things my players did that made me want to quit DMing
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2022
- love those guys, all jokes
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The, "If a single thing goes wrong this fight, it might be a little challenging" line got me good. XD
How many times have I heard that, let me count the ways
we almost had a TBK a few sessions ago.
czcams.com/users/clipUgkxcfO4OHsUPMx-cYMM6If16_OqJPw1K66K
Exactly why I paused and came down here. Too true.
god i hate players who pick easy mode.
The polearm master and sentinel interaction has always seemed cheap, but keeping enemies from getting close enough to hit you is basically the whole point of polearms.
And, as stated, it only works against one target. Cool when it's cool, but otherwise eh. And, of course, it's not hard to throw in a few ranged attackers. That way ya dont shut down the character build entirely, but they aren't immune. Skeleton archer alongside zombies is a classic
@@randomspectator4417 Unless you miraculously reach your fighter capstone as a cavalier
Yeah but that should be part of the weapon and shouldn't work against a Tarrasque
@@giant0mantis it doesn't cause the tarrasque has better reach than that
@@randomspectator4417 Sure but if it were to be used on the tarrasque he would still stop moving, the extra reach shouldn't be the reason he beats a dude with a long stick
"I'm gonna cast magic missile at second level and target each copy with a different missile" that "huh" afterwards. As a forever DM, I felt that "huh" in my bones
Edit: jeez guys I posted this months ago calm the heck down. BG3 wasn't even released yet. Incase anyone is curious, yes I have been informed that this is how you defeat one of the bosses
that's actually fucking smart and I like the idea
@@RomanII1997 but sadlly it's neither RAW nor RAI, stated in a Sage Advice by Jeremy Crawford... but if i were DM, i'd roll with it. I just have to hit the brakes if things are too cheezy
@@sweetboygreeny3855 ? "Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4 + 1 force damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously, and you can direct them to hit one creature or several."
@@oranje_cat RAW: The caster is only one creature and therefore you can't direct the missiles at the illusions. You can direct them at the caster and it will hit them, ignoring the illusion's effect: " A duplicate's AC equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier. If an Attack hits a duplicate, the duplicate is destroyed. A duplicate can be destroyed only by an Attack that hits it. It ignores all other damage and Effects. The spell ends when all three duplicates are destroyed." Magic Missile is not an attack, so it ignores all other damage and effects.
RAI: The Missiles are so sure to hit the target that they can't be fooled by illusions.
the enemy must've really had fucking low hp
"Guys we gotta do something. If a SINGLE negative thing happens to us during this fight, it might be a little challenging!"
Absolutely killed me. Can totally relate as a DM.
Had a DM that would pull their punches and always had things balanced just so and never gave us any reason to think otherwise but one player complained if they ever heard there might be a dangerous enemy saying it was hopeless and we had no chance every time. It got very grating
the problem here is that if a single negative thing happens to the players, it could spiral down into a TPK, so i can understand why a player might be averse to that
also, the fact that the DM had to pull their punches, kinda proves that the players would have no chance if the DM played the monsters intelligent and made them use proper tactics and use all their abilities to the full extent and actually try to win.
players who claim "i beat a dragon at level 3" didn't really beat a dragon. . they just had a permissive DM that pulled punches and went along with whatever crazy plan they came up with that should have never worked
@@Femaiden that is dnd is it not?
@@skoomaenjoyer9582 eh I've had small bad things spiral into my character having his head almost cut off by a ghost horseman.
The thing my players did that made me quit DMing was the feeling of them not taking the game seriously. Tired of prepping for a session every week and then getting the feeling that my players are barely paying attention.
Honestly same, I spent about a month making an adventure for them to play, only for one of them to be on their phone whenever it wasn’t their turn, and one person ignoring everyone else and trying to become a drug lord, not realizing that they were the only one that found it funny
This is sad but I can sort of understand. While i have not given up GMing because of that I have stopped preparing ANYTHING but maps and general campaign plot. A few weeks ago i was running a 5th edition game in which the character were facing off against a nasty pair of enemies. One was an alchemist creating abominations and the other was one of his experiments.
They fought the experiment 1st, which was a mutaded humanoid. When they saw the picture of the monster they just went: Huh this monster is kind of thicc. I just faceplanted on my desk. They have been building up to this encounter for like 4 weeks... and all they did was crack jokes and shit talk during the 1st part of the fight... Because they did not take it seriously they almost TPK-ed. The ranger managed to 1 v 1 the 2nd phase which was the alchemist ( level 8 ranger vs lvl 10 blade singer ). Suffice to say it was way too close... and they did get an important NPC killed in this fight...
Sad thing is you cannot make people behave, they will play how they want to play, but sometimes player can be really fucking tone deaf...
Honestly I have hit the point as a DM where I am just like, pay attention and please buy into the world a little bit... like you can still make meme jokes, but please do not insult my NPC/Location names...
Idk your situation. But we’re they ever close to dying? It’s usually the case that they discover death isn’t a real threat and there’s no consequences to their actions
Amen
To be fair using magic missile to figure out which copy is real is very clever problem solving
Then the missiles pass through each figure and you hear behind you a low chuckle.
I think that one's less "my players did something that ruins the fun" and more "this makes my job more difficult as DM because they did something I didn't prepare for"
@@kevinquintana2647 well done
@@littlemisspipebomb4723 i love it when they do something I couldn't have accounted for
and I'm like so... is my charactee clever enough for that... hmmm
In one campaign the DM prepared a whole section where we would riddle with a SPHYNX. We were supposed to ask it one question it didn’t know the answer to in order to cross a bridge. If it knew we would take permanent psychic damage so we were supposed to think about it for a long time. I immediately said, “Yo, SPHYNX, what’s my name?”
The DM almost cried. We ended the session early.
Yo, SPHYNX, what's an answer to a question you don't know the answer to?
@@SirPolarr That'd be pretty easy thing to answer. I can think of all sorts of questions I don't know the answer to. Like the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow.
@@GwenActually i have attempted to fix my response to this said sphynx
@@SirPolarr thats also extremely easy. There are yes or no questions that I dont know the answer to. Therefore "yes" is the answer to a question I dont know the answer to.
Why didn't your DM roll a wisdom check for the Sphynx? It is not like there isn't spells and abilities that could easily suss out such knowledge. It would of been better to ask the Sphynx its true name. Either it doesn't know and you win, or it tells you and you gain power over it and you win.
Last week: "OK, you notice that you can only see the invisible creature when your Darkvision is on; so when it passes into the light it flickers away." This week: "You come upon the creature in a room filled with torches. It sneers and disappears, so you don't have a line of sight or target." Players: "Welp. we're done. There's nothing we can do." Me again: "The room's filled with TORCHES. Well-lit, brightly burning TORCHES." Them: "Yeah, we heard you. There's nothing we can do."
This is when you make the players role intelligence check, then tell them the torch’s could just be unlit for them to see it.
More people should be playing druids with Faerie Fire, huh
@@helgenlane or invest in a lantern of revealing. Or dust of appearance. They do the same job
@@louiesatterwhite3885 I love lantern of revealing. Give a humunculous servant a lantern of revealing and a staff of magic missiles, design it like a sci-fi distopia government drone, and use the lantern as those super bright spotlights.
