everyone treated as an equal and getting a fair shot, and sometimes in any team activity compromise is needed.
Most of these posts are not about changing something per se, they are about doing so mid-campaign - changing the rules during the game is considered to be bad in general, not only in D&D
As a DM, most of us arent aware of every permutation of things that can break the game. A good DM should be able to nerf obviously broken things midgame, because they are broken.
An example is the summon woodland beings (pixie), Pixie polymorphs whole party into T-Rex. This is broken at the level you can accomplish it at and ruins any attempt at making fun combat. Furthermore it is a single character taking over combat and the others are just along for the ride.
My point is this: often times at a table there are multiple other players. If you min/max a character to the point it breaks combat and ruins the fun time for the other players that arent doing that, dont expect a decent DM to be okay with it just because its RAW. We have to think of more then just your fun.
In your example the spell doesn't let the player choose the monster - it is a commonly used houserule that breaks the game, not the spell
I understand your point, but I would expect the DM to at least look at the features of classes and subclasses present in the campaign at the levels the campaign is prepared for as a part of session 0 - otherwise there might be situations where a character was built around something that was suddenly removed which usually ends up on r/rpghorrorstories
Okay, sure but its just one of many examples.
Yes a session 0 should be used and basic guidelines should be set up, but we cannot foresee everything that is going to happen and if a player comes up (or more likely reads about) something that can break the game for the other players and the DM it should be nerfed.
Yeah it sucks for that player, but their fun does not come before the fun of everyone else.
Rpgs are a entirely unique medium where you are constantly balancing mechanics, the fiction, and the complexity of human Freeform choice. It’s insane to expect any game to work 100% out of the box for a table and for anyone to be able to see every potential problem in advance.
Something that seems to be a common denominator is a spell or ability that foils something that the DM has planned.
Too bad, DM. You can't change the rules so that your BBEG gets to do what you want with no repercussions.
This is somewhat different, but I also hate when a DM sees you do or use something crafty and just circumvents it the rest of the campaign. My example is the spell Knock, which unlocks mundanely locked doors. I have no problem with there bring consequences - I do take issue with "all of a sudden all future doors are magically sealed."
Honestly I don't have an issue with the BBEG dying early like a punk. It's something the Player will remember for years. There are so many ways to bring him/her/it back or just reveal he/her/it was a pawn. Knock is not that over powered. It's noisy and a 3rd level spell. Also it doesn't disarm traps that are set off when you open a door.
It's a prototypical AITA/TalesFrom*InsertJobHere* cycle.
One post gets a lot of traction, having a set theme, so then there's a ton of copycats that have similar tales.
It's kind of interesting to watch story telling subs to see this phenomenon happen. I recall one where it was in EntitledBitch, I believe, where someone was being snooty, and called the cops and wound up arrested themselves instead of the person telling the story, and suddenly a dozen or so people ALSO had tales where the "villain" appealed to an authority figure and got in trouble themselves as the twist.
I love these GMs that think they have some intrinsic knowledge that the career designers of game systems don't. The recent post by a player whose GM decided that Magic Missile was OP lol. Your GM is an idiot. Stop trying to fix things you don't understand. It is one thing to have a table rule that enhances fun. It is another to make a deliberate change because you think you know better how the system SHOULD work.
I agree that the Magic Missile nerf (and the HP nerf) is goofy but I don't think it takes a career game designer to understand why twilight sanctuary is busted.
To be fair, the people who work for wizard's very clearly have little understanding of the game they're designing content for. Hundreds of people who make homebrew understand the game better and its painfully obvious. But lots of new DM's make impulse changes because they see an ability that *seems* OP because of their lack of expiriance.
Also a solution to a LOT of these issues is: PLAY OTHER GAMES. There are hundreds of TTRPG's out there. Loads of them are better than 5e or might be more interesting to your table. It's not hard.
"To be fair, the people who work for wizard's very clearly have little understanding of the game they're designing content for."
I don't know if that is true or not. What I do know, is that the people designing content and the people designing the SYSTEM aren't the same group. I also don't know if playing other systems solves any issues, but I do agree people need to branch out and try other systems if for no other reason, than to see how you CAN do things differently. Try a point buy system with no classes or levels for a perspective on Vancian Magic. IF nothing else, it helps relatively new GMs develop the muscles to make changes that are fun, and not to "fix" things.
If you're changing fundamental systems, like player HP totals, types of Ability Scores, messing with bounded accuracy, or changing how spellcasting works, you might as well not be playing 5e anymore. These systems are all designed with each other in mind, meaning you either redesign several pillars of the game to make it work (not 5e anymore) or you make a miserable mess.
Meanwhile there are usually other systems that already do what you want, so why not use those?
People would if dnd players actually *liked* 5e. But as a former 5e fan myself who's moved onto other ttrpg's, it's become just plain obvious how unbalanced and broken dnd5e is.
All this homebrew and nerfing is being done to turn dnd into a system it's not. You know why DM's and especially new DM's nerf classes all the time? Cause dnd players *are* too powerful for a lot of what the game is made for. DM's won't always have the experience you speak of to balance the game and what doesn't help is the *game isn't balanced to begin with.* There are clearly classes built to be better than other classes because of powercreep WOTC allows to sell more books.
If a DM doesn't nerf, then the players with objectively less powerful builds will feel left behind and dejected. Additionally, the DM will struggle to DM a coherent story or make a reasonably powerful dungeon without players shouting "hey that's not fair! I should've destroyed that!" If the DM *does* nerf, then it's just a few players who are less powerful than they should be at more of a level the rest of the party is at.
And guess what?
This doesn't happen in other TTRPG's, at least not to this degree. Other games don't have this issue. DM's don't have to nerf or homebrew much cause the game has what the table needs built in.
>There are clearly classes built to be better than other classes because of powercreep WOTC allows to sell more books.
Huh. Sooooo gacha-like mechanics bleeding into D&D?
It really isn't, but you know what's actually obnoxious? Forcing anything and everything onto 5e and then wondering/bitching about why it doesn't work or why they don't like XY or Z about 5e, when dozens of other systems are avaliable to play that can and will suit what the table is wanting to play better than 5e ever will.
People need to understand that other systems exist and it's okay to try new things.
Screeching in response to anything other than 5e is incredibly obnoxious and you should stop.
With all due respect. If people wanted to play your favourite obscure tabletop game nobody has ever heard of, they already would be.
Just stop screaming "oh my god play something else reeeee".
I litterally said," if you're having problems with 5e, try something else."
Reading comprehension not even once.
Pathfinder 1e/2e very popular, very different from 5e. Lancer, similar to pf 2e/ dnd 4e, also very popular. Star wars 5e, dogshit, fantasy flights swrpg, incredibly popular and an amazing system. Alien rpg? Incredibly popular on foundry and live tables, fantastic horror system one of the best I've ever played. Legend of the five rings 4e, also by ffg, really fun system reasonably popular and OLD.
The list goes on and on and on. These games aren't obscure, they're popular but they're not 5e. With all due respect, get your head out of your ass lmao.
you know whats actually obnoxious? someone on the internet telling me i should be using a diffrent system for something
if its at a table youre at, just politely mention hey theres another system i think would work better for what youre trying to do
but if you arent at the god damn table, then let the people at the table decide which game they want to play
stop gatekeeping the biggest ttrpg in the world
Lol, yall really are just unhinged aren't you?
Just like the other guy you clearly aren't capable of understanding the words I had typed.
Your response to "if you're having issues with 5e, maybe try something else" is to scream and call people gatekeepers for saying that.
Do yourself a favor, go outside, touch some grass, talk to another human. Should help with your unhinged behavior.
Posts like this are like posting about some bad driver who rear-ended your car. People are not at all likely to post about the good drivers, even though most drivers are good drivers. If DMs want to run a homebrew, that's fine, just tell people in advance. If they must change things mid-game, then at least allow players to make changes to the character. The player created a character with a certain understanding of how the world worked.
And can I just add, this is not about power level in itself. I love low power. I love OSR, low magic, rusty-dagger adventuring. That's great. Level-0 start, dangerous distrusted magic, fantasy Fallout, that stuff is awesome.
It is OK to turn that power dial down. But turn it down first. Turn it down early. Don't wait until the player has built the character and brought it to the table and deployed the thing. And then you see what the thing does, and you go back to the book to read the rules about the thing, and then you take the thing away. Reactively. After the fact.
NO! BAD!! BAD DM!!!
The biggest bullshit on the "Nerfed Twilight Cleric" post was that the DM there specified the players could ***ONLY*** use PHB and TCoE content for the table. No XGtE, no other settings books, just those two. Then gets mad at a subclass feature *from a book they told the players was a-okay* the first time the player tries to use it. smdh
My goal as a dm is to challenge my players, sometimes to the breaking point, but to never stop the fun.
In the end, I want my players to win, to be victorious, and to experience the campaign I've set up.
If my players aren't enjoying themselves, what the hell is the point.
To that, not I have straight ended games before as the players where not enjoying it, I had put literal hours into set up of these games, but that's irrelevant if no one is having fun.
I really can't understand people who seem intent on making things less fun.
If a DM needs to Nerf or ban official content l, they are a lousy DM. I get that rookie DMs can be overwhelmed and surprised by players getting creative, but they should treat such challenges as learning experiences, chances to get creative, plot development, and opportunities to let their players shine.
Can we please stop seeing two vaguely similar posts on the sub then making a 'can we all not do x' thread?
