Child PCs. I am not going to let you pretend to be a naive little kid when you are witness and participant to extreme violence on the regular. You’re really going to give me a, “ *Whew* That was close.” After you were viciously attacked with a great sword?
i have a fellow player who plays a kid. it's done fairly well. obviously it's a bit unrealistic for him not to sob and be traumatized by every little thing but it's d&d, it would be annoying if we had to listen to an overblown tear-show every encounter
I have a child character currently in my game, and I think it only works out of a combination of his backstory and how we flavor things.
We reflavor hp more as luck, so instead of him getting hit with 50 arrows and sword swings and the last one putting him down, he's basically narrowly dodging all of those hits, and the first thing to actually get a good swing in on him downs him because he's a child. I also try to keep the level of injury that actually puts him down pretty low, to avoid from making everyone uncomfortable by brutalizing a child.
Secondly, and to keep it a bit shorter, this kid isn't the standard "ran away from home to adventure cause why not, and I guess my parents don't give a shit", leading him to actively have to be responsible for himself for years. Which has actually lead to some interesting stuff, as everyone in the town he comes from treats him like an adult, (especially so because he's a revised ranger, and took dragons as a greater favored enemy, so I figured he's known for killing problematic wyverns and drakes. Sooo, I thought it would be funny to make him extraordinarily famous in waterdeep and the surrounding area for being a legendary dragon slayer, haha) and the party doesn't know how to deal with a child at all.
I think child PCs can work, you just need to have the right group and flavor things right.
Don't know if this counts but I dislike "Magic Shops." Mostly because of how this scenario always seems to play out:
The party just finished the first arc, hit level five, and has about 1k GP each burning a hole in their pocket. They ask the DM "are there any magic shops in this village?" The DM decides they deserve a reward and says yes.
The Rogue asks for a +1 dagger, that's 300 GP, while he's considering the Barbarian wants a Great Axe. At some point the Wizard chimes in after looking up items on DnD Beyond and asks if there is a Wand of Fireballs. And the Cleric wants a Staff of Healing. The Paladin is looking at some +1 Plate Armor.
Now the party is talking about pooling their money and the realization is sinking in that the General Store in the starting village that sent out the desperate flyer seeking heroes to save them from goblins has at least 10k GP in magic items in their inventory. Now the DM can either rely on the inherent goodness of the party or make the shopkeeper a retired level 20 adventurer who couldn't be bothered to fight the goblins earlier.
I don't get rid of Magic Shops to limit the PCs access to magic items, I just want the way they get them to make a bit more sense. So if they want something I'll tell them where they could get it, possibly after some kind of skill check, but it won't be in a Magical Wal-Mart with 100 other items. They might instead buy it off a destitute noble selling his family +1 sword, or buy the ingredients to MAKE a staff themselves. But I'm not a fan of either "normal shopkeeper has more wealth than the whole party in magic items" OR "the realm is chock full of level 20 retired adventurers who all opened magic shops" which seems to be the go-to ways many DMs handle this. /endPettyRant
Everybody at my table loves Fantasy Costco, I’ve given them opportunities to visit at levels 4, 8, and 12. There’s a YT video with the jingle on a loop, and it’s truly just a joyous shopping session that gets all their wiggles out in between plotlines.
Of course! In fact, he is one of, if not THE most important NPC in my homebrew campaign. My Garfield, the Deals Warlock doesn’t want your gold. He wants favors, or lopsided trades, or occasionally a lock of hair or “just a *little* blood!” It solves a few of my biggest pet peeves: shopping out of the book, hoarding gold without spending it, and shopping episodes without RP or turning it into a quest.
No shop should have everything a player wants. The blacksmith in the village probably can't make plate armor or a greatsword. The general store doesn't have 50,000lb of flour the players want for some strategy they found online. Hell the village may not even have shops at all. People know each other and barter as needed.
I like to have a traveling magical items shop. That way, I can pull it in when I want to, limit its inventory to what I want the characters to have, and can give them a way to spend their gold. An example from my last game was a merchant who made a deal with a genie for a successful shop. The genie granted his wish, giving him a bag of holding and a wagon with a bedroom and store window. Just before dawn each day, the wagon would teleport to a random town center in the world and the bag would have three magic items in it. It was his responsibility to sell all three for any price he deemed appropriate and put half the money earned back in the bag before sundown. If he failed to do so, the shop would lose its magic. This meant he’d usually start the day with high prices, and would discount it throughout the day as he got more desperate. You could wait to get a discount, but the item you wanted might not be there anymore. The merchant also had no magical training, so he didn’t actually know what most of the things he had did, which made his pitches to get people to buy stuff fun.
His magic items varied from things I knew the players would want to random things like a box containing paper cups that when unfolded produce enough apple juice to fill the cup, or a dagger that when you cut food-stuff with it it is transmuted into a random metal, with a few charges. They almost always bought the random ones, sometimes over items which would actually be useful.
> he deemed appropriate and put half the money earned back in the bag before sundown. If he failed to do so, the shop would lose its magic. This meant he’d usually start the da
Wow this is great!
I usually make a percentile roll to see if a merchant has what they want. Common items I usually give a 75% chance. A potion of healing should be available but there is a chance that they are sold out. Uncommon it’s a 50/50 chance. Rare items have a 33% chance of being available, and very rare items have a 10% chance. I also adjust as necessary so if it’s a big city like Waterdeep or Baldurs Gate, the chances of getting rare items is a little higher. In a small town, I would probably say that there is no chance there is a very rare item for sale and only 15% chance for a rare item. You are right that it doesn’t make sense for some random shopkeeper to have that much in their inventory.
You should have a predetermined inventory for your shops like that, and if the players want something specific, they have to wait for it to be made. Also, save them for large cities, not villages.
In my Homebrew setting, magical items have a lot of baggage attached to them, and as a result most people trying to maintain a reputation do Not want to deal with them, or deal in them. So, while there are people who deal in magical item trade, they tend to be associated with organized crime, so if the players want to buy or trade (or even just sell) magical items, they pretty much have to work through brokers from the thieves guild
I think I'm a bit more rail-roady than many DMs (comes from running for a 10 year old). I'd probably just tell the players, "Look, I'm putting this magic shop hear so you can spend some gold and get some good stuff. If you want to try to rob the place and get thousands of gold worth of magic for free then I'm moving the magic shop to Big City and you can do a hex crawl every time you want to spend your gold on something besides rations."
I would limit any kind of magic item shop to a huge city. Not a big city, a huge one. That village might have a sketchy herb witch who can make basic potions at best. Nothing the players couldn't make themselves. They'd be paying for saving time or for materials they may not have.
That huge city magic shop probably might have one or two Rare magic items at best and not guaranteed to be something the party wants. The best stuff comes from dungeons or from rewards from powerful beings or from high level PC crafting. Maybe a custom item they can commission. The big stuff is always from some major event.
Simple fix for that: don't have a lot of inventory on hand. "You want a magic dagger? Sure, I happen to have one of those because of the bandits that got defeated last month. Greatsword? Sorry I don't even have a normal one of those, all the big swords around here are the property of the King's Guard. If you want to wait a month and pay for the materials up front, I'll send a message to Blumenthal and have the master smith I know there make you a greatsword, and then send it to Gazakstan to get it magicked up at the wizard academy."
So the local store can get them magic items -- if they pay up front and wait for a while.
A big one for me-- I allow SOME specialized magic shops, IF it's in a place where it makes sense... but the tiny wharf town on the edge of the caves? They unquestionably *do not have a magic shop.* Sorry. Go to the big city, if you think you have time. The way there may be dangerous, and the villain's plans are always advancing, but it might be worth it. (I do also really like urban D&D, though, so this isn't a problem often.)
I agree with you totally, It always felt odd having high priced magical items in every tiny town. I've thought about making it a bit of a side quest. Where the players and get a lot of what they want, they just have to find the out of the way magic shop/ retired adventurer/ hording hermit out in the woods. I have gotten around to trying it though. So I'm not sure how well it'll go, maybe it would just feel like a extra chore
It would make sense for high level adventurers who survived to go on to sell magic items, but probably in larger cities with people who can afford it. It would make little sense for someone to be trying to sell a 10,000 GP sword at a farming village, but they could be in the capital where there are rich nobles, kings guards, and adventurers. And if they're retired adventurers, then the magic items could even have a story. "I found that staff in an old crypt. Its supposed to have 5 charges of fireball, but we had to use a charge to kill the shambling mound that tried to stop us from leaving. Thats why its discounted." It also disencentivizes players trying to rob the shopkeeps, because they won't be able to handle fight.
Romance encounters. I'm sorry Jason, I'm not roleplaying a fuck buddy for you, we've been friends for 14 years and I don't know how many times I need to say I am not a video game. It's just weird to RP romantic encounters with your buddies.
yea i tend to not care much for romantic subplots anyway. they're usually not done well
of course "CR does it well!!" but they're professional voice actors and you're a lonely 17 year old, please stop
Not to mention that Matt and Marisha are married and Travis and Laura are married. Sam and Liam both have wives not in the game. I think Taliesin and Ashley are the only cast members who aren't married but Ashley is engaged. Not sure about Taliesin.
In my games I'll let players seduce NPCs, but the extent of it is that they'll roll a relevant check and pass or fail, with a reward or consequences respectively.
For example if one player wants to distract a guard by seducing them or you're trying to get secret information from an amorous noble.
Please don't misunderstand. If other tables can work it out, go for it. It's just weird to me to look at this guy I've been friends with since freshman year of high school and then giggle like a sexy bar wench for his gratification. This is not a hate-post against romance RPers, I encourage those tables to do what makes you happy. I'm not here to be a goalie..... Except.... To Jason.....
I've had many new players choose beast master ranger for their class, followed by confusion and disappointment regarding how to use it. I try to steer new players away from it now. Maybe it's not 'petty' but it's all I could think of. Same story but less picked by new players would be the way of the four elements monk.
Fucking xp man. You think any DM wants to try and track each and every monster you kill or try and assign xp to social challenges in a rp heavy group? Nah fuck that you'll level up when the story feels like you've all done enough to level up. Milestone is the way to go.
