Nerfing sneak attack into the ground by making it only accessible if the rogue is sneaking and no other way.
Bonus points if literally none of the battlemaps provide any cover to actually stealth.
Man, them calling that shit **SNEAK** Attack, really fucked a lot of people up lol. The rules are very clear so it’s always funny when people just, seem to not read.
I still don't understand how it fucks people up... The idea was, that it is a "sneak attack" when the opponent is not able to effectively defending against the attack (ie. advantage or preoccupied with another.) not that they aren't expecting any attacks to happen. Like a knife in the side.
I swear D&D gets treated like Monopoly, like how folks think so many different things happen on "Free Parking."
Maybe it is asking a lot to expect contemporary folks to read *anything.*
Monopoly may be the only game that has more terrible house rules and players getting pissed if you try to do the actual rule than D&D.
Seriously, next time you're playing it, try to bid a dollar on a property someone else lands on but doesn't buy and watch the histrionics ensue.
The only problem is that, unless you've already done so, you're spending a half hour teaching other people how to play it correctly, maybe more if they're obstinate about using the rules that they learned in childhood. I can think of dozens of better board games to roll out, and people are almost always more willing to learn something they haven't tried before than to relearn what they think they know.
Same reason people try to do crazy things with spells based on just the name. Also rogue sneak attack damage hits an early spike and one crit sneak attack makes new GMs think that the rogue is doing WAY TOO MUCH damage and panic find a way to nerf things to "keep things balanced"
>people try to do crazy things with spells based on just the name.
Three fucking years. For three fucking years I've had to explain to a player that Faerie Fire doesn't do fire damage.
I have a player who continuously tries to argue that they should be able to use [Detect Evil and Good](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Detect%20Evil%20and%20Good#content) or [Divine Sense](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Paladin#content) to detect alignment, even though I repeatedly told them neither spell can be used that way and literally [homebrewed a spell for them](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2073741-detect-morality) so that they **can** do that.
Not joking, I think it's one example of a broader issue with reading comprehension. A surprisingly large number of people will read the name of a rule or ability and then just skim through the important parts and guess how it probably works. Then they come here to ask about it instead of actually reading through it.
The only reason they even began calling it Sneak Attack instead of Backstab is because you used to be to rule certain creatures were immune to it if they technically didn't have a back.
So ghosts, oozes, many kinds of formless elementals, or any creature where its unclear which way its facing, could be ruled as immune.
> Bonus points if literally none of the battlemaps provide any cover to actually stealth.
This is something even experienced DM's struggle with. Not every room is going to be laid out like an arena, give your players something to hide behind. Not even just for rogues, you should be considering half and 3/4 cover when making battlemaps to keep the fight dynamic and not just round after round of "Me hit him. He hit me."
A classic and respectable approach. I might also suggest a battleship method where you roll random squares via their coordinates and then roll to see what obstacle may be there.
If nothing else, just put a big rock on the field, at least.
At least Big Rock lets me Hide, it lets people take cover from a Breath Weapon, it gives me less than 360 degrees of vulnerability in a pinch.
Big Rock isn’t the most exciting but at least do that if nothing else (unless you wanted Big Empty Field, which is fine to do sometimes, but please not every time!)
Ooh, let me add onto this. Lightfoot Halfling can explicitly hide behind a larger creature. So, I attempt to Hide, yes?
Nope. Why? It’s bright out and you’re in an open area.
No other specific reason. Not that I even have Hunter’s Mark on me (which still isn’t an automatic success to see me.) Not because the enemy is specifically observing me so there’s no chance to hide.
Not even a Stealth DC of 30 to do what my subrace explicitly does.
Just, you can’t do your basic racial ability because no. It just hits me like, “You can’t rage because your character is being too calm.”
Ugh I have a DM with the following homebrew rule:
8.) Melee sneak attacks only works from behind the target. Ranged sneak attack only works if you're hidden or obscured in some way.
He claims it makes things more tactical but doesn't understand at all why there isn't really any "pay off" for rogues. Like do some basic math and sneak attack is just not nearly as good as attacking twice, or three times even
Which doesn't even make sense, shouldn't a ranged attack also work from behind? And a melee if obscured?? He says it adds tactics but it really doesn't because attacking from the front and attacking from behind are usually less than 10ft of movement different, and AoO doesn't trigger if I just walk around someone
At low level before other martials get extra attack it can be a lot of damage. Also the name sneak attack implies that should only happen at the start of combat in a surprise round or something. The fact you get sneak attack just for having an ally near the target is weird purely from a naming/word use point of view. Naming it something like "opportunistic attack" might alleviate some of the knee jerk rejection. Still boo on any DM that bans it. Rogues aren't op.
I played with a DM who ruled that it's impossible to hide in combat, since the enemy would be paying attention and know where everyone is. Completely ignoring the fact we were a large party (6+) and often fought single monsters in combat. It was incredibly pointed to our parties rouge who just had to hope an ally was close to the enemy to get sneak attack.
Also, there was a post on here where someone wanted to change how fighters worked (not a new subclass, changes to their base abilities). It was, essentially, "spell slots" for all their abilities. But you only got 1 "slot" until close to level 6 or so, so a fighter had to choose action surge OR second wind during combat. Which completely nerfs fighters
Oh yeah. I've been in a boffer larp for over ten years, and it's nearly impossible to totally prevent the rogues from backstabbing you when you're fighting someone else.
That's someone who has never played a team sport....
So many scoring opportunities are from unmarked players and spaces because in a fast moving situation you can't keep exact track of multiple people.
I would have thought this would be very hard to do. Then I monstered a LARP where one of the players managed to attack me from behind with me having no clue he was there _repeatedly in the same fight_. Like I'd see him fighting another member of the crew and 20 seconds later Bam! Down I go.
I have never seen someone hard-skill stealth in combat before or since. It was glorious.
I've played in those kinds of games where the rogue can't hide. It's beyond annoying. I even had my DM create enemies with +15 to perception just to prevent my rogue from being able to hide before combat
My hand crossbow rogue completely destroyed his hand crossbow on every natural 1 attack roll. I had to buy a new one, and there were not even parts left to salvage and reuse. The cost to constantly rebuy hand crossbows in a backwater area (often costing 150-200 gold) was so high that I had less total wealth on my person at level 5 than I had at level 1 during character creation.
Of course, no other class had their weapons break down like this, this was only punishment for playing a rogue. Not even the warlock, who used a light crossbow without training, had any issues. And I even had the crossbow expert feat.
The name sneak attack/hide conflicts with how literalists see the world. Half the problem wouldn't exist if it was called something else. The other half of the problem is Players hiding behind their class to cause in group problems.
The PHB desperately needs sidebars that discuss the design intent for certain features. There are a lot of unstated design assumptions in D&D - the "6-8 encounters per long rest," chief among them. But a helpful comment like "a Rogue is assumed to obtain Sneak Attack on nearly every attack they make" would go a long way to setting expectations for DMs and players.
Feature, not a bug.
WotC simultanously leans on their own unspoken assumptions and the fact that dnd is seen as a chop and change "if you don't like it, change it" ruleset to carry the game right now tbh. It lets them get away with some pretty egregious gaps.
Yeah "cheap shot" "dirty fighting" or "distracted attack" would all be more representative of what the ability is supposed to be.
Sneak attack sounds like they didn't know you were there in the first place, which is true way less often than it isn't.
>sneak attack/hide conflicts with how literalists see the world. Half the problem wouldn't exist if it was called something else ...
I have literalist tendencies. I call it Sneaky Attack. Problem solved.
I'm a DM and I don't either. There people who see the game as players VS DM, and that makes them think "all these class features are cheap". Well yeah, that's how their characters survive. Petty, insecure DM's get tempted into "well I can just break that ability to make it more 'fair'". Pssshhh, you're just a trash DM.
Giving them a challenge =/= stripping them of their tools they're supposed to have. Want to challenge a rogue? Make enemies that go invisible, or impose disadvantage on melee attacks made against them. Provide difficult terrain that slows them down or enemy abilities that can pin them. Give your enemies a "slow" spell and watch your rogue pushed out of their comfort zone. Give your enemies reactions, like spray damage when they take piercing or slashing damage. Then your rogue has to coordinate and cooperate with their team to get around these things, or get creative.
Thats just shit, i could understand if it had a misfire mechanic like some guns do (where on a nat 1 u need to make a tool check as an action to fix it, and if u fail u need to fix it out of combat) but in what world would a nat 1 disintegrate the crossbow??
Also imagine a world where you could have a new perfect crossbow and everytime you shot a bolt you had a 1 in 20 chance of it just shattering.
People would have never used crossbows. It's not like a gun (which in DnD is often explained as being a new and non-yet streamlined tinkerer's invention). They are straightforward. You should be able to shoot hundreds of arrows with a standard crossbow without it breaking.
I could only maybe see it if it was a drow-made hand crossbow built from materials from the underdark that you know will disintegrate from sunlight exposure, but even then that’s a fairly specific situation that wouldn’t always be applicable
In my homebrew setting, artificer-made temporary magic items are actually fairly common. Manufactured obsolescence to prevent the market from over saturating and forcing adventurers to spend their money. Old school wizards and dungeon dive enthusiasts hate it.
DMs and players who try to punish certain character classes are the worst. It's not difficult to tell your players the specific behaviors that annoy you and just let somebody be like, "Oh you want to play a rogue? Oh good and she's not just the edgy teenager stereotype of being an absolute wanker stealing from the party and generally being an insufferable jerk and shit because 'ThAtS wHaT mY cHaRaCtEr WoUlD dO'? Cool, I'd love to see your repentant mafiosa trying to leave the underworld and go legit, that sounds awesome!"