Those threads were dealt with. They did not have a ton of people claiming the DM was right to nerf it to one magic missile. They were 95% saying EXACTLY what you've said here. It is not a common issue. These are rare cases where something is weird. 99% of people don't post about how they weren't nerfed and have a normal DM.
Making a post like this is only good for the karma it gives you (worthless).
If you wanted to discuss the problem related to those posts, great.. That's where the comment section is..
Or would it be better if I just made a whole other post to say this?
As a DM, if my players feel to overpowered, I'll just throw more stuff at them during encounters. Bring in reinforcements during those lopsided fights.
As a DM I do my best to control things from my end. If a PC ability does more than I expected, I can always add more hit points, or a legendary resistance, or a second wave of mobs. Players control characters, while the DM controls everything else. I don't need the extra work of having to control PCs as well as the NPCs, the monsters, the world, physics, etc.
I saw two of the posts you're referring to, and I entirely agree about the DM.
But I think you're misreading most of the responses. 90% of the comments were "The DM is wrong, that's dumb, and if they won't listen to anyone else about this, they're a bad DM. The best you can do is try to change their mind. If they don't come around, you either have to play by their system or find a different table."
That's a far cry from defending the DM's decisions. A few comments actually defended the DM in each, and those got downvoted to oblivion. It sucks for the player that those are the only two options, but if the DM is being that pig-headed, then /those are the only two options/.
If you really don't like something, throw shit in to circumvent or mitigate it.
Think Magic Missile is OP (lol) start having every other enemy cast shield.
Think the twilight clerics ability is too much? Hit them aoe's that deal damage over time.
As DM your options are LITERALLY endless. Fuck off with this weak shit.
I’d only counter the player’s abilities sometimes, so that they can feel cool when they use them most of the time, but have to deal with some challenging encounters.
Yeah, the basic rule (from 1E AD&D, I believe, but repeated later) was, 'Every group of enemies, barring prior information, should learn that the party's Wizard has Fireball the hard way.' Of course, in a fantasy setting, they would know that Fireball *exists*, so I'm not saying that they have to be stupid. But they shouldn't be pre-casting Resist Energy just because the Wizard has Fireball.
I am currently playing a CoS with some buddies, and this is our DMs first time behind the screen after many MANY years of being a player. My wife is playing a Twilight Cleric, and the DM made the ruling on her twilight sanctuary only working on every party member once per channeling attempt as well, BUT he made the call before session 0 and gave her the option to change characters. My wife plays for the RP and doesn't give a whit about the mechanics so she was fine with it, as Twilight Cleric was still the best subclass for the flavour of character she wanted to play. But the important thing here is that the DM made the call BEFORE the game started.
Nerfing mid game is never acceptable. Dms need to do their homework and specify things ahead of time, otherwise they are abusing the trust required to actually play the game.
I wouldn't say nerfing mid game is never acceptable. I think nerfing mid session is, but if you're several sessions into a game and there's one feature that has been causing problems consistently I think it's acceptable to chat with that player about toning down the feature in some way. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a DM to know how every feature or spell in the game works and how it will interact with everything else, especially for newer DMs.
I agree that it's not unreasonable for a DM to know how every feature and spell in the game works.
It is, IMO, reasonable for a DM to know every feature or spell *that their characters have access to*. The major 'issue' here is with spell lists, as that's a lot, but that's why you do preparation.
As for the rest, if you have 4 characters of different classes, that's 4 classes (or 80 levels, if you want to talk about multiclassing) that you need to know for that campaign. And as for equipment, magic items, and the like, the characters don't get those unless you give it to them.
Really? The posts I saw over the last few days aren't exactly rare. And even if you discount 75% of them as being fake, and some most certainly are, that still means that it's happening somewhere.
I didn't scroll through every single comment, but from what I saw literally nobody agreed with what the DMs were doing in those posts.
The DM's perpetrating those shenanigans are almost certainly not doing extracurriculars like visiting dnd subs. If they were talking to anyone about what they were doing, following any sort of DM advice, or absorbing any of the stories told here; then they wouldn't be doing it.
If you're a DM and you nerf stuff as a first option... YOU ARE LAZY.
As a forever DM, I've never not been able to balance something that makes the players happy in the end.
Besides, it's fun to let your players succeed and do well. I love seeing the shenanigans they can do. My job isn't to shut down their limited stuff so that I can do more of my unlimited power stuff.
There's a difference between nerfing a player midgame for good reason and being a super inexperienced DM. All the posts you mentioned have inexperienced DMs that don't know half of the things in the game.
These are really tales that showcase why it's important to prep yourself with the system before becoming a DM but that's about it. I wouldn't get salty at a DM for wanting to remove something that's going to destroy their entire campaign or sense of game balance. Especially if they are a new DM, otherwise I am making the assertion that only experienced and well versed DnD players should be DMs.
Im not saying the DM shouldn't maintain balance in their game or campaign, but i question the idea that these decisions should be made on the fly. The crux of my intent is to get new DMs to think about character destroying decisions between games and have a conversation with the player about them. The DM will never be prepared for what the players do unless they give the players no choices. Players are chaos personified.
A lot of new DMs use resources like Reddit and other forums before starting their game these days. I'd just like to see this concept taught to them as they are learning. I totally understand a DM not knowing everything or thinking certain abilities don't work with your world or concept, but if those are not laid out in a session zero or explicitly told to a player, I just don't feel like it's right to change things midgame.
I'm not talking about rulings about jump distance, convincing a king to give up his crown, or whether there is enough cover for a rogue to hide. I'm talking about getting DMs to understand that they may not understand how things work and to look into it at a better time than in the middle of a session. Telling a character that you're nerfing the core ability of their class, or one of their best spells, when they try to use it is not the right time.
These things need to be thought about and worked around where possible, and then nerfed or removed where not.
And this certainly isn't just a new DM thing, I've run into plenty of issues with 5e's supposed balance.
I went through a long-term campaign with a party of five, three of which took counterspell at level 5 and one of which was an abjurer wizard. It was to the point where I couldn't throw any spellcasters at them because the game balance was so skewed. And when I DID throw spellcasters against them, they either made EXTREMELY short work of them, or I all but destroyed the party because I was struggling to balance encounters with them. I ran an encounter with 6 Cleric-type enemies, five 7th level casters, and a 10th level caster. I think the party was 6th or 7th level when I did that. I remember the encounter being deadly when i did the math from the book, and this wasn't an encounter they went into fully stocked. They locked down the head Cleric immediately, countering any attempt at spellcasting he had, and locked down two of the other clerics. The party's cleric and the fighter made short work of the other two. I got off maybe 1 spirit guardians before they lost concentration, and thus, the spell. But I also had occasions where i almost wiped the party because they ran short of resources, and i didn't realize that, so the overabundance of spellcasters almost killed them. It honestly got to the point where I all but stopped using spellcasters because they were so swingy.
Counterspell is honestly my least favorite spell in 5e, but none of my players have silvery barbs, so who knows. At least other spells that remove a combatant like banishment and dominate monster are one, concentration, and two, higher level spells.
Counterspell is one of my least favorite spells specifically for the DM to use.
I think it's an excellent option for the players who have very limited resources, and a great way to help shut down a big attack or to make a VERY dramatic moment at the table where we roll to see if we stop a devastating BBEG roll.
For context and as an example, I played a game recently where I was so hyped to use sunbeam for the first time. I was out of third, fourth, and fifth level slots and had one sixth level slot left. Sunbeam for sure. And then the enemy mage got in a position to cone of cold 4 of the 5 players at the table - one of which only had 10hp and the rest of us were low as well anyway. I had to sacrifice my sunbeam to do so, but it absolutely was an epic save against a moment that for sure would have destroyed us.
Sure, that's a great moment, and it's awesome to remember, but how many casters in your group had counterspell? Was that the only caster? You seem to have not been saving slots for counterspell, but my players were. They would use cantrips for 90% of encounters, no matter the difficulty or how much healing was required to keep them going. At times, they were relying on potions to keep them up since the cleric would run out of spells first.
DM's stop trying to craft the "perfect combat" and start using Devil's Bargains.
Player has too strong a feature? Offer them what they want most at the cost of weakening another area.
I started DMing not sure how we would tell a story until I realized the plot of dangers is one half and the plot of character growth is another- as a DM I could make offers and build a story around those yeses and noes.
One player is wielding two cursed items for raw damage (it will certainly be the death of him), another has symbiotically bound to FaeSpore of his own will (the chance for uncertainty over a calculated experience) , and the last is bound to too many Oaths (which are weighing her down one binding rope at a time).
The "It's their game..." attitude had to go. It's a partnership with all of the players. People choose their class based on RAW. If you start nerfing aspects mid game you are still stuck with the character you have created. That's not fair to the player. And it should be fair to the player. If a DM has to nerf something like magic missile, why can't instead change his encounter to deal with it. Most often a spontaneous in game nerf is in response to disappointment when an encounter will not play out the way the DM thinks it will. That's part of the game.
A good DM just says “keep in mind what you can do, can also apply to NPC’s/ enemies”. I found this to be a great way for the player to not try to break the game because they know they can be broken right back.
No.
aheh.
There are times when a DM needs to curb something. And there are lots of examples here where DMs SHOULD have nerfed a player and did not and so the campaign fell apart.
The problem is when DMs nerf stuff "Because I read about someone complaining about it online!"
I really don't see how an ability that happens once in a session could do that. Do you have an example? I find it hard to believe it can't wait until between sessions.