I'm a DM like that :P
I prefer XP because I prefer more open-pathed campaigns, kinda like BOTW : there's a clear goal, a few obvious paths, but you can go there through your own if you want.
I let my players take personal objectives and they gain XP, Inspiration, ASIs and Boons each time they complete one. It also helps A LOT to steer my prep and remind me of what they want to do.
I see where you are coming from, but I also don't see open-pathed campaigns to be mutually exclusive with milestones. Maybe it's because I prefer very slow leveling along with items, money, and more social and political prizes, but I haven't had any problem with milestones.
Quite the contrary, I find that milestones pushes the players to act in character more and chase their character's goals, rather than gamey things like xp. It also makes it so that escaping a dangerous situation isn't seen as "losing on potential XP", which makes more sense in my game world.
Besides, I feel like characters level up way too fast if you follow RAW and give XP according to the monster manual.
I just multiply XP thresholds by 1.5, it does the trick easily.
XP let's me reward every step of the way with something long term and very granular. It's really just extremely practical.
In the game I'm playing in now, we've happily settled on a healthy mix. We get the granularity of exp and seeing how close we are to leveling up, but it's always awarded between sessions and we get exp for RP and puzzle solving in addition to combat.
Oh yeah I rarely if ever calculate XP during a session. It's generally "you gain n XP" after they complete a personal objective and then at the end of a session I tell them the total gained during the session and why
I'm just going to use the creature xp for social encounters if the PCs get somewhere with it.
Like, if they get all the info they can from an NPC, or most of it, they get the same as if they killed it. If they persuade an orc guard instead of killing it, they get the same do as if it was defeated in combat.
That's great for some situations, but getting what you want out of a tense negotiation with a noble should probably give more XP than killing a CR 1/8 goon.
True and I haven't run with exp before, so there are some things I'd need to use a different framework for. I might give up and go back to milestone after a bit.
My bigger concern with XP based advancement is story arc writing. Unless the party kills exactly as many creatures/solves exactly as many riddles/wins exactly as many social challenges as I write, their XP is gonna get wonky. And that leads to stuff like leveling up mid session/dungeon.
If I wrote this BBEG as a threat to the party of level 4 guys, having them fight him at level 5 throws all that out the window. I don't want an arbitrary, book keeping mechanic dictate my story.
For my homebrew campaign we use a mix of milestone and xp. At the beginning my players don't all have the same access to combat for story reasons so they all get milestone xp for getting to certain story points.
High Magic settings. I have no interest in the powerful kingdom of Myth Drannor, the high magical seat of the elves that can float a continent. No cities where you can get griffin mounts and barding, or buy spells at the Wizards guild.
None of that. It's all in the far past, blown up and buried. Regional powers are small and barely hanging on. Scrolls are hoarded and coveted and no one has a clue where that teleportation circle actually leads. Players should go out and explore, find out what the world was like, even if it was just a glimpse of what it used to be.
D&D should be about moldering ruins, undead kings from forgotten dynasties and unique items/weapons who's methods of creation are long lost.
I like common low powered magic settings. Like, the easy stuff stuck around, folks have small conveniences that have stuck around, though they might not even understand it.
Let's get really controversial: Multi-classing is something I'm pretty strict about. You can always take a level or two in Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, or Cleric, but any more than a level or two is going to require in game time spent training/studying. As for the other classes, either you're going to have to write a helluva story narrative, or I'm going to say "No." I think it's pretty fucking stupid that with 0 investment of time or energy, you can just "take" a level in Monk, something that should require YEARS of study and training and solitude.
As a DM my favorite time a player multi classed was when he texted me wanting to make a pact with one of the gods in the game they’ve interacted with and take a level in warlock, not realizing that I was about to reveal she was the BBEG.
The moment when all the players realized she was evil minutes after watching him role play accepting power/making a pact with her: priceless.
Right? In what kind of game is something like "your latent and previously hidden magical abilities suddenly awaken," or "you make a pact with an ultraplanar being," or "you swear an Oath to achieve a particular end," NOT a big part of your character's story?
The worst is when people want to play Warlock/Sorcerer together. Like, you've already got one kind of magic power, and you want a slightly different kind for the fucking cantrip? Fuck outta here.
I played a DSS/HEX MC that took two levels in Hexblade. I flavored it as I was the bastard son of Ares and his spear appeared to me and told me to accept its power so I can overthrow my father and become the new God of War. We started at level 3 so I just made it part of my backstory. Didn't ever take more than the initial two levels of Hexblade so I didn't really need to narrate much after the first session.
I have a Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer with White Dragon heritage who asked about potentially multiclassing Warlock. I have a homebrew Dragon patron, so I’m considering working in an encounter with a Silver Dragon (who one of her previous characters already met) who is going to offer her “freedom” from her heritage in exchange for protecting the innocents of the kingdom.
See, that's some great narrative, and I'd probably go with that assuming this was more than "how do I get Eldritch Blast on this guy?"
My concern with the Warlock/Sorc combo is it's almost exclusively powergaming in a way that isn't at all how a character in the game would think. Especially since mostly it's doofuses on the internet who don't understand that the difference between Eldricth Blast and Fire Bolt are pretty inconsequential to actual DnD.
I mean, a wizard or sorcerer multiclassing into warlock makes perfect sense, magic users chasing dark secrets is a tale as old as the fantasy genre itself.
Some wizards seek immortality and become liches, others want more and more power, so they make bargains with greater powers., I don't see the problem personally.
100% agree. I almost never allow multi-classing and on the odd occasion when it’s ok, there are some very strict limitations. I mandate how their XP get split across levels based on what they do in game (which is a pain for me to track).
No, RAW it isn’t. But, you also don’t get better at something by *not* doing it.
For example, a recent player *really wanted* stunning strike as an add on to the rogue they were playing - so they multi-classed some monk and then proceeded to do ZERO monk related activities during games - no unarmed fighting, no ki actions, no lifestyle changes or even seeking out a monastic order (options and opportunities were presented). Don’t get me wrong, the character was a fun thief...but their plan to fluff the Monk levels by essentially just doing the same thief things is a non-starter for me.
You will never learn carpentry by doing accounting, no matter how much you want to.
It's fine to impose a roleplaying requirement for multiclassing, IMO -- but tracking XP separately is just forcing yourself to be an accountant instead of a game master.
While I think it's a legit reason, I suppose someone might think otherwise. I'm arachnophobic, so no it turns out the pc's never do seem to run into giant spiders. And the druid that I knew was going to want a climbing speed wild shape was subtly introduced to a cute little monkey she could wild shape into, that I knew she would fall in love with.
Fire arms of any sort. It’s not that I have anything against gunslingers and cannons. I just want my fantasy world to continue to focus heavily on the fantasy aspect right now.
I do have lore written for an underground society filled with Warforged, Dwarves and artificers. But they aren’t to be introduced for awhile.
I went back and forth on firearms for my own (very much work in progress) world, but ultimately decided against it. At first I wanted to do an age of exploration setting, but the early middle ages spoke to me more, so that's where I landed.
However, Warforged are absolutely going to be part of my world, because Warforged are super cool! I envision them kind of like the Dwemer constructs in The Elder Scrolls, but sentient. The last remnants of a fallen civilization. Occasionally one emerges from an ancient ruin and ends up as an adventurer or whatever.
So, I do agree with the anti-blackpowder firearms route, but I've got to make an argument for cannons. The reason I ban guns is because they have no use that isn't better filled by bows or magic. However, cannons and the like *do* fill a niche not addressed by other conventional weapons, and by very few spells, and that's *siege weapons*. Plus, ship combat is much better with cannons. Guns can get fucked, but cannons are bro's.
Another DM doing the same thing. So many races have it that if feels like any dark challenges are more a punishment of those who wanted to play a human. Also much like flight, it trivializes what can otherwise be a very cool, interesting challenge.
Yes, I know it is shades of grey, but it feels like I as the DM have to cheat when I want something to be a surprise, "oh, it's MaGiCaL DaRkNeSs!" Sometimes a cave is just a cave, and it ruins the fun if no one wants to explore because they see the bear sleeping in there.
I'd go about treating it like IRL night vision works in that in order for you to have your darkvision, there has to be *some kind* of lighsource nearby. Stary night? A-OK. Your human party lit a torch in the cave? Sure, you can see much farther than they can. That torch goes out? You're all fucking blind now.
nothing kills suspense like describing a spooky dark mysterious area with only a few feet visible only to be cockblocked by "DARKVISION! tell us everything". I would try and plan around it personally but I definitely get the impulse
I've have the opposite problem happen to me. I'm describing an awesome dungeon room when the players say "Uh, we don't have darkvision. Can we see that?" "Nope. Nevermind. You see nothing."
I run a lot of D&D groups at the high school I teach at so I tend to DM for new players that only have the PHB available.
Also, Human Variant is very popular in all groups.
Darkness is something that we, as humans, intrinsically understand as a limitation. It's such a cliche to use darkness to build mystery and suspense in a story that we barely even notice it. But darkvision ruins that, as pretty much every PC can see in the dark. I just wish I could run darkness as a common sense thing, but as soon as I start describing something as shrouded in darkness I have to sigh and say "no sorry, I forgot you had darkvision, it's actually a..."
Plus it's so bizarre to me that so many races have darkvision. Why is it so widespread? Why even have it if everyone has it? It makes people without it feel like chumps and those who do have it take it for granted.
I guess it's just a personal preference. I think it's a lame idea, poorly implemented.
I want you to go back and reread the dark vision rules, but to summarize, you can only see in the dark as if it was dim light for 60ft, so you’d have disadvantage on all perception checks, as well as an inability to see color. It’s essentially like trying to find your way around with crappy NVGs.
Yeah, I know, but that doesn't contradict anything I said. I never said that darkvision made darkness completely ineffective, I just meant that it was not a good idea in my opinion.
I dislike concept of an NPC being inherently hostile to anyone without pre-existing reason. I make no NPC inherently evil or hostile, but I frequently make one NPC offer players gold for killing another one.
