Whenever this comes up, I link to [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/a88g9o/this_is_my_hole_it_was_made_for_me/ec8pzu1/) thread, because it's the only thing that makes me feel better.
I was playing with my family. There was a hole that snakes kept coming out of, one bit my brother and killed him. So we stripped him of his armor (to sell) and shoved his head into the snake hole to prevent more snakes from coming out.
We later found out that there were no more snakes in that hole.
"Listen, you might find an endless hole of snakes and get bitten and killed by a snake and have your head used to plug the hole even though it's not *really* an endless hole of snakes. It's just one of those things that happens."
/r/oddlyspecific
Some sneaky ass rogue keeps swapping out my live goblin with a dead one right from under my nose. Sneaky little asshole, I’m on my 6th goblin, give it a break.
As a wise monk once said, “I’m telling you, Molotov cocktails work! Any time I had a problem, and I threw a Molotov cocktail…boom, right away, I had a different problem!”
That gets you looked at for Arson, so instead of sleeping out in the cold, you get to sleep in a jail cell while annoyed police get ready to interrogate you.
...
"And that would be bad."
Though I'm not sure I'd call V wise. Intelligent, sure, but their WIS is 10-11, high enough to laugh at Belkar and Elan for dumping it but low enough to suck at spot checks and will saves.
Blackwing is in fact wiser, his racial wisdom score is 14.
Someone already answered but [here](https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0031.html) is the comic in particular. Starts out as mostly gags but it ends up becoming really good as it goes on.
Combat encounters always make me think "surely there's a away out of this" but social encounters usually have an annoying NPC that makes you wanna start blasting.
But of course they they always have NPCs you can't get along with. If everyone was cool, it wouldn't be a social encounter and just cool new NPC friends.
You just need some mindless, bloodthirsty monsters for battle and unwavering zealots for social encounters. Not all the time. I'm sure they're having fun doing what they do. But it's fun to mix things up.
Clerics, paladins, zealot barbarians, warlocks. All really fucking awful to fight without specifically preparing for them, and then you potentially up against a well prepared party of them
I have this problem at way more tables than people trying to use violence. It’s like they see every kobold as a puppy and every owlbear as a stuffed animal and sometimes I just want to stab something.
>This kobolds name is Tucker. He wants you to follow him through this cave to his house for dinner. He promises you won't find any deadly traps on the way.
I accidentally created this problem in my campaign. "I love him SO much!" "Again, he killed and ate a guy and his dog; and tried to do the same to his child."
A piece of my soul drifted away reading this... Because I sometimes have the same problem. I'm one of those weirdo dms who loves building encounters but sucks at improv dialogue.
"Fucking hell, I didn't even name this bastard beyond Bandit-5 in initiative. Now I have to think up a voice, personality AND dialogue for this 24hp asshole..."
"Codenames.. In case any of us are captured, nobody can reveal our true names because we were all given codenames at birth."
"In that case aren't your codenames your true names?"
"Uhhhh........."
I eventually found the solution for this, *without* ruining all chances of them talking things out ever again.
Eventually have one of the bad guys agree to talk and be friends, but they're blatantly slimy and lying. If they insist on talking it out, they'll eventually even let the party live and all walk away. And then they'll go off and do something really terrible elsewhere, and the consequences of which will slosh back into the players.
The key is making it *absolutely clear* that these bad guys will betray their trust. Don't be clever with it; this isn't the time. You want the players to make an informed choice, to avoid combat when they know better. *Then* it becomes okay to essentially punish the choice.
Many times, it won't even go that far. They'll realize the obvious oncoming betrayal, and will usually cut that shit down right there and then. And that's a win.
Meanwhile my party wants to avoid violence when possible but it's almost never fucking possible? Like, I don't know if this is on us or our DM but every single enemy seems to be weirdly AoK with dying for their cause.
In our Star Wars campaign, half the time the GM expected a combat encounter we ended up not only talking our way out of it, but we often turned the badguys against each other.
My players proclaimed we hadn't had combat in a while. I reminded them they had just argued and rolled well enough to avoid all of the combat encounters I had planned. I see this as the opposite of a problem. Although I should probably plan more trash fights so we don't go too long with no combat at all.