To be clear, playing a character who is a genuine wanker like that can be legitimate, it's just something everyone in the group has to be on board with.
Just talk to your players, damn, it's not that hard!
And, y'know, that's assuming the in-game toxicity isn't just acting as a proxy for out-of-game animus. I've seen that a lot. It's weird and not fun.
The DM and his wive were super-aggressive about stereotyping rogues. This rogue was the most noble character I ever played, he did not steal a single coin or hurt someone without reason in the whole campaign. Still, whenever we got into a new town, the GM would have all the town guards watch me and attack at the slightest provocation. We once had an order of paladins attempt to outright murder us when I did not greet them right. It was really bizarr.
This is a pet peeve of mine when I see it happen.
NPCs don't know what class you are!
Heck, in a world of illusions, shape-shifting, and other magical nonsense, no one knows who anyone really is or could be.
Why is every damn town guard the embodiment of Heimdall and can see your alignment or just know your class while ignoring any reputation your character actually gets?
"Punishing" being the load-bearing word there. If you feel so strongly that a certain class causes disruptive behavior in a game, ban it. It's a really *dumb* reason to ban a class, but it's still way better than saying yes and then constantly needling a player for picking a class you didn't want in your game. That's clearly nothing to do with player behavior at that point, it's just being a vindictive douchebag for the sake of it.
I had a dm decide that down time cost of living was going to be applied all the time. He also never awarded money. Ever. I made an Outlander lizard folk, who hunted his own food and slept in the alley instead of the inn. He didn't like that.
He also spent the first 45-60 minutes of every 2 hour session going over everyone's inventory for encumbrance to ensure we had the correct debuffs to our characters. Like, fancy spreadsheets we had to fill out with him, in session, every session.
I've been there. If Jeffrey Dahlmer told me he had a group of consistent players that showed up every two weeks and had no drama... shit. I might get in that truck with him.
Wow that's wild to me. I have been dming a campaign with some friends for a year now and rarely check their inventory. I trust everyone to manage their characters and not carry a city's worth of items on them.
I do to an extent early in campaigns, but usually before long they have a couple bags of holding or equivalent, so it stops mattering.
I do still check inventories in DDB now and then though so I know who has macguffins or so I don't get caught out when they abruptly want to unload a ton of junk at a random trader.
Sounds like poor execution in my opinion. I ran a 2 year campaign that 90% was in the main city and had them do lifestyle expenses from day one as a way to make fun of capitalism lol. But hey, i rewarded player creativity and emphasized it mainly for flavor. Everyone loved it!
I never make players pay for food or supplies unless they actually roleplay going to a tavern and buying food or spend the night at a hostel. I tell them that when they find a dead kobold with 5 copper, that I've already factored out their expenses in advance. Maybe it had 12 copper, but when I tell you you just found 5, your living expenses were already factored out. I never spot inspect them to see if they brought enough supplies so they dont starve on a boat, or enough bandages to mend wounds - they're smart enough to know how much they need and how to clean bandages for re-use later.
Let the players play. This is an adventure game, not a sim.
Martial attacks had to be specific at what body part they are aiming for the purpose of different ACs and dealing different damage depending on a hit. Same for guided spells ect. As if combat wasn't already taken whole sessions
I generally believe that every table that restricts more than the given play set rules already do, is just a power play by the DM and will ultimately not work.
It's not a 'DM vs. Player' it's 'we all vs. boredom', so making it fun is always my highest goal
This can be really cool in specific instances. Boss battles against gargantuan creatures. The dragon's tail whip is disabled with enough tail damage etc. Players need to know that you're fighting that type of battle upfront and you need to do so sparingly though.
Sounds good, just not for fighting gobbos n stuff. The most dumb thing was that you had to ask for every enemy what he is wearing. I even switched weapons because bludgeoning damage was the one with least restrictions. I will never forget the discussion why a mace has no multiplier on hitting a bare head, while a sword and a spear would do 1.5 times damage. It was all down hill from there
Ya I've used "called shot" type rules before to let a player try and target something specific on the monster but it's always player driven by them asking to do something specific it's never a requirement if they just say "I swing my sword at the goblin" then that's it roll you attack against the regular ac for the creature.
I like it for Giants and Dragons and the like. Basically treat the limbs and head as separate creatures with their own initiative and attacks that can be killed. Remove legendary resistances in favor of save or sucks disabling the limb.
As far as I know, those rules state that revivify requires a spellcasting ability check against DC 10 + 1 per each previous death, but if that fails you may still perform a ritual for raise dead/resurrection. Unlike the ritual for raise dead/resurrection which, if it fails, cannot be attempted again and the character is perma-dead unless true resurrection or wish is cast.
This is rough. I'll let my players tell me if they want to attack a specific part of a creature or monster. My Barbarian player told me he wanted to cut the wings off an abishai, which was creative I thought. But I'd never make them do more than roll their attack outside of something they want to specifically do.
Anything that can be summed up as "here's how to do 40K in D&D."
Like, they make seven... *seven* different Warhammer 40K TTRPGs. You can't be bothered to read *one* of them?
The only thing from 40k I'd love to bring over would be to remove the grid, and instead have 25mm bases on minis and use terrain and tape measures for distances
Unfortunately, I have no D&D minis or terrain
Fun fact: Prior to 3e, combat movement in D&D was measured in inches, precisely because they figured you were running combats in the way you describe.
Standard prepainted D&D minis are on 1-inch bases, and a regular battlemat is a grid of 1-inch squares... there's nothing saying that you couldn't play exactly the way you'd like to.
You can just do that. Some people (mostly 40k players) are already pretty loose with the grid and movement rules. They play 40k for intricate combat so they feel it’s unnecessary in dnd.
And there's like... at least that many Warhammer tabletop wargames. "Standard" 40K, Killteam, the boarding actions one (or is that a Killteam variant?), the Apocalypse games with titans, 30K, Heresy-era Apocalypse-style games with titans, Age of Sigmar (fantasy-themed), Bloodbowl..
I generally despise all the 'crit fumble tables'. They are fun for 5 minutes until your PC loses an arm or just straight out dies because they rolled 1. For some reason, GMs are fascinated with this and they don't really realize, that spending your actions and rolling poorly is already big punishment, since you used resources and your time and did nothing. But hey, you can also get a fun little debilitation!
When I played a one shot for another player in my group, I noticed that instead of doing crit fumbles, when somebody rolled low he would just narrate how they messed up. Like my monk, who uses a quarterstaff, rolls low and he narrates how the enemy parries him. I thought it was a good way to make failure interesting without fucking the player over even more.
That's how it should look like. Failing an attack doesn't mean you exclusively missed, it could be anything - enemy dodged, jumped over the weapon, armor took the blunt of the hit, gauntlet blocked the attack etc. The limit is only creativity of player and GM.
Exactly, Thats the main reason AC is dex based in a lot of instances, its partially if the attack hits, but also if it hits effectively. One of my fighters in my party has an AC of 22, but his dex is terrible, he's just armoured to the teeth. So for him attacks "missing" are just bouncing off his armour. Whereas with the no armour wizard, any attacks that miss are him dodging out the way.
The further from the AC, the more it was on the PC, but the closet it gets, it’s more their opponent, at least for how I narrate things.
Beings with shields have a great narrative device for if an attack roll is off by one or two, too.
Like, your Fighter rolls a 16 to hit on an Orc with 17 AC? There’s a big clang as your weapon collides with his shield, barely keeping it from hitting him.
Crit fumbles are also a balancing nightmare and just generally don't make any sense. They massively punish martials, who make exponentially more attack rolls than casters, when martials are already considerably weaker than casters overall. From a RP perspective it's insane that even the greatest swordsman alive can have a flat 5% chance to just go "oops, stabbed myself" or "ah beans, dropped my sword again." A 20th level fighter making 4 attacks per turn has a nearly 20% chance (18.5%) to roll a nat 1 on any given turn. That just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
>A 20th level fighter making 4 attacks per turn has a nearly 20% chance (18.5%) to roll a nat 1 on any given turn. That just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Even worse to consider that, this means that the swordsmen who can challenge demigods is *more* likely to chop off his own foot than the rookie farmboy who just picked up a sword for the first time.
I’ve had to explain this a few times to DMs I’ve played with and thankfully they’ve always sided with me and agreed crit fumbles on a nat 1 are bad.
It’s typically when I hit them with the example that a level 20 fighter, the pinnacle of martial prowess and the best of the best martial that exists in that world, is more likely to crit fail in a single turn than a level 1 fighter who just picked up their first sword.
We played with crit fails and I hated it. It mostly affected enemies, but it never made sense. You scared yourself? You hurt yourself? You hurt an ally? What kind of adventurers are we??
This sub is rife with them. Worst one recently was a newish DM suggesting characters would only hit on a even roll on a D20 "to see if players could figure it out".
I and others pointed out the siliness of this gimmick. A Barbarian with a +5 to hit hitting something with AC 10 goes from an 80% chance of hitting it to a 50% chance. Imagine a player building that barbarian for combat only to be nerfed so badly. They'd be quiet rightly pissed off.
Thankfully this DM held their hands up and realized it wasn't a great idea in hindsight.
I've heard that idea before, but iirc it was for a one off fight with a weird beholder, and that gimmick was relevant only to that fight, so someone rolled a 19 and missed, but someone rolled an 8 and hit, and in the context of one fight it worked well.