@@louiesatterwhite3885 or... use water
DM: *Goes into immense detail about something important while successfully staying in character/narrator voice to keep up the immersion*
Player: "I wasn't paying attention, what did you say?"
Ooof yes I have 0 attention span but yet deeply care about the universe the game takes place in so sometimes I'll ask an NPC a question for some world-building opportunities for the DM only to forget half of what they said a minute later.
It's really gotten on my nerves the past couple of campaigns I've run
I have a couple of players that bug me to run a session, and then I see one on a Steam Game 5 minutes into the session, but they also take *FOREVER* to take their turn in combat.
The other player refuses to listen to descriptions, instead going the "I'll just ask later when it's relevant, as I can just do a Recall Knowledge check" Or, he'll just ask me to repeat it, sometimes more than once. He's not even hard of hearing, or mentally deficient, he's just a disrespectful ass.
Oh wow. Did not know that Shady Doorags was into Dnd. Just another reason to like your channel I guess lol
oops encounter just got 3x as hard
I care alot about the universe of my dm...I just have severe adhd
It's not intentional xd
I don't see why you'd be mad about the magic missiles, that's sounded really cool! Like, an actual thoughtful and strategic response!
He's mad at himself for not thinking about it
True, if that happened, I’d be impressed
@u know me Wait... these aren't magic missiles at all! These are just Potatoes!
@@AlexT7916 yeah I'd feel like a super fuck up for that great moment if I forgot about magic missile in my balancing.
Its fucking brilliant, but if I don't want that happening for a cinematic moment, I'm so mad at my self.
It's a combination of feelings when that happens. Partially, impressed that my plan was so quickly thwarted and partially frustrated for that exact same reason. 😅😅 Had something very similar happen where I'd designed a boss that charged its powerful attack by infinitely falling through two portals. My player cast featherfall on it to slow its speed significantly.
That first scenario
If a player ever says to you "Well there's only 3 zombies left so..."
They're about to quickly learn there are NEVER only 3 fucking zombies left
I know that's right
No one’s gonna want to play with you as the dm lol
@@finna1002 are you seriously supporting the players side of "players who made me want to quit DMing"
@@zackarychristian9489 in that scenario the players didn't even do something bad, in fact, they were just using game's mechanics lol
If players feel awesome from this, don't stop their fun!
You can always adjust future encounter into uncheeseable, but don't make it like their ability is totally useless all the time.
If players laugh at how your encounter is too easy, give a warning and ditch them if there's second time.
tl;dr: DON'T PUNISH PLAYER IN GAME.
Also, can I just say I absolutely love the comedic timing and delivery of "Thump this Beholder 'til it's atomized," and the other player saying "Done," and dropping a comically large pile of dice onto the table.
Behold. A Paladin.
Rule number 1 of being a Beholder: Avoid being within melee range of a monk. Or anything for that matter
The Magic Missile hard counter is absolutely spectacular. As a DM I would be ecstatic of a player completely broke my encounter with a big brain play like this. I would describe the BBEG panicking, struggling to think of something else, etc. Flawless.
This! I find much greater pleasure in watching the party use an intrepid solution to solve or avoid a problem than beating them up.
Easy reaction. It enrages the BBEG and he goes after the caster single-mindedly. That way he makes dumb mistakes allowing the group to kill him without it being obvious.
"One of the missiles hits Strahd with a ping. He just... stands there, looking around awkwardly"
mirror images only shatter when hit with attacks, magic missile isn't an attack, so the resolution is that they all hit the mirrored caster, without shattering any, but you then can't tell which is which as they move and shift.
@@Squidbush8563 SHIELD!
The "snakes" bit really reminds me of a pretty hilarious way we broke a scenario our DM had set up in one of our games. There was a sort of magic throne that would allow us to see through our antagonist's eyes and spy on whatever he was up to... but sitting on it would summon a troll in the nearby antechamber, blocking our escape. We were pretty low level, so this was a big deal. Of course like idiots we use the chair a second time, and sure enough, now there are two trolls. After pondering for a moment, we started sitting and standing on the throne as rapidly as possible, just absolutely doing an aerobics routine on it. After a couple of minutes of this, we opened the door to the antechamber and were greeted by what we referred to as "troll jelly." Turns out only so many trolls can fit in a small room before things get a little bit tight.
We cooked the mashed trolls into a fine chili and fed the nearby villagers, who were starving for unrelated reasons.... we didn't tell them where we got the meat, and they didn't ask too many questions.
Wouldn't the trolls just regenerate?
i love that
Inside the villagers.
That can be their next quest.
@@MarginalSC they cooked the troll therefore it took fire damage and can’t regenerate at least that’s my take on it’s
@@metalismedicine5499 I suppose. Otherwise there were a lotta exploding villagers after they left...
The Sentinal/Polearm Master player: “If you think thats bad, wait until I become a level 18 Cavalier Fighter, then I can make an opportunity attack on every turn”
Literally a friend of mine word-for-word lmfao
Or a wizard that possessed a Mithras
I actually had no issue with the whole polearm sentinal that's players using their abilities to full effect
If you think that's bad, Polearm Master and Warcaster is very strong, they enter your range, and you can cast any spell you want to deal with the situation, including teleports away, thunderwave or other things to push them back, hold person to paralyze them, all kinds of stuff.
Too be fair, if your party is reaching level 18, shenanigans like that are going to be par for the course for pretty much any class.
In my last campaign we were on our way to the “final boss” and we ran into an npc with The Deck of Many Things and each of us got to pull a card. (For back story our group was all begrudgingly forced to work together and did not get along). The first character to pull a card was our most “disliked” companion and he disappeared into the void. Our second character was only there for revenge for his dead wife, and he was able to pull a card that let him resurrect her, so he left the group. I was in debt to one of our characters who’s mom was a government official and she pulled a card that killed the person she loved most so her mom died so I left the group. Then our last character pulled a card that let him summon anyone of his choosing for 5 minutes and so he summoned the main boss we were after and was able to kill him since he had surprise advantage and a spell that locked him in place so he couldn’t move. So at that point everyone in our party just awkwardly parted ways and there was no epic final battle like the DM had planned 😂
This is why no DM should have the deck of many things in their campaign setting unless they are ok with it completely destroying the story and/or world
And that’s why parties need to be cooperative in game.
*”Guys, we gotta do something! If a single negative thing happens to us during this fight, it MIGHT be a little CHALLENGING!”*
Yeah, my DM caught us doing that in COS, but instead of idk, actually making the encounters challenging, he decided it was a good idea to suddenly make dispel magic work on an active channel divinity effect
Yeah, I don't know why so many DND players throw a hissy fit when they take a single d4 of damage.
@@tonybaloney9607 but it really feel like it does work tho. Because dispel magic is well dispelling any sort of magic and it can be use whether to dispel buff or debuff.
@@ultrabigfella I think a lot of the blame is on WotC poorly balancing their monsters, making them too weak (BY THEIR OWN RULES 90% of monsters should roll one extra die of dmage for their CR) and having so little HP they cannot last for more than a turn. Players quickly discover powerful builts and trivialize everything, get used to it and then get upset when actually a bad thing happens.