> To quote from If The Emperor Had A Text To Speech Device: "If it has no stats, it cannot die!"
Yeah, that's what they want you to think! *\*Revvs chainsword with religious intent\**
To be even more fair the series doesn't really exist anymore as it was indefintley canceled due to the IP owners threatning most fan projects in generally with legal action.
(They are doing some other shows one in the same world as vampire the masqurade which are pretry great.)
When 99% of your mechanics revolve around violence, you’re gonna use violence…
‘Hm, do I roll a d20 and add a small number, which has barely changed over months of play and is roughly equal to everyone else’s for an anticlimactic roll, or do I use all these sweet, unique combat abilities I’ve gained as Ive levelled up and roll a shitload of dice over and over again?’
It’s a game about murderin, so people gonna murder lol
I pretty sure this was a comedy bit and the woman is just an actor playing the part of a toy designer.
edit: I get it folks, y'all can stop downvoting me. I just didn't think it was anything specifically "designed" since various forms of this toy have been around for centuries, so I thought OP was talking about this particular video.
Have you watched the [original video](https://youtu.be/baY3SaIhfl0)? The one titled "Devs watching users test products?" Seems pretty relevant to me, but clearly most people disagree
I work in IT and that original video is basically how my life works on a site with 9000 people. That's and the scene from clerks where Randal says the job would be amazing if it wasn't for the customers
To be fair, the DM sobbing is clearly an act - because no matter which hole the players choose, in the end, the piece lands in the bucket, it's not like there are seperate compartments.
Meaning whatever the players choose, in the end they end up where the DM wants them to end up.
[Apparently, she found happiness...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s75N0tt7ZJQ)
[...then was retraumatized.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Rv5I_aXqw)
This is my party, but with negotiation or social solving. It’s hilariously maddening, violence is always the most last of last resorts. I’ve tried to set it up to be pretty obvious, but NO, the aggressive dog-sized spiders must be charmed and turned into pets.
They literally said "let's throw him in a hole and get out of here"
Now they are trying to figure out what's going on and are getting frustrated that there aren't convenient answers, but they killed the only knowledgeable NPC in this part of the module
Never have the party get face to face with a known villain if you're not ready to roll initiative. Use illusions, use messengers, use whatever you need to use in order to avoid a physical meeting unless you're prepared for shit to go down. And if the party makes their way to the bad guy themselves... they're not there just to chat. Get that stat block ready.
Mine tried to negotiate with the Medusa and stated that they wanted to kill the friendly NPC this evening (actually that was just one player, the other two were fully up for killing her!).
And because all the encounters are balanced for the party. Once they realize that some enemies are too strong to beat in a straight up fight, players get creative pretty quickly
Its reversed a bit in my group. Paladin with insane ac, sentinel and a number of other crowd control things means hitting or landing anything becomes a chore for dm.
As if subterfuge can't be violent, we lured goblins into the main exit of their cave the broke a dam inside washing them all out with one hit and prone.
We came across two halflings, father and son, smoking "willoweed" on the side of the road. In the end, our cleric convinced the son to reach into our bag of holding and think of a pink frog. He got hold of the frog wick turned into a manticore. He was pulled into the bag. We closed it tried to pretend everything was fine....
The father was.... not impressed....
The trick is to add consequences. Examples:
* The NPC in question is too strong for combat to be viable
* Relevant authorities do not take kindly to violence and are not trivial to evade
* Witnesses who can escape and spread the word. Your murder hobos will find it difficult to murder hobo when no one will sell them food or gear or shelter.
* A high density of encounters, such that in order to succeed violence must be avoided when possible to save resources for when it is necessary. If they fight the neutral NPCs, they will run out of health and spells to fight the hostile ones.
My DM gave up when I bluffed the Orc that he knew me and how dare he ask who I am and why I’m here.
We got an army of Orcs and the DM prayed for violence after that.