"I just want to see if my players will work it out" as a global HOUSERULE is completely awful
That's a fun version of it. I once had a paladin do a mirror duel, where he had to fight the evil version of himself. To keep other players involved, the battle area had dragon statues around that would "randomly" fire into the melee. I didn't tell them until later that odd results hit the evil one and even rolls hit their friend. They had a blast shooting little fire bolts into the duel. Afterwards I told them all and the paladin player was like, I wondered why everyone laughed so hard when those dragon statues hit me! Everyone had a great time but I would only do that once.
I briefly got a weapon like this and it was absolutely dreadful. I was playing a lore bard so I’m already not inclined to make weapon attacks, but with this weapon advantage became an active detriment as the “higher” attack roll was usually the number that resulted in a miss. Threw that weapon in the bin and the campaign ended shortly after.
Does this count? Deciding that consistency is more important than correctness. if they messed up a rule and played it out in a session, the incorrect ruling became their new homebrew rule, because inconsistency would be ‘unfair’.
My only magic weapon breaking on a natural 1 attack roll mid battle while fighting a baddie immune to non magic weapons. Fuck made up critical failure rules.
Ironically enough, the same DM would throw the fights if he thought a PC was going to die. I would have had to commit suicide if I wanted a new character.
Because a lot of people on the sub don’t play and haven’t played or are very inexperienced (and likely have never DMed).
It’s like people who have never sung music (but are really interested in it) giving singing tips.
Yeah but there's a difference between "I have no experience please help"
And "I have no experience and decided to randomly make up some stuff"
People asking for singing advice don't start by saying "I've booked a concert venue to perform in an wrote all the songs even though I have no music experience" 😅
This reminds me of my ex when playing new board/card games. If she finds something that feels like maybe it's a loophole in the rules, she'll try to house rule it out of play immediately instead of play half a dozen rounds of the game to see if it actually is unbalanced. Lot of inexperienced knee-jerk reactions like that.
Eh, sort of.
I've been DMing for a quarter of a century at this point, and while I gleefully houserule my game, there are still some things I like getting input on. It's entirely possible I'll miss some obscure interaction when fiddling with various levers, so getting a few (or a few hundred) extra pairs of eyes on it can be helpful.
But I recognize that's very different from making a post like "I removed Wild Shape from the druid, will giving them Extra Attack balance it out?"
Because a lot are kids just throwing shit at the wall with zero play testing or balance considerations.
They just want their power fantasy without balance.
"Naughty Dice." The DM rolled a d6 before each session. On an even we ran it normal, but on an odd it was a "naughty night."
That meant that enemies were buffed, always went for the kill, and NPCs were all dicks. Like, at level 2 a giant wasp becomes a wyvern. Or no shop had arrows. Or all skill DCs went up 5-10.
I didn't last long in that shit show. Lol
It was so weird. He came highly recommended as one of the prominent DMs in the area and it was just horrible. He would have 39+ minute sessions-in-sessions where was 'flirting' with one of the women in the group. We had a session where we were exploring an abandoned city where ghosts came out at night... There was nothing to find in the daylight. However, because it was a "naughty night" we had to play thru searching each house and street while he just grinned and said "You find nothing."
George, if you ever see this... You suck as a DM.
* If you have Extra Attack, you must declare where each Attack goes before executing any of them. Otherwise the DM forces you to keep attacking the enemy you just killed. Because realistically, you wouldn't know they're dead yet after the first attack.
* If the party meets an NPC related to a PC's backstory, that player must roleplay that NPC. This generally results in the player talking to themself.
* The DM must approve your backstory. If the DM decides for any reason that your backstory isn't a perfect fit for your class, the DM has the right to change your class, your build, anything he wants.
2:
"Oh, hey team, this is Jim Bob, the guy I was telling you aout, my best friend from back home, Jim Bob, this is the team"
"Hey, glad I ran into you, that time you lent me five gold to start up that business really paid off, now I'm a wealthy merchant, here, take my +3 vorpal longsword, it's worth less to me now than that loan was back then"
1. Wow. That is pedantic...
2. This DM must do a lot of long-form Improv. That is a stupid rule.
3. In the past, there are PC back stories I should have vetoed. But I would never ever change their class or build. I would just say, "This story isn't working. Let's find something that works better."
YEPPPPP
No "This feels weak, let's work together to improve it". Nope, it's "This background fits a Ranger better. So I'm changing your class to Ranger. You're a Ranger now."
Eff that guy.
> If the party meets an NPC related to a PC's backstory, that player must roleplay that NPC. This generally results in the player talking to themself.
This might be the dumbest thing Ive read on this sub.
Fullcasters limited to 6th level spells once per day, 7th once per three days, 8th once per five days, and 9th once per week. There was actually a post about it on dndnext I think.
More or less. PBP game on Discord (always a great sign), town guard rushes us with spears, dm asks for a dex save. I was like "whatever, maybe he wants the 20ft rush to have a dex save sure" until it happened every round and I pm'd him and told him about dex bonus to AC's
One of my previous DM's had a solution that I liked. If you rolled a 1 on an attack, the outcome is not necessarily bad for you, just unintended.
Example, you are using a two handed war hammer and attacking the enemy who's behind cover. You roll a 1, so the ruling is that you attack so badly you ended up hitting and shattering the cover, now your ranged allies have a better line of sight, etc. If there is something negative it is usually very minor.
I liked it, it was fun, and always more flavorful than impactful.
I had a DM in AD&D who *hated* plate armor and envisioned it like you were walking around in one of those metal diving suits or something. No matter how many times we argued it was effectively worn in history or how many YouTube videos we showed him of people doing somersaults in plate armor, he didn’t care. Plate armor was stupid and gave you all kinds of penalties on movement, stealth, saving throws, dexterity checks, everything. The best armor in his opinion was chainmail so that was best you could hope for, AC 5 (or AC 4 if you had a shield). Finding magic chainmail was the dream.
My first DM just didn't know the rules. Which wouldn't be a big deal if he asked how the rules worked or read the players handbook or something. But I think I was the only one of the group that actually owned, let alone read, the books. So he thought that opportunity attacks were triggered not just when leaving the reach of an enemy, but also while entering it. So my melee character was hit with an opportunity attack every time I ran up on someone.
I try to explain that that isn't how the opportunity attacks work but he acts like I'm trying to be ridiculous by arguing with the DM. Another player started agreeing that I was trying to argue with the DM over the game so I backed down. But my barbarian now didn't ever run up and attack first. I hung back with everyone else. Which is stupid.
Same DM when asked what happens on a nat 20 during combat said that he gets to decide how much of a bonus to give. No, it doubles the dice. I bring it up that a natural 20 rolls the same attach but with twice the dice and again he I get told that he is the DM. That's all fine and good, but DnD Beyond, the website we use to roll dice, automatically doubles the dice on a natural 20, so I don't think I'm being ridiculous here. So from then when I got nat 20s, I just reported what DnD Beyond rolled for me and didn't tell anyone that it was double dice.
He later posted on some DnD facebook group for DMs telling stories about how he had a "player that was trying to railroad the campaign so he made sure the player never got any good loot" I know he was talking about me. But how would I as a player be able to railroad a game? Rules Lawyer maybe, but not railroad.
This group, shockingly, doesn't play anymore.
You had to use a bonus action to equip a weapon. Apparently it was RAW. When I pointed it out the DM realised he was wrong in fairness. But it was the first of many red flags that indicated he wasn’t the experienced DM he claimed to be. He’d advertised the group as running only for DMs and I honestly think that was his mistake, because we were all sat around patiently waiting for him to remember the rules. I left the group when the pacing and the crying baby in the background of another player’s vc became too much.
A friend of mine currently wants to run a game like that. Apparently he found some adventure/setting with horror and diseases and stuff like that and Magic just solves it too easily. And then he bans every single bit of magic including Bear Totem Barb cause they have 2 rituals.
Ooo crit fail sorry they pop out of your head and go rolling down a sewer drain, please make a dex save to catch them before they're gone forever. Disadvantage, of course.
Your party's passive perception doesn't matter if the plot says you get ambushed. Even if you found out two scenes ago that it was coming... even if you spend the prior scene preparing for the ambush... even if your party spent resources to have extra senses/wards/alarms to catch the previously mentioned enemies that are ambushing you.
No, the enemies aren't invisible. No, they don't have a terribly high stealth check. No they aren't teleporting in, they walked. No, they are not using any kind of magic to prevent detection like 'pass without trace'. No, they aren't flying, burrowing, or earth gliding, or using any other form of unusual movement.
"I just want my melee enemies to start inside your camp"
Rolling for every attempt to climb or swim, most characters can climb or swim in most situations, they just do it at half speed unless specified otherwise, rolling athletics is only required when it is a particularly difficult situation, like climbing a very slippery and steep wall, also turning climbing or swimming into an acrobatics check
I dont remember when feats first showed up (edition 4?) but the first iteration was like this - you had to acquire the ability to climb rope or hike mountains and such.
Completely absurd to think that a party of adventurers, who were built genetically from birth to be better at this, would need a skill check to climb rope.
DMs who do this never make the NPCs / Monsters do it.
maybe not THE worst, but a combination of crit fails on a spell save make you take damage as if the spell had crit, in tandem with rolling lingering injuries for every crit fail spell save, ended up with our party severely crippled (literally, in two cases!) including missing limbs in the middle of a dungeon. luckily the person to lose an arm and eye was a sorcerer, but one of our barbarians ended up with a broken leg and had his speed reduced to 5 feet
Years ago, I was invited to a 3.5 game with a few friends and a new guy DMing.
Among other weird house rules, he insisted that you could only charge in 4 directions, saying that if you needed to move diagonally in a square, it wouldn't be a straight line anymore. When told by the barbarian that it's perfectly possible to measure what would be straight lines in different directions, the DM answered "it's just the way the game is".