@@IdiotinGlans I mean that really just depends on what game or module you are running. Ice spire peak had people dropping like flies thanks to low hp rolls and monsters just hitting. The mimic in gnomengarde killed 2/4 players the wererats in the mine killed almost everyone and the last person has wererat lycanthropy. Im sure if they had stumbled into the ankhegs at the loggers campsite there could have been a TPK. And the anchorite that appears when players leave downed 2 players in my game. Not to mention that the dragon already snacked on 2 players due to absurdly unlucky rolls when entering certain locations.
Choice ones from my own group:
- "I burn down the building," ad nauseum
- Killing the main villain of our first Dark Heresy story arc by shoving him down an elevator shaft and rolling a medical gurney off the edge on top of him, followed by us googling "weight of a gurney" (it's fucking heavy) and trying to come up with an estimate of damage based on the Telekinesis rules (it was a lot)
- Stumbled upon a dungeon with a well room at the entrance where a deadly giant serpent is swimming in the water and then killing him by gathering poison herbs from the surrounding jungle for 8 hours and dumping them in the water
Ngl, the poison the snake idea sounds amazing. Really cool, inventive, and if ya spending 8 hours wandering a jungle for herbs, plenty of room as the gm to throw in hijinks
@@randomspectator4417 I actually believe he did, we encountered tigers I think, but we had an elven ranger who was too good at his job.
Love the poison idea. My party once contaminated the well of an enemy camp to enable a rescue mission. Not to *kill* everyone, just to give them all really bad diarrhea for a bit.
If your players want to play with destructible buildings, then they will probably need to be a lot more tentative with AoE spells in the future.
Also, burning down buildings is a great way to piss off the local town/village and not get paid.
Your players sound like fun. Environmental problem-solving is always a blast to DM for me. The biggest laughs I've had from my group came from either them being brilliant or absolute dumbasses, they never seem to find a middle ground.
And I relate to the building burning. I had a bard cast heat metal on the nails of a wooden building and she killed half a dungeon's worth of content in the resulting fire. She singlehandedly caused a mid-session level up for the whole party.
I love my players.
"The usurper is no pushover though, as his many years as a rogue have made him very nimble. He sprints 90 feet towards you this turn, and you realize it will not be long before he catches up to you and-"
Monks: "Oh we have 45 feet of movement per turn because we're not wearing armor, so if we dash he can't catch us."
"OK well your friends won't be able to-"
Fighter: "Hey DM, remember that ruling you made on the jump spell like 8 sessions ago and how casting it on myself basically gives me 55 ft of movement? Well now I'm also faster than him if I dash."
"Well surely the wizard is-"
Wizard: "I enter bladesong and because I have the mobile feat I get 100 feet per turn if I dash."
"Well what about the barbarian?"
Barbarian: "I have fast movement so I only get 80 feet by dashing, but if I rage I get instinctive pounce for 100 feet."
"Well that still means your consistent speed is 80 feet so he's gong to catch up to you and stab you eventually!"
Barbarian: "Eh, I don't really care. He doesn't get sneak attack plus he has to forgo one of his dashes to attack me, the wizard can just shoot a fire bolt or something every couple of turns and we'll be fine."
"Well jump and bladesong only last for a minute! So you'll have to face him head on eventually!"
Wizard: "Yeah you're right. I'll just cast bilndness/deafness on him. He needs to make a con save."
"Does a seventee-"
Wizard: "Silvery barbs."
"Aaaalright, so he fails then."
Barbarian: "Cool I attack him 3 times at advantage because he's blinded for a total of... 27 damage."
"You guys are level 7 what the fuck..."
Wizard: "Once it's my turn again I'm going to cast polymorph on the barbarian."
"OK so you're dropping concentration on blindness/deafness?"
Wizard: "Nope, blindness/deafness doesn't require concentration."
"Of course it doesn't."
That last line, "of course it doesn't," I must have said that in exasperation god-knows-how-often.
27 damage is a lot for level 7? Since when
@@dodhethompson4841 This honestly. My level 6 Barbarian is attacking twice for an average of 15 per hit, assuming the Drakewarden isn't buffing her, which is usually what's happening.
@@dodhethompson4841 Barb forgot to pick up great weapon master lol
27 is not great damage for lvl 7. Esp considering 3 attacks
This DM must be proud his players know their abilities so well and work well together. It's better than when the fights last for two hours because casters go "I'm gonna do... I'm gonna do... What's this spell do..." And then cast it incorrectly anyways.
I love my players, but by the Gods this grates on my nerves!
Honestly I'd say it depends on the playstyle of the party. I'm used to playing in campaigns that have very experienced D&D players (played with the same group for more than a decade in fact) but we are also very used to long, epic and drawn out fights that are usually at least somewhat challenging since our DM designs them to push us and is bit of a min maxer for homewbrewed monsters and our parties enjoy that as well. So I'd say it depends on the general vibe a party has when it comes to encounters.
DM: "here's this diary, only your character has read it so perhaps you should discuss the content with the party" Player:"ok let me put it into my bag for it never to be discussed again".
I had this exact thing happen in a Witcher RPG I ran. The quest relevant information was inside the diary and the lead Witcher investigator just tossed it like used toilet paper.
@@benwhite8863 Same thing but with ravenloft and the guy was playing a Rogue character, he had a +4 to investigation.
I never understand why players do this. I think it's like "if only I know, i'll have a leg up" but then they forget about it and it's never brought up again
@@_motho_ It's a sign they are only suited for hack and slash gameplay.
Oh good, it's not just my players that do this.
4:15 as a monk, this sets unrealistic expectations for party members actually hitting stunned creatures after they've been told to do so.
as a monk with 13 wisdom, it's unrealistic for me to stun a creature.
as a non-monk, it's unrealistic for me to use stunning strike
@@ColdBlazze why do you have such low wisdom
bro, im running a drud/monk multiclass in this prolonged one-shot. (its a month-long-shot now) My DM crushes all CON saves by a mile, except my stunning strikes... Swear its a statistical anomaly.
@@louiesatterwhite3885 probably took feats instead of constantly using ASI to boost the WIS or dex (I wish the day comes when monks get the mobile feat is automatically gotten at level 4)
Either that or they are low level/rolled bad stats. Also yes i know this comment is 2 weeks old i just like to roleplay the "🤓"
The players not remembering information they’ve already been given gets me every time.
In my games, I ask the party to give a recap at the start of the sesh. That way I know what they remembered, and I can fill in the gaps to remind them of key details
Oooh that’s a good way of doing it. I’ve got memory issues but I think that asking me to recap what I remember would help me a lot. Gets the gears turning, so to speak. Plus then the group can rely on information that the others remember even if they didn’t remember it individually, and, as you mentioned, you can bring things up.
Yeah we do this, and we've got one player who narrates the whole thing with the voice of the narrator from Dragon Ball Z lmao
A few of my friends just started a brand new campaign last week. We’re level 1 and had our second session just the other day. We ended up alerting some giant guy that immediately knocked me and one friend unconscious. Our only standing party member, our warlock, then cast minor illusion of himself in front of this decrepit, dry ass shack, the giant ran right into it got stuck, then our Warlock smashed a lantern onto the shack, burning the pinned giant alive. We were then told by the DM friend that he expected us to be at least level 8 or 9 for this specific giant. It was a side quest related giant. We totally fucked it in like 4 rounds out of pure panic.
:-) I love that stuff as a player.
I'm a fan of also using high charisma to convince junior ranking baddy bosses to go away.