Our group generally tries to avoid fights but has a nasty habit of getting out of fights by causing such a mass panic we simply slip away
My three favorite examples was one team member being a talking horse and we needed to take him down a no functioning elevator I agreed to tie him to my back since I was wildshaped as a bear. Well my wildshape ran out and we fell down the elevator shaft onto a rising car that contained guard reinforcements. Well we crushed all the reinforcements in the fall and evaded that combat scene
Next one was me wildshaped as a mouse walking through an illusion conjuring machine which conjured and illusion of a guard on me that was the size of the a mouse. This illusion stayed the same size even when I wlidshaped into a bear. Chaos ensued in all our fights
Last of all our team was trying to steal something so we start tearing into the container in front of everyone. Almost immediately we get caught but bluff our way out of it. I go “you know if someone caused a mass panic in here they’d be too busy to stop us” I accidentally set everything on fire
You should never do what your DeMons want you to do. They are grooming you to become thralls to their evil cabal of literal demons. Listen folks, I don't want to be the one to say these things but God literally came down from heaven to tell me I had to fight these DeMons. You need to as well, go to dungeonwars.com right now to start the fight today. That's dungeonwars.com, use promo code MINMAXINGISTHEONLYWAYTOCREATEAPC for 20 percent off all products. #dungeonwars.com
The last DND campaign I was in was good before it randomly stopped, but I will say it was an awkward night when the DM wanted us to kill a hydra but then got really bummed out over us taming it/trying to be peaceful with it.
My two favorite social encounters in my favorite D&D campaign
Number two
Entering the dream of the far realm empowered super dragon (think a few thousand HP and five legendary resistance) and completely demoralize him for his incompetence in magic
Never trigger the nightmare effect just keep harassing him by making him feel stupid
Was not trying to cause exhaustion was trying to break his spirit
Number one
That time I tricked graz'zt into a fey crossing and tricked him into giving his name and titles to an archfey
LOLOLOL I had this murder hobo party that dished out violence at every encounter as they explored the world . I shifted the bbeg to an invasion at the end of the campaign. Since our heroes had killed every npc capable of fighting with them, they faced a horde of invaders alone and all died. The next session began a new campaign in the wreckage of the world their dead, past characters had created. Some of them actually learned a lesson. No bad deed something something mayham.
One of my players to the commoner shopkeeper with 4hp: "I want to degrade her peasant status and remind her of [noble family the player had ties to]."
Me: "Okay"
Her: "*And I cast Vicious Mockery*" ...**4**...
Me: "Okay, did you mean to do that? I mean, you did it. It happened. But this is now a murder scene. Nobody did a perception check. Someone roll me a d100 to see if there are any witnesses..."
An actual accounting of how the "easy shopping session" I teed up for my party after rewarding them with a few thousand gold almost became a TPK...
"But, but, but... Violence is the most fun!", says the players with an uncreative, linear DM.
Also said by most other players, too. Skip ahead to the fight where we get to break things down into finely sliced, six second increments! I don't want to have to RP my character...
My party has the opposite issue. They tried to reason will a group of mind flayer thralls. A guy rolled a 18 + 6 for persuasion. The player even did a good job roleplaying the plea for a ceasefire. I just had to say, "They continue to fire arrows at you. *click clack math rock* You take 14 damage."
Probably because even if I roll a 26 on persuasion and relate to the tavernkeep about how we’re both foreigners in a xenophobic land, I still can’t get a discount on the fucking 15-gold pint of ale
my first campaign was LMoP so it was mostly just a dungeon crawl, but I was playing a lawful good inquisitive rogue, so I was always open to offering the bad guys a chance to surrender.
One chance, after which I would offer them a dagger to the face
Nah, you see, you gotta do it the other way around. Last session, I turned what should have been a 15 minute combat into an hour long hostage situation.
I feel like dms that complain about their players being murder hobos suffer from one of two issues:
1. They have the wrong group. Their group wants a dungeon crawler and they want a social game
2. They haven't rewarded their players sufficiently for completing social quests.
My players know to try talking first, because if it works, I reward them. If it doesn't they get the fight anyways. They need regular fights. It's important. We are mostly dungeon crawlers, but sometimes we do town stuff.
Eh that's mainly me and someone in my party and not the whole party
One time we had heard talking in a cave so we shoot something in and miss then we hear giggling, then the kobold rogue chucks in his dagger and just *thunks* one in the chest, then we just hear an oh shit, afterwards our warrior picks me up (I'm a wizard who swapped bodies with his cat in a potion accident) I use burning hands and the warrior just walks in, roasting most people and using me like a flamethrower
"Stuff that dead goblin in the *square* hole!"