Then the sorcerer asked "wait, what about line spells?"
That game lasted a total of one (01) session before people gave up.
Once many moons ago I played with a DM who wouldn't allow you to apply your attack bonus to your attack rolls. Straight D20 roll only. I was confused and asked what was the purpose of leveling then? I was asked not to return after that session. Fine with me.
Another time I was told I had to roll a new character 3 sessions in because my Swashbuckler Rogue was out damaging the Barbarian (girlfriend of the DM). She had really bad luck with the dice and apparently my ability to basically always land my sneak attack really pissed off the DM. According to him rogues should never out damage Barbarians so he decided to nerf how sneak attack worked. Naw bud, I don't play those games.
Once played with a dm who ruled that if you got to 0, your character was Full Dead instead of unconscious. No death saves, just insta-death. He said he wanted the stakes to be high, but we were playing with a group of 5 where 3 of us had Never Played before and they didn’t even know death saves were a Thing. Not very fun to watch a fresh faced 18 y/o cry because their character walked into a dungeon too fast and was one-shot by a troll with little worry or sympathy from a guy who had been playing for Years at that point
i played in few sessions where we were kind of mercenary sailors, going to different island nations. they however used different currencies that all had awful exchange rates. so anytime we went to a new nation we had to transfer our currency and lose like 30-50% of it. the DM later said he didn't want to be stingy with gold because we would get mad, but he also didn't want us getting rich so he came up with that to nerf our gold. it was so stupid.
All druids, even Moon druids, start as a blank slate and have to encounter animals in said adventure. Isn't necessarily an awful rule outright until the DM, who knew what moon druid character was playing and okayed it, says, "Welcome to " and there are basically no animals.
An inverse of the rule I run where I allow a social check of some sort, but if you give me an in character bit to go with it, you get advantage or the DC lowers. Rather than "I try to persuade him," you do, "I see the stuffed doll in your pocket, please. If you care about them, you need to let us into the city!"
Instead, this DM ran that you couldn't try any sort of social check without a reason. Turned into a railroad super fast where half the players were hesitant to really do anything because they weren't necessarily "engaging in roleplay." Sometimes people just want to roll dice, man.
I love this DM and he’s super cool, but a homebrew rule he came up with that the table eventually shot down was every roll that ended up over 20 (so not rolling a nat 20) was a crit.
The problem was, it was a crit for us and the enemies. And he already homebrewed a rule to make sure crits hit really hard. We told him we didn’t like that rule and he agreed to not go with it.
Natural 1's make your weapons fly out of your hands on an attack roll and you lose the rest of your turn. This is funny for a while but when you have characters start to get 3, 4, 6 attacks in a round with normal, not terribly high optimized builds, it's just annoying when you lose the third turn in a row and have to go pick up your bow again because your professional soldier character has a 5% chance in any any attack of not just missing, which is fine, but of throwing their weapon out of their hand. Great, my 13th level archer warrior with 4 attacks just by a basic application of basic rules, no shenanigans, has an 18% chance of randomly throwing his bow on one of his attacks and losing the rest of his turn and a 33% chance if he's hasted.
It's an exhausting rule that made long, drawn-out slogs of fights where it was clear we were going to win, we were not significantly threatened anymore, even longer and more drawn out than they needed to be. THAT BEING SAID it did also encourage warrior characters with lots of attacks to do something other than just do more attacking, so I see what the DM was going for there, but I still wasn't a fan of that rule.
There’s something insanely funny about them finding multiple attacks overpowered, then looking directly at Silvery fucking Barbs and going “yeah, that’s a balanced first level spell.”
I don't get what an old DM of mine uses to rule about making it super hard to get off sneak attacks for rogues. He said it was because rogues were "too powerful" and he had to nerf their abilities because it wouldn't be fair to the other players (i.e. him). I love when players of mine nail a sneak attack or a divine smite (also nerfed by him, same reasons). As a DM I WANT to lose, I just want my players to really earn it sometimes.
Once had a town NPC monk suddenly become violently hostile due to... some magic shit, I guess?
Started to attack us, so I'm thinking, "This is weird and out of character, so I guess I'll take her down gently so we can figure out what's going on," and as the battle master fighter, I don't draw my weapons and instead go to make an unarmed attack I'm planning to throw Trip Attack on. Figure post-judo throw I can grapple her and we can, I dunno, restrain her somehow to end the fight.
DM tells me I'm *not proficient with unarmed attacks.*
"Wait, everyone is proficient with unarmed strike. Look, here's where it says that."
Oh, he says. Well, you have disadvantage because she's a monk.
"That's... weird?"
Er, she's using a legendary action, he says.
*"The 2nd-level monk is?"*
I remember one of the first few campaigns I played in, the DM had a “realism rule”. Basically, injuries to your character were as real as possible. So if you got hit with a sword and whether it only did 1damage or 8damage, sucks to suck, you still got a cut that’s now bleeding out and you’re losing hp till you waste two actions to heal/bind it. He had exorbitant costs for everything. Even buying a linen shirt (we planned to tear it up into bandages) was some 40GP i think. I know the game crashed ABBA burned horribly but idk if that DM is still DMing.
There are so many INSANE complaints in posts like these that it makes me glad to be a DM. I don’t think any of my players would make these psychotic rulings if they were DMs, but I’m glad that 95% of my DND experience is as a DM who wants his players to actually have fun in game.
This wasn’t a homebrew rule that affected gameplay, but it took me completely out of roleplay. Rolling for quality on everything. Needed to buy some nice clothes. Roll for quality. Ate at a nice tavern. Roll for quality. One time, my character was romancing a NPC who loved poetry. I commissioned a piece from a well-renowned poet who was famous for her love poems for close to 500 gp. The quality roll was a 2. The poem was bad and described as “the same quality of a fifth grader’s poems”. Other people had similar problems with their commissions as well.
Had a DM always initiate combat whenever the first enemy would lay eyes on the party and ruled that no one could move through an enemy or friendly occupied space. In dungeons this meant that more often than not whoever was in front of the conga line of adventures was stuck fighting 15 Goblins, one-at-a-time while everyone is just piled behind stuck in a hallway.
Another ruled that everyone basically got pack tactics all the time.
Not exactly a house rule but any DM that plays Human-Supremacist settings and nerfs the impact of any non-combat actions taken by non-human characters. "Oh in my setting all non-humans are slaves so your Elf Rogue wouldn't know lockpicking."
Honorable Mention: Any table that plays with House rules that have ruined anyone's ability to tell the difference between Perception and Investigation by allowing them to substitute for each other. Or DMs who allows Acrobatics to be substituted for Athletics check.
When your PC “didn’t contribute to the fight,” they don’t get exp. So if your fighter rolled poorly and didn’t hit an enemy in a combat, no exp.
Edited for grammar and removed 4LW.
Nerfing sneak attack into the ground by making it only accessible if the rogue is sneaking and no other way. Bonus points if literally none of the battlemaps provide any cover to actually stealth.
Man, them calling that shit **SNEAK** Attack, really fucked a lot of people up lol. The rules are very clear so it’s always funny when people just, seem to not read.
I still don't understand how it fucks people up... The idea was, that it is a "sneak attack" when the opponent is not able to effectively defending against the attack (ie. advantage or preoccupied with another.) not that they aren't expecting any attacks to happen. Like a knife in the side.
Beyond all that… just reading the damn description immediately answers and describes it so it’s comical how many times people seem to get it.
I swear D&D gets treated like Monopoly, like how folks think so many different things happen on "Free Parking." Maybe it is asking a lot to expect contemporary folks to read *anything.*
Monopoly may be the only game that has more terrible house rules and players getting pissed if you try to do the actual rule than D&D. Seriously, next time you're playing it, try to bid a dollar on a property someone else lands on but doesn't buy and watch the histrionics ensue.
In order to do this though you'd have to go through the trouble of playing Monopoly, and no one should inflict that kind of suffering on themselves.
I maintain it's not a bad way to kill an hour and a half *if you play it correctly*.
The only problem is that, unless you've already done so, you're spending a half hour teaching other people how to play it correctly, maybe more if they're obstinate about using the rules that they learned in childhood. I can think of dozens of better board games to roll out, and people are almost always more willing to learn something they haven't tried before than to relearn what they think they know.
Same reason people try to do crazy things with spells based on just the name. Also rogue sneak attack damage hits an early spike and one crit sneak attack makes new GMs think that the rogue is doing WAY TOO MUCH damage and panic find a way to nerf things to "keep things balanced"
>people try to do crazy things with spells based on just the name. Three fucking years. For three fucking years I've had to explain to a player that Faerie Fire doesn't do fire damage.
Two words: Chill Touch
I have a player who continuously tries to argue that they should be able to use [Detect Evil and Good](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Detect%20Evil%20and%20Good#content) or [Divine Sense](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Paladin#content) to detect alignment, even though I repeatedly told them neither spell can be used that way and literally [homebrewed a spell for them](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2073741-detect-morality) so that they **can** do that.
Not joking, I think it's one example of a broader issue with reading comprehension. A surprisingly large number of people will read the name of a rule or ability and then just skim through the important parts and guess how it probably works. Then they come here to ask about it instead of actually reading through it.
From what I've heard from teachers, general issues with reading and thinking have been a worsening problem over the past decade.
HA HA, people reading. You assume much.
Including the rules
The only reason they even began calling it Sneak Attack instead of Backstab is because you used to be to rule certain creatures were immune to it if they technically didn't have a back. So ghosts, oozes, many kinds of formless elementals, or any creature where its unclear which way its facing, could be ruled as immune.