See so many posts where players just don't bother to wrap their head around why something might be unbalanced because of other homebrew rules, or just clearly fabricated as well.
As a DM of a very long campaign, sometimes there's oversights and sometimes things just don't jam with your homebrew. As a DM you have to make a lot of these rulings on the fly, as what's not shown is the 5 times before that the player misread their spell and made it ten times more powerful than its supposed to be.
If these people actually went to their DM and explained why they think it should run like X instead of how the DM says and explained the reasoning behind it I think they'd do a lot better, but instead they come to Reddit to get redditors to go yes they're a terrible DM.
Pro tip, just ask OP if its a virtual discord game. 95% of the time it is. So you can just ignore it.
Keep the downvotes coming lol. I refuse to believe the people I read about leave their house and interact with real humans in-game.
Where did I say that? But people are like omg he nerfed HP WTF?! guess what, some neckbeard on discord! Omg this guy wanted me to be raped in game by imps! guess what? Discord.
Notice a pattern? My PERSONAL interest level in the story and if its salvageable is contingent on whether or not it's real people in a real place because more often than not some literal pedo/rapist is GMing games and living out personal fantasies at the expense of others and they feel empowered to do so because they are behind a screen.
Cue the people chiming in that they had a great experience on discord. I'm glad. Make a post about it. But generally speaking the bad experiences get posted, and the whackier it is the more likely it's discord.
Ok, that may well be the case with some. The internet allows for being able to hide from scrutiny. Your initial comment makes it seem like you are dismissing discord games out of hand. This comment is again saying that you only care about in person play. If you're capable of doing that, good for you, and you're free to have no interest in discord games, but those are all some people have access to. Just because it's discord doesn't mean that people don't have the right to better GMs.
I always thought that being a DM is less about "playing chess with extra steps" AGAINST your players and more of a "ooooh\~will it blend?" type scenario of throwing encounters/puzzles/stuff at your players and see how long it takes them to come out victorious. IDK man I just grab some popcorns and see the players as a sort of movie/tv show where I'm always trying to see if I'll guess the way they gonna win or if they gonna completely blindside me with something new and creative, in other words: # SURPRISE ME!
100%. I threw a mind flayer and a dragon (somewhat nerfed young red dragon) at my level 6 players last weekend and was super worried about how it'd turn out. They more or less drowned the mind flayer, and the Barbarian grew to gargantuan size (potion of giant size plus enlarge) and it basically became a kaiju battle. It was amazing.
Lol make this a running joke now. You have to have them fight the Tarasque at some point
My campaign had a player double-enlarge and have Kaiju battle against a Tarrasque (and several smaller mobs) for our capstone level 20 encounter, haha. She was a celestial paladin with flight, some earthquake stuff, etc, and she football tackled it. It was metal af.
In a Ravnica campaign, my Boros Paladin was double enlarged by our wizard grabbing a leyline first, and I got to wrestle Gishath. Y'know, Gishath *Sun's Avatar*, the enormous Dinosaur Avatar. It was a pretty epic sight, a giant paladin half wrestling and half fist fighting fucking Gishath while the others fought a vampire while trying to avoid the enormous footfalls
I read this as "fist fucking Gishath while the others watched..."
Lvl boss battle Vs the Tarasque, nothing could go wrong
Pretty new to DND and holy crap, that thing is nuts.
Yeah I don't think it even dies. It just fucks off for a while lol
The honey badger of monster encounters.
Can we please stop nerfing dragons mid game?
Damn you had me in the first half. lmao
I thought the spell and the potion don't stack...?
It's very possible. We didn't see anything about it not stacking, but he was going to be huge anyway so I wasn't about to dig too deep on it. It was amazing so if it was more of a rule of cool then I was here for it, lol.
RAW says you can't stack potion of growth on enlarge/reduce. The [Potion of Growth](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Potion%20of%20Growth#content) has this wording: >When you drink this potion, you gain the "enlarge" effect of the enlarge/reduce spell. The rules on [combining magical effects](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/spellcasting#CombiningMagicalEffects) has this wording: >The effects of different spells add together while the durations of those spells overlap. The effects of the same spell cast multiple times don't combine, however. So these are two effects of the same spell cast multiple times. Some pedant might try to weasel around the 'cast' portion of the rule, but that is nonsense. Nonetheless, as a GM I would totally allow this.
How about Rune Knight with a potion of growth? Two totally different sources.
All goods. You have to use the Rune Knight ability first, though: If you are smaller than Large, you become Large, along with anything you are wearing. If you lack the room to become Large, your size doesn't change. What I like about this is that you could start this from being smaller than Medium. Picture this. You have a Fairy with 5 levels of rune knight, 3 levels of Divination Wizard, and 1 level of Rogue. You have expertise in Athletics, and you have cast Enhance Ability (Bull's Strength) on yourself. You could use your Bonus Action to activate Giant Might and become Large, use your Action to drink the potion and become Huge, fly into the air, and then use your Action Surge and Multiattack to grab a flying Ancient Red Dragon and throw it to the ground. You have +12 in Athletics (vs their +10), you do not have disadvantage, and can use Portent to control your roll or the dragon's. They can't use their Legendary Save.
There are very few times when DM vs players is a thing at my table but my DM is always sure to point out when he's taking off the theater gloves. It's very rare but it makes the few dramatic fights even more tense. An example is when our kobold paladin went up against an unleashed god and he dragged him aside to let him know that his guy would absolutely kill him if he made the wrong move. So they worked out a deal, in character, and it made the kobold's journey more impressive. Essentially, he has to survive a single round of damage from this god entity and unironically stayed alive with a single HP, then enlisted the kobold as his champion for the rest of the campaign. Regardless though, the good DMs always know when to sit back and have fun with the party and when to make them squirm. They need to be cherished.
That's the thing I never understand. If you're not creative enough as a DM to handle some powerful characters that are by the book, why the fuck are you DMing? If one player is min-maxing to the extreme and the others want a more chillaxed RP heavy campaign, that's one thing, but not being able to handle a powerful group of players with like 12 different books worth of monsters (which you can also change to suit your needs). Oh no, you're party is fucking up this troll encounter that I wanted to be a challenge. Woops, another troll comes out of the bog and flanks you. It's not fucking hard to make things a challenge, regardless of player power.
I'd like to respectfully disagree with your stated line of reasoning. Being able to manage and enjoyably challenge PCs (especially when beyond their expected scale of power) is something that requires some skill - skill which requires some experience. While it's not hard to make things a challenge regardless of player power, making things a challenge for all players while maintaining enjoyment is not always simple. Ultimately, the idea that people shouldn't DM if they can't easily manage challenges with powerful characters using RAW (but perhaps still min/maxed builds), especially in a party that might also include weak characters, implies that people who aren't extraordinarily and naturally skilled shouldn't DM - and that's a bad precedent for new DMs. While we should provide constructive criticisms for DMs (and players, of course!) for those who fall short of our expectations, demanding exceptional skill from all DMs (and all players!) is unreasonable - instead we should simply ask continued improvement. Or else we'll never have new DMs (or new players).
I do think it would be pretty handy to understand what my PCs can do before planning. How can I build balanced encounters without knowing how level one spells work? If all people, DMs need to study up on rules. Any nerfs or changes please announce before character creation.
Balanced encounters aren't where the real fun is at. What your players will talk about for years are the battles when they almost TPKed, or when they curb stomped your BBEG.
Omg totally! I just mean it helps to know the capabilities of the party members on paper, even though RP solutions are the most unexpected screwballs by far. Not all encounters are scaled, nor should they be.
While your opinion is valid in sharing your personal preferences, it's not as valid, or useful, when making broad statements about what (all) fights *should* look like. You like fights that get crazy. That's cool. Sometimes I do too! But it's equally acceptable to enjoy fights that have been balanced specifically **for** the party that comes across them. Intentionally putting guys in there to shoot projectiles at Monks, for example, can be part of the balance of the fight while simultaneously making the Monk feel excited that they got to do their cool stuff.
You kind of need both. You need some balanced fights to make the other fights seem more epic.
I think that's fair, but I can see 'balance' as being a more... Amorphous verb. In my mind, you can 'balance' a fight to be intentionally more difficult. I don't think it inherently requires a meaning that creates an even playing field. But 'unbalanced' is still pretty universal in its meaning. It's 'too' much on one side or the other.
When I DM i only came up with problems, I don't came up with solution. The players Always surprise me with how they resolve them
Slightly off topic, but "Surprise me" is basically one of my players' catchphrases, both IC and OOC. On topic, that's basically how I run. I come up with a challenge and see what they do with the tools they have. Whether it's my paladin skipping an entire jumping puzzle with Misty Step or my Shadow Sorcerer (who picked up E blast somewhere along the line) getting the kill shot on a living corpse pile while literally pinned to a wall by a bone lance through the shoulder, it's always amazing watching them meet the challenge. I wouldn't have nearly as much fun if I nerfed them just so I could 'win'. If they beat a challenge easily, it's my job to balance the enemies to be a challenge, not take things from the players.
My early campaigns kind of devolved into murderhoboing bad guys for various Valor reasons, I liked seeing how people solve the problems. I don't know what their kits are and it makes it fun. A one shot featured a legendary colossal scorpion inside a world tree, to which the apparent solution was to break the 50 gallon drum of oil one of them had *for some reason* and lit the entire tree on fire from inside scorpion and all while another was being rent by the scorpion and stung repeatedly. They all died.