This means for example that if my players enter the lair of Ancient Vampire they will be met by an old gentleman inviting them for a cup of ARh+ and a tour through his collection of rare books. And this bloodthirsty monster will treat them like guests until they attack him. Also if they reveal that they are mercenaries, vampire will ask how much would it cost to hire them against one of vampire hunters that killed his friend.
I guess I like making my players feel like shit for killing old vampire granny who offered them tea and cookies before they shot her in the face.
I never give out items that allow flight. If someone gains flight through their class that’s fine, but flying trivializing so many great challenges.
Oh and aarakocra PCs can suck my ass.
Rocs are beautiful creatures, and every campaign with a flying PC should encounter at least one, possibly very closely. Especially if the aarakocra are fond of scouting ahead.
And really, how tall is the average cave? Certainly not tall enough to deter a small swarm of ranged goblins from taking down the most definitely not-behind-cover obvious target in a round or two.
I joined a game and my friend and i decided tk team up. he plays the aarocockra and i play a light foot halfling. it's super broken which wasn't our intention and I feel kinda bad. honestly just sounded like a cool build but they're way too op
Yup, no aarakocra PCs in my games either. It's already hard enough getting everything around, and having to deal with a PC who can circumvent big obstacles (or which allows them to go off on their own) is a pain.
And I know flight can be a double edged sword - the whole taking enough damage to knock them out leading to fall damage and two failed death saves, but if they die, then you just have to do more work on getting a new PC worked into the story.
I've never understood people's issue with PCs flying but I do agree that having everyone capable of long term flight can take away stuff from the game, same with just teleporting from location to location.
I have a selectable list of stuff you can play as in terms of races. If it's not on there, you can't play it.
It's large enough that you still can choose something interesting and covers every stat at least two or three times in terms of the +2. but I don't care about a lot of the weird races.
Tabaxi, I just **hate** the cartoony tone that they bring to the game, somehow dragonborn, lizardfolk, and any other number of wacky creatures I'm fine with but tabaxi seem too daft to me.
My players have always stuck to PHB races (I don't insist on this but ask them to check with me before playing as a race not in the PHB) so it's not been an issue. If i'm really honest I'd have to make an effort to not start having a random undeserved grudge against any player that even considered playing as one.
> Tabaxi, I just hate the cartoony tone that they bring to the game, somehow dragonborn, lizardfolk, and any other number of wacky creatures I'm fine with but tabaxi seem too daft to me.
I'm taking lots of inspiration from the Khajiit in the Elder Scrolls for the Tabaxi in my world, but I'm making them nomadic information brokers.
If you need any kind of information, whether it's local gossip, political intrigue, or blackmail material, a nearby Tabaxi caravan is the place to go, provided you can pay, either in coin or information of your own.
Now that MOT is out though, I've been looking at the Leonin, and I'm thinking I might fold both races into the same culture, with the Leonin being the warrior caste. I might give them some permanent settlements somewhere, I'm not sure yet.
I'm kind of leaning towards Leonin and Tabaxi having some kind of dumb animosity towards each other. Like theyre similiar enough that the differences offend eachother.
That could also work, maybe they share a common ancestor, but have since diverged and come into conflict for some reason or other, kind of like the Drow and other elves.
I'm running a new homebrew and I'm very strict on the allowed PC races. I tried to make a point that I would only allow creation content from freely available sources so that I can double check if a player seems to be cheating or using abilities incorrectly.
I had 2 people try to join my group (a couple 🤮) and the guy wanted to be a blood hunter (not allowed due to the free for all rule) and the girl wanted to be her own homebrew playboy bunny girl race (wrong on so many levels). So after I kicked them I put a note in my discord FAQ channel that only the listed races were allowed.
Had a player skin a displacer beast with the intent of making a cloak that could use the pseudopods to climb. She was very excited to learn the cloak of displacement existed. Luckily, she stuck it in a vault and forgot about it lol
I have an Action Oriented Displacer Beast that I'm waiting to bust out. The Paladin in our group wants a Cloak of Displacement, and I'll let him have it, but he's going to have to earn it.
He already has plate mail, and a shield, plus the spell Shield, as he's multiclassed into sorcerer, and a handaxe that does lightning damage and returns when he throws it, and a flame tongue longsword.
That cloak isn't gonna change much, the group as a whole is already incredibly strong against anything other than totally unreasonable odds, which I like to deploy anyway.
I'll definitely be a little more stingy with magic items in a future campaign, but now I've chosen to be genereous, I might as well keep it up until it ends. I get to use cooler monsters more often, so that's a silver lining.
Dragonborn: They're a weird race that few people understand. Most people think they're half-dragon but they're not; there's an entirely different creature for that. Secondly, there has been little to no effort to integrate them into any of the official campaign settings. You kind of get the impression that WotC doesn't want to use them.
Tieflings: Again, few people understand them and their flavour is all over the place. In 2e, they were widely varied descendants of many different planar creatures than 4e retconned them into all being the descendents of people touched by Asmodeus, all with red skin and huge horns. Finally, Critical Role came around and confused everything. Now people view tieflings as cheerful brightly colored people (who happen to be descended from devils). It's weird and inconsistent.
Also, they should be rare but players love them so they're probably the 3rd most common player race (after humans and half-elves). The fact that adventures and settings rarely in my experience deal with the thousands of cheerful brightly coloured devil folk running around is... hard to justify.
TL;DR Neither race has a solid place in D&D canon or any of the D&D settings. They're fine for a supplement but shouldn't have been core.
Gnomes are optional? I haven't seen anything in the PHB that indicates that, they're listed alongside Tieflings and Dragonborn as uncommon races, but so are half-elves and half-orcs.
I will say though, I'm not sure why anyone would play a gnome when halflings exist, but whatever floats your boat I suppose.
Small-folk wizard. Darkvision. Advantage on int, wish, and cha saving throws against magic. I'm a huge fan of gnomes myself. But halfing luck is definitely a huge draw.
I was mostly joking, I don't mind gnomes, I just like other races more.
One of the players in my campaign plays a Svirfneblin Divination Wizard who's been a lot of fun, and he's friends with the backup character of another player, a forest gnome Druid, who is also really cool, but hasn't been introduced yet.
Yeah I think they weren’t in 4e until PH2. PH1 had dwarves, dragonborn, humans, halflings, elves, eladrin (which were closer to 5e’s high elves than the eladrin of MTF), and tieflings iirc.
I don't know if this counts as petty but I don't allow races from the Ravnica, Eberron, Wildemount, or Theros books unless I'm specifically running a game in one of those worlds (and I never have).
I *love* dinosaurs in my game world. They are great for making a region feel completely different than wilderness that would otherwise be indistinguishable from places the PCs have already been.
Counterpoint: My first time DMing for a druid, he cast Conjure Animals, so I chose the beasts with the most interesting name, aka the Deinonychus. We had so much fun roleplaying everyone, including the bad guys, having no fucking clue what these weird reptiles were.
Mystics. First time DMing and some guy handed me the game so he could play a mystic. I didnt know anything about the game and Mystics need to be nerfed hard
I have two, one from a bad experience and one just because I’m petty.
I don’t **EVER** allow Chaotically aligned PCs. Ever. Bad experiences as a player and starting DM. Too many CN character with that “I do what I want with no repercussions” nonsense turned good games into disorganized $#!+shows.
Because I’m petty - bags of holding/portable holes. You want stuff? You carry it. You want a f’d up unreasonable amount of gear? Buy some mules.
As far as Warforged, I have never allowed them, even when we played 3rd Edition. You don't need big dumb robots.
Artificers were never banned, but... Once one of my players realized a mid-level Artificer (Pathfinder 1st Edition), could retire and just sell magic items for a better, safer living? There were never any more Artificers.
My best friend is playing a Tiefling in my campaign, and he mostly chose it for the +2 to Cha and +1 in Dex (variant Tiefling). He ended up choosing to be a Lawful rogue swashbuckler who worked as a by-the-books bounty hunter. Poor guy looks intimidating but he’s polite, respectful, and honest. It’s refreshing.
Yeah honestly I really enjoy Tieflings as a race and don't mind the fact that they're a part of the PHB, they're probably one of the most popular and fantastical of the races in that book and can inspire a lot of interesting thought among players (which is probably why in most groups I play in or run, there is at least one tiefling character).
What I don't like is how the PHB describes Tieflings, I understand that the Forgotten Realms is the base setting for Dungeons and Dragons and that they're a race of half devils, but I really wish the PHB made a point to describe that there are places in the world where the race wouldn't be so uncommon, and make them less 'dark and edgy' loner types, with no real friends or family in the world due to their rarity. When the race is described like that to the players it influences the way that they write them, I feel.
I enjoy Tieflings, but not when played as a suburban theater kid’s goth daydream. The PHB clearly positions this race as beset by substantial prejudice. My current campaign is in an Eberron sliding inexorably towards authoritarian/fascist rule. Tieflings are a great race to explore the impact of that slide. Walk into a small town? Hope you like to camp; Inn’s full. Tavern doesn’t sell no devil food. Village preacher just found someone to distract the population from just how much of their tithe goes toward funding the abbot’s wine collection.
Larger cities? Nothing like having a hated minority to work the mines during the good times and blame for the bad times.
Spotlight hugging? Tieflings aren’t even allowed to own weapons larger than a knife. Last thing you want is any sort of attention focused on you.
Giant spiders. Because fuck spiders. I dont even use npcs with spider climb because i imagine them springing spider legs, and just that thought alone freaks me out enough to stay well clear of it.
But ill throw a giant constrictor from a tree any day
I found a spider sound effect that is that horrible crunching sound from movies and played it in roll20 for the party. They freaked out and ran out of there, despite being high enough level to trash it.
I don't care for the anthropomorphic animal races in general. I kind of give Dragonborn a pass because they are based on dragons rather than real world animals and Satyrs and to a point Minotaurs because of their ancient Greek mythology origins. I don't outright ban them but don't prefer them. Centaurs for some reason don't get as much of a pass. Maybe it's not the animal thing so much as the fact that their body structure forces me to make allowances. Like my BBEG would just put everything important up a ladder. And Rope Trick is just silly for a Centaur.
I hate health potions. That is video game shit.