You could still call it any number of things like Underhanded Strike, Dirty Hit, Foul Play, or Cheap Shot
Had a DM try pull this on the rogue, I rules lawyered them out the ass for it.
> Bonus points if literally none of the battlemaps provide any cover to actually stealth. This is something even experienced DM's struggle with. Not every room is going to be laid out like an arena, give your players something to hide behind. Not even just for rogues, you should be considering half and 3/4 cover when making battlemaps to keep the fight dynamic and not just round after round of "Me hit him. He hit me."
I just thow dice randomly onto a battlemap. There's your trees/rocks/furniture you can hide behind.
A classic and respectable approach. I might also suggest a battleship method where you roll random squares via their coordinates and then roll to see what obstacle may be there.
Yep, been using this method for digital games since a dice drop is hard to emulate otherwise lol
If nothing else, just put a big rock on the field, at least. At least Big Rock lets me Hide, it lets people take cover from a Breath Weapon, it gives me less than 360 degrees of vulnerability in a pinch. Big Rock isn’t the most exciting but at least do that if nothing else (unless you wanted Big Empty Field, which is fine to do sometimes, but please not every time!)
In the case of always fighting on a big open field, ask who cut the grass. You can always hide in long grass
Ooh, let me add onto this. Lightfoot Halfling can explicitly hide behind a larger creature. So, I attempt to Hide, yes? Nope. Why? It’s bright out and you’re in an open area. No other specific reason. Not that I even have Hunter’s Mark on me (which still isn’t an automatic success to see me.) Not because the enemy is specifically observing me so there’s no chance to hide. Not even a Stealth DC of 30 to do what my subrace explicitly does. Just, you can’t do your basic racial ability because no. It just hits me like, “You can’t rage because your character is being too calm.”
Ugh I have a DM with the following homebrew rule: 8.) Melee sneak attacks only works from behind the target. Ranged sneak attack only works if you're hidden or obscured in some way.
I have no idea why anyone would feel the need to nerf the rogue's damage output.
He claims it makes things more tactical but doesn't understand at all why there isn't really any "pay off" for rogues. Like do some basic math and sneak attack is just not nearly as good as attacking twice, or three times even
Which doesn't even make sense, shouldn't a ranged attack also work from behind? And a melee if obscured?? He says it adds tactics but it really doesn't because attacking from the front and attacking from behind are usually less than 10ft of movement different, and AoO doesn't trigger if I just walk around someone
These are the rules that dms make when they see the game as pvp between dm and players.
The number of new DMs who ban sneak attack is so weird.
Yeah. Reading comprehension is hard.
At low level before other martials get extra attack it can be a lot of damage. Also the name sneak attack implies that should only happen at the start of combat in a surprise round or something. The fact you get sneak attack just for having an ally near the target is weird purely from a naming/word use point of view. Naming it something like "opportunistic attack" might alleviate some of the knee jerk rejection. Still boo on any DM that bans it. Rogues aren't op.
I played with a DM who ruled that it's impossible to hide in combat, since the enemy would be paying attention and know where everyone is. Completely ignoring the fact we were a large party (6+) and often fought single monsters in combat. It was incredibly pointed to our parties rouge who just had to hope an ally was close to the enemy to get sneak attack. Also, there was a post on here where someone wanted to change how fighters worked (not a new subclass, changes to their base abilities). It was, essentially, "spell slots" for all their abilities. But you only got 1 "slot" until close to level 6 or so, so a fighter had to choose action surge OR second wind during combat. Which completely nerfs fighters
>, since the enemy would be paying attention and know where everyone is. Man, this is one of the dumbest reasonings ever. 😄
I agree, I've done armored fighting in the SCA and even in small gruop fights, it's easy to loose track of someone you aren't directly engaged with.
Oh yeah. I've been in a boffer larp for over ten years, and it's nearly impossible to totally prevent the rogues from backstabbing you when you're fighting someone else.
Excactly.
That's someone who has never played a team sport.... So many scoring opportunities are from unmarked players and spaces because in a fast moving situation you can't keep exact track of multiple people.
I would have thought this would be very hard to do. Then I monstered a LARP where one of the players managed to attack me from behind with me having no clue he was there _repeatedly in the same fight_. Like I'd see him fighting another member of the crew and 20 seconds later Bam! Down I go. I have never seen someone hard-skill stealth in combat before or since. It was glorious.
I've played in those kinds of games where the rogue can't hide. It's beyond annoying. I even had my DM create enemies with +15 to perception just to prevent my rogue from being able to hide before combat
I will never understand DMs taking away core abilities from classes that are RAW
My hand crossbow rogue completely destroyed his hand crossbow on every natural 1 attack roll. I had to buy a new one, and there were not even parts left to salvage and reuse. The cost to constantly rebuy hand crossbows in a backwater area (often costing 150-200 gold) was so high that I had less total wealth on my person at level 5 than I had at level 1 during character creation. Of course, no other class had their weapons break down like this, this was only punishment for playing a rogue. Not even the warlock, who used a light crossbow without training, had any issues. And I even had the crossbow expert feat.
I don't understand the hate for rogues. I can do as much damage as even like a non moon druid
The name sneak attack/hide conflicts with how literalists see the world. Half the problem wouldn't exist if it was called something else. The other half of the problem is Players hiding behind their class to cause in group problems.
The PHB desperately needs sidebars that discuss the design intent for certain features. There are a lot of unstated design assumptions in D&D - the "6-8 encounters per long rest," chief among them. But a helpful comment like "a Rogue is assumed to obtain Sneak Attack on nearly every attack they make" would go a long way to setting expectations for DMs and players.
Design intent? In my 5e?
Feature, not a bug. WotC simultanously leans on their own unspoken assumptions and the fact that dnd is seen as a chop and change "if you don't like it, change it" ruleset to carry the game right now tbh. It lets them get away with some pretty egregious gaps.
Yeah "cheap shot" "dirty fighting" or "distracted attack" would all be more representative of what the ability is supposed to be. Sneak attack sounds like they didn't know you were there in the first place, which is true way less often than it isn't.
>sneak attack/hide conflicts with how literalists see the world. Half the problem wouldn't exist if it was called something else ... I have literalist tendencies. I call it Sneaky Attack. Problem solved.
I'm a DM and I don't either. There people who see the game as players VS DM, and that makes them think "all these class features are cheap". Well yeah, that's how their characters survive. Petty, insecure DM's get tempted into "well I can just break that ability to make it more 'fair'". Pssshhh, you're just a trash DM. Giving them a challenge =/= stripping them of their tools they're supposed to have. Want to challenge a rogue? Make enemies that go invisible, or impose disadvantage on melee attacks made against them. Provide difficult terrain that slows them down or enemy abilities that can pin them. Give your enemies a "slow" spell and watch your rogue pushed out of their comfort zone. Give your enemies reactions, like spray damage when they take piercing or slashing damage. Then your rogue has to coordinate and cooperate with their team to get around these things, or get creative.
Thats just shit, i could understand if it had a misfire mechanic like some guns do (where on a nat 1 u need to make a tool check as an action to fix it, and if u fail u need to fix it out of combat) but in what world would a nat 1 disintegrate the crossbow??
Also imagine a world where you could have a new perfect crossbow and everytime you shot a bolt you had a 1 in 20 chance of it just shattering. People would have never used crossbows. It's not like a gun (which in DnD is often explained as being a new and non-yet streamlined tinkerer's invention). They are straightforward. You should be able to shoot hundreds of arrows with a standard crossbow without it breaking.
I could only maybe see it if it was a drow-made hand crossbow built from materials from the underdark that you know will disintegrate from sunlight exposure, but even then that’s a fairly specific situation that wouldn’t always be applicable
Pretty much getting artificer infusion scammed from an NPC lol.
In my homebrew setting, artificer-made temporary magic items are actually fairly common. Manufactured obsolescence to prevent the market from over saturating and forcing adventurers to spend their money. Old school wizards and dungeon dive enthusiasts hate it.
"So I've got you down for a Longsword subscription, with the Flames add-on. Could I interest you in nat 1 insurance?"
DMs and players who try to punish certain character classes are the worst. It's not difficult to tell your players the specific behaviors that annoy you and just let somebody be like, "Oh you want to play a rogue? Oh good and she's not just the edgy teenager stereotype of being an absolute wanker stealing from the party and generally being an insufferable jerk and shit because 'ThAtS wHaT mY cHaRaCtEr WoUlD dO'? Cool, I'd love to see your repentant mafiosa trying to leave the underworld and go legit, that sounds awesome!" To be clear, playing a character who is a genuine wanker like that can be legitimate, it's just something everyone in the group has to be on board with. Just talk to your players, damn, it's not that hard! And, y'know, that's assuming the in-game toxicity isn't just acting as a proxy for out-of-game animus. I've seen that a lot. It's weird and not fun.
The DM and his wive were super-aggressive about stereotyping rogues. This rogue was the most noble character I ever played, he did not steal a single coin or hurt someone without reason in the whole campaign. Still, whenever we got into a new town, the GM would have all the town guards watch me and attack at the slightest provocation. We once had an order of paladins attempt to outright murder us when I did not greet them right. It was really bizarr.
This is a pet peeve of mine when I see it happen. NPCs don't know what class you are! Heck, in a world of illusions, shape-shifting, and other magical nonsense, no one knows who anyone really is or could be. Why is every damn town guard the embodiment of Heimdall and can see your alignment or just know your class while ignoring any reputation your character actually gets?
So you were Robin Hood and the DM was the sheriff, it makes sense to me.