All though, the last time I did it I realized that I wasn't Chaotic Good any more and was actually Chaotic Neutral because I convinced the dude to go away by saying, "We don't care what you go and do to make money, we just want you to leave us alone so we can kill the big boss". Chr check of like 19 and apparently him already just being there for the money and he just watched us walk on by and promised to leave after we were done with our business in the dungeon.
In my second-ever D&D session (so I still had no idea what I was doing) it was intended for me and the other player to find this mysterious tower in the middle of the woods that had no entrance and we were SUPPOSED to turn back around to the town and find help back there.
But it took us so long to get to the tower (and involved the two of us little level 1 babies fighting off a significantly more powerful horse of like 5 or 6 zombies - an issue which was resolved at my suggestion by the wizard casting bonfire underneath the zombies repeatedly.) and there was no indication that we were supposed to turn back, that my paladin just tied my rope to my sword and kept hurling it at a window until it grappled onto it like a grappling hook.
Turned out I brute-forced my way past like two sessions worth of plot and we ended up fighting the big bad of that plotline in the first session, killing him with more bonfire cantrips and my paladin trying to reason with him and then ultimately started govining him his Last Rites while slicing bits of his body off in “self-defense.”
That level of chaotic energy fully informed that Paladin’s character for the rest of that campaign.
I would hope you guys leveled up at least once or twice for killing something that was supposed to be done around level 8
@@OgdenM Did something similar when I, as a warlock, blew up a gunpowder keg because the DM kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to blast open the keg and I thought she was hinting that it had some hidden treasure inside. Took out a bunch of goblins and we all barely survived the explosion and killed the goblins inside who knew we didn't work for the BBEG. Rest of the goblin army rolls up and I nat 20 deception to convince the goblin captain that I'm the new captain in charge. Now I'm in command of 120 goblins
The only thing particularly annoying to me is the one guy forgetting about the slimes when he's had multiple examples of it dealing acid damage on death.
Yup same here, at that point its on them for not paying attention. They had multiple chances to memorize what they do and they didn’t even pay attention, so that death was 200% on them and not the DM’a fault
Players being shitty when they get CCd is also annoying
They clearly just want to play a video game where they always dominate and are never challenged
you have clearly never seen me play roguelikes, this happens more than you think
@@lootjunior Skill Issue
The funniest part is the one guy on the other side had been paying attention and going. Perhaps we shouldn't do that.
To be fair, zombies aren't really a threat once you hit high enough level to have both polearm master and sentinel.
Variant human could get that combo fairly quickly. That said, yeah zombies are very much low level creatures.
With One D&D a variant human can start with it...
The fact that the game continuously scales the player characters in a way that strips the usefulness out of larger and larger parts of the monster manual is another thing that makes DMs like me want to quit.
True, but are you fighting 4 zombies like in this video or are you fighting 17 zombies? :D
Variant human, free feat to everyone hb.
1st lvl.
I remember as a joke someone cast magic missile as a level 9 spell. Didn't kill the boss but seriously hurt and surprised the hell out him.
In Neverwinter Nights (the PC game that used slightly modified 3e) there existed a spell "Isaac's greater missile storm" it spat a magic missile per caster level. You could maximize it as well, at level 20 that would be 240 damage in a single turn without a single roll.
@@Reriiru NWN also had drown my favorite spell to this day. Oh your a living being that needs air? Hope you passed your save. Oh you didn't, take 90% of your life as bludgeoning damage.
@@skiefyre123 You know how DnD is a lot about "save or die"? Well, NWN version of DnD has plenty of "just fucking die". And it managed to still somehow be fun, especially in shard multiplayer.
Me: Has a whole cool jurassic park-like chase planned out with a T-rex.
Paladin: steps forward, raises holy sigil, "Yeah it's afraid of me now, can't move towards me."
Me: .......
I feel that "if anything slightly bad happens to us." Part. When an enemy heals or uses a spell or is immune to 1 players repeated shenanigans, all of a sudden, I'm a "monster". Lol. Also polearm master + Sentinel + alert = what ambush? Player messed up my assassin good
Ugh I hate the balancing act that creates when a player picks some build thats super powerful for the setting, like the kobold killer feat that adds a flat 50 damage to every attack against a kobold of any type and you are running tuckers kobolds. So maybe you want to include more wolves? "Hey! Why are you using dm fiat to shut down my build?!" (Warning, feat may not actually exist)
Persoanlly I'd prefer any of those things before taking a character out of the game for an indeterminate amount of time
@@chrishubbard64 that feat isn't homebrew? Because that sounds like a lot of Dmg for RAW
@@xuklysc agreed. I don't like to stun/paralyze players unless they do it alot or have ways to over come in. Bardic inspiration/counterccharm(homebrewed to affect spell conditions also.) Or dispell/counterspell or flash of genius. Feels cool to overcome them but lame if they just stuck doing nothing
Sure, all those things are very reasonable. Simply removong a players turns and making them auto critable for failing one save is much worse then an enemy casting spells
I summoned 32 giant crabs once
The DM did not take into account the fact they have blind sight so the enemy casting darkness did not make his disassembly by crab any slower
"disassembly by crab", why does that sound so bloody terrifying
@@rory8182 third episode of House of the Dragon sums it up quite well
Disassembly by crab XD
That's some Cthulu shit right there 🤣
CRAB CRAB CRAB CRAB
"Stunning *strikeS* " I laughed. That's happend a few times in my group
Reminds me of the time the monk and my wizard broke the adventure by killing an adult green (that we weren't supposed to fight until next game) Between using telekinesis (strength CHECK vs spell DC) to drag it down to the ground and stunning strikes to put it down. Even had a couple of skeletons flinging arrows at it, while a third held a tea kettle and kept watch for any other ridiculousness. Executed its 'mate' the following session, when the druid wildshaped into a Quetzalcoatlus, monk jumped off druid and SS'd the dragon, rode it down and took half fall dmg, then brutalized it before the paladin or barbarian could stop us.
Then there was some BS about walking through the jungle for a month to get to our objective, but we just said 'Nah, we'll just fly over as a pair of Quetz. He's got Wildshape, I got Polymorph." Did some conservative math (factored in pee breaks, lunch, tea, sleep) and it took just over 6.5 days
DM's physical and mental reaction to Magic Missile outplaying Strahd's trick got me so good. xD
My players were recently in a cave dungeon. They found a stone door in a large room blocking the rest of the cave. The door had a riddle engraved on it, with the answer being "Echo" and the players had to yell loudly to cause an echo. Before I even described the riddle, the alcoholic paladin screamed, "ALCAHOL!" and the door opened.
alcoholic paladins, always funny never bummy
My friend, that's why booze is always the answer
what was the riddle tho lol
@@d4s0n282 "what cannot speak but always has the last word" or something along those lines.
To be fair, trapping an enemy in a confined space and instantly filling every unoccupied area in that space with small animals is kinda funny.
horse-sized snakes
@@Chillzer95 Or snake sized horses?
Could I, theoretically, summon enough bunnies into a room to suffocate my enemies?
No, physics in D&D doesn't work that way. The only way to run out of air is being in extra dimensional space or somewhere where air would not normally be, which runs out significantly faster than in our reality.
@@seanpeery7780 I didn't mean suffocation specifically, just the raw weight and pressure. There's a minimum threshold of pressure on a humanoid's chest that will make breathing difficult and strength is rendered useless when leverage is taken away.