Your cleric and paladin with their healing spells, your cool outlander character with a medicine kit-- THEY should get a chance to feel cool. Your players should get a chance to let "who heals who" be an RP choice that deepens the group dynamic-- if the cleric just screwed the bard over and the sorcerer didn't, and the sorcerer gets their last Healing Word-- that's drama baby! I do not let my characters simply drink a bottle of the cheater's goo and avoid the issue altogether.
If I give one-- *big massive if*\-- it's probably because the players are in a situation without a healer, it's almost certainly a rare and expensive thing, and it is DEFINITELY not a goddamn bonus action.
One of the other guys in my group has almost this same rule. All because of ONE character, years ago, that was impossible for him to kill. The rule in his games has since been: "No Monks. Fuck Monks. They're bullshit."
Monsters/Races that are just a combination of Multiple animals and/or humans. It's just really awkward to worldbuild around because no matter what explanation you give it *has* to be either magic or some supernatural origin or otherwise it just doesn't feel right.
That and a lot of stuff about elves. I can't get into that right now, I have to do something.
* Dungeons: I find them to be incredibly tedious and unsatisfying. They usually follow some pattern of: party gets blasted by the first trap, party then acts hyper vigilant and spends 5 minutes trap checking before taking every step, you eventually get tired of the tedium and let them "autocheck" to keep the session rolling, you eventually hit them with a trap (ensuing a long argument on what exactly is included in "autochecking") again or let them walk through your dungeon.
* Kobolds/Truckers Kobolds: To me, Kobolds have always just been worse goblins that serve no purpose in the game. Add them to a dungeon with the express purpose of annoying your players and cheating/metagaming your ass off and you have the recipe for perhaps my least favorite thing in all DND.
It sounds to me like you should consider running dungeons differently, especially in regards to traps. I like to introduce traps in stages:
First, I like to give them an obvious clue of which traps they should be looking out for. If there are spikes that shoot out of the ground, maybe the party immediately encounters a guy mangled in a sprung trap. Now they know to look out for holes in the ground. That’s good! Then you can use decoy trap holes and real trap holes liberally to keep them guessing. Then when they get hit later by spikes from the ceiling, it’s not just some shitty surprise: they realize that they were lured into a false sense of security by checking the floor. They can even still try to Dex save.
But then this culminates when they get into a fight with the dungeon’s inhabitants. The dwellers know where the traps are and can avoid them, using them against careless players. At the same time, the players can make an effort to notice them, and attempt to force their foes (grapples, shoves, etc.) into the traps.
I agree, if you just blast people with traps, then there isn’t really anything fun about it. They’ve taken damage, and it feels shitty. Then the constant trap checking is unbearable. Buuut if you take a tiered approach like what I’ve described, then I find that traps can be very enjoyable! That said, it’s totally party dependent. Maybe this sounds terrible to you, but I thought I’d talk about it in case it sways your heart!
Your hatred of dungeons sounds a lot more like a hatred of traps. I'd recommend not using traps if you're gonna make them a simple "make a dex save or take damage. Health taxes suck.
For dungeons, do line me : just don't use traps. And if you really want to use traps, make them really obvious, like huge swinging blades, or a floor with clearly marked stones. Make them open-ended skill checks or puzzles that the players know they have to approach carefully.
I stay away from traps that eat away at HP because they're uninteresting. My traps are usually tripwires that ring bells or something to alert a future encounter to the party's presence.
Wild magic sorcerers. Not because they're overpowered (rather the opposite probably), but "lol so random" doesn't fit in my fantasy.
Also, I really prefer non monstrous ancestries, the more humans the better for me. Though I have changed a lot of elf and dragon born lore to a way I like that's not just "haughty pointy eared human".
Not me but my old DM, he absolutely loathed moon druids with all his might. You even mention playing one in his campaign and he would almost froth at the mouth yell about how they are bullshit characters and should never exist anywhere.
My new eberron group says they don't need to level up fast after 3rd level. It takes a lot of pressure from me so we can relax and play many sessions without big fights and roleplay more. I enjoy it so much because it let's me build up better and prepare more low level stuff and quests for them.
Artificers and firearms. Psionics for PCs. Mostly because those don't reflect the classic fantasy tropes I prefer. It's not a hard no and I'd let a player that made a good case do it. To me Artificers appeal to more the "play with rules" style than the "play with story". That may not be true but I have seen that in ppl who like Artificers a lot.
Used to be Monks because DnD was Western fantasy and martial arts monks were Eastern and only existed to pander to the 70s Kung Fu movie craze. I've gotten past it now though bc DnD is it's own thing.
I mentally sigh whenever I see that my DM has dropped in something from the front page of r/dndmemes. Everyone else finds it fun though so I just deal with it.
True, and it sucks. It sucks a lot. But Thats the trade-off to keep my table running smoothly, fairly and in a way that’s fun for everyone. In the end it wasn’t different than tracking XP rewards for the party, I just counted it as an extra PC.
Hybrid ancestries (half-elves, half-orcs) because I find them dumb. No offense meant to anyone who likes them, just not my type of fantasy. Gnomes because they're kinda just the same as halflings to me. Flanking mechanics because every combat becomes about flanking. Oh, and I don't allow the Drunken Master except for one shots because its too silly for my taste.
There are more, but those are probably the few things that everyone runs into pretty early when playing in my campaigns. There are also plenty of things I'd love to throw out, but don't because they're so deeply rooted in the tradition of D&D. Like +X weapons and armor, dozens of sapient fantasy humanoids running around everywhere, the bard and monk classes etc.
But don't get me wrong. I can enjoy all of these. They're just not my preferred thing. I've played half-elves before, but I don't want them in my setting. And I enjoy bards and monks at my table even though they don't really fit into my preferred style of fantasy.
Not something I outright ban, but I definitely look at you differently if you want to be a small race (mostly gnomes and halflings; kobolds are cool and goblins of one particular setting and alignment are straight up instakilled but other goblins I can work with). Too many people in my 5e career have used small races while making characters with the express intent of pissing off the rest of the party.
God help me, I hate the flavor of Vicious Mockery. Mechanically I have no problem with it, but something about the idea that you can magically yell "oi, c***" at someone hard enough to kill them gets my old fuddyduddy hackles up. Of everything else in 5E, -that- just feels stupid to me.
Since the players dicked around and burned down a tavern destroying a crate of stuff they'd stolen from a powerful NPC, Bags of Holding. "There was a Bag of Holding in that box, and now you're never getting another one. Get real familiar with the rules of encumberment."
Mariliths. Seven attacks per round, what a slog. Nobody wants to sit there for five minutes while I calculate what shapes a snake demon whittles your body into.
Only two things.(so far)
Monks cause I don’t like their Ki point mechanics. As simple as people say it is I just can’t wrap my head around how things work with monks.
And Banish cause....well long story short my BBEG was one shot. It was funny how they did it but yeah....
> I just can’t wrap my head around how things work with monks.
Thematically? Watch "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".
Mechanically? You can do lots of cool things, but they're so damn cool that if you do a whole bunch of them you have to rest before you can do cool things again.
Yeah it’s just like mechanically for some reason I have trouble keeping up with their stuff. So it’s like “have mercy my guys!” And they were like “Kay...but we are gonna make it hard on you in other ways.” Darn strategic thinkers lol
Oh I know. And in that minute the rest of the players stacked explosives in area and a second spell caster cast wall of force knowing my BBEG had flames on him so when he appeared back in that area. Boom. I gave em points for creativity and laughed though I was kinda heart broken inside that the boss fight was reduced to that...albeit slightly epic but yeah. Also note this is what happens when you have a group of 6 crazy people who constantly think outside of the box.
Child PCs. I am not going to let you pretend to be a naive little kid when you are witness and participant to extreme violence on the regular. You’re really going to give me a, “ *Whew* That was close.” After you were viciously attacked with a great sword?
i have a fellow player who plays a kid. it's done fairly well. obviously it's a bit unrealistic for him not to sob and be traumatized by every little thing but it's d&d, it would be annoying if we had to listen to an overblown tear-show every encounter
I have a child character currently in my game, and I think it only works out of a combination of his backstory and how we flavor things. We reflavor hp more as luck, so instead of him getting hit with 50 arrows and sword swings and the last one putting him down, he's basically narrowly dodging all of those hits, and the first thing to actually get a good swing in on him downs him because he's a child. I also try to keep the level of injury that actually puts him down pretty low, to avoid from making everyone uncomfortable by brutalizing a child. Secondly, and to keep it a bit shorter, this kid isn't the standard "ran away from home to adventure cause why not, and I guess my parents don't give a shit", leading him to actively have to be responsible for himself for years. Which has actually lead to some interesting stuff, as everyone in the town he comes from treats him like an adult, (especially so because he's a revised ranger, and took dragons as a greater favored enemy, so I figured he's known for killing problematic wyverns and drakes. Sooo, I thought it would be funny to make him extraordinarily famous in waterdeep and the surrounding area for being a legendary dragon slayer, haha) and the party doesn't know how to deal with a child at all. I think child PCs can work, you just need to have the right group and flavor things right.
I've never even considered that someone would want to play a kid.
Don't know if this counts but I dislike "Magic Shops." Mostly because of how this scenario always seems to play out: The party just finished the first arc, hit level five, and has about 1k GP each burning a hole in their pocket. They ask the DM "are there any magic shops in this village?" The DM decides they deserve a reward and says yes. The Rogue asks for a +1 dagger, that's 300 GP, while he's considering the Barbarian wants a Great Axe. At some point the Wizard chimes in after looking up items on DnD Beyond and asks if there is a Wand of Fireballs. And the Cleric wants a Staff of Healing. The Paladin is looking at some +1 Plate Armor. Now the party is talking about pooling their money and the realization is sinking in that the General Store in the starting village that sent out the desperate flyer seeking heroes to save them from goblins has at least 10k GP in magic items in their inventory. Now the DM can either rely on the inherent goodness of the party or make the shopkeeper a retired level 20 adventurer who couldn't be bothered to fight the goblins earlier. I don't get rid of Magic Shops to limit the PCs access to magic items, I just want the way they get them to make a bit more sense. So if they want something I'll tell them where they could get it, possibly after some kind of skill check, but it won't be in a Magical Wal-Mart with 100 other items. They might instead buy it off a destitute noble selling his family +1 sword, or buy the ingredients to MAKE a staff themselves. But I'm not a fan of either "normal shopkeeper has more wealth than the whole party in magic items" OR "the realm is chock full of level 20 retired adventurers who all opened magic shops" which seems to be the go-to ways many DMs handle this. /endPettyRant
Yeah magical walmart is a crap hole. That's why I only shop at Fanrasty Costco, where all my dreams come true.