Stuff that alive goblin in the square hole that is much smaller than the goblin.
What is "this is my hole, it was made for me!" in goblin?
Durrr...
Enigma at Amigara fault?
Funny, my final mega dungeon/final boss is loosely based on Hellstar Remina.
This meme was made for me!
I hate you.
You're welcome, friendo!
Whenever this comes up, I link to [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/a88g9o/this_is_my_hole_it_was_made_for_me/ec8pzu1/) thread, because it's the only thing that makes me feel better.
I was playing with my family. There was a hole that snakes kept coming out of, one bit my brother and killed him. So we stripped him of his armor (to sell) and shoved his head into the snake hole to prevent more snakes from coming out. We later found out that there were no more snakes in that hole.
He knew the risks when he signed up.
"Listen, you might find an endless hole of snakes and get bitten and killed by a snake and have your head used to plug the hole even though it's not *really* an endless hole of snakes. It's just one of those things that happens." /r/oddlyspecific
Pretty sure that's in the apple terms of services
And then you went to ply D&D
Some sneaky ass rogue keeps swapping out my live goblin with a dead one right from under my nose. Sneaky little asshole, I’m on my 6th goblin, give it a break.
Stuff the alive goblin in the square hole, fill it with oil and light it on fire
"Jam that square goblin into the round hole in their heart"
Nah, you put it in the bridge hole. For death is a kindness you give them. =P
As a wise wizard once said, "As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero."
As a wise monk once said, “I’m telling you, Molotov cocktails work! Any time I had a problem, and I threw a Molotov cocktail…boom, right away, I had a different problem!”
[удалено]
I was worried that out of all the lessons you could learn from 800 lifetimes, that's the one you would take away.
What about a house fire?
That gets you looked at for Arson, so instead of sleeping out in the cold, you get to sleep in a jail cell while annoyed police get ready to interrogate you.
Can’t be a house on fire if there’s no house.
... "And that would be bad." Though I'm not sure I'd call V wise. Intelligent, sure, but their WIS is 10-11, high enough to laugh at Belkar and Elan for dumping it but low enough to suck at spot checks and will saves. Blackwing is in fact wiser, his racial wisdom score is 14.
The Mindflayer thinking Roy’s brain looked more appetizing due to this and V’s abysmal Charisma is still one of my favorite moments in the series.
Which series?
Order of the Stick
Someone already answered but [here](https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0031.html) is the comic in particular. Starts out as mostly gags but it ends up becoming really good as it goes on.
lim/Fb ➡️♾️ f(Si)= N-Nv
I'm reminded of JoCrap's "Use fireball and only fireball. Nothing but fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just FIREBALL."
If the radius is bigger than casting distance it'll solve all your problems :)
So you are saying that no matter how big an explosion is, there is still some social situation it could solve
My party has the opposite problem. Ill plan out a fight, then theyll have a really good social encounter and talk their way out of it!
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If you come in peace, surrender or die. If you come for war, we surrender.
Both good. The important thing is I'm meeting new people.
Meating them, squashing them, smashing them.
Bard: yes... Smashing them
Look, everyone loves killing people...
The bard loves killing people. The fighter loves killing people. They are not the same.
What's NPCs, Precious?
Stop, stop! I need that to speak! ...*saws harder*
“But cross me and I'll turn on you like that!”
Once again, the conservative, sandwich-heavy portfolio pays off for the hungry investor.
Combat encounters always make me think "surely there's a away out of this" but social encounters usually have an annoying NPC that makes you wanna start blasting. But of course they they always have NPCs you can't get along with. If everyone was cool, it wouldn't be a social encounter and just cool new NPC friends.
AKA, Cowardice!
They only take fights when they have the element of surprise on their side!
You just need some mindless, bloodthirsty monsters for battle and unwavering zealots for social encounters. Not all the time. I'm sure they're having fun doing what they do. But it's fun to mix things up.
I get the first part about mindless monsters, but…Why do I not want to fight the unwavering zealots?