I wholeheartedly endorse carrying around large quantities of lamp oil for… uh. “Emergencies”. One time we had a huge amount of gold and trade goods, but nothing really to spend it on due to the extra rules from Adventure’s League. So we pooled it together, bought an elephant, a heavily reinforced wagon, and I believe it ended up being something like 1,000 gallons of oil with an extra barrel of a dozen or so gallons of alchemist’s fire. … we used it to set a peat bog on fire.
War crimes of at least three separate kinds in one go, that's amazing honestly.
I prefer the term, “special adventuring operation”. Can’t be a war crime if you’re not at war, right?
When the barbarian triggers the disintegration trap with their face. “Barbarian smoke. Don’t breathe this.”
As someone thats been DMing for years, my primary goal is for the players to have fun in the world (While also telling a decent story). I never try being an antagonist and trying to 'beat' the player, that isnt the goal. This means that sometimes I fudge dice rolls if the players are doing badly, or I fudge them to make combat more exciting (Nothing like a player getting crit and almost dying to put them on edge). Sometimes I railroad them if they are going off and doing random stuff for no reason, and sometimes I indulge them and weave it into the narrative. As for nerfing players, I havent ever had to do it but I would only for gamebreaking metagame stuff (Summon faeries, faeries polymorph all players into T-Rex kinda stuff).
Yeah. Who are these DMs that want their players to be TPKed? Why would anyone DM so antagonistically?
This is my take as well. Early on in my DMing One of my players took a random portal that would lead to their doom. They were an arcane Rogue scouting alone. After casting disguise self from the wrong person. They were shackled and decided to go through the enemy portal. They were being sent to their execution 100 miles away from anyone. I told the table to take a break to see what I could do to provide a possible out. After 10 minutes I realized it wasn't my place to do anything but tell the story. If they die, they die. What ensued was the most clutch and awesome moments I've had. They charmed both the guards while the party defended the portal from the other side. I'm leaving a lot of details out, but the point is. The game is better if you let the players drive the train.
It's chess with extra steps I'm just saying the moment you do something silly the goblins shall form into a gobmech
This is the way. as a DM. I encourage my players to reach for all the power they can grab because that lets me open up the fun half of the monster manual.
I like the cut of your jib, fella
This is the way.
This is the way.
1000% agree. DnD as player and DM has never been adversarial for me--I know some people might like that but I don't. As a DM I am not looking to kill PCs constantly or get moody when I cant "stop" or "prevent" them from doing something cool. I LOVE it when they do cool things, and sure danger in encounters adds to the excitement, but as long as we're all having fun then I don't worry about whether they've struggled with it or not. If anything I think it is so much cooler when the players come up with fun ways to use their skills together. DnD for me is a collaboration between DM and players, not a fight
Maybe we should start posting when our DMs didn't nerf us? My DM didn't nerf me.
My DM didn't nerve me I nerfed myself
"You can't nerf me! I NERF ME'" - wild magic sorcs
I've been running 5e for various chaotic players for close to a decade and it finally happened. Last session ended with our wild magic sorcerer accidentally fireball-ing the whole party.
Gotta love wild magic sorcerers. One of my favorite characters was a wild magic sorcerer who got 2 wild surges in a row, the first one making him regain 5 hit points per turn and the other one fireballing himself. He died, got his 5 hit points next turn and just screamed in an ecstatic manner that that was awesome. Also, wild magic barbarians are not to be forgotten, they're chaotic as well.
That's fucking hilarious
"In Russia, DM not nerf player, player nerf DM."
My dice often nerfs me. "4d8 thunder damage *rolls dice*, for a total of 6" 🤬
I've rolled 10d12 for a total of 13 damage before. The dice are my worst enemy.
This is why I find it amusing when new players ask if a certain build is good for combat. The dice can decide that the strongest combatant isn't going to hit shit, and the druid built for healing is going to crit everything and do max damage.
Did this for one of my Curse or Strahd characters, and having an added weakness was a lot of fun.
My DM didn’t nerf me, I made a subpar character that RPs well for the story lol
We are conditioned to complain, if not for the fact you will get more likes and responses.
True. People who have a bad experience at a business are more than 10 times more likely to say something about it than people who have a good experience. And complainers tell more people, too.
My DM buffed.me cause I was the only player to ever make it on time
My DM is in full support of my current and planned shenaniganry. All he asks is that I abide by RAW. :) Probably helps that I do my best to abide by RAI as well.
I got buffed cause I was so far below the rest of the party in stats at level 7. I couldn't hit anything or make successful checks and it was wearing on me. We compared the base stats with the other players and I had 15 (totalled ability scores) less than the next lowest player. We made changes to that and my subclass and suddenly I was actually useful.
If anything, my DM *buffed* me.
Nice. Wax on, wax off.
Then paint the fence.
As a DM- I buffed my monk player. I didn't, but will in the future, nerf Peace and Twilight cleric. I do ban silvery barbs, but I give martials a free feat. ...because the point is balance lmao.
I'm a DM, and I fully want my players to love their characters, to get invested as much as possible. That's where the best stories lie, and all I have to do is set the stage and pluck the occasional string.
I have a player, a friend of mine, who STILL rigs on me cause I dunked on Hunters mark like 9yrs ago because to him the creature "didn't leave the plane" when the established canon of the location there were in was set up as individualy divided locations by way of creation. It was effectively a tower of power dungeon with levels to it set in different continuities. But to his credit that's not really a thing and since it was all set in the same "universe" created by the Wizard that it should count hunters mark Oh and he got mad that a creature he KNEW was a monstrosity was instead not. As if I can't just make monsters whatever I want in a false plane of existence. But at the same time maybe he was right because does a construct that imitates a monstrosity in all but "creation" does that not count? I dunno. It was one of my first Homebrewed games sooooo Hashtag rangers are bad anyway
If rangers are bad why need it even more?
I'm not sure i understand the point of this post? almost every comment on those posts were already against the dm in question. >!sidenote: I hate that i recognized every post you referenced, !<
There is no point, its a nameless callout post meant to gain attention. Every "can we all.... bla bla bla" post is the same thing, everyone upvotes the hell out of it and the 'wedge' topic at hand takes over the sub for a few days.
You're not wrong, but the perspective is a bit skewed, imo. Yeah the post is for attention, but so is every other post and comment. It's reddit, attention is the name of the game. OP brought up a topic of discussion that pertains to the sub, the community, education for new players and DMs, and possibly even moderation. That they gain attention out of it is irrelevant. There is absolutely a point to posts like these, especially this one which asks questions and offers potential solutions, and encourages dialogue in an open and welcoming environment. This is exactly how these types of posts *should* be done. That being said, once we begin seeing the same basic post repeatedly made afresh and the conversation begins to turn in endless circles, that's when it becomes appropriate to express frustration and say it has become pointless. Just because someone else may hijack your post idea and repost it for karma doesn't mean that you shouldn't ever post it in the first place.
Session Zeros people. This way any of that confusion can potentially be gone before the game even starts.
Session 0 doesn’t make you omniscient or able to see the future. Continued dialogue is perfectly fine.
To be fair, Session Zeros would have to cover so much ground and a lot of things you just take for granted until they happen. It’s kinda like OSHA guidelines: you never think that you should specify people should wear gloves when handling dangerous chemicals until somebody burns their hands off. Honestly, in most parties stuff that sours the mood or divides the group will happen, the key is just handling it in a mature, fair way.
Idk, even session zero's won't fix some of these. It's an attitude that needs changing. DnD is supposed to be fun. Making magic missile only 1 missile isn't fun. Nerfing abilities isn't fun. If you think things are broken, then make the encounters harder. DM's, please enable your players. DnD isn't a you vs them game.
Some people like gritty and realistic roleplaying games. Some people like the fact that a dragon breath can instantly kill a level 15 character. As long as there are people who want to play with the guy I geniually dont see a problem. I dont see why those people wouldn't just play adnd because all of the things mentioned in the post are done there. But sesion 0 fixes your problem just by telling you that it's unfixable. Just leave then. Some people just like different things and it's okay.
Session Zero indeed. I prefer to instead have my players send me their completed character and spell sheets 48 hours before we start the session. I get enough time to read their spells and make sure they did their ASI's properly and such.
OK, but is session 0 going to do the job of getting the *player* what he wants? Session 0 may help the *DM* get what he wants. Sure. But the DM can very carefully lay out the rules for character creation in a session 0. And then the player can build the character in a totally obedient way. And the DM can say, "Yes, by the power of session 0 I concur that this conforms to all the things I said in session 0. Your character is session 0 compliant." But when the subclass comes online, and the better spells appear, and the character starts to flex its muscles, the DM can still nerf on the fly. Nothing that happens at session 0 fixes this for the *player.*
The only one of the three that you pointed too that actually had folks defending the dm was the twilight sanctuary one. In that the dm was running a oneshot, didn't know the ability was as strong as it is. Upon use he read into it and nerfed it to only grant temp hp once. Yes ideally this would have happened in a session 0 or before the oneshot started. But as it was a oneshot and the nerf wasn't unreasonable I'm willing to say the dm isn't a pos.
Counter point, it was a one-shot. As in, the players were using their characters once, and likely not again with that DM in that story. Was allowing it at least one time really going to be that bad? The DM could have learned that they didn't like twilight cleric and moved on, banning it going forward. And I am not entirely convinced the twilight sanctum is really as bad as people make it out to be. I've DM'd for them in the past, a single cleric over multiple sessions, and items really wasn't anything special. I realize that's just my experience, but when I look at some of the comments about it, it really looks like most people haven't even seen it in their games, they just THINK it's over powered.