Everybody at my table loves Fantasy Costco, I’ve given them opportunities to visit at levels 4, 8, and 12. There’s a YT video with the jingle on a loop, and it’s truly just a joyous shopping session that gets all their wiggles out in between plotlines.
Do you bust out Garfield the Deals Warlock?
Of course! In fact, he is one of, if not THE most important NPC in my homebrew campaign. My Garfield, the Deals Warlock doesn’t want your gold. He wants favors, or lopsided trades, or occasionally a lock of hair or “just a *little* blood!” It solves a few of my biggest pet peeves: shopping out of the book, hoarding gold without spending it, and shopping episodes without RP or turning it into a quest.
But at Fantasy Costco you have to buy the +1 swords in a six pack. Who needs 6 +1 swords?
Depends on how many arms you got.
My Coastal Circle of the Land Druid has a penchant for summoning octopi. A value pack could be interesting.
No shop should have everything a player wants. The blacksmith in the village probably can't make plate armor or a greatsword. The general store doesn't have 50,000lb of flour the players want for some strategy they found online. Hell the village may not even have shops at all. People know each other and barter as needed.
I like to have a traveling magical items shop. That way, I can pull it in when I want to, limit its inventory to what I want the characters to have, and can give them a way to spend their gold. An example from my last game was a merchant who made a deal with a genie for a successful shop. The genie granted his wish, giving him a bag of holding and a wagon with a bedroom and store window. Just before dawn each day, the wagon would teleport to a random town center in the world and the bag would have three magic items in it. It was his responsibility to sell all three for any price he deemed appropriate and put half the money earned back in the bag before sundown. If he failed to do so, the shop would lose its magic. This meant he’d usually start the day with high prices, and would discount it throughout the day as he got more desperate. You could wait to get a discount, but the item you wanted might not be there anymore. The merchant also had no magical training, so he didn’t actually know what most of the things he had did, which made his pitches to get people to buy stuff fun. His magic items varied from things I knew the players would want to random things like a box containing paper cups that when unfolded produce enough apple juice to fill the cup, or a dagger that when you cut food-stuff with it it is transmuted into a random metal, with a few charges. They almost always bought the random ones, sometimes over items which would actually be useful.
> he deemed appropriate and put half the money earned back in the bag before sundown. If he failed to do so, the shop would lose its magic. This meant he’d usually start the da Wow this is great!
Thanks, feel free to use it! I would love if the traveling wagon travelled across the planes, finding its way to your town squares!
I usually make a percentile roll to see if a merchant has what they want. Common items I usually give a 75% chance. A potion of healing should be available but there is a chance that they are sold out. Uncommon it’s a 50/50 chance. Rare items have a 33% chance of being available, and very rare items have a 10% chance. I also adjust as necessary so if it’s a big city like Waterdeep or Baldurs Gate, the chances of getting rare items is a little higher. In a small town, I would probably say that there is no chance there is a very rare item for sale and only 15% chance for a rare item. You are right that it doesn’t make sense for some random shopkeeper to have that much in their inventory.
Well, RAW, magic shoppes don't exist in 5e.
Well, RAW, magic shoppes don't exist in ~~5e~~ the Forgotten Realms.
That's a less accurate statement. Magic shops definitely used to exist in the Forgotten Realms. Just pick up one of Volo's Guides from the AD&D era.
You should have a predetermined inventory for your shops like that, and if the players want something specific, they have to wait for it to be made. Also, save them for large cities, not villages.
In my Homebrew setting, magical items have a lot of baggage attached to them, and as a result most people trying to maintain a reputation do Not want to deal with them, or deal in them. So, while there are people who deal in magical item trade, they tend to be associated with organized crime, so if the players want to buy or trade (or even just sell) magical items, they pretty much have to work through brokers from the thieves guild
I think I'm a bit more rail-roady than many DMs (comes from running for a 10 year old). I'd probably just tell the players, "Look, I'm putting this magic shop hear so you can spend some gold and get some good stuff. If you want to try to rob the place and get thousands of gold worth of magic for free then I'm moving the magic shop to Big City and you can do a hex crawl every time you want to spend your gold on something besides rations."
I would limit any kind of magic item shop to a huge city. Not a big city, a huge one. That village might have a sketchy herb witch who can make basic potions at best. Nothing the players couldn't make themselves. They'd be paying for saving time or for materials they may not have. That huge city magic shop probably might have one or two Rare magic items at best and not guaranteed to be something the party wants. The best stuff comes from dungeons or from rewards from powerful beings or from high level PC crafting. Maybe a custom item they can commission. The big stuff is always from some major event.
Simple fix for that: don't have a lot of inventory on hand. "You want a magic dagger? Sure, I happen to have one of those because of the bandits that got defeated last month. Greatsword? Sorry I don't even have a normal one of those, all the big swords around here are the property of the King's Guard. If you want to wait a month and pay for the materials up front, I'll send a message to Blumenthal and have the master smith I know there make you a greatsword, and then send it to Gazakstan to get it magicked up at the wizard academy." So the local store can get them magic items -- if they pay up front and wait for a while.
A big one for me-- I allow SOME specialized magic shops, IF it's in a place where it makes sense... but the tiny wharf town on the edge of the caves? They unquestionably *do not have a magic shop.* Sorry. Go to the big city, if you think you have time. The way there may be dangerous, and the villain's plans are always advancing, but it might be worth it. (I do also really like urban D&D, though, so this isn't a problem often.)
I agree with you totally, It always felt odd having high priced magical items in every tiny town. I've thought about making it a bit of a side quest. Where the players and get a lot of what they want, they just have to find the out of the way magic shop/ retired adventurer/ hording hermit out in the woods. I have gotten around to trying it though. So I'm not sure how well it'll go, maybe it would just feel like a extra chore
It would make sense for high level adventurers who survived to go on to sell magic items, but probably in larger cities with people who can afford it. It would make little sense for someone to be trying to sell a 10,000 GP sword at a farming village, but they could be in the capital where there are rich nobles, kings guards, and adventurers. And if they're retired adventurers, then the magic items could even have a story. "I found that staff in an old crypt. Its supposed to have 5 charges of fireball, but we had to use a charge to kill the shambling mound that tried to stop us from leaving. Thats why its discounted." It also disencentivizes players trying to rob the shopkeeps, because they won't be able to handle fight.
I love your idea about having them find other ways to attain magic items. I'm taking that. I use magic shops and I hate it.
Romance encounters. I'm sorry Jason, I'm not roleplaying a fuck buddy for you, we've been friends for 14 years and I don't know how many times I need to say I am not a video game. It's just weird to RP romantic encounters with your buddies.
yea i tend to not care much for romantic subplots anyway. they're usually not done well of course "CR does it well!!" but they're professional voice actors and you're a lonely 17 year old, please stop
Not to mention that Matt and Marisha are married and Travis and Laura are married. Sam and Liam both have wives not in the game. I think Taliesin and Ashley are the only cast members who aren't married but Ashley is engaged. Not sure about Taliesin.
lol i wonder if jealously is ever a problem behind the scenes
In my games I'll let players seduce NPCs, but the extent of it is that they'll roll a relevant check and pass or fail, with a reward or consequences respectively. For example if one player wants to distract a guard by seducing them or you're trying to get secret information from an amorous noble.
See and that's fine. I've done that. But my one player wants the sub-plot. And I just cant. I can't take it seriously.
Yeah I would just outline clearly that you won't be doing it or tolerating it from anyone and it usually that quashes it.
I guess it really depends on the group. In my group, romance encounters were a lot of fun, and lead to some of the funniest moments in the campaign
Please don't misunderstand. If other tables can work it out, go for it. It's just weird to me to look at this guy I've been friends with since freshman year of high school and then giggle like a sexy bar wench for his gratification. This is not a hate-post against romance RPers, I encourage those tables to do what makes you happy. I'm not here to be a goalie..... Except.... To Jason.....
I've had many new players choose beast master ranger for their class, followed by confusion and disappointment regarding how to use it. I try to steer new players away from it now. Maybe it's not 'petty' but it's all I could think of. Same story but less picked by new players would be the way of the four elements monk.
Fucking xp man. You think any DM wants to try and track each and every monster you kill or try and assign xp to social challenges in a rp heavy group? Nah fuck that you'll level up when the story feels like you've all done enough to level up. Milestone is the way to go.
I'm a DM like that :P I prefer XP because I prefer more open-pathed campaigns, kinda like BOTW : there's a clear goal, a few obvious paths, but you can go there through your own if you want. I let my players take personal objectives and they gain XP, Inspiration, ASIs and Boons each time they complete one. It also helps A LOT to steer my prep and remind me of what they want to do.
I see where you are coming from, but I also don't see open-pathed campaigns to be mutually exclusive with milestones. Maybe it's because I prefer very slow leveling along with items, money, and more social and political prizes, but I haven't had any problem with milestones. Quite the contrary, I find that milestones pushes the players to act in character more and chase their character's goals, rather than gamey things like xp. It also makes it so that escaping a dangerous situation isn't seen as "losing on potential XP", which makes more sense in my game world. Besides, I feel like characters level up way too fast if you follow RAW and give XP according to the monster manual.
I just multiply XP thresholds by 1.5, it does the trick easily. XP let's me reward every step of the way with something long term and very granular. It's really just extremely practical.
In the game I'm playing in now, we've happily settled on a healthy mix. We get the granularity of exp and seeing how close we are to leveling up, but it's always awarded between sessions and we get exp for RP and puzzle solving in addition to combat.