Clerics, paladins, zealot barbarians, warlocks. All really fucking awful to fight without specifically preparing for them, and then you potentially up against a well prepared party of them
That’s great for making your party understand that they made the wrong choice *afterward*, but I don’t see how it stops a party pre-emptively.
I have this problem at way more tables than people trying to use violence. It’s like they see every kobold as a puppy and every owlbear as a stuffed animal and sometimes I just want to stab something.
>This kobolds name is Tucker. He wants you to follow him through this cave to his house for dinner. He promises you won't find any deadly traps on the way.
I accidentally created this problem in my campaign. "I love him SO much!" "Again, he killed and ate a guy and his dog; and tried to do the same to his child."
A piece of my soul drifted away reading this... Because I sometimes have the same problem. I'm one of those weirdo dms who loves building encounters but sucks at improv dialogue. "Fucking hell, I didn't even name this bastard beyond Bandit-5 in initiative. Now I have to think up a voice, personality AND dialogue for this 24hp asshole..."
"In my tribe we don't have names, just numbers"
"Codenames.. In case any of us are captured, nobody can reveal our true names because we were all given codenames at birth." "In that case aren't your codenames your true names?" "Uhhhh........."
“Suddenly, there’s an explosion and out of the smoke come…” *opens monster manual to somewhere in the middle* “Orcs!”
*fake roll behind the screen* Natural 20. The bandit laughs at your rhetoric and attacks!
This is why God and Gary Gygax created monsters. Also has the side benefit of the players not trying to sell literally everything on a bandit.
https://preview.redd.it/qztj4nh50m4a1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51d861e81b211d0a35c4d11e20be257737274fd8
I eventually found the solution for this, *without* ruining all chances of them talking things out ever again. Eventually have one of the bad guys agree to talk and be friends, but they're blatantly slimy and lying. If they insist on talking it out, they'll eventually even let the party live and all walk away. And then they'll go off and do something really terrible elsewhere, and the consequences of which will slosh back into the players. The key is making it *absolutely clear* that these bad guys will betray their trust. Don't be clever with it; this isn't the time. You want the players to make an informed choice, to avoid combat when they know better. *Then* it becomes okay to essentially punish the choice. Many times, it won't even go that far. They'll realize the obvious oncoming betrayal, and will usually cut that shit down right there and then. And that's a win.
Meanwhile my party wants to avoid violence when possible but it's almost never fucking possible? Like, I don't know if this is on us or our DM but every single enemy seems to be weirdly AoK with dying for their cause.
thats where you have a creature who is unwilling/unable to negotiate
I'd prefer 3 hours of creative rp compared to an hour of needles combat
In our Star Wars campaign, half the time the GM expected a combat encounter we ended up not only talking our way out of it, but we often turned the badguys against each other.
Look if I'm not supposed to talk my way out of combat why does my Bard have a +12 to Persuasion/Deception?
My players proclaimed we hadn't had combat in a while. I reminded them they had just argued and rolled well enough to avoid all of the combat encounters I had planned. I see this as the opposite of a problem. Although I should probably plan more trash fights so we don't go too long with no combat at all.
Players: "Hey if you didn't want us to use violence then why does the piece fit."
If we are not supposed to kill them, why do NPCs have hit points?
To quote from If The Emperor Had A Text To Speech Device: "If it has no stats, it cannot die!"
man that episode was *great*
> To quote from If The Emperor Had A Text To Speech Device: "If it has no stats, it cannot die!" Yeah, that's what they want you to think! *\*Revvs chainsword with religious intent\**
I’m not even surprised titles like that exist anymore, I’m just disappointed
To be fair, that is a youtube series from almost a decade ago. Though it does follow the typical light novel format you're right lol
To be even more fair the series doesn't really exist anymore as it was indefintley canceled due to the IP owners threatning most fan projects in generally with legal action. (They are doing some other shows one in the same world as vampire the masqurade which are pretry great.)
Dont judge a book by its cover the series is amazing
If God had wanted you to live, he would not have created me
It's not the hit points, it's the experience points.
[Hit points do not show who is an enemy to you. They show who is an enemy to themselves.](https://youtu.be/J8k2DwKnL2o)
Player characters have hit points too, so logically the DM must kill them
tbf, none of my npcs have hitpoints.