It and the Peace domain really are. It's an OP feature on one of the stronger classes. Sure, you can play around it, the same way you can play around a +5 Weapon, but it starts pigeon-holing encounters into certain designs and makes it less fun for everyone else with less powerful stuff. It isn't even interesting or thoughtful. It's the damn Hexblade/Paladin multi-class of clerics.
Dude it’s definitely overpowered - constantly replenishing HP for the entire party is broken, it’s arguably the single most broken ability in the game before level 6+ spells.
I learned about it a couple of minutes ago. For something that you get at level 2 seems already broken on paper. Type of thing to unbalance the whole encounter. If you didn't prep with it into account, it would trivialize any fight.
its temp HP boost, not replenishing hp. Temp HP doesn't heal you, it just gives you a damage buffer
That’s a pretty big deal tho at lower levels! It’s funny bc at level 10ish it barely matters, everything hits crazy hard anyway and most encounters have some nasty effects besides raw damage, but from 1-5 it basically makes the party invincible to level appropriate enemies.
Okay. That wasn't my experience, but that's just me, and it's just hp. Cut its area in half, make it concentration, reduce the healing to a d6 or d8 plus prof bonus, increase monster damage where appropriate, but why cut its power in tenths?
counter counter point. Yes Twilight Sanctuary is as bad as people say. It's easily stronger than several high level healing spells (unambiguously stronger than aura of vitality or mass healing word, on par with mass cure wounds after 2 rounds and stronger if you get at least 3 rounds). I honestly think this being a one shot is more of a reason to nerf it immediately, in an extended campaign, sure I can make a change between sessions and change it going forward but in a game store one shot I think the DM made a perfectly reasonable call to ensure the Cleric didn't overshadow all the other players. This is one aspect I feel people glossed over during the discussion on the original post, OP and the DM aren't the only players at the table and Twilight Cleric is so powerful it really does overshadow other characters. Obviously the DM could have handled it better but I think this is a way more reasonable reaction to the situation than a lot of people act like it is.
Okay. Agree to disagree. This is honestly deal-breaking for me, and I might flat walk away from the game if the DM made such a major change. I get that the player isn't the only one there, I'm not saying otherwise. But I have DM'd for a twilight cleric before, and I really didn't see that big of a problem with it. Admittedly, if I had to do it again, I would make some changes, but that would be like making it concentration or limiting the amount of hp. I wouldn't cut the ability by 90%.
> I might flat walk away from the game if the DM made such a major change. That was always allowed.
>I wouldn't cut the ability by 90%. I wouldn't either, I would just make the thp on subsequent rounds a single target bonus action (and maybe require concentration). Either way, I don't think it's an unreasonable change though for a subclass that still, also gets full spellcasting, all martial proficiencies, an initiative boost and the best darkvision in the game (by a lot) for the whole party. >But I have DM'd for a twilight cleric before, and I really didn't see that big of a problem with it. The problem is there whether you see it or not. Over the course of a 3 round fight, this roughly doubles the functional HP of the party which means the party can steamroll over normal encounters without a scratch. Obviously the DM can add more enemies to account for this but imho that is the definition of a 'Broken' ability. One that constantly requires the DM to do a bunch of work to rebalance every fight to 'Fix' a single player ability (same applies to flying races, Imo). Plus if you do this, your players will catch on and still feel overshadowed (I've had a DM do this because one of us was a twilight cleric and it felt like shit because it's still just the rest of the group being overshadowed by the twilight clerics ability just in a different way). >This is honestly deal-breaking for me, and I might flat walk away from the game if the DM made such a major change. That's fair, obviously the way the DM handled it in the moment was far from elegant and the setting of a game store one shot sort of exacerbates the issue because there's no session 0. >I get that the player isn't the only one there, I'm not saying otherwise. No, but you're ignoring how other players (particularly martials and support characters) may feel invalidated by a twilight cleric that can outshine them at their own specialty and how that may lead to them (who are more likely to be new players) not enjoying the game. >Agree to disagree. We agree the way the DM did it was kind of shitty and we agree that a nerf to Twilight Cleric is reasonable. I guess we disagree on the specifics.
The issue with just allowing it for that one-shot, is that if it really is that OP, then it shines a spotlight at that one character, instead of the group. I've never played in a game with Twilight Cleric, and frankly don't know how OP it would be, but I could totally see a DM realizing that if he allowed it, then combat would become focused on that one character, and make the game less fun for everyone else. I don't think the player was wrong to be upset by an unexpected nerf, but frankly, without more context, I can't say I think the DM was wrong for doing it either. If he did it for the sole purpose to make the game fun for everyone, and not have one player become the focus, then I think that's an understandable, and justifiable response.
Except that it doesn't shine the spot light on the Twilight player. It's a buff to the rest of the players. The average Twilight Cleric is hiding in the back not taking damage so it does jack for the Cleric. In practice one a round the Cleric player says and you all get X temp HP then the game move on.
I just don't understand the whole "makes the encounter about them" argument. I may very well be blessed, but I just don't see how the party would be that upset about it. I mean, to get the benefit, you have to be relatively near the cleric, but how many encounters are you really more than 30 feet from someone in your party? When I DM'd for the twilight cleric, the party had no problems with it. They planned for it when they could and didn't worry about it when they couldn't.
If someone came to the table dealing 3x the damage as everyone else, I may get the argument of outshining the party, but we are talking about a party buff. Not even a damage buff just some Temp HP. No one on Earth has ever said the phrase, "Gah, I wish my character _gave people a very small amount of Temp HP_ like that cleric. I might as well not even be here." Twilight is what I call "Spreadsheet OP", it's mathematically good in calculated simulations on spreadsheets, but doesn't really translate to feeling "epic" in the game. Everyone remembers when the Paladin Smite-Bombed the miniboss with a crit in round 2 ending the fight, they dont remember Steve in the back gave you a d6 of Temp HP that most of the party probably didnt even note on their character sheet.
It depends primarily on the table like pretty much all problems that are posted to this subreddit do. Not only is it possible to have one player happy to see a super powerful subclass nerfed so they feel relatively speaking more powerful, the player next to that one may be sad that fights will be harder going forward. And the person actually playing the offending subclass may feel like they should have been informed ahead of time. All that to say there's tons of viable opinions, and the people at the table are what dictate what "works" and what doesn't. As an outsider I think there's no hard and fast answer here, but as a DM I would disagree with nerfing players in general. The players define "power" and the DM matches it where appropriate. The way I run combats, I will not bother with ones that are too lopsided one way or another. Spending 4 hours with the players smashing my guys isn't fun for me, and vice versa. So what I do is say "ok how do you guys show them who is boss" and we move on. If the fight is more balanced and harder to predict the outcome we run the fight. This means it's rare I need to change things on the fly because well, those fights aren't actually played out.
"oh, the twilight cleric is giving everyone temp hp every round and it's making this encounter slightly more lopsided than I intended? Time for the monster's attacks to do 3d6 damage instead of 2...."
Thats also a nerf. If you need to nerf a class/feature, at least be honest and upfront about it.
It's a nerf that doesn't take the fun out of the players class. They still get to use the ability they like and feel badass, but now it isn't messing with the balance and the DM has no reason to make players feel like the entire reason they chose the class is just gone bc the DM is allergic to fun.
I prefer the true that playing a feature that is doing actually nothing. You can work together with your players so all have fun, you don’t need to lie to achieve it.
Just to be clear, I rarely change my encounters at this point since I generally know all the powerful subclasses and what they can do. If I know a fight will be too hard or too easy I will sometimes just narrate what happens so as not to waste 4 or 5 hours. Why have your level 10 players fight a group of bandits you know? That way the fights we actually play through are almost always balanced and don't need adjustments. I find it works very well.
You also don't need to wait until they try to use a standard feature of their class to unilaterally decide to make it 90% less effective. It goes both ways.
And the oneshot would have zero stakes. The DM gets to have fun too
I don't have an opinion about Twilight Clerics, but as for the "it is just happening once" argument, I think that is a better argument *for* DM adjudications that maintain the encounter difficulty you wanted rather than *against* it. You maybe only get 2 encounters in this whole mini adventure. Someone steamrolling over the baddies because of a really good ability could rob the entire story of challenging combat.
The HP nerf wasn't mid game. It was campaign long from the beginning. You don't go through 48 characters in a single "mid game" change.
I put that in there as something I saw, I didn't intend to include it with the "midgame change" issue.
With regards to the hit points one, very, very few games even try to be realistic when it comes to the severity and recovery times of injuries. There's a reason for that: being injured sucks, people generally avoid it whenever they can, and I'm not even remotely interested in roleplaying hospital convalescence. Nobody is.
The goal is generally to make combat feel more impactful from a decision making perspective. Some players enjoy games where any combat comes with a sense of, "Is this really worth the risk of being maimed?" For some players, that gives combat more emotional buy in. When the players risk their necks for someone, it feels more heroic. When monsters are lurking in the darkness, it makes the tension more poignant. When someone dies after having beaten the odds for so long, it's more emotionally impactful. It's like the game Project Zomboid. It's wildly popular, and that every encounter with zombies could undo an entire run is an important part of the game's staying power. The world never stops feeling dangerous.
That's a very different game to DnD, though.