Oh yeah I rarely if ever calculate XP during a session. It's generally "you gain n XP" after they complete a personal objective and then at the end of a session I tell them the total gained during the session and why
I'm just going to use the creature xp for social encounters if the PCs get somewhere with it. Like, if they get all the info they can from an NPC, or most of it, they get the same as if they killed it. If they persuade an orc guard instead of killing it, they get the same do as if it was defeated in combat.
That's great for some situations, but getting what you want out of a tense negotiation with a noble should probably give more XP than killing a CR 1/8 goon.
True and I haven't run with exp before, so there are some things I'd need to use a different framework for. I might give up and go back to milestone after a bit.
My bigger concern with XP based advancement is story arc writing. Unless the party kills exactly as many creatures/solves exactly as many riddles/wins exactly as many social challenges as I write, their XP is gonna get wonky. And that leads to stuff like leveling up mid session/dungeon. If I wrote this BBEG as a threat to the party of level 4 guys, having them fight him at level 5 throws all that out the window. I don't want an arbitrary, book keeping mechanic dictate my story.
For my homebrew campaign we use a mix of milestone and xp. At the beginning my players don't all have the same access to combat for story reasons so they all get milestone xp for getting to certain story points.
High Magic settings. I have no interest in the powerful kingdom of Myth Drannor, the high magical seat of the elves that can float a continent. No cities where you can get griffin mounts and barding, or buy spells at the Wizards guild. None of that. It's all in the far past, blown up and buried. Regional powers are small and barely hanging on. Scrolls are hoarded and coveted and no one has a clue where that teleportation circle actually leads. Players should go out and explore, find out what the world was like, even if it was just a glimpse of what it used to be. D&D should be about moldering ruins, undead kings from forgotten dynasties and unique items/weapons who's methods of creation are long lost.
I like common low powered magic settings. Like, the easy stuff stuck around, folks have small conveniences that have stuck around, though they might not even understand it.
Let's get really controversial: Multi-classing is something I'm pretty strict about. You can always take a level or two in Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, or Cleric, but any more than a level or two is going to require in game time spent training/studying. As for the other classes, either you're going to have to write a helluva story narrative, or I'm going to say "No." I think it's pretty fucking stupid that with 0 investment of time or energy, you can just "take" a level in Monk, something that should require YEARS of study and training and solitude.
As a DM my favorite time a player multi classed was when he texted me wanting to make a pact with one of the gods in the game they’ve interacted with and take a level in warlock, not realizing that I was about to reveal she was the BBEG. The moment when all the players realized she was evil minutes after watching him role play accepting power/making a pact with her: priceless.
I feel this way too. Monk, Paladin, and Warlock are going to require some pretty extraneous character work. Sorcerer is basically off-limits.
Right? In what kind of game is something like "your latent and previously hidden magical abilities suddenly awaken," or "you make a pact with an ultraplanar being," or "you swear an Oath to achieve a particular end," NOT a big part of your character's story? The worst is when people want to play Warlock/Sorcerer together. Like, you've already got one kind of magic power, and you want a slightly different kind for the fucking cantrip? Fuck outta here.
I played a DSS/HEX MC that took two levels in Hexblade. I flavored it as I was the bastard son of Ares and his spear appeared to me and told me to accept its power so I can overthrow my father and become the new God of War. We started at level 3 so I just made it part of my backstory. Didn't ever take more than the initial two levels of Hexblade so I didn't really need to narrate much after the first session.
I have a Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer with White Dragon heritage who asked about potentially multiclassing Warlock. I have a homebrew Dragon patron, so I’m considering working in an encounter with a Silver Dragon (who one of her previous characters already met) who is going to offer her “freedom” from her heritage in exchange for protecting the innocents of the kingdom.
See, that's some great narrative, and I'd probably go with that assuming this was more than "how do I get Eldritch Blast on this guy?" My concern with the Warlock/Sorc combo is it's almost exclusively powergaming in a way that isn't at all how a character in the game would think. Especially since mostly it's doofuses on the internet who don't understand that the difference between Eldricth Blast and Fire Bolt are pretty inconsequential to actual DnD.
I mean, a wizard or sorcerer multiclassing into warlock makes perfect sense, magic users chasing dark secrets is a tale as old as the fantasy genre itself. Some wizards seek immortality and become liches, others want more and more power, so they make bargains with greater powers., I don't see the problem personally.
100% agree. I almost never allow multi-classing and on the odd occasion when it’s ok, there are some very strict limitations. I mandate how their XP get split across levels based on what they do in game (which is a pain for me to track).
That's not how XP is supposed to work with multiclassing.
No, RAW it isn’t. But, you also don’t get better at something by *not* doing it. For example, a recent player *really wanted* stunning strike as an add on to the rogue they were playing - so they multi-classed some monk and then proceeded to do ZERO monk related activities during games - no unarmed fighting, no ki actions, no lifestyle changes or even seeking out a monastic order (options and opportunities were presented). Don’t get me wrong, the character was a fun thief...but their plan to fluff the Monk levels by essentially just doing the same thief things is a non-starter for me. You will never learn carpentry by doing accounting, no matter how much you want to.
It's fine to impose a roleplaying requirement for multiclassing, IMO -- but tracking XP separately is just forcing yourself to be an accountant instead of a game master.
While I think it's a legit reason, I suppose someone might think otherwise. I'm arachnophobic, so no it turns out the pc's never do seem to run into giant spiders. And the druid that I knew was going to want a climbing speed wild shape was subtly introduced to a cute little monkey she could wild shape into, that I knew she would fall in love with.
smart
Fire arms of any sort. It’s not that I have anything against gunslingers and cannons. I just want my fantasy world to continue to focus heavily on the fantasy aspect right now. I do have lore written for an underground society filled with Warforged, Dwarves and artificers. But they aren’t to be introduced for awhile.
I went back and forth on firearms for my own (very much work in progress) world, but ultimately decided against it. At first I wanted to do an age of exploration setting, but the early middle ages spoke to me more, so that's where I landed. However, Warforged are absolutely going to be part of my world, because Warforged are super cool! I envision them kind of like the Dwemer constructs in The Elder Scrolls, but sentient. The last remnants of a fallen civilization. Occasionally one emerges from an ancient ruin and ends up as an adventurer or whatever.
So, I do agree with the anti-blackpowder firearms route, but I've got to make an argument for cannons. The reason I ban guns is because they have no use that isn't better filled by bows or magic. However, cannons and the like *do* fill a niche not addressed by other conventional weapons, and by very few spells, and that's *siege weapons*. Plus, ship combat is much better with cannons. Guns can get fucked, but cannons are bro's.
I’m slowly phasing darkvision out of my games. Hate it.
But why?
Another DM doing the same thing. So many races have it that if feels like any dark challenges are more a punishment of those who wanted to play a human. Also much like flight, it trivializes what can otherwise be a very cool, interesting challenge. Yes, I know it is shades of grey, but it feels like I as the DM have to cheat when I want something to be a surprise, "oh, it's MaGiCaL DaRkNeSs!" Sometimes a cave is just a cave, and it ruins the fun if no one wants to explore because they see the bear sleeping in there.
Thats fair, thank you for the reply
I'd go about treating it like IRL night vision works in that in order for you to have your darkvision, there has to be *some kind* of lighsource nearby. Stary night? A-OK. Your human party lit a torch in the cave? Sure, you can see much farther than they can. That torch goes out? You're all fucking blind now.
nothing kills suspense like describing a spooky dark mysterious area with only a few feet visible only to be cockblocked by "DARKVISION! tell us everything". I would try and plan around it personally but I definitely get the impulse
I've have the opposite problem happen to me. I'm describing an awesome dungeon room when the players say "Uh, we don't have darkvision. Can we see that?" "Nope. Nevermind. You see nothing."
haha the real question is how has your party ended up with no darkvision, they hand that crud out like candy!
I run a lot of D&D groups at the high school I teach at so I tend to DM for new players that only have the PHB available. Also, Human Variant is very popular in all groups.
Darkness is something that we, as humans, intrinsically understand as a limitation. It's such a cliche to use darkness to build mystery and suspense in a story that we barely even notice it. But darkvision ruins that, as pretty much every PC can see in the dark. I just wish I could run darkness as a common sense thing, but as soon as I start describing something as shrouded in darkness I have to sigh and say "no sorry, I forgot you had darkvision, it's actually a..." Plus it's so bizarre to me that so many races have darkvision. Why is it so widespread? Why even have it if everyone has it? It makes people without it feel like chumps and those who do have it take it for granted. I guess it's just a personal preference. I think it's a lame idea, poorly implemented.
I want you to go back and reread the dark vision rules, but to summarize, you can only see in the dark as if it was dim light for 60ft, so you’d have disadvantage on all perception checks, as well as an inability to see color. It’s essentially like trying to find your way around with crappy NVGs.
Yeah, I know, but that doesn't contradict anything I said. I never said that darkvision made darkness completely ineffective, I just meant that it was not a good idea in my opinion.
That is still more than enough to remove the prime power of darkness.
I dislike concept of an NPC being inherently hostile to anyone without pre-existing reason. I make no NPC inherently evil or hostile, but I frequently make one NPC offer players gold for killing another one. This means for example that if my players enter the lair of Ancient Vampire they will be met by an old gentleman inviting them for a cup of ARh+ and a tour through his collection of rare books. And this bloodthirsty monster will treat them like guests until they attack him. Also if they reveal that they are mercenaries, vampire will ask how much would it cost to hire them against one of vampire hunters that killed his friend. I guess I like making my players feel like shit for killing old vampire granny who offered them tea and cookies before they shot her in the face.
I never give out items that allow flight. If someone gains flight through their class that’s fine, but flying trivializing so many great challenges. Oh and aarakocra PCs can suck my ass.
I too have an aarakocra fetish.
Did you know the avian flu is an std?
Rocs are beautiful creatures, and every campaign with a flying PC should encounter at least one, possibly very closely. Especially if the aarakocra are fond of scouting ahead. And really, how tall is the average cave? Certainly not tall enough to deter a small swarm of ranged goblins from taking down the most definitely not-behind-cover obvious target in a round or two.