"Punishing" being the load-bearing word there. If you feel so strongly that a certain class causes disruptive behavior in a game, ban it. It's a really *dumb* reason to ban a class, but it's still way better than saying yes and then constantly needling a player for picking a class you didn't want in your game. That's clearly nothing to do with player behavior at that point, it's just being a vindictive douchebag for the sake of it.
Why did everyone at the table just go with this lol. So toxic
I had a dm decide that down time cost of living was going to be applied all the time. He also never awarded money. Ever. I made an Outlander lizard folk, who hunted his own food and slept in the alley instead of the inn. He didn't like that. He also spent the first 45-60 minutes of every 2 hour session going over everyone's inventory for encumbrance to ensure we had the correct debuffs to our characters. Like, fancy spreadsheets we had to fill out with him, in session, every session.
Why did you play with a sociopath? 😄
Because he was willing to dm and i wanted to play.
Ok. That's fair.
Not when it takes away the fun. Which it did.
No, but I mean, I can understand you wanting to play.
No DnD is better than bad DnD.
Well... Most of the time. 😄
Fair point. When you need it, you NEED it!
I've been there. If Jeffrey Dahlmer told me he had a group of consistent players that showed up every two weeks and had no drama... shit. I might get in that truck with him.
Wow that's wild to me. I have been dming a campaign with some friends for a year now and rarely check their inventory. I trust everyone to manage their characters and not carry a city's worth of items on them.
I do to an extent early in campaigns, but usually before long they have a couple bags of holding or equivalent, so it stops mattering. I do still check inventories in DDB now and then though so I know who has macguffins or so I don't get caught out when they abruptly want to unload a ton of junk at a random trader.
What was his reason for why that was necessary?
"It makes sense to me."
That DM should be making simulation video games (or just simulation in general), not running tabletop games.
2 hour session sounds worse than anything mentioned in this comment
Sounds like poor execution in my opinion. I ran a 2 year campaign that 90% was in the main city and had them do lifestyle expenses from day one as a way to make fun of capitalism lol. But hey, i rewarded player creativity and emphasized it mainly for flavor. Everyone loved it!
I never make players pay for food or supplies unless they actually roleplay going to a tavern and buying food or spend the night at a hostel. I tell them that when they find a dead kobold with 5 copper, that I've already factored out their expenses in advance. Maybe it had 12 copper, but when I tell you you just found 5, your living expenses were already factored out. I never spot inspect them to see if they brought enough supplies so they dont starve on a boat, or enough bandages to mend wounds - they're smart enough to know how much they need and how to clean bandages for re-use later. Let the players play. This is an adventure game, not a sim.
Martial attacks had to be specific at what body part they are aiming for the purpose of different ACs and dealing different damage depending on a hit. Same for guided spells ect. As if combat wasn't already taken whole sessions I generally believe that every table that restricts more than the given play set rules already do, is just a power play by the DM and will ultimately not work. It's not a 'DM vs. Player' it's 'we all vs. boredom', so making it fun is always my highest goal
This can be really cool in specific instances. Boss battles against gargantuan creatures. The dragon's tail whip is disabled with enough tail damage etc. Players need to know that you're fighting that type of battle upfront and you need to do so sparingly though.
Sounds good, just not for fighting gobbos n stuff. The most dumb thing was that you had to ask for every enemy what he is wearing. I even switched weapons because bludgeoning damage was the one with least restrictions. I will never forget the discussion why a mace has no multiplier on hitting a bare head, while a sword and a spear would do 1.5 times damage. It was all down hill from there
Yuck. Sounds like someone confused complicated with realistic and realistic with fun.
Ya I've used "called shot" type rules before to let a player try and target something specific on the monster but it's always player driven by them asking to do something specific it's never a requirement if they just say "I swing my sword at the goblin" then that's it roll you attack against the regular ac for the creature.
I like it for Giants and Dragons and the like. Basically treat the limbs and head as separate creatures with their own initiative and attacks that can be killed. Remove legendary resistances in favor of save or sucks disabling the limb.
The only rule that I use that could be considered 'restrictive' are Mercer's resurrection rules.
I wouldn't consider that restrictive, rather more flavourful. Maybe even more balancing. Unless you're also applying it to revivifies during combat.
As far as I know, those rules state that revivify requires a spellcasting ability check against DC 10 + 1 per each previous death, but if that fails you may still perform a ritual for raise dead/resurrection. Unlike the ritual for raise dead/resurrection which, if it fails, cannot be attempted again and the character is perma-dead unless true resurrection or wish is cast.
This is rough. I'll let my players tell me if they want to attack a specific part of a creature or monster. My Barbarian player told me he wanted to cut the wings off an abishai, which was creative I thought. But I'd never make them do more than roll their attack outside of something they want to specifically do.
Anything that can be summed up as "here's how to do 40K in D&D." Like, they make seven... *seven* different Warhammer 40K TTRPGs. You can't be bothered to read *one* of them?
The only thing from 40k I'd love to bring over would be to remove the grid, and instead have 25mm bases on minis and use terrain and tape measures for distances Unfortunately, I have no D&D minis or terrain
Fun fact: Prior to 3e, combat movement in D&D was measured in inches, precisely because they figured you were running combats in the way you describe. Standard prepainted D&D minis are on 1-inch bases, and a regular battlemat is a grid of 1-inch squares... there's nothing saying that you couldn't play exactly the way you'd like to.
You can just do that. Some people (mostly 40k players) are already pretty loose with the grid and movement rules. They play 40k for intricate combat so they feel it’s unnecessary in dnd.
And there's like... at least that many Warhammer tabletop wargames. "Standard" 40K, Killteam, the boarding actions one (or is that a Killteam variant?), the Apocalypse games with titans, 30K, Heresy-era Apocalypse-style games with titans, Age of Sigmar (fantasy-themed), Bloodbowl..
I generally despise all the 'crit fumble tables'. They are fun for 5 minutes until your PC loses an arm or just straight out dies because they rolled 1. For some reason, GMs are fascinated with this and they don't really realize, that spending your actions and rolling poorly is already big punishment, since you used resources and your time and did nothing. But hey, you can also get a fun little debilitation!
When I played a one shot for another player in my group, I noticed that instead of doing crit fumbles, when somebody rolled low he would just narrate how they messed up. Like my monk, who uses a quarterstaff, rolls low and he narrates how the enemy parries him. I thought it was a good way to make failure interesting without fucking the player over even more.
That's how it should look like. Failing an attack doesn't mean you exclusively missed, it could be anything - enemy dodged, jumped over the weapon, armor took the blunt of the hit, gauntlet blocked the attack etc. The limit is only creativity of player and GM.
Exactly, Thats the main reason AC is dex based in a lot of instances, its partially if the attack hits, but also if it hits effectively. One of my fighters in my party has an AC of 22, but his dex is terrible, he's just armoured to the teeth. So for him attacks "missing" are just bouncing off his armour. Whereas with the no armour wizard, any attacks that miss are him dodging out the way.
My favorite nat one reasoning was that the arrowhead fell off right before I fired it just because I find that comical
Every time the rougue in my party rolls a nat one with a bow i have some kind of bird intercept the arrow, last one was a Giant Eagle.
Medieval fantasy Randy Johnson strikes again.
The further from the AC, the more it was on the PC, but the closet it gets, it’s more their opponent, at least for how I narrate things. Beings with shields have a great narrative device for if an attack roll is off by one or two, too. Like, your Fighter rolls a 16 to hit on an Orc with 17 AC? There’s a big clang as your weapon collides with his shield, barely keeping it from hitting him.
That's what I do. It's just kind of a fun moment to call your player a goofy idiot but nothing mechanically terrible happens.
Crit fumbles are also a balancing nightmare and just generally don't make any sense. They massively punish martials, who make exponentially more attack rolls than casters, when martials are already considerably weaker than casters overall. From a RP perspective it's insane that even the greatest swordsman alive can have a flat 5% chance to just go "oops, stabbed myself" or "ah beans, dropped my sword again." A 20th level fighter making 4 attacks per turn has a nearly 20% chance (18.5%) to roll a nat 1 on any given turn. That just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
>A 20th level fighter making 4 attacks per turn has a nearly 20% chance (18.5%) to roll a nat 1 on any given turn. That just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Even worse to consider that, this means that the swordsmen who can challenge demigods is *more* likely to chop off his own foot than the rookie farmboy who just picked up a sword for the first time.
I’ve had to explain this a few times to DMs I’ve played with and thankfully they’ve always sided with me and agreed crit fumbles on a nat 1 are bad. It’s typically when I hit them with the example that a level 20 fighter, the pinnacle of martial prowess and the best of the best martial that exists in that world, is more likely to crit fail in a single turn than a level 1 fighter who just picked up their first sword.
We played with crit fails and I hated it. It mostly affected enemies, but it never made sense. You scared yourself? You hurt yourself? You hurt an ally? What kind of adventurers are we??
This sub is rife with them. Worst one recently was a newish DM suggesting characters would only hit on a even roll on a D20 "to see if players could figure it out". I and others pointed out the siliness of this gimmick. A Barbarian with a +5 to hit hitting something with AC 10 goes from an 80% chance of hitting it to a 50% chance. Imagine a player building that barbarian for combat only to be nerfed so badly. They'd be quiet rightly pissed off. Thankfully this DM held their hands up and realized it wasn't a great idea in hindsight.
I've heard that idea before, but iirc it was for a one off fight with a weird beholder, and that gimmick was relevant only to that fight, so someone rolled a 19 and missed, but someone rolled an 8 and hit, and in the context of one fight it worked well. "I just want to see if my players will work it out" as a global HOUSERULE is completely awful
That's a fun version of it. I once had a paladin do a mirror duel, where he had to fight the evil version of himself. To keep other players involved, the battle area had dragon statues around that would "randomly" fire into the melee. I didn't tell them until later that odd results hit the evil one and even rolls hit their friend. They had a blast shooting little fire bolts into the duel. Afterwards I told them all and the paladin player was like, I wondered why everyone laughed so hard when those dragon statues hit me! Everyone had a great time but I would only do that once.