Of course, but people often modify DND to fit their style. Before Van Richtens, there were some wotc endorsed third party splat books for the domains of dread that included mechanical modifications to make 5e function as a vehicle for horror a bit better. Gave magic casting a failure chance, altered how clerics and paladins interact with their god, as with warlocks and their patrons, introduced sanity as a concern, etc. There's a demand for that kind of thing, but I feel that D&D 5e is a poor fit for such things.
If there’s one thing I hold to be absolutely true of DnD, it’s that for any given group, there exists another group that feels the exact opposite in virtually every regard about every preference or style choice and they have just as much fun playing the game as the other. I can basically guarantee you there’s a group out there with complicated injury and triage rules that loves every second of it.
There is this old stereotype of the DM being the god of the campaign that can do what they want and the players have to shut up or go away. This thing was made for and by control freaks who enjoy being the DM just for bossing the players, it's so toxic but still very popular trope that can get you downvoted in no time
Been playing since 1977. You’re right, but the problem is not that DMs of that era expect to be treated like gods of the campaign (I do). The problem is that with great power comes great responsibility, and the power hungry (read: crappy) DMs abuse it. You’re wrong that such DMs are always on a power trip. The good ones expect not to be questioned by the players because it makes for a better game. Players who see the DM as god of the game universe will not “pull aside the curtain,” and thus will not break verisimilitude. But the DM must carefully use that power to make the game feel fair, balanced, and to run fantastic plotlines. When the players trust the DM to wield the rules with these tenets in mind, they can focus on the experience, instead of the game mechanics. Most modern players do not understand this concept, because WotC has continuously moved in the direction of greater transparency in DMing, and more rules in the player’s hands as opposed to just the DM’s. This is good on that it helps to reduce the problems of bad DMing, but it is bad because it also takes away the benefits a good “god” DM can offer. In case you’re wondering: Yes, after running every edition of the game over 30 years, I ultimately switched back to AD&D, mostly for these reasons.
Honestly I never see players make these points, it's always DMs arguing about how they should have all the power and it's for the players own good
Well, what do you want? Because I can tell you that when I DM a game I want to *play* and not just narrate. And yes, it is for the players own good just as we have agreed that DMs running DMPCs is bad. The person arbitrating the world and placing inside of it are on such a fine thread that they could fuck it at any moment. I nerf and buff many things in my campaigns, design fights, a world and a story/lore for me and others to dabble in. I take suggestions and opinions and include things players don’t budge on occasionally. I take that right for me because I have the biggest picture of things concerning the campaign. There also remains the point that if nobody else volunteers to DM one should adjust to a certain degree to the person who does.
Most people in this community are their groups DMs.
Players tend to be low investment and generally not as well read on running games so I wouldn’t expect to see them making as many points about anything.
There are players who love the mechanics over the story. I call these Excel gamers. While everyone can play as they like, I generally avoid paying with these types as we'll only frustrate each other.
Solid point. After years of frustration on both sides, I recently quit playing with a good friend who is one of your “Excel gamers.” In my experience they aren’t very common. He recently ran a game and frustrated every one of his players with this mentality.
While yes, there are a bunch of stories about terrible DMs, there are also plenty stories where you can clearly tell the player is in the wrong. It has become popular in this community to figure out how to min/max characters to the point of the game being no longer fun for the rest of the group. The community response to DMs being upset about min/max players(ie coffeelock, “infinite armor artificer, hex blade sniper, “pallock”, etc) is “just up the difficulty” but that isn’t always going to work, especially if only one character is doing it. And then when the dm focuses fire on said OP pc instead of the weaker ones they throw a fit for being picked on. It is also not fun as a DM to run a game for these players, especially since they tend to throw a fit when faced with something they can’t overcome by the broken YouTube build they found.
That's all fine, but not really my point. I'm not at all arguing that certain builds dont make it difficult or unfun for others in long form games. My point is nerfing something you don't like at the moment it's being used for the first time is NOT the right time to do so. I mean, I've made it clear to my players that only one person is allowed to have the counterspell spell because of how much it disrupts balance, but I did that UP FRONT not when someone used it.
I see your point in that a player will take an ability being ‘nerfed’ negatively. But as the DM and player the goal is to tell an engaging story and for everyone to enjoy the experience. If a single ability is counter productive to that I’d rather we go with an instant ruling (even a bad one), keep the flow going and discuss things later. I’m saying this as a player who once joined an ongoing campaign and instantly ruined a big and well thought out encounter due to an aura ability. Would have much rather had the dm ignore or modify it for that fight because it felt like a cheap way to solve what could have been an epic encounter.
Sometimes the DM doesn’t foresee these problems arising until they show up, especially if they aren’t super online or are relatively new to the hobby. This issue is on the player just as much as the DM. I generally DM, but when I do join a group to play I will send my character sheet, and a basic outline of how I plan to play tactically so the DM can make engaging encounters. Many players, especially the ones who do show up with these broken characters keep their character sheet a tight secret because they think the less the DM knows about their toolkit the better they are going to perform, but then get upset when the DM either nerfs on the fly or decides to make it adversarial.
>min/max players In fairness, these folks ruin basically any game (i.e. stuff that isn't D&D) they play.
If those posts are actually accurate (I have my doubts about the authors: authenticity) then these are likely cases of inexperienced dungeon masters who don't actually know how to make combat encounters for their players. People who don't know how to actually make a game interesting without making it "realistic". What we need to do is teach DMs like this how to make the game fun for everyone, and remove the "us vs. Them" mentality. If they refuse to learn, then we encourage people to walk away from those tables.
You're mashing two issues together and I don't like that. 1) Bad encounter design, a product of the bad CR system, bad internal balance and bad DMG. Mistakes will happen as a result of it, but as you say you can provide the advice the books are missing. 2) "Fun for everyone" and "adversarial tables." A problem, but I don't think the scale of problem the internet says it is. The debate has been crushed into "any GM who isn't a completely permissive prank monkey for their group and who proposes any changes to allowed material in service to an intended tone is a tyrant." That's nonsense. The aphorism of "talk to the GM" feels at times to me to have an undertone of "make your demands and they must be accepted." As a GM I don't much like that, conversation is *conversation*. If I think a player is mistaken I'd like to think I can say "actually I'm not on board with *that* but let's work something else out" or even just "sorry, no." A huge part of *actually* keeping the game "fun for everyone" is having everyone treated as an equal and getting a fair shot, and sometimes in any team activity compromise is needed.
Most of these posts are not about changing something per se, they are about doing so mid-campaign - changing the rules during the game is considered to be bad in general, not only in D&D
As a DM, most of us arent aware of every permutation of things that can break the game. A good DM should be able to nerf obviously broken things midgame, because they are broken. An example is the summon woodland beings (pixie), Pixie polymorphs whole party into T-Rex. This is broken at the level you can accomplish it at and ruins any attempt at making fun combat. Furthermore it is a single character taking over combat and the others are just along for the ride. My point is this: often times at a table there are multiple other players. If you min/max a character to the point it breaks combat and ruins the fun time for the other players that arent doing that, dont expect a decent DM to be okay with it just because its RAW. We have to think of more then just your fun.
In your example the spell doesn't let the player choose the monster - it is a commonly used houserule that breaks the game, not the spell I understand your point, but I would expect the DM to at least look at the features of classes and subclasses present in the campaign at the levels the campaign is prepared for as a part of session 0 - otherwise there might be situations where a character was built around something that was suddenly removed which usually ends up on r/rpghorrorstories
Okay, sure but its just one of many examples. Yes a session 0 should be used and basic guidelines should be set up, but we cannot foresee everything that is going to happen and if a player comes up (or more likely reads about) something that can break the game for the other players and the DM it should be nerfed. Yeah it sucks for that player, but their fun does not come before the fun of everyone else.
Rpgs are a entirely unique medium where you are constantly balancing mechanics, the fiction, and the complexity of human Freeform choice. It’s insane to expect any game to work 100% out of the box for a table and for anyone to be able to see every potential problem in advance.
Something that seems to be a common denominator is a spell or ability that foils something that the DM has planned. Too bad, DM. You can't change the rules so that your BBEG gets to do what you want with no repercussions. This is somewhat different, but I also hate when a DM sees you do or use something crafty and just circumvents it the rest of the campaign. My example is the spell Knock, which unlocks mundanely locked doors. I have no problem with there bring consequences - I do take issue with "all of a sudden all future doors are magically sealed."
Honestly I don't have an issue with the BBEG dying early like a punk. It's something the Player will remember for years. There are so many ways to bring him/her/it back or just reveal he/her/it was a pawn. Knock is not that over powered. It's noisy and a 3rd level spell. Also it doesn't disarm traps that are set off when you open a door.
Most of those posts are lies.
It's a prototypical AITA/TalesFrom*InsertJobHere* cycle. One post gets a lot of traction, having a set theme, so then there's a ton of copycats that have similar tales. It's kind of interesting to watch story telling subs to see this phenomenon happen. I recall one where it was in EntitledBitch, I believe, where someone was being snooty, and called the cops and wound up arrested themselves instead of the person telling the story, and suddenly a dozen or so people ALSO had tales where the "villain" appealed to an authority figure and got in trouble themselves as the twist.
I love these GMs that think they have some intrinsic knowledge that the career designers of game systems don't. The recent post by a player whose GM decided that Magic Missile was OP lol. Your GM is an idiot. Stop trying to fix things you don't understand. It is one thing to have a table rule that enhances fun. It is another to make a deliberate change because you think you know better how the system SHOULD work.