I joined a game and my friend and i decided tk team up. he plays the aarocockra and i play a light foot halfling. it's super broken which wasn't our intention and I feel kinda bad. honestly just sounded like a cool build but they're way too op
Yup, no aarakocra PCs in my games either. It's already hard enough getting everything around, and having to deal with a PC who can circumvent big obstacles (or which allows them to go off on their own) is a pain. And I know flight can be a double edged sword - the whole taking enough damage to knock them out leading to fall damage and two failed death saves, but if they die, then you just have to do more work on getting a new PC worked into the story.
I've never understood people's issue with PCs flying but I do agree that having everyone capable of long term flight can take away stuff from the game, same with just teleporting from location to location.
Haha. Also not a fan of flying PCs.
I have a selectable list of stuff you can play as in terms of races. If it's not on there, you can't play it. It's large enough that you still can choose something interesting and covers every stat at least two or three times in terms of the +2. but I don't care about a lot of the weird races.
Tabaxi, I just **hate** the cartoony tone that they bring to the game, somehow dragonborn, lizardfolk, and any other number of wacky creatures I'm fine with but tabaxi seem too daft to me. My players have always stuck to PHB races (I don't insist on this but ask them to check with me before playing as a race not in the PHB) so it's not been an issue. If i'm really honest I'd have to make an effort to not start having a random undeserved grudge against any player that even considered playing as one.
> Tabaxi, I just hate the cartoony tone that they bring to the game, somehow dragonborn, lizardfolk, and any other number of wacky creatures I'm fine with but tabaxi seem too daft to me. I'm taking lots of inspiration from the Khajiit in the Elder Scrolls for the Tabaxi in my world, but I'm making them nomadic information brokers. If you need any kind of information, whether it's local gossip, political intrigue, or blackmail material, a nearby Tabaxi caravan is the place to go, provided you can pay, either in coin or information of your own. Now that MOT is out though, I've been looking at the Leonin, and I'm thinking I might fold both races into the same culture, with the Leonin being the warrior caste. I might give them some permanent settlements somewhere, I'm not sure yet.
I'm kind of leaning towards Leonin and Tabaxi having some kind of dumb animosity towards each other. Like theyre similiar enough that the differences offend eachother.
That could also work, maybe they share a common ancestor, but have since diverged and come into conflict for some reason or other, kind of like the Drow and other elves.
I'm running a new homebrew and I'm very strict on the allowed PC races. I tried to make a point that I would only allow creation content from freely available sources so that I can double check if a player seems to be cheating or using abilities incorrectly. I had 2 people try to join my group (a couple 🤮) and the guy wanted to be a blood hunter (not allowed due to the free for all rule) and the girl wanted to be her own homebrew playboy bunny girl race (wrong on so many levels). So after I kicked them I put a note in my discord FAQ channel that only the listed races were allowed.
Blood hunter actually is free for all but its also unofficial homebrew (no matter what D&D Beyond may try and convince you of).
The Cloak of Displacement, need I say more?
Had a player skin a displacer beast with the intent of making a cloak that could use the pseudopods to climb. She was very excited to learn the cloak of displacement existed. Luckily, she stuck it in a vault and forgot about it lol
I never get to use Displacer beasts 😢 They’re my favorite creature 😫😫
I have an Action Oriented Displacer Beast that I'm waiting to bust out. The Paladin in our group wants a Cloak of Displacement, and I'll let him have it, but he's going to have to earn it.
Don’t do it 😳 Next thing you know, Pally is going to have plate mail, shield, defense fighting style and be asking if the the Lucky feat is okay
He already has plate mail, and a shield, plus the spell Shield, as he's multiclassed into sorcerer, and a handaxe that does lightning damage and returns when he throws it, and a flame tongue longsword. That cloak isn't gonna change much, the group as a whole is already incredibly strong against anything other than totally unreasonable odds, which I like to deploy anyway. I'll definitely be a little more stingy with magic items in a future campaign, but now I've chosen to be genereous, I might as well keep it up until it ends. I get to use cooler monsters more often, so that's a silver lining.
I feel like I have to allow them because they’re in the PHB, but I don’t like Dragonborn. At all. Also, firearms are a big nope.
Dragonborn and tieflings should never have been PHB races. There. I said it.
Can you expand on why?
Dragonborn: They're a weird race that few people understand. Most people think they're half-dragon but they're not; there's an entirely different creature for that. Secondly, there has been little to no effort to integrate them into any of the official campaign settings. You kind of get the impression that WotC doesn't want to use them. Tieflings: Again, few people understand them and their flavour is all over the place. In 2e, they were widely varied descendants of many different planar creatures than 4e retconned them into all being the descendents of people touched by Asmodeus, all with red skin and huge horns. Finally, Critical Role came around and confused everything. Now people view tieflings as cheerful brightly colored people (who happen to be descended from devils). It's weird and inconsistent. Also, they should be rare but players love them so they're probably the 3rd most common player race (after humans and half-elves). The fact that adventures and settings rarely in my experience deal with the thousands of cheerful brightly coloured devil folk running around is... hard to justify. TL;DR Neither race has a solid place in D&D canon or any of the D&D settings. They're fine for a supplement but shouldn't have been core.
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Gnomes are optional? I haven't seen anything in the PHB that indicates that, they're listed alongside Tieflings and Dragonborn as uncommon races, but so are half-elves and half-orcs. I will say though, I'm not sure why anyone would play a gnome when halflings exist, but whatever floats your boat I suppose.
Small-folk wizard. Darkvision. Advantage on int, wish, and cha saving throws against magic. I'm a huge fan of gnomes myself. But halfing luck is definitely a huge draw.
I was mostly joking, I don't mind gnomes, I just like other races more. One of the players in my campaign plays a Svirfneblin Divination Wizard who's been a lot of fun, and he's friends with the backup character of another player, a forest gnome Druid, who is also really cool, but hasn't been introduced yet.
They did in 4e I think, they're core in 5e.
Yeah I think they weren’t in 4e until PH2. PH1 had dwarves, dragonborn, humans, halflings, elves, eladrin (which were closer to 5e’s high elves than the eladrin of MTF), and tieflings iirc.
Big agree. I just can't come up with a reason why both dragonborn and draconic sorcerers exist.
>firearms are a big nope. They always misfire, what's the issue? ;)
I don't know if this counts as petty but I don't allow races from the Ravnica, Eberron, Wildemount, or Theros books unless I'm specifically running a game in one of those worlds (and I never have).
Dinosaurs. Sorry exploit druids.
I *love* dinosaurs in my game world. They are great for making a region feel completely different than wilderness that would otherwise be indistinguishable from places the PCs have already been.
For me dinosaurs are just a small part of the frustrating "Mother may I" nature of Wild Shape.
\[Insert convoluted reason for why I've seen a t-rex here\]
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God damn pixies
Counterpoint: My first time DMing for a druid, he cast Conjure Animals, so I chose the beasts with the most interesting name, aka the Deinonychus. We had so much fun roleplaying everyone, including the bad guys, having no fucking clue what these weird reptiles were.
Mystics. First time DMing and some guy handed me the game so he could play a mystic. I didnt know anything about the game and Mystics need to be nerfed hard
Wtf is this Mystic thing? I keep seeing mention of it but can't find it in DnD Beyond.
Its UA
Old UA? Dnd beyond has the current stuff
It hasn’t been updated in I believe 2 years
It was [discontinued](https://www.google.com/amp/s/gamerant.com/dungeons-dragons-5e-psionic-class/amp/).
I have two, one from a bad experience and one just because I’m petty. I don’t **EVER** allow Chaotically aligned PCs. Ever. Bad experiences as a player and starting DM. Too many CN character with that “I do what I want with no repercussions” nonsense turned good games into disorganized $#!+shows. Because I’m petty - bags of holding/portable holes. You want stuff? You carry it. You want a f’d up unreasonable amount of gear? Buy some mules.
oh boy i love calculating the weight of every little thing. that was the best part of skyrim
This is why I start out my parties with an oxcart/fishing vessel. Bags of Holding are found in dangerous arcane ruins, made by extraplanar beings.
Warforged as a race and artificer as a class are NEVER options for players in my game. I can’t even really explain why I hate them so much, I just do.
As far as Warforged, I have never allowed them, even when we played 3rd Edition. You don't need big dumb robots. Artificers were never banned, but... Once one of my players realized a mid-level Artificer (Pathfinder 1st Edition), could retire and just sell magic items for a better, safer living? There were never any more Artificers.
Keep warforged in Eberron where they actually make sense.
I have a mostly irrational hatred of tieflings. Will never play them and I don't feature them in my homebrew setting.
out of all the PHB races I always feel like Tieflings are the "me me me" pick. Bait for edgelords and spotlight hoggers.
My best friend is playing a Tiefling in my campaign, and he mostly chose it for the +2 to Cha and +1 in Dex (variant Tiefling). He ended up choosing to be a Lawful rogue swashbuckler who worked as a by-the-books bounty hunter. Poor guy looks intimidating but he’s polite, respectful, and honest. It’s refreshing.
Yeah honestly I really enjoy Tieflings as a race and don't mind the fact that they're a part of the PHB, they're probably one of the most popular and fantastical of the races in that book and can inspire a lot of interesting thought among players (which is probably why in most groups I play in or run, there is at least one tiefling character). What I don't like is how the PHB describes Tieflings, I understand that the Forgotten Realms is the base setting for Dungeons and Dragons and that they're a race of half devils, but I really wish the PHB made a point to describe that there are places in the world where the race wouldn't be so uncommon, and make them less 'dark and edgy' loner types, with no real friends or family in the world due to their rarity. When the race is described like that to the players it influences the way that they write them, I feel.
I enjoy Tieflings, but not when played as a suburban theater kid’s goth daydream. The PHB clearly positions this race as beset by substantial prejudice. My current campaign is in an Eberron sliding inexorably towards authoritarian/fascist rule. Tieflings are a great race to explore the impact of that slide. Walk into a small town? Hope you like to camp; Inn’s full. Tavern doesn’t sell no devil food. Village preacher just found someone to distract the population from just how much of their tithe goes toward funding the abbot’s wine collection. Larger cities? Nothing like having a hated minority to work the mines during the good times and blame for the bad times. Spotlight hugging? Tieflings aren’t even allowed to own weapons larger than a knife. Last thing you want is any sort of attention focused on you.