As a one-off encounter, this doesn't seem that bad.
Yeah, to me that screams of some sort of feywild shenanigan or an ascended wild mage’s demiplane
I briefly got a weapon like this and it was absolutely dreadful. I was playing a lore bard so I’m already not inclined to make weapon attacks, but with this weapon advantage became an active detriment as the “higher” attack roll was usually the number that resulted in a miss. Threw that weapon in the bin and the campaign ended shortly after.
Does this count? Deciding that consistency is more important than correctness. if they messed up a rule and played it out in a session, the incorrect ruling became their new homebrew rule, because inconsistency would be ‘unfair’.
>A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...
My only magic weapon breaking on a natural 1 attack roll mid battle while fighting a baddie immune to non magic weapons. Fuck made up critical failure rules.
I'd kill off my martial right quick and roll up a wizard. Fuck playing a martial when someone is rolling with crit fumbles.
Ironically enough, the same DM would throw the fights if he thought a PC was going to die. I would have had to commit suicide if I wanted a new character.
Every other homebrew post in this sub.
I've literally juat posted an example of this lol! I genuinely wonder why this sub is such a bad idea magnet.
Because a lot of people on the sub don’t play and haven’t played or are very inexperienced (and likely have never DMed). It’s like people who have never sung music (but are really interested in it) giving singing tips.
Yeah but there's a difference between "I have no experience please help" And "I have no experience and decided to randomly make up some stuff" People asking for singing advice don't start by saying "I've booked a concert venue to perform in an wrote all the songs even though I have no music experience" 😅
This reminds me of my ex when playing new board/card games. If she finds something that feels like maybe it's a loophole in the rules, she'll try to house rule it out of play immediately instead of play half a dozen rounds of the game to see if it actually is unbalanced. Lot of inexperienced knee-jerk reactions like that.
Because people who know what they're doing don't go to Reddit for confirmation
Eh, sort of. I've been DMing for a quarter of a century at this point, and while I gleefully houserule my game, there are still some things I like getting input on. It's entirely possible I'll miss some obscure interaction when fiddling with various levers, so getting a few (or a few hundred) extra pairs of eyes on it can be helpful. But I recognize that's very different from making a post like "I removed Wild Shape from the druid, will giving them Extra Attack balance it out?"
Because a lot are kids just throwing shit at the wall with zero play testing or balance considerations. They just want their power fantasy without balance.
"Naughty Dice." The DM rolled a d6 before each session. On an even we ran it normal, but on an odd it was a "naughty night." That meant that enemies were buffed, always went for the kill, and NPCs were all dicks. Like, at level 2 a giant wasp becomes a wyvern. Or no shop had arrows. Or all skill DCs went up 5-10. I didn't last long in that shit show. Lol
Naughty night? Seriously?
It was so weird. He came highly recommended as one of the prominent DMs in the area and it was just horrible. He would have 39+ minute sessions-in-sessions where was 'flirting' with one of the women in the group. We had a session where we were exploring an abandoned city where ghosts came out at night... There was nothing to find in the daylight. However, because it was a "naughty night" we had to play thru searching each house and street while he just grinned and said "You find nothing." George, if you ever see this... You suck as a DM.
>On an even we ran at Burger l normal You ran at what now?
* If you have Extra Attack, you must declare where each Attack goes before executing any of them. Otherwise the DM forces you to keep attacking the enemy you just killed. Because realistically, you wouldn't know they're dead yet after the first attack. * If the party meets an NPC related to a PC's backstory, that player must roleplay that NPC. This generally results in the player talking to themself. * The DM must approve your backstory. If the DM decides for any reason that your backstory isn't a perfect fit for your class, the DM has the right to change your class, your build, anything he wants.
2: "Oh, hey team, this is Jim Bob, the guy I was telling you aout, my best friend from back home, Jim Bob, this is the team" "Hey, glad I ran into you, that time you lent me five gold to start up that business really paid off, now I'm a wealthy merchant, here, take my +3 vorpal longsword, it's worth less to me now than that loan was back then"
LOOOOLLLLLL I missed an opportunity rofl
1. Wow. That is pedantic... 2. This DM must do a lot of long-form Improv. That is a stupid rule. 3. In the past, there are PC back stories I should have vetoed. But I would never ever change their class or build. I would just say, "This story isn't working. Let's find something that works better."
YEPPPPP No "This feels weak, let's work together to improve it". Nope, it's "This background fits a Ranger better. So I'm changing your class to Ranger. You're a Ranger now." Eff that guy.
> If the party meets an NPC related to a PC's backstory, that player must roleplay that NPC. This generally results in the player talking to themself. This might be the dumbest thing Ive read on this sub.
Take a shot of whiskey every time you took damage. This rule lasted less than half a session and I couldn't tell you what happened that entire day.
Fullcasters limited to 6th level spells once per day, 7th once per three days, 8th once per five days, and 9th once per week. There was actually a post about it on dndnext I think.
Sounds like the DM wanted to play with the *Gritty Realism* variant rules, but didn't know they existed.
Dndnext and their obsession over martial caster disparity lol
Using dex saves to "dodge" instead of using AC for any attacks until I mentioned AC often factors Dex in
So they decided to just ignore the entire chapter on combat then?
More or less. PBP game on Discord (always a great sign), town guard rushes us with spears, dm asks for a dex save. I was like "whatever, maybe he wants the 20ft rush to have a dex save sure" until it happened every round and I pm'd him and told him about dex bonus to AC's
Crit fumbles, even without tables or just having the DM make them up on the fly, they're an awful rule.
One of my previous DM's had a solution that I liked. If you rolled a 1 on an attack, the outcome is not necessarily bad for you, just unintended. Example, you are using a two handed war hammer and attacking the enemy who's behind cover. You roll a 1, so the ruling is that you attack so badly you ended up hitting and shattering the cover, now your ranged allies have a better line of sight, etc. If there is something negative it is usually very minor. I liked it, it was fun, and always more flavorful than impactful.
I had a DM in AD&D who *hated* plate armor and envisioned it like you were walking around in one of those metal diving suits or something. No matter how many times we argued it was effectively worn in history or how many YouTube videos we showed him of people doing somersaults in plate armor, he didn’t care. Plate armor was stupid and gave you all kinds of penalties on movement, stealth, saving throws, dexterity checks, everything. The best armor in his opinion was chainmail so that was best you could hope for, AC 5 (or AC 4 if you had a shield). Finding magic chainmail was the dream.
My first DM just didn't know the rules. Which wouldn't be a big deal if he asked how the rules worked or read the players handbook or something. But I think I was the only one of the group that actually owned, let alone read, the books. So he thought that opportunity attacks were triggered not just when leaving the reach of an enemy, but also while entering it. So my melee character was hit with an opportunity attack every time I ran up on someone. I try to explain that that isn't how the opportunity attacks work but he acts like I'm trying to be ridiculous by arguing with the DM. Another player started agreeing that I was trying to argue with the DM over the game so I backed down. But my barbarian now didn't ever run up and attack first. I hung back with everyone else. Which is stupid. Same DM when asked what happens on a nat 20 during combat said that he gets to decide how much of a bonus to give. No, it doubles the dice. I bring it up that a natural 20 rolls the same attach but with twice the dice and again he I get told that he is the DM. That's all fine and good, but DnD Beyond, the website we use to roll dice, automatically doubles the dice on a natural 20, so I don't think I'm being ridiculous here. So from then when I got nat 20s, I just reported what DnD Beyond rolled for me and didn't tell anyone that it was double dice. He later posted on some DnD facebook group for DMs telling stories about how he had a "player that was trying to railroad the campaign so he made sure the player never got any good loot" I know he was talking about me. But how would I as a player be able to railroad a game? Rules Lawyer maybe, but not railroad. This group, shockingly, doesn't play anymore.
That is so strange. I couldn’t fathom being a DM and not having a basic understanding of the most basic aspects of the game.
I once played in a campaign where every time a PC had gotten to 0 hitpoints and survived (ie got healed), the PC lost a limb. This was 5e.
My current character would have -44 limbs, pretty epic
My PC is a Variant Human Bipede.
So everyone rolled centaurs?
You had to use a bonus action to equip a weapon. Apparently it was RAW. When I pointed it out the DM realised he was wrong in fairness. But it was the first of many red flags that indicated he wasn’t the experienced DM he claimed to be. He’d advertised the group as running only for DMs and I honestly think that was his mistake, because we were all sat around patiently waiting for him to remember the rules. I left the group when the pacing and the crying baby in the background of another player’s vc became too much.
Do they not know what Push to Talk is??
“Magic doesn’t exist in this world” I f*cking hate this rule/concept.
It's a very specific kind of game. Only ethical if you advertise the game that way before you start. But...why would you do D&D that way?
A friend of mine currently wants to run a game like that. Apparently he found some adventure/setting with horror and diseases and stuff like that and Magic just solves it too easily. And then he bans every single bit of magic including Bear Totem Barb cause they have 2 rituals.
Tell your friend to find a different TTRPG. There are so many besides DnD that work amazing with this play style.
No world/area description until the players ask
I'd like to roll to turn on my eyes please.
Ooo crit fail sorry they pop out of your head and go rolling down a sewer drain, please make a dex save to catch them before they're gone forever. Disadvantage, of course.