Also it's just absurd; doesn't have to be effective, just hilarious.
my dm forgot he gave me access to an orbital cannon once and had planned a large army like battle for us and I was just like "Yea, I use the orbital cannon." I never wanted to see someone quit on the spot as bad as he did
3:16 You haven't officially earned your DM stripes until you have made this face AT LEAST once. It's like a rite of passage.
I love how at 4:20 he just casually drops "Yeah, so, you did 450 dmg, anyway..."
I don't trust that link
Also I'm confused as to how... 450...plese explain
Hehe 343 was my max round on a lvl 20 Vengeace Paladin
@@kenreynolds8673 It's just a joke :D But a good one, high level fights are crazy sometimes
@@kenreynolds8673 Not that hard if you're a high level martial class tbh. Highest damage I managed to do in my 5e career was 392 damage in a single swing, so 450 damage seems pretty reasonable for a high level min-maxed martial class.
Damage is in the eye of the Beholder.
So true BigDickWizard6969, so true
Example 2 with the acid corpse damage is one I've experienced in different forms. Guy tried to trip a dwarf in pathfinder (with no supporting feats either). Dwarf has a trait that makes them harder to trip, and we all had a moment about it. Same guy gets in a bar fight with a dwarf next session, immediately tries to trip him. Fails his roll and gets mad at me, "How was I supposed to know!?! This is bullshit, blablabla." Creates a scene at my table. Another player throws popcorn at him, and he ends up leaving in huff. A few weeks later I throw another dwarf at him and it's like he has no memory at all, immediately tries to trip him. Fails. I gloss over it and quickly pivot to another player to get the spotlight off of numbnuts. This strategy works. Some people just do not learn.
I remember one time where I (Dhampir Warlock) summoned a T-Rex with Summon Fey and used a wish spell to make it never despawn, and half a year later took it to the boss fight after our Artificer had tinkered with it, making it this walking fortress. Think Pieck from AoT.
I'm thinking Dino Riders.
God, the Stibbles bit caught me waaaay off-guard. That was perfect
How did a character of so few words write a book?
Runesmith? Is that you?
His impersonation of Runesmith was really good.
Beast.
Summon beast.
Snake.
Player: Here is stunning Strike 4x every time we have a boss fight. Sorry to cheese your boss fight DM.
DM: *Several sessions later.* The evil monk uses stunning strikes on you. And with that failed saving throw, you are now stunned.
Player: Wow, this is so unfair. I can’t believe my agency is being taken from me.
Thats why, when i have an important boss, he is just immune to Stun. Or atleast very resistant.
I house rule stunning strike as 1 per target per turn.
It has led to some interesting creative shenanigans and some tm Big Hero Moves when the monk stunned literally all the minions around the Oni warlord because they knew the warlords Con bonus was massive but the honour guard all had Flametongue broadswords.
He ran in, hit every guard to block the flow of their Chi and ran out of movement 10 ft from the warlord, then the oni struck back for more than half his HP, but without his 16d6 +20 backup attacks from his guards he didn't have the threat to take on the battered player crew
Removing single target stunning Spam highlights the weakness of a whirlwind multiattacker like the monk but also promotes variety and imagination. My monk used nunchuks and took the duelist FS because the difference between 3 hits with +5 damage and 3 hits with +7 damage is actually huge.
I had a DM where the boss would have just made all saves... also every regular enemy as well... also against the barbarian's Shove or Blinding attack... also enemies would always surprise the party because they rolled very high for Stealth.
@@schwarzerritter5724 oh jeez that's ass man.
I'm all for nerfing unfun spam but the blagg is on the sheet they absolutely should be able to use them.
Dnd and rpgs in general are about working together to make awesome stories, so heroes need the chance to be big damn heroes, or live long enough to become the villains!
@@schwarzerritter5724 if my monk tried to stun my BBEG of the campaign, I roll, I fail. I would let the BBEG be stunned, but only until after the next creature lands a hit on him. Perhaps that is the best balance to it I can see. But only for the BBEG. I also like the 1 per target per turn Stephen mentioned above. Meaning your BBEG might pass, but that doesn’t mean all his minions will!
One time our dm had a portion of the BBEG’s castle filled with poison gas. He thought we would just blow it away with gust or something. He did NOT expect me to throw flame tongue and light it, exploding entire portion of the castle in one go
I had a rule for my new players that they allowed to have one magic item when they made their character, one of them made around 40 characters and tried to convince me that they all give the items to his one character
The fuq? 🤨
I sincerely hope you slapped him. Once for each character.
@@kismethappel7811(insert the TerminalMontage Yoshi slaps)
3:20 This is so an "I ain't even mad." face because that's honestly such a good idea that is so obvious once it is stated but not something most people would think of doing.
Unless they played Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, in which case it's the main use of the spell.
And then the DM says, "He reacts with Shield."
Does Shield block magic missile?
@@butlershurk7227 Yep. It specifically says it in Shield's Description. "...Until the start of your turn, you have a +5 bonus to AC, including against the triggering attack, and you take no damage from magic missile."
The reaction condition also specifies that it can be used with a casting time of 1 Reaction "which you take when you are hit by an attack or targeted by the magic missile spell."
@@butlershurk7227 "An invisible barrier of magical force appears and protects you. Until the start of your next turn, you have a +5 bonus to AC, including against the triggering attack, and you take no damage from magic missile."
It is specifically made to be The hard-counter to magic missile.
That part about the oozes that explode is my life as a DM. I hate how little attention my players pay to things only to complain that they didn't know later despite multiple warnings and examples.
Death is a good teacher
I repeatedly had Fae Princes show up and hand the PCs gold coins. The PCs never questioned it. The last time, it was a Dark Fae Prince, and each coin had an Explosive Glyph (with a Permanency spell to let them move around - a personal allowance) set to detonate a couple minutes after it was spent. They returned to their small, adopted, hometown and promptly spent the coin on 1) food from the tavern-keeper who took them in, 2) donations to the orphanage, and 3) tithing at the cleric's church.
BOOM
@@wirtslegacy interesting way to punish players, while they’re not directly being affected by their mistakes in a way that may kill them, the consequences are still dire.
Reminds me of a game I had where my party was in a dungeon fighting automaton that were not only immune to lightning but buffed by it what with that being their fuel source and all. The paladin chose specifically to use his sword that has a long range lightning attack multiple times because he kept forgetting what we were fighting. This culminated in him getting really mad when we fought a dragon in the lower levels and another party member hit it with lightning only for the paladin to get mad that "they're only immune to lightning when im the one attacking why even give me the weapon if i cant use it"..... he forgot the automatons had lightning immunity while fighting them but remembered when he wasn't fighting them.
one friend kept getting his phone out, so we skipped him in combat for 2 rounds and when he finally noticed we told him he died. threw a shit fit then left. he didnt die we were all just tired of waiting 20 minutes when he decided to pay attention to decided what to do and it was almost always not what the party wanted XD
3:10 fighting the hag in BG3 be like
Dm: "a boat approaches you carrying ratfolk with cannons"
Me: I cast reduce on their boat...
I think it's kind of cool if the players are smart. The ooze thing was trubbling and dealing with players that can't take a hit sucks. I can see that ruining a session.