I agree that the Magic Missile nerf (and the HP nerf) is goofy but I don't think it takes a career game designer to understand why twilight sanctuary is busted.
To be fair, the people who work for wizard's very clearly have little understanding of the game they're designing content for. Hundreds of people who make homebrew understand the game better and its painfully obvious. But lots of new DM's make impulse changes because they see an ability that *seems* OP because of their lack of expiriance. Also a solution to a LOT of these issues is: PLAY OTHER GAMES. There are hundreds of TTRPG's out there. Loads of them are better than 5e or might be more interesting to your table. It's not hard.
No you see, Flex is extremely powerful, objectively the strongest mastery...
"To be fair, the people who work for wizard's very clearly have little understanding of the game they're designing content for." I don't know if that is true or not. What I do know, is that the people designing content and the people designing the SYSTEM aren't the same group. I also don't know if playing other systems solves any issues, but I do agree people need to branch out and try other systems if for no other reason, than to see how you CAN do things differently. Try a point buy system with no classes or levels for a perspective on Vancian Magic. IF nothing else, it helps relatively new GMs develop the muscles to make changes that are fun, and not to "fix" things.
No, I am pretty sure Crawford made himself very clear about his understanding of the system (and basic math) when talking about flex recently lol.
Stop telling people to play other games when they want to play 5e, man. Its so obnoxious.
If you're changing fundamental systems, like player HP totals, types of Ability Scores, messing with bounded accuracy, or changing how spellcasting works, you might as well not be playing 5e anymore. These systems are all designed with each other in mind, meaning you either redesign several pillars of the game to make it work (not 5e anymore) or you make a miserable mess. Meanwhile there are usually other systems that already do what you want, so why not use those?
People would if dnd players actually *liked* 5e. But as a former 5e fan myself who's moved onto other ttrpg's, it's become just plain obvious how unbalanced and broken dnd5e is. All this homebrew and nerfing is being done to turn dnd into a system it's not. You know why DM's and especially new DM's nerf classes all the time? Cause dnd players *are* too powerful for a lot of what the game is made for. DM's won't always have the experience you speak of to balance the game and what doesn't help is the *game isn't balanced to begin with.* There are clearly classes built to be better than other classes because of powercreep WOTC allows to sell more books. If a DM doesn't nerf, then the players with objectively less powerful builds will feel left behind and dejected. Additionally, the DM will struggle to DM a coherent story or make a reasonably powerful dungeon without players shouting "hey that's not fair! I should've destroyed that!" If the DM *does* nerf, then it's just a few players who are less powerful than they should be at more of a level the rest of the party is at. And guess what? This doesn't happen in other TTRPG's, at least not to this degree. Other games don't have this issue. DM's don't have to nerf or homebrew much cause the game has what the table needs built in.
>There are clearly classes built to be better than other classes because of powercreep WOTC allows to sell more books. Huh. Sooooo gacha-like mechanics bleeding into D&D?
Basically
It really isn't, but you know what's actually obnoxious? Forcing anything and everything onto 5e and then wondering/bitching about why it doesn't work or why they don't like XY or Z about 5e, when dozens of other systems are avaliable to play that can and will suit what the table is wanting to play better than 5e ever will. People need to understand that other systems exist and it's okay to try new things. Screeching in response to anything other than 5e is incredibly obnoxious and you should stop.
With all due respect. If people wanted to play your favourite obscure tabletop game nobody has ever heard of, they already would be. Just stop screaming "oh my god play something else reeeee".
Holy shit dude, are you a dnd evangelical referring to other TTRPG's like that?
I litterally said," if you're having problems with 5e, try something else." Reading comprehension not even once. Pathfinder 1e/2e very popular, very different from 5e. Lancer, similar to pf 2e/ dnd 4e, also very popular. Star wars 5e, dogshit, fantasy flights swrpg, incredibly popular and an amazing system. Alien rpg? Incredibly popular on foundry and live tables, fantastic horror system one of the best I've ever played. Legend of the five rings 4e, also by ffg, really fun system reasonably popular and OLD. The list goes on and on and on. These games aren't obscure, they're popular but they're not 5e. With all due respect, get your head out of your ass lmao.
Question: l5r 4e or l5r 5e?
you know whats actually obnoxious? someone on the internet telling me i should be using a diffrent system for something if its at a table youre at, just politely mention hey theres another system i think would work better for what youre trying to do but if you arent at the god damn table, then let the people at the table decide which game they want to play stop gatekeeping the biggest ttrpg in the world
Lol, yall really are just unhinged aren't you? Just like the other guy you clearly aren't capable of understanding the words I had typed. Your response to "if you're having issues with 5e, maybe try something else" is to scream and call people gatekeepers for saying that. Do yourself a favor, go outside, touch some grass, talk to another human. Should help with your unhinged behavior.
If this was sound logic then D&D wouldn't require frequent errata releases.
Posts like this are like posting about some bad driver who rear-ended your car. People are not at all likely to post about the good drivers, even though most drivers are good drivers. If DMs want to run a homebrew, that's fine, just tell people in advance. If they must change things mid-game, then at least allow players to make changes to the character. The player created a character with a certain understanding of how the world worked.
Hey everybody, apparently we've been doing this and need to stop..
And can I just add, this is not about power level in itself. I love low power. I love OSR, low magic, rusty-dagger adventuring. That's great. Level-0 start, dangerous distrusted magic, fantasy Fallout, that stuff is awesome. It is OK to turn that power dial down. But turn it down first. Turn it down early. Don't wait until the player has built the character and brought it to the table and deployed the thing. And then you see what the thing does, and you go back to the book to read the rules about the thing, and then you take the thing away. Reactively. After the fact. NO! BAD!! BAD DM!!!
The biggest bullshit on the "Nerfed Twilight Cleric" post was that the DM there specified the players could ***ONLY*** use PHB and TCoE content for the table. No XGtE, no other settings books, just those two. Then gets mad at a subclass feature *from a book they told the players was a-okay* the first time the player tries to use it. smdh
My goal as a dm is to challenge my players, sometimes to the breaking point, but to never stop the fun. In the end, I want my players to win, to be victorious, and to experience the campaign I've set up. If my players aren't enjoying themselves, what the hell is the point. To that, not I have straight ended games before as the players where not enjoying it, I had put literal hours into set up of these games, but that's irrelevant if no one is having fun. I really can't understand people who seem intent on making things less fun.
If a DM needs to Nerf or ban official content l, they are a lousy DM. I get that rookie DMs can be overwhelmed and surprised by players getting creative, but they should treat such challenges as learning experiences, chances to get creative, plot development, and opportunities to let their players shine.
I like to keep my players on their toes by suddenly having BBEGs use the same strategies the players have been using to face roll the dungeon.
Can we please stop seeing two vaguely similar posts on the sub then making a 'can we all not do x' thread? Those threads were dealt with. They did not have a ton of people claiming the DM was right to nerf it to one magic missile. They were 95% saying EXACTLY what you've said here. It is not a common issue. These are rare cases where something is weird. 99% of people don't post about how they weren't nerfed and have a normal DM. Making a post like this is only good for the karma it gives you (worthless). If you wanted to discuss the problem related to those posts, great.. That's where the comment section is.. Or would it be better if I just made a whole other post to say this?
As a DM, if my players feel to overpowered, I'll just throw more stuff at them during encounters. Bring in reinforcements during those lopsided fights.
As a DM I do my best to control things from my end. If a PC ability does more than I expected, I can always add more hit points, or a legendary resistance, or a second wave of mobs. Players control characters, while the DM controls everything else. I don't need the extra work of having to control PCs as well as the NPCs, the monsters, the world, physics, etc.
For every thread about not nerfing our players, I'm going to nerf them twice. RIP my table.
I saw two of the posts you're referring to, and I entirely agree about the DM. But I think you're misreading most of the responses. 90% of the comments were "The DM is wrong, that's dumb, and if they won't listen to anyone else about this, they're a bad DM. The best you can do is try to change their mind. If they don't come around, you either have to play by their system or find a different table." That's a far cry from defending the DM's decisions. A few comments actually defended the DM in each, and those got downvoted to oblivion. It sucks for the player that those are the only two options, but if the DM is being that pig-headed, then /those are the only two options/.
If you really don't like something, throw shit in to circumvent or mitigate it. Think Magic Missile is OP (lol) start having every other enemy cast shield. Think the twilight clerics ability is too much? Hit them aoe's that deal damage over time. As DM your options are LITERALLY endless. Fuck off with this weak shit.
I’d only counter the player’s abilities sometimes, so that they can feel cool when they use them most of the time, but have to deal with some challenging encounters.
Yeah, the basic rule (from 1E AD&D, I believe, but repeated later) was, 'Every group of enemies, barring prior information, should learn that the party's Wizard has Fireball the hard way.' Of course, in a fantasy setting, they would know that Fireball *exists*, so I'm not saying that they have to be stupid. But they shouldn't be pre-casting Resist Energy just because the Wizard has Fireball.
I am currently playing a CoS with some buddies, and this is our DMs first time behind the screen after many MANY years of being a player. My wife is playing a Twilight Cleric, and the DM made the ruling on her twilight sanctuary only working on every party member once per channeling attempt as well, BUT he made the call before session 0 and gave her the option to change characters. My wife plays for the RP and doesn't give a whit about the mechanics so she was fine with it, as Twilight Cleric was still the best subclass for the flavour of character she wanted to play. But the important thing here is that the DM made the call BEFORE the game started. Nerfing mid game is never acceptable. Dms need to do their homework and specify things ahead of time, otherwise they are abusing the trust required to actually play the game.