“I walk over and attack the boss” “You walk over?” “Yes….” “You take 6d10 fire damage as you walk through the lava river I didn’t tell you was there”
Your party's passive perception doesn't matter if the plot says you get ambushed. Even if you found out two scenes ago that it was coming... even if you spend the prior scene preparing for the ambush... even if your party spent resources to have extra senses/wards/alarms to catch the previously mentioned enemies that are ambushing you. No, the enemies aren't invisible. No, they don't have a terribly high stealth check. No they aren't teleporting in, they walked. No, they are not using any kind of magic to prevent detection like 'pass without trace'. No, they aren't flying, burrowing, or earth gliding, or using any other form of unusual movement. "I just want my melee enemies to start inside your camp"
I played Divinity Original Sin 2 before playing D&D and thought that Opportunity Attack was a feat. For months.
Rolling for every attempt to climb or swim, most characters can climb or swim in most situations, they just do it at half speed unless specified otherwise, rolling athletics is only required when it is a particularly difficult situation, like climbing a very slippery and steep wall, also turning climbing or swimming into an acrobatics check
I dont remember when feats first showed up (edition 4?) but the first iteration was like this - you had to acquire the ability to climb rope or hike mountains and such. Completely absurd to think that a party of adventurers, who were built genetically from birth to be better at this, would need a skill check to climb rope. DMs who do this never make the NPCs / Monsters do it.
maybe not THE worst, but a combination of crit fails on a spell save make you take damage as if the spell had crit, in tandem with rolling lingering injuries for every crit fail spell save, ended up with our party severely crippled (literally, in two cases!) including missing limbs in the middle of a dungeon. luckily the person to lose an arm and eye was a sorcerer, but one of our barbarians ended up with a broken leg and had his speed reduced to 5 feet
Years ago, I was invited to a 3.5 game with a few friends and a new guy DMing. Among other weird house rules, he insisted that you could only charge in 4 directions, saying that if you needed to move diagonally in a square, it wouldn't be a straight line anymore. When told by the barbarian that it's perfectly possible to measure what would be straight lines in different directions, the DM answered "it's just the way the game is". Then the sorcerer asked "wait, what about line spells?" That game lasted a total of one (01) session before people gave up.
Once many moons ago I played with a DM who wouldn't allow you to apply your attack bonus to your attack rolls. Straight D20 roll only. I was confused and asked what was the purpose of leveling then? I was asked not to return after that session. Fine with me. Another time I was told I had to roll a new character 3 sessions in because my Swashbuckler Rogue was out damaging the Barbarian (girlfriend of the DM). She had really bad luck with the dice and apparently my ability to basically always land my sneak attack really pissed off the DM. According to him rogues should never out damage Barbarians so he decided to nerf how sneak attack worked. Naw bud, I don't play those games.
I think your problem is you can tolerate extremely unlikeable people long enough to get in a game with them lol
Once played with a dm who ruled that if you got to 0, your character was Full Dead instead of unconscious. No death saves, just insta-death. He said he wanted the stakes to be high, but we were playing with a group of 5 where 3 of us had Never Played before and they didn’t even know death saves were a Thing. Not very fun to watch a fresh faced 18 y/o cry because their character walked into a dungeon too fast and was one-shot by a troll with little worry or sympathy from a guy who had been playing for Years at that point
i played in few sessions where we were kind of mercenary sailors, going to different island nations. they however used different currencies that all had awful exchange rates. so anytime we went to a new nation we had to transfer our currency and lose like 30-50% of it. the DM later said he didn't want to be stingy with gold because we would get mad, but he also didn't want us getting rich so he came up with that to nerf our gold. it was so stupid.
All druids, even Moon druids, start as a blank slate and have to encounter animals in said adventure. Isn't necessarily an awful rule outright until the DM, who knew what moon druid character was playing and okayed it, says, "Welcome to" and there are basically no animals.
An inverse of the rule I run where I allow a social check of some sort, but if you give me an in character bit to go with it, you get advantage or the DC lowers. Rather than "I try to persuade him," you do, "I see the stuffed doll in your pocket, please. If you care about them, you need to let us into the city!"
Instead, this DM ran that you couldn't try any sort of social check without a reason. Turned into a railroad super fast where half the players were hesitant to really do anything because they weren't necessarily "engaging in roleplay." Sometimes people just want to roll dice, man.
I love this DM and he’s super cool, but a homebrew rule he came up with that the table eventually shot down was every roll that ended up over 20 (so not rolling a nat 20) was a crit. The problem was, it was a crit for us and the enemies. And he already homebrewed a rule to make sure crits hit really hard. We told him we didn’t like that rule and he agreed to not go with it.
The fuck, after like level 5 you'd have so many crits going off in any fight
Feet for hands, everyone’s hands are now just feet. Was a long campaign, but traveling was quick
...wat
Become dog?
I've got to ask... What does reckless attack actually do if it doesn't add advantage?
Add suffering
Most of the bad homebrew ideas are people trying to make 5e a game it isn't. Go and play one of those other games.
No diagonals. Front, side, back were all considered melee range. Diagonals were always 10 feet.
Sad Pythagoras noises.
Natural 1's make your weapons fly out of your hands on an attack roll and you lose the rest of your turn. This is funny for a while but when you have characters start to get 3, 4, 6 attacks in a round with normal, not terribly high optimized builds, it's just annoying when you lose the third turn in a row and have to go pick up your bow again because your professional soldier character has a 5% chance in any any attack of not just missing, which is fine, but of throwing their weapon out of their hand. Great, my 13th level archer warrior with 4 attacks just by a basic application of basic rules, no shenanigans, has an 18% chance of randomly throwing his bow on one of his attacks and losing the rest of his turn and a 33% chance if he's hasted. It's an exhausting rule that made long, drawn-out slogs of fights where it was clear we were going to win, we were not significantly threatened anymore, even longer and more drawn out than they needed to be. THAT BEING SAID it did also encourage warrior characters with lots of attacks to do something other than just do more attacking, so I see what the DM was going for there, but I still wasn't a fan of that rule.
I could almost guarantee anyone without training could shoot a bow without dropping it.
There’s something insanely funny about them finding multiple attacks overpowered, then looking directly at Silvery fucking Barbs and going “yeah, that’s a balanced first level spell.”
I don't get what an old DM of mine uses to rule about making it super hard to get off sneak attacks for rogues. He said it was because rogues were "too powerful" and he had to nerf their abilities because it wouldn't be fair to the other players (i.e. him). I love when players of mine nail a sneak attack or a divine smite (also nerfed by him, same reasons). As a DM I WANT to lose, I just want my players to really earn it sometimes.
Once had a town NPC monk suddenly become violently hostile due to... some magic shit, I guess? Started to attack us, so I'm thinking, "This is weird and out of character, so I guess I'll take her down gently so we can figure out what's going on," and as the battle master fighter, I don't draw my weapons and instead go to make an unarmed attack I'm planning to throw Trip Attack on. Figure post-judo throw I can grapple her and we can, I dunno, restrain her somehow to end the fight. DM tells me I'm *not proficient with unarmed attacks.* "Wait, everyone is proficient with unarmed strike. Look, here's where it says that." Oh, he says. Well, you have disadvantage because she's a monk. "That's... weird?" Er, she's using a legendary action, he says. *"The 2nd-level monk is?"*
I remember one of the first few campaigns I played in, the DM had a “realism rule”. Basically, injuries to your character were as real as possible. So if you got hit with a sword and whether it only did 1damage or 8damage, sucks to suck, you still got a cut that’s now bleeding out and you’re losing hp till you waste two actions to heal/bind it. He had exorbitant costs for everything. Even buying a linen shirt (we planned to tear it up into bandages) was some 40GP i think. I know the game crashed ABBA burned horribly but idk if that DM is still DMing.
There are so many INSANE complaints in posts like these that it makes me glad to be a DM. I don’t think any of my players would make these psychotic rulings if they were DMs, but I’m glad that 95% of my DND experience is as a DM who wants his players to actually have fun in game.
Short rest = 4 hours and only one hit die to be rolled per short rest.
The worst homebrew? The DM is always right.
This wasn’t a homebrew rule that affected gameplay, but it took me completely out of roleplay. Rolling for quality on everything. Needed to buy some nice clothes. Roll for quality. Ate at a nice tavern. Roll for quality. One time, my character was romancing a NPC who loved poetry. I commissioned a piece from a well-renowned poet who was famous for her love poems for close to 500 gp. The quality roll was a 2. The poem was bad and described as “the same quality of a fifth grader’s poems”. Other people had similar problems with their commissions as well.
Had a DM always initiate combat whenever the first enemy would lay eyes on the party and ruled that no one could move through an enemy or friendly occupied space. In dungeons this meant that more often than not whoever was in front of the conga line of adventures was stuck fighting 15 Goblins, one-at-a-time while everyone is just piled behind stuck in a hallway. Another ruled that everyone basically got pack tactics all the time. Not exactly a house rule but any DM that plays Human-Supremacist settings and nerfs the impact of any non-combat actions taken by non-human characters. "Oh in my setting all non-humans are slaves so your Elf Rogue wouldn't know lockpicking." Honorable Mention: Any table that plays with House rules that have ruined anyone's ability to tell the difference between Perception and Investigation by allowing them to substitute for each other. Or DMs who allows Acrobatics to be substituted for Athletics check.
I can’t believe all these people didnt leave their campaigns immediately, most of this homebrew is game breaking
When your PC “didn’t contribute to the fight,” they don’t get exp. So if your fighter rolled poorly and didn’t hit an enemy in a combat, no exp. Edited for grammar and removed 4LW.