@@Chkprofilename dumb bot
That's a place where the DM could intervene and remind them of the explody death of the creature: "before you do that, remember that you saw ooze explode when they die, hitting everyone nearby for big acid damage"
@@ratchet1freak Yeah, and then your players complain that you're "railroading" them or "controlling their character for them" for reminding them of that.
@@ratchet1freak isn't that on the player to remember? Especially after multiple encounters?
Oh my god! It's like paying attention to the themes and monsters in the game might actually give you an edge on how to survive the encounter a DM planned. "How dare the DM put me in this situation after he shows the death rattle effect of the ooze to an NPC and then I get first hand experience in a previous session. How dare he expect me to remember stuff like this!?"
I'm amazed Spencer's instakill of Levistus wasn't there. That would've pushed me over the edge internally
The age old principle of don't 'dump' where you eat
lmao no I was proud
That's why I dont use HP
@@punishedwhispers1218 What do you use then?
@@bloodwarrior20k Most of the time 'good hits', sometimes nothing at all
Polearm Master+Sent is literally the least barrier to entry powergaming of 5E I love it. Simple, effective and you feeds the RP of those characters well.
My favorite misuse of a spell was the elven druid in a two-PC underground dungeon crawler campaign who would, every time the duo needed to rest, use Mold Earth to construct a little pod to keep them safe from the roving monsters. Later, I did start screwing with that with some burrowing creatures, but I enjoyed the creativity!
Had a player that was mostly in it for combat, and I get it it's fun, so set up this MASSIVE battle between a demon that they begrudgingly saved because it had info then disappeared, a mechanical horror that had plans on invading their world but wished to observe it further, and it's "brother" a perfect beast that hated his brother and wanted to interfere with all his plans. Everyone else was hyped for the big fight and they did a great job! The player that was only in the game for combat...said he skirts around the edge of town...and summons the magic boat they just got...and sails away. Without the party.
You're player was in it to win not to fight
@@ExamplePrime un/fortunately they are no longer one of my players. Another player called them out during a game for not playing along. As soon as he said his character got on the boat and left, he packed up and left as well. We are still friends, just no longer playing ttrpgs together. I hope we can get him back into it when we start up Cyberpunk RED again because he had a fun, albeit disruptive character. It made the game interesting lol
@@JohnnyBoy-wi4kn why'd he just leave?
@@sidneyrobinson18 must've been what his character would do
Lol I was wondering up until the last moment, "How is this guy gonna be unhappy?"
Didn't see it coming lol. 10/10
That ooze thing was completely unavoidable as nobody could have foreseen it.
We just have to accept that adventuring is dangerous and one hero might reduced to zero in an instant.
Look man, all im saying is, the dm could have included a freaking CLUE about it. It just feels sorta dm fiat-ish is all.
@@chrishubbard64 lol
@@chrishubbard64 yeah, it's hardly better then making rocks fall
i can't tell if there's a joke here or not
@@BroKenYaKnow it may be a sarcasm, it may not. We'll never know
In 3rd edition, I noticed that a careful read of control weather allowed me to create and steer (in that version) a tornado by centering it on something.
So, after casting it, I turned into a bird and flew out over the massive army that we were supposed to spend the afternoon fighting and just massacred all of them in minutes.
While a lot of fun, that was also the last time we played that campaign 😂
3:05 First thought was "I play sorcerer... Twin Spell Magic Missile Baybe!"
Im so glad you got Runesmith back in a video man I missed that guy... he is looking real good! Like he gives off a real Dad vibe these days...
question: did anything happen to runesmith? his last video is now 5 months old... did he die?
@@zinogrevz7389 what do you mean? He is right there in this video, of course he isn't dead
@@austinmilne1263 i dont see him, am i m blind?
@@zinogrevz7389 yeah couldn't you see him? He was playing stibbles again, come on that's his character
@@zinogrevz7389 He had kid
That magic missile fiasco reminds me of a pathfinder game I DM'd where the players needed to solve a murder mystery before the trial. Little did I know, they had the spell "Red Hand of the Killer" which reveals who killed a fresh corpse. The problem I had was that technically there were two killers. The murdered victim actually used a wand of possession to force someone else to kill her, thus making it a suicide while framing someone else for murder. I wasn't sure if the Red Hand spell would reveal the possessed or the possessor as the killer and I wound up ruling that it revealed both of them. The players were so confused but eventually figured it out with some more hints thrown in.
sounds like a homebrew spell
@@lordilluminati5836 No, Paizo themselves made it. It's a necromancy 4th or 5th level spell (According to d20pfsrd)
That spell specifies This spell affects only the creature that directly killed the targeted corpse. that being said i like what you did better
We had to solve a murder and publicly got all the suspects to agree to interrogation. Under a detecting lie kind of spell, we determined none of them were the killer so the feud between the suspects ended.
Literally in the spell block of the spell: "This spell affects only the creature that directly killed the targeted corpse. Other individuals that contributed to the target’s death are unaffected...", so it would only be the person who physically shoved the knife/slit the throat/what-have-you would be "red handed", even if someone else (including the victim, herself, in this case) magically compelled/possessed the man to do it. Hope that helps for future reference... ;)
Nothing better than the feeling of your awesome narration getting interrupted by a player wanting to do something annoying. Love that sensation.
The best part is the player pretending he only just realized what sentinel comboed with polearm master is capable of when it is one of the most known metas in the game that you specifically only take because of how strong you heard it was.
One of the most annoying things was an owl familiar with the dragon breath spell cast on it. It will just circle around the map and annihilate everything. But when suddenly an enemy archer appears and shoots the owl, the player, of course, is getting really upset (especially when he realises that he will have to buy components to summon another familiar)
Well that's the cost of making your familiar a part of combat. If you want your familiar dish out damage, you've gotta be willing for them to take it.
To be fair, that's a really cool use of the spell. The player's reaction on the other hand was super immature. Like, what do you expect to happen when a 1 HP creature mops the floor with your enemies? And 10g worth of components really isn't something to bitch about either.
Just be glad they don't understand that with 3 in rogue to be an assassin plus Inflict wounds is traumatizing to any creature the familiar sneaks up on...
@@dylanwatts9344 Sorry but how exactly does Assassinate interact with a familiar?
To be fair, it's one thing if the archer was already on the battlefield. But you said he suddenly appeared. A player can't exactly plan for that meta gaming nonsense.
"As a summoner I can summon a nonmagical object I've seen before. I've seen the sun before, or at least the outside of it from the ground here, so I summon as much of the sun's corona as I can. That should immediately cause a fusion reaction and take out pretty much everything around here. Also I am immune to fire... so....." One of many hijinks I am an 'unfair' dm for not allowing.
tell them they can cast it if they study the sun for like 20 minutes straight and give them permanent blindness
I'd hardly say the sun is non magical in dnd
and it probably does is radiant damage anyways 🤷🏽♂️
Sure the fire doesn't do anything, but the radiant damage obliterates your body. You guys wanna roll up new characters ?
In a D&D world, you could classify the sun as a magical entity. It has special effects on undead, and is commonly associated with radiant damage as well as fire damage.
"The sun is just a giant gateway to the Plane of Fire. You can't summon magical objects, so your summoning fails due to having an invalid target."