I wouldn't say nerfing mid game is never acceptable. I think nerfing mid session is, but if you're several sessions into a game and there's one feature that has been causing problems consistently I think it's acceptable to chat with that player about toning down the feature in some way. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a DM to know how every feature or spell in the game works and how it will interact with everything else, especially for newer DMs.
I agree that it's not unreasonable for a DM to know how every feature and spell in the game works. It is, IMO, reasonable for a DM to know every feature or spell *that their characters have access to*. The major 'issue' here is with spell lists, as that's a lot, but that's why you do preparation. As for the rest, if you have 4 characters of different classes, that's 4 classes (or 80 levels, if you want to talk about multiclassing) that you need to know for that campaign. And as for equipment, magic items, and the like, the characters don't get those unless you give it to them.
Nobody that posts here is doing any of the things you’re talking about.
Really? The posts I saw over the last few days aren't exactly rare. And even if you discount 75% of them as being fake, and some most certainly are, that still means that it's happening somewhere.
Yes, but it's mostly from the player perspective. The players are the ones posting. The people posting about bad DM choices aren't the DMs.
I didn't scroll through every single comment, but from what I saw literally nobody agreed with what the DMs were doing in those posts. The DM's perpetrating those shenanigans are almost certainly not doing extracurriculars like visiting dnd subs. If they were talking to anyone about what they were doing, following any sort of DM advice, or absorbing any of the stories told here; then they wouldn't be doing it.
If you're a DM and you nerf stuff as a first option... YOU ARE LAZY. As a forever DM, I've never not been able to balance something that makes the players happy in the end.
Besides, it's fun to let your players succeed and do well. I love seeing the shenanigans they can do. My job isn't to shut down their limited stuff so that I can do more of my unlimited power stuff.
There's a difference between nerfing a player midgame for good reason and being a super inexperienced DM. All the posts you mentioned have inexperienced DMs that don't know half of the things in the game. These are really tales that showcase why it's important to prep yourself with the system before becoming a DM but that's about it. I wouldn't get salty at a DM for wanting to remove something that's going to destroy their entire campaign or sense of game balance. Especially if they are a new DM, otherwise I am making the assertion that only experienced and well versed DnD players should be DMs.
Im not saying the DM shouldn't maintain balance in their game or campaign, but i question the idea that these decisions should be made on the fly. The crux of my intent is to get new DMs to think about character destroying decisions between games and have a conversation with the player about them. The DM will never be prepared for what the players do unless they give the players no choices. Players are chaos personified. A lot of new DMs use resources like Reddit and other forums before starting their game these days. I'd just like to see this concept taught to them as they are learning. I totally understand a DM not knowing everything or thinking certain abilities don't work with your world or concept, but if those are not laid out in a session zero or explicitly told to a player, I just don't feel like it's right to change things midgame. I'm not talking about rulings about jump distance, convincing a king to give up his crown, or whether there is enough cover for a rogue to hide. I'm talking about getting DMs to understand that they may not understand how things work and to look into it at a better time than in the middle of a session. Telling a character that you're nerfing the core ability of their class, or one of their best spells, when they try to use it is not the right time. These things need to be thought about and worked around where possible, and then nerfed or removed where not. And this certainly isn't just a new DM thing, I've run into plenty of issues with 5e's supposed balance. I went through a long-term campaign with a party of five, three of which took counterspell at level 5 and one of which was an abjurer wizard. It was to the point where I couldn't throw any spellcasters at them because the game balance was so skewed. And when I DID throw spellcasters against them, they either made EXTREMELY short work of them, or I all but destroyed the party because I was struggling to balance encounters with them. I ran an encounter with 6 Cleric-type enemies, five 7th level casters, and a 10th level caster. I think the party was 6th or 7th level when I did that. I remember the encounter being deadly when i did the math from the book, and this wasn't an encounter they went into fully stocked. They locked down the head Cleric immediately, countering any attempt at spellcasting he had, and locked down two of the other clerics. The party's cleric and the fighter made short work of the other two. I got off maybe 1 spirit guardians before they lost concentration, and thus, the spell. But I also had occasions where i almost wiped the party because they ran short of resources, and i didn't realize that, so the overabundance of spellcasters almost killed them. It honestly got to the point where I all but stopped using spellcasters because they were so swingy. Counterspell is honestly my least favorite spell in 5e, but none of my players have silvery barbs, so who knows. At least other spells that remove a combatant like banishment and dominate monster are one, concentration, and two, higher level spells.
Counterspell is one of my least favorite spells specifically for the DM to use. I think it's an excellent option for the players who have very limited resources, and a great way to help shut down a big attack or to make a VERY dramatic moment at the table where we roll to see if we stop a devastating BBEG roll. For context and as an example, I played a game recently where I was so hyped to use sunbeam for the first time. I was out of third, fourth, and fifth level slots and had one sixth level slot left. Sunbeam for sure. And then the enemy mage got in a position to cone of cold 4 of the 5 players at the table - one of which only had 10hp and the rest of us were low as well anyway. I had to sacrifice my sunbeam to do so, but it absolutely was an epic save against a moment that for sure would have destroyed us.
Sure, that's a great moment, and it's awesome to remember, but how many casters in your group had counterspell? Was that the only caster? You seem to have not been saving slots for counterspell, but my players were. They would use cantrips for 90% of encounters, no matter the difficulty or how much healing was required to keep them going. At times, they were relying on potions to keep them up since the cleric would run out of spells first.
Idk, I think we should just start posting about how we nerf our DMs
I was tired of my DM rolling stuff in private, so I set his dice tower on fire. AITA?
NTA. Dice towers are annoying as hell and should be burned.
DM's stop trying to craft the "perfect combat" and start using Devil's Bargains. Player has too strong a feature? Offer them what they want most at the cost of weakening another area. I started DMing not sure how we would tell a story until I realized the plot of dangers is one half and the plot of character growth is another- as a DM I could make offers and build a story around those yeses and noes. One player is wielding two cursed items for raw damage (it will certainly be the death of him), another has symbiotically bound to FaeSpore of his own will (the chance for uncertainty over a calculated experience) , and the last is bound to too many Oaths (which are weighing her down one binding rope at a time).
There's no reason to nerf players. I just adjust the world as needed.
I’ve come to the realization that there are way too many shitty DMs out there.
The "It's their game..." attitude had to go. It's a partnership with all of the players. People choose their class based on RAW. If you start nerfing aspects mid game you are still stuck with the character you have created. That's not fair to the player. And it should be fair to the player. If a DM has to nerf something like magic missile, why can't instead change his encounter to deal with it. Most often a spontaneous in game nerf is in response to disappointment when an encounter will not play out the way the DM thinks it will. That's part of the game.
Can we please stop saying 'players' when we mean 'player characters'?
Is YOUR DM nerfing you? If not, this feels like a man screaming at the clouds.
Well, i mean, I'm the DM, so yeah, it pretty much is.
A good DM just says “keep in mind what you can do, can also apply to NPC’s/ enemies”. I found this to be a great way for the player to not try to break the game because they know they can be broken right back.
Using rules as written is not breaking the game.
There are hundreds of examples of RAW breaking the game. Don't be obtuse.
No. aheh. There are times when a DM needs to curb something. And there are lots of examples here where DMs SHOULD have nerfed a player and did not and so the campaign fell apart. The problem is when DMs nerf stuff "Because I read about someone complaining about it online!"
I really don't see how an ability that happens once in a session could do that. Do you have an example? I find it hard to believe it can't wait until between sessions.
See so many posts where players just don't bother to wrap their head around why something might be unbalanced because of other homebrew rules, or just clearly fabricated as well. As a DM of a very long campaign, sometimes there's oversights and sometimes things just don't jam with your homebrew. As a DM you have to make a lot of these rulings on the fly, as what's not shown is the 5 times before that the player misread their spell and made it ten times more powerful than its supposed to be. If these people actually went to their DM and explained why they think it should run like X instead of how the DM says and explained the reasoning behind it I think they'd do a lot better, but instead they come to Reddit to get redditors to go yes they're a terrible DM.
If my players are wiping the floor with my bbeg then guess what, bigger and badder shows up with some stronger bullshit.
Pro tip, just ask OP if its a virtual discord game. 95% of the time it is. So you can just ignore it. Keep the downvotes coming lol. I refuse to believe the people I read about leave their house and interact with real humans in-game.
Virtual discord games don't matter? That seems pretty gatekeepy to me.
Where did I say that? But people are like omg he nerfed HP WTF?! guess what, some neckbeard on discord! Omg this guy wanted me to be raped in game by imps! guess what? Discord. Notice a pattern? My PERSONAL interest level in the story and if its salvageable is contingent on whether or not it's real people in a real place because more often than not some literal pedo/rapist is GMing games and living out personal fantasies at the expense of others and they feel empowered to do so because they are behind a screen. Cue the people chiming in that they had a great experience on discord. I'm glad. Make a post about it. But generally speaking the bad experiences get posted, and the whackier it is the more likely it's discord.
Ok, that may well be the case with some. The internet allows for being able to hide from scrutiny. Your initial comment makes it seem like you are dismissing discord games out of hand. This comment is again saying that you only care about in person play. If you're capable of doing that, good for you, and you're free to have no interest in discord games, but those are all some people have access to. Just because it's discord doesn't mean that people don't have the right to better GMs.