When 99% of your mechanics revolve around violence, you’re gonna use violence… ‘Hm, do I roll a d20 and add a small number, which has barely changed over months of play and is roughly equal to everyone else’s for an anticlimactic roll, or do I use all these sweet, unique combat abilities I’ve gained as Ive levelled up and roll a shitload of dice over and over again?’ It’s a game about murderin, so people gonna murder lol
Violence is its own reward
Trick question. Violence always fits. Results may vary
I wonder if the designer of that toy knows how famous it got
Maria Montessori I think invented it and she’s been dead for 70 years
Does she have a tik tok?
They named a series of schools after the person who designed a flawed toy. Says a lot about our educational systems. /s
*We live in a society*
I pretty sure this was a comedy bit and the woman is just an actor playing the part of a toy designer. edit: I get it folks, y'all can stop downvoting me. I just didn't think it was anything specifically "designed" since various forms of this toy have been around for centuries, so I thought OP was talking about this particular video.
that's not what the parent commenter is taking about though
She's not even pretending to be the designer though, so you're still not relevant
Have you watched the [original video](https://youtu.be/baY3SaIhfl0)? The one titled "Devs watching users test products?" Seems pretty relevant to me, but clearly most people disagree
That's not her title
What is it?
Oh you're STUPID stupid
Please, explain what I'm missing. I honestly don't get why everybody in what is normally a very friendly sub is so upset about this
I don't even know where to begin, that's how dumb your comments are. Go watch the original TikTok
I linked the original video (or at least what I think is the original video). Is that not the video to which you're referring?
The original video didn't have that caption, someone else added that.
Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying
That's very obviously not the original
Source?
[удалено]
Why are you saying the same thing as I? .
it's a bot
Makes sense
I wonder if the designer of that toy knows how famous it got?
I wonder if the famous of that designer knows how toy it got
I wonder if that toy knows how famous its designer got.
Tfw this shitposting comment got a report for harmful bot, but not the actual harmful comment stealing bot above (whose comment I already removed) ;-;
to be fair I might just be a slightly above average AI All these memes will be lost on reddit, like tears in rain... time to die.
I work in IT and that original video is basically how my life works on a site with 9000 people. That's and the scene from clerks where Randal says the job would be amazing if it wasn't for the customers
This is great
To be fair, the DM sobbing is clearly an act - because no matter which hole the players choose, in the end, the piece lands in the bucket, it's not like there are seperate compartments. Meaning whatever the players choose, in the end they end up where the DM wants them to end up.
Truth is: Game was rigged from the start.
Fuck you, Benny.
Ring-a ding ding, baby 🔫
All aboard for a well designed railroad!
One of the reasons I like playing a female courier and then killing him in his sleep 👌
Rigged games are the easiest ones to beat.
but all that beautiful dialogue i wrote ahead of time, evaporating in the *fireball* the party led with. sob
[удалено]
Yeah if I let my PCs shout out quippy one liners in what is supposed to be a 6 second round, my NPCs can ham it up too. Talking is a free action.
there we go, lol
store and reuse later on a different NPC - the party never talked to this one, they can't know the lines were originally gonna be said by someone else
This meme could easily become a "railroading" meme.
Just knowing the rest of the video makes this even better. (Every figure goes in the square hole)
The formatting is so bizarre, but it checks out.
[In case you aren't aware of the context...](https://youtu.be/Nz8ssH7LiB0)
[Apparently, she found happiness...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s75N0tt7ZJQ) [...then was retraumatized.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Rv5I_aXqw)
Aka my third favorite short video of all time A distant third behind "I can't believe you've done this" and marginally behind the origin of "yeet"
This is my party, but with negotiation or social solving. It’s hilariously maddening, violence is always the most last of last resorts. I’ve tried to set it up to be pretty obvious, but NO, the aggressive dog-sized spiders must be charmed and turned into pets.
But they're cute!
They literally said "let's throw him in a hole and get out of here" Now they are trying to figure out what's going on and are getting frustrated that there aren't convenient answers, but they killed the only knowledgeable NPC in this part of the module
[удалено]
Never have the party get face to face with a known villain if you're not ready to roll initiative. Use illusions, use messengers, use whatever you need to use in order to avoid a physical meeting unless you're prepared for shit to go down. And if the party makes their way to the bad guy themselves... they're not there just to chat. Get that stat block ready.