“Everything’s snakes” killed me 🤣🤣🤣 I gotta say that I’m guilty of being a polearm master+sentinel gremlin, it’s just such a nice combo, especially as a higher level fighter that gets multiple attacks per round
5e needs a monster book that is specifically about spicing up monsters with new add-on abilities, resistances and some sort of equation system to bring them up to par with the party. And a chapter on how to make your monster a challenging BBEG with a list of legendary actions to pick and choose from. It could also add in a comprehensive list of lair actions and lair and terrain features/objects. Perhaps even add in official minion templates and such. More traps and hazards, skill challenges...
I always have to augment monster stats to fit the party in order to make a decent challenge for them, it would be nice to have a book with all that stuff in it to cut down on the time it takes to prep. I've found a lot of inspiration for monster abilities in the 4E books and flavor them to feel less like 4E
"Guys we gotta do something. If a single negative thing happens to us during this fight, it might be a little challenging."
Oh my goodness, I felt that in my soul. I have gone on tangents to my players and teammates of how the party is not in trouble just because something bad happens. They will have bags of holdings filled with healing potions but because someone lost half a hit point, people start complaining how the fight wasn't balanced.
“Perma”death makes D&D feel a lot more hardcore than a lot of the games that many players are used to playing.
My players on the other hand are used to my shenanigans and when they all take seventy damage in one turn (at high levels of course) they all keep rolling. Perhaps my encounters are a bit over the top but if they didn't praise them for the difficulty or were a different group that didn't enjoy challenging combat so much I wouldn't do such shenanigans. I've made wildly, unintentionally, unbalanced fights where they should not have won but the dice save them and they had so much fun in those times. The BBEG actually should've defeated the whole party had I carried over the ten in my math, luckily I didn't and it made their victory all the more rewarding. I ended up writing it off as though the dying deity they were fighting for gave one last small push of fate for the players.
Bad things happening is exactly what made my first ever session memorable. We were fighting a manticore and it put us in pretty bad shape due to really poor rolls on our end, decided that taking shelter in a building was better than dying. From there, we had the idea for the paladin and cleric to almost cartoonishly bonk and javelin this manticore through the doorway, and I had snuck out a window to approach it from a different side. I don't remember what level we were (it was really low), or whether we were even supposed to kill the manticore, but it was dumb and fun even though we nearly died right away.
As a DM, it's not a balanced fight unless someone goes down.
“If a single negative thing happens to us during this fight, it might be a little challenging”
Running a high level campaign this one got too real for me. It hurt.
You have my condolences
It's very hard but not impossible, you have to be willing to put in fights that have a non-zero chance of killing the party.
In a high level campaign we did, that was pretty much us until the DM decided to humble us and made carryweight, the depressing, rainy, muddy and cold environment and exhaustion an integral part of it. We were already playing in a system where a full long rest took about a week, so adding those components where they had previously fallen to the wayside, aswell as pacing the adventures in a way that you couldn't just rest up fully in between them and had to be careful to not let your exhaustion levels stack up too much got us off our high horses really quickly. We still got to be badasses able to nuke any manner of zombies, undead and demons, but we got a new appreciation for preserving our energy, playing smart, and feeling and celebrating all the ups and downs because it was now much more immersive. Simply surviving two or three days and nights in a demon-besieged abbey protecting and encouraging the terrified locals and fighting off possession that could invade your mind as soon as you fell asleep was one of the most exhausting things we ever did, and simultaneously one of our most treasured experiences.
@@Kai-K In my experience, I have to build encounters that at least on paper looks like it will almost certainly end in a TPK to me. Even then a player getting downed is rare, but they'll usually run them pretty low on resources and HP.
Something my DM does to help offset the risk is basically "the mulligan." We only officially lose on the second TPK.
The first time we TPK, it's not the end; we might be captured, or stripped of our items and left for dead, etc, but we're not "dead." We can try to come back from it. If it happens AGAIN, though, we're dead unless there's a good reason. And of course the consequences might be steep (if captured, for example, a party might suffer losses breaking out - because you know that they're not going to sit there and let spellcasters get their spells back. Your DM may be more lenient, but mine has the guards come in to rough you up just enough so you can't complete a rest) so it's not a freebie. But if even one person gets away, the rest can make new characters and rejoin the action.
This is nice for a number of reasons:
1) It's a safety net to catch us the first time we either have horrific luck or make a grave miscalculation. Like the time our level 9 wizard cast counterspell on a legendary dragon casting a portal to leave the room we were in with it - WHAT DID HE THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!?
2) My group uses Milestone EXP, so everyone is always the same level as each other. This means new characters start at whatever level the rest of the party is, allowing us to bring in class combos that suck to level from 1 with but are crazy fun if you can start higher. If someone wants to swap out, this is the time to make the big heroic sacrifice so the campaign can continue.
3) It allows them to keep giving us challenging/deadly encounters without us stressing out so much until we've spent our first wipe. But if we use that mulligan too early, it sets up a higher degree of dread and respect for the challenges ahead. Both outcomes are great in their own ways and can be worked into roleplay as our characters being confident because they're yet to lose, or to be shaken from a near-death experience.
Every single DM has used that “Huh.” Before - it’s the sound of a plan shattering 🤣
This is actually so comforting because now I know players just be that way sometimes and its not personal (if my players see this, I love you very much).
From the players perspective. I once spent an entire THREE HOUR session confused by a sanity mechanic and then chain stunned by myconids. I was the Cleric.
Opening fight for a 4e campaign I very briefly ran was they were sent to clear Giant frogs from a cave, the frogs have a swallow mechanic where they straight up eat a part member and they fight to get free.
The fighter spent the entire fight being digested, not dead, just.....trapped it was literally the scene from Konosuba.
Oh boy, I feel this one. Stunned for a 3 hour combat by Power Word Stun due to a roll of 20 being the only way to beat the DC. Not getting to have a turn one round is totally fine, but doing nothing for 3 whole hours is something else entirely.
Wish I was joking about this. Once spent a 9 hour session incapacitated every turn by enemy reactions.
Left that group.
I swear my Conquest paladin suffered the same problem. Any save against stun or paralysis he's guaranteed to fail. Later got disintegrated.
The Magic Missile on is actually genius though
In some of these cases, you could try what my friends and I call wave combat.
Basically, if the party is doing exceptionally well in a fight, at the top of initiative of a following round, either more enemies find their way into the fight (such as back up in an orc raid, zombies rising from the ground, or a foe calling on more minions for aid), or you buff the boss/toughest monster, granting it more health and a legendary action as combat reaches a new stage. We love it, especially when done in a naturally flowing way.
That’s really cool I’m stealing this
It's not so much the cool tactic -- which is awesome -- but the fact that the tactic completely negates a core strategy of the main villain. If a encounter-neutralizing tactic was used in a smaller encounter, it wouldn't sting as much; but when it happens in a way that makes the central villain a total pushover, that's when its a bit bruising to a DM's ego, not gonna lie.
@@grifonecoronato If your BBEG's main schtick (he shouldn't only have one main schtick, by the way) is completely canceled out by a 2nd level spell, I don't know what to tell you other than you made a mistake. The illusion trick described in this video is easily defeated even without magic missile. A savvy player will have a bag of dust or flour with them. Worst case scenario, you throw rocks until one of them says "ow." That is an example of something that should be used by the villain as a means of buying time to cast a bigger spell, at best, not "his ultimate trick that the party will spend the whole fight trying to figure out."