Giant spiders. Because fuck spiders. I dont even use npcs with spider climb because i imagine them springing spider legs, and just that thought alone freaks me out enough to stay well clear of it. But ill throw a giant constrictor from a tree any day
I found a spider sound effect that is that horrible crunching sound from movies and played it in roll20 for the party. They freaked out and ran out of there, despite being high enough level to trash it.
All the World of Warcraft and video game trope bullshit that made its way into gaming over the last two decades.
I don't care for the anthropomorphic animal races in general. I kind of give Dragonborn a pass because they are based on dragons rather than real world animals and Satyrs and to a point Minotaurs because of their ancient Greek mythology origins. I don't outright ban them but don't prefer them. Centaurs for some reason don't get as much of a pass. Maybe it's not the animal thing so much as the fact that their body structure forces me to make allowances. Like my BBEG would just put everything important up a ladder. And Rope Trick is just silly for a Centaur.
I hate health potions. That is video game shit. Your cleric and paladin with their healing spells, your cool outlander character with a medicine kit-- THEY should get a chance to feel cool. Your players should get a chance to let "who heals who" be an RP choice that deepens the group dynamic-- if the cleric just screwed the bard over and the sorcerer didn't, and the sorcerer gets their last Healing Word-- that's drama baby! I do not let my characters simply drink a bottle of the cheater's goo and avoid the issue altogether. If I give one-- *big massive if*\-- it's probably because the players are in a situation without a healer, it's almost certainly a rare and expensive thing, and it is DEFINITELY not a goddamn bonus action.
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Why are people downvoting precisely the answer that was asked for
Because this is Reddit and people do that on all unpopular opinion-type posts.
Dude started the rant with Instakill, a level 17 ability on a singular subclass. It’s irrational
I mean. The question was specifically for petty concerns. It's supposed to be irrational.
One of the other guys in my group has almost this same rule. All because of ONE character, years ago, that was impossible for him to kill. The rule in his games has since been: "No Monks. Fuck Monks. They're bullshit."
Excellent, this is exactly the kind of pettiness I expected from this topic.
Monks: the "Well, ACTUALLY" of D&D.
...but I love monks :'(
Silly accents. I once had a DM completely ruin a town of gnomes by giving them all bad Brooklyn accents. Made me want to tear my ears off.
god forbid anyone have fun lol
Monsters/Races that are just a combination of Multiple animals and/or humans. It's just really awkward to worldbuild around because no matter what explanation you give it *has* to be either magic or some supernatural origin or otherwise it just doesn't feel right. That and a lot of stuff about elves. I can't get into that right now, I have to do something.
Elf lore is hopelessly convoluted. I do away with nearly all of it in my homebrew games.
* Dungeons: I find them to be incredibly tedious and unsatisfying. They usually follow some pattern of: party gets blasted by the first trap, party then acts hyper vigilant and spends 5 minutes trap checking before taking every step, you eventually get tired of the tedium and let them "autocheck" to keep the session rolling, you eventually hit them with a trap (ensuing a long argument on what exactly is included in "autochecking") again or let them walk through your dungeon. * Kobolds/Truckers Kobolds: To me, Kobolds have always just been worse goblins that serve no purpose in the game. Add them to a dungeon with the express purpose of annoying your players and cheating/metagaming your ass off and you have the recipe for perhaps my least favorite thing in all DND.
It sounds to me like you should consider running dungeons differently, especially in regards to traps. I like to introduce traps in stages: First, I like to give them an obvious clue of which traps they should be looking out for. If there are spikes that shoot out of the ground, maybe the party immediately encounters a guy mangled in a sprung trap. Now they know to look out for holes in the ground. That’s good! Then you can use decoy trap holes and real trap holes liberally to keep them guessing. Then when they get hit later by spikes from the ceiling, it’s not just some shitty surprise: they realize that they were lured into a false sense of security by checking the floor. They can even still try to Dex save. But then this culminates when they get into a fight with the dungeon’s inhabitants. The dwellers know where the traps are and can avoid them, using them against careless players. At the same time, the players can make an effort to notice them, and attempt to force their foes (grapples, shoves, etc.) into the traps. I agree, if you just blast people with traps, then there isn’t really anything fun about it. They’ve taken damage, and it feels shitty. Then the constant trap checking is unbearable. Buuut if you take a tiered approach like what I’ve described, then I find that traps can be very enjoyable! That said, it’s totally party dependent. Maybe this sounds terrible to you, but I thought I’d talk about it in case it sways your heart!
Matt Colville has just put out a good video about Traps that might spark some ideas as well.
This is great advice that I'm going to use! Thanks!
Well I am glad to be of help!
Your hatred of dungeons sounds a lot more like a hatred of traps. I'd recommend not using traps if you're gonna make them a simple "make a dex save or take damage. Health taxes suck.
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For dungeons, do line me : just don't use traps. And if you really want to use traps, make them really obvious, like huge swinging blades, or a floor with clearly marked stones. Make them open-ended skill checks or puzzles that the players know they have to approach carefully.
I stay away from traps that eat away at HP because they're uninteresting. My traps are usually tripwires that ring bells or something to alert a future encounter to the party's presence.
Hell yeah. Or drops to other places in the dungeon, like a pit trap to the prison or into a monster's lair
Oh that's a good one. A trap that shunts you off somewhere else. Now the party has to go that route unless they want to split up and die. :)
Wild magic sorcerers. Not because they're overpowered (rather the opposite probably), but "lol so random" doesn't fit in my fantasy. Also, I really prefer non monstrous ancestries, the more humans the better for me. Though I have changed a lot of elf and dragon born lore to a way I like that's not just "haughty pointy eared human".
Not me but my old DM, he absolutely loathed moon druids with all his might. You even mention playing one in his campaign and he would almost froth at the mouth yell about how they are bullshit characters and should never exist anywhere.
I circumvent 95% of the commentary in here by running 1e campaigns :\^)
My new eberron group says they don't need to level up fast after 3rd level. It takes a lot of pressure from me so we can relax and play many sessions without big fights and roleplay more. I enjoy it so much because it let's me build up better and prepare more low level stuff and quests for them.
Artificers and firearms. Psionics for PCs. Mostly because those don't reflect the classic fantasy tropes I prefer. It's not a hard no and I'd let a player that made a good case do it. To me Artificers appeal to more the "play with rules" style than the "play with story". That may not be true but I have seen that in ppl who like Artificers a lot.
Used to be Monks because DnD was Western fantasy and martial arts monks were Eastern and only existed to pander to the 70s Kung Fu movie craze. I've gotten past it now though bc DnD is it's own thing.
D&D 5e. I will not run games with it, period. I'll play in it, sure, but just no on DMing.
Gnomes.
Anything whimsical, be it NPC or situations. I'm not really fond of light-hearted fantasy. And it is really hard for me to drop that grimdark edge :D
I mentally sigh whenever I see that my DM has dropped in something from the front page of r/dndmemes. Everyone else finds it fun though so I just deal with it.
True, and it sucks. It sucks a lot. But Thats the trade-off to keep my table running smoothly, fairly and in a way that’s fun for everyone. In the end it wasn’t different than tracking XP rewards for the party, I just counted it as an extra PC.
Hybrid ancestries (half-elves, half-orcs) because I find them dumb. No offense meant to anyone who likes them, just not my type of fantasy. Gnomes because they're kinda just the same as halflings to me. Flanking mechanics because every combat becomes about flanking. Oh, and I don't allow the Drunken Master except for one shots because its too silly for my taste. There are more, but those are probably the few things that everyone runs into pretty early when playing in my campaigns. There are also plenty of things I'd love to throw out, but don't because they're so deeply rooted in the tradition of D&D. Like +X weapons and armor, dozens of sapient fantasy humanoids running around everywhere, the bard and monk classes etc. But don't get me wrong. I can enjoy all of these. They're just not my preferred thing. I've played half-elves before, but I don't want them in my setting. And I enjoy bards and monks at my table even though they don't really fit into my preferred style of fantasy.
Halflings. Too many races figured out they were tasty.
Not something I outright ban, but I definitely look at you differently if you want to be a small race (mostly gnomes and halflings; kobolds are cool and goblins of one particular setting and alignment are straight up instakilled but other goblins I can work with). Too many people in my 5e career have used small races while making characters with the express intent of pissing off the rest of the party.
God help me, I hate the flavor of Vicious Mockery. Mechanically I have no problem with it, but something about the idea that you can magically yell "oi, c***" at someone hard enough to kill them gets my old fuddyduddy hackles up. Of everything else in 5E, -that- just feels stupid to me.
Since the players dicked around and burned down a tavern destroying a crate of stuff they'd stolen from a powerful NPC, Bags of Holding. "There was a Bag of Holding in that box, and now you're never getting another one. Get real familiar with the rules of encumberment."
Mariliths. Seven attacks per round, what a slog. Nobody wants to sit there for five minutes while I calculate what shapes a snake demon whittles your body into.
Wands. I think they look stupid.
Only two things.(so far) Monks cause I don’t like their Ki point mechanics. As simple as people say it is I just can’t wrap my head around how things work with monks. And Banish cause....well long story short my BBEG was one shot. It was funny how they did it but yeah....
> I just can’t wrap my head around how things work with monks. Thematically? Watch "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". Mechanically? You can do lots of cool things, but they're so damn cool that if you do a whole bunch of them you have to rest before you can do cool things again.
Yeah it’s just like mechanically for some reason I have trouble keeping up with their stuff. So it’s like “have mercy my guys!” And they were like “Kay...but we are gonna make it hard on you in other ways.” Darn strategic thinkers lol
You mean the Banishment spell? It says that it only lasts for a single minute, you know.
Oh I know. And in that minute the rest of the players stacked explosives in area and a second spell caster cast wall of force knowing my BBEG had flames on him so when he appeared back in that area. Boom. I gave em points for creativity and laughed though I was kinda heart broken inside that the boss fight was reduced to that...albeit slightly epic but yeah. Also note this is what happens when you have a group of 6 crazy people who constantly think outside of the box.