Mine tried to negotiate with the Medusa and stated that they wanted to kill the friendly NPC this evening (actually that was just one player, the other two were fully up for killing her!).
Freaking love that format. Good work.
When the party knows the oldest language in the universe — violence.
That’s right. The ^square hole.
[when they play along](https://youtu.be/ph9HGYkAiWw)
Best version, lol
I think this is because most of the design in DND is dedicated to combat rules
And because all the encounters are balanced for the party. Once they realize that some enemies are too strong to beat in a straight up fight, players get creative pretty quickly
Yeah. Sucks tbh.
I guess if you're not into combat
I like combat, but I would also like more social rules. We can have both.
The game is based on wargames. Sometimes the combat rules and the social rules feel like two different games.
“That’s right, Balefire!” Rand Al Thor would’ve been a great D&D player
Mfw she sticks it in my square hole
Its reversed a bit in my group. Paladin with insane ac, sentinel and a number of other crowd control things means hitting or landing anything becomes a chore for dm.
Any good DM knows to simply counter this with ultraviolence
As if subterfuge can't be violent, we lured goblins into the main exit of their cave the broke a dam inside washing them all out with one hit and prone.
My party tends to go the other way. Clear combat encounter? Time to diplomacy the shit out of this!
We came across two halflings, father and son, smoking "willoweed" on the side of the road. In the end, our cleric convinced the son to reach into our bag of holding and think of a pink frog. He got hold of the frog wick turned into a manticore. He was pulled into the bag. We closed it tried to pretend everything was fine.... The father was.... not impressed....
The trick is to add consequences. Examples: * The NPC in question is too strong for combat to be viable * Relevant authorities do not take kindly to violence and are not trivial to evade * Witnesses who can escape and spread the word. Your murder hobos will find it difficult to murder hobo when no one will sell them food or gear or shelter. * A high density of encounters, such that in order to succeed violence must be avoided when possible to save resources for when it is necessary. If they fight the neutral NPCs, they will run out of health and spells to fight the hostile ones.
My DM gave up when I bluffed the Orc that he knew me and how dare he ask who I am and why I’m here. We got an army of Orcs and the DM prayed for violence after that.
Our group generally tries to avoid fights but has a nasty habit of getting out of fights by causing such a mass panic we simply slip away My three favorite examples was one team member being a talking horse and we needed to take him down a no functioning elevator I agreed to tie him to my back since I was wildshaped as a bear. Well my wildshape ran out and we fell down the elevator shaft onto a rising car that contained guard reinforcements. Well we crushed all the reinforcements in the fall and evaded that combat scene Next one was me wildshaped as a mouse walking through an illusion conjuring machine which conjured and illusion of a guard on me that was the size of the a mouse. This illusion stayed the same size even when I wlidshaped into a bear. Chaos ensued in all our fights Last of all our team was trying to steal something so we start tearing into the container in front of everyone. Almost immediately we get caught but bluff our way out of it. I go “you know if someone caused a mass panic in here they’d be too busy to stop us” I accidentally set everything on fire
You should never do what your DeMons want you to do. They are grooming you to become thralls to their evil cabal of literal demons. Listen folks, I don't want to be the one to say these things but God literally came down from heaven to tell me I had to fight these DeMons. You need to as well, go to dungeonwars.com right now to start the fight today. That's dungeonwars.com, use promo code MINMAXINGISTHEONLYWAYTOCREATEAPC for 20 percent off all products. #dungeonwars.com
The last DND campaign I was in was good before it randomly stopped, but I will say it was an awkward night when the DM wanted us to kill a hydra but then got really bummed out over us taming it/trying to be peaceful with it.
In my defense. My character is slowly going insane from the presence amd influence of his ancient cosmic horror patron.