@@CrizzyEyes Except in the case of Mirror Image the other copies would then just be covered in flour so you still couldn’t tell them apart. If the caster is hit by an attack while using Mirror Image they of course will bleed. If the other copies don’t bleed as well the spell becomes useless. Same if you throw flour or dust on the caster, the copies then reflect that otherwise the spell would be useless.
@@oneearrabbit If the other copies reflect what you did, then that means you've found the real mage and should continue attacking. Otherwise, the image would either disappear or be unaffected, would it not?
I think its important to remember that both the DM and the players are building a story so not only is there combat but also rp, but if players destroy things its more like them rp'ing these elite soldiers and of course the DM shouldnt really be fighting the players more so providing creatures that would realistically be in those locations for story reasons
I love the Strahd one. I'd even say that because of the nature of the illusion if Strahd succeeds a saving throw they'd react the same way as if he'd been hit. Then I'd ask the players to make a perception or insight check to sus out maybe a flicker or flaw in the illusions on a success!
That way he still takes the damage and it rewards the player's creativity without automatically defanging the encounter
The magic missile one is legit as hell. I'm glad that player gets to feel good about picking magic missile.
RAW magic missile would just do the damage to Strahd and ignore the illusions because mirror images specifies it requires an attack roll which magic missile doesn't provide. Though the dm could just make the call otherwise
@@RighteousBoone Alas, RAW has once again defeated the once mighty magic missile.
@@RighteousBoone Where does it say it? I don’t see it. In my PHB, p260, it reads, “A duplicate’s AC equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier. If an attack hits a duplicate, the duplicate is destroyed.” It doesn’t say anything here about an attack roll being required.
Update: I see. Magic Missile is not technically an attack. It doesn’t have an attack roll, so it is not technically an attack, and not technically being an attack, it does not disrupt the mirror image. Wow- that’s sad, but I see it. That’s where I would be inclined to rewrite the spell.
@@LionKimbro mirror image ignores fireball and other aoe spells so it also ignores magic missile because it is not an attack
@@finalfantasy50 I see that. I updated my comment after I did some research. I still would rewrite MM so that it counts as an attack, because I think it is a clever idea and should have the effect intended by the player. It is very strange to me that it is not an attack on the justification that it is not rolled.
The magic missle one wouldn't even make me mad. I'd be happy my players are actaully using their spells creativity instead of just dropping whatever hurts the most constantly
I would give the player who thought of that an inspiration. Here is a list of times I rewarded a player for doing something I never expected:
- A druid escaped certain death by turning into a spider and running away (try and detect a specific spider in a dark and moldy dungeon)
- The same druid with other party members captured a group of people by running around them at the speed of Raptor with a rope
- An artificer emptied a bag of ball bearings on a group of hobgoblin and cast Lightning on the ball bearings
@@tafua_a I once was doing a fight in a tunnel with a huge cliff drop 10 feet from the entrance. I asked the cleric to cast create water in the tunnel and I cast a cold spell down the tunnel floor. Then we put a globe of darkness over the ice just as around 30 orcs we were supposed to try to escape from rounded the corner and ran through it full force. We killed all of them in one round with only using 2 spell slots and the drows innate globe of darkness.
And the best part is that the bard threw a banana peel on there to just becuse he could
And I just remembered he named it the the slip and slay
@@pickleyouelmo5940 This is awesome. I really appreciate this, because I'm really uncreative as a player in combat, the most creative thing I've ever done in combat was crafting flammable arrows, using Mage Hand on a torch and using it to set my arrows on fire with a bonus action.
Baldurs gate would kill you horribly if you didnt do this all the time
4:30 Four hundred WHAT?! Hold up, run that back
"I cast magic missile and have each missile hit a different copy."
Ah, I see you are also a man of culture.
Here's something that happened to me when my brother was DMing:
Bro: The small boat you are on is slowly sinking, and in the water are several schools of quippers (fish with a surprising amount of HP and AC due to being a 'swarm' enemy that had given out party trouble in the past) you only have about... A minute until the boat sinks. What do you do?
Me, playing a wizard at second level and totally out of spell slots: umm... *reads spell carefully* I cast Prestidigitation to salt the water, since it says I can use it to 'season' things. Quippers are fresh water fish, so they absorb the salt and it causes them to be unable to breathe and die.
Bro: *reads the spell, debates whether that it is legal or not* ... you'd need a lot of salt...
Me: You said I have about a minute, I can cast it several times...
Bro: ...huh...
Afterwards he made a special cantrip named 'Salt Arc' that could be used in the same way but also against certain undead and fey. It was fun.
EDIT: That... Is a lot of interesting comments... I would like to point out that my Bro literally afterwards said 'Yeah, that was cool but don't do it again' and then allowed the new spell 'Salt Arc' to be home brewed as a nod to that. Though he allows us to get away with stuff like casting Heat Metal on iron doors and then using a Cold Spell to rapidly cool and potentially warp it open if we succeed an Arcana check. If we fail it warps totally stuck and we can't get it open.
I guess what I am trying to say is he usually likes when we do inventive problem solving and rewards/punishes it when he can.
I know that when it is my turn to DM he comes up with way crazier stuff and uses it too. Such as when he used an Acrobatics/Stealth check combined with Feather Fall to literally prance around a group of sleeping monsters and slow falling so his landings were feather light and snagged all the loot. All while humming ballet music.
Our group is pretty fun.
Now that’s a great example of a DM and player working together to expand the game! Now I wonder if that can work with pepper to stun breathing enemies into a sneezing stun.
Also, it should be called “Season Turning” or “Salt Shake” instead.
@@commandercaptain4664 welcome to "prestidigitation has very loose rules"
Huh, I thought they were very careful to tack on some kind of lingo that spells out "NO H O S T I L E ACTS with PRESTO E V E R ! ! !" Or at least that's what my party keeps smacking me with when I try to figure out fun things to do with it... *sobs*
@@LordNumbnutsthe1st Your party is ass.
It just affects flavor. No actual salt. Maybe the fish would panic but no damage
2:23
Had a moment like this in game. Blood Cleric player got frustrated with me because the Vampire they hit with a 4th level Inflict Wounds was resistant to necrotic damage.
What made it especially egregious was that *their character was an ancient vampire that had possessed a mortal* and the player themselves seemed extremely aware of how Vampires operate.
Lol, fucking wow. "Does something that a vampire couldn't care less about, doesn't work.... Surprised pikachu."
@@bryanadam4578 Dude it wasn't even surprised pikachu, he got straight up indignant and told me I should have told him it wouldn't do that much damage.
Both that incident aswell as that extremely cringy character backstory are already quite questionable on their own. Having both combined... wow.
That is just utterly brazen lack of respect towards you, the game, and the other players who came there to have fun and not listen to whiny (and incorrect) complaining.
It's one thing to not know something, but then you go "huh okay I guess this type of creature is resistant to this" (btw wouldn't undead be HEALED by inflict wounds, not just resist half of it? or did 5th edition change that?) or politely ask "hey if my character would reasonably know about something this beforehand can you warn me next time?" instead of making a fuss about it.
@@Orillion123456 I feel like with how much else he knows about vampires, he didn't need me handholding him for what they resist, even ignoring the fact that doing necrotic damage to an undead target is a non-starter.
@@Orillion123456 yes they changed the undead completely. You can