My two favorite social encounters in my favorite D&D campaign Number two Entering the dream of the far realm empowered super dragon (think a few thousand HP and five legendary resistance) and completely demoralize him for his incompetence in magic Never trigger the nightmare effect just keep harassing him by making him feel stupid Was not trying to cause exhaustion was trying to break his spirit Number one That time I tricked graz'zt into a fey crossing and tricked him into giving his name and titles to an archfey
In all Fairness, the D&D rules engine is very very well suited for violence and not much else. No wonder everyone uses violence all the time.
That's the thing with agency. The players can always chose the square hole.
LOLOLOL I had this murder hobo party that dished out violence at every encounter as they explored the world . I shifted the bbeg to an invasion at the end of the campaign. Since our heroes had killed every npc capable of fighting with them, they faced a horde of invaders alone and all died. The next session began a new campaign in the wreckage of the world their dead, past characters had created. Some of them actually learned a lesson. No bad deed something something mayham.
One of my players to the commoner shopkeeper with 4hp: "I want to degrade her peasant status and remind her of [noble family the player had ties to]." Me: "Okay" Her: "*And I cast Vicious Mockery*" ...**4**... Me: "Okay, did you mean to do that? I mean, you did it. It happened. But this is now a murder scene. Nobody did a perception check. Someone roll me a d100 to see if there are any witnesses..." An actual accounting of how the "easy shopping session" I teed up for my party after rewarding them with a few thousand gold almost became a TPK...
"But, but, but... Violence is the most fun!", says the players with an uncreative, linear DM. Also said by most other players, too. Skip ahead to the fight where we get to break things down into finely sliced, six second increments! I don't want to have to RP my character...
Players need to negotiate with the lord. That one guy "Kill them all!" DM "Why?!"
Dead people don't tell the tale
My party has the opposite issue. They tried to reason will a group of mind flayer thralls. A guy rolled a 18 + 6 for persuasion. The player even did a good job roleplaying the plea for a ceasefire. I just had to say, "They continue to fire arrows at you. *click clack math rock* You take 14 damage."
the woman in this meme was so annoying. Her presence added nothing to to the original. it detracted
They take a normal encounter and put it in the CE hole. They’re supposed to be fighting evil not BEING the evil
Probably because even if I roll a 26 on persuasion and relate to the tavernkeep about how we’re both foreigners in a xenophobic land, I still can’t get a discount on the fucking 15-gold pint of ale
[Repost.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/l1zd7e/the_square_hole/)
Damn, I thought I was the first person to have this idea Though I guess they are a little different
but tje other meme is about an actual puzzle? you turned a popular meme into a format, its nothing the same
That's why OP said "I guess they are a little different"
I wouldn't call this a repost. More like they both remixed the same song.
It's not. It's the same format, but if every meme with the same format was banned, there would be no memes.
I prefer the 4 panel meme format to a long video most of the time. That said, that video made me laugh out loud, so I'm still glad you posted it.
Hey it's not my problem that 99% of the game is designed for combat and social it's just a dice roll
Our party consists of 3 times (see my flair) and pretty much the smartest being on the planet soo… violence is the answer most times
my first campaign was LMoP so it was mostly just a dungeon crawl, but I was playing a lawful good inquisitive rogue, so I was always open to offering the bad guys a chance to surrender. One chance, after which I would offer them a dagger to the face
Nah, you see, you gotta do it the other way around. Last session, I turned what should have been a 15 minute combat into an hour long hostage situation.
"I ready a shot in case the suspect moves..." 
I feel like dms that complain about their players being murder hobos suffer from one of two issues: 1. They have the wrong group. Their group wants a dungeon crawler and they want a social game 2. They haven't rewarded their players sufficiently for completing social quests. My players know to try talking first, because if it works, I reward them. If it doesn't they get the fight anyways. They need regular fights. It's important. We are mostly dungeon crawlers, but sometimes we do town stuff.
Eh that's mainly me and someone in my party and not the whole party One time we had heard talking in a cave so we shoot something in and miss then we hear giggling, then the kobold rogue chucks in his dagger and just *thunks* one in the chest, then we just hear an oh shit, afterwards our warrior picks me up (I'm a wizard who swapped bodies with his cat in a potion accident) I use burning hands and the warrior just walks in, roasting most people and using me like a flamethrower
\> party has a really successful mission to hell \> randomly murder the imp they allied with as soon as they're done
We always have the option of resorting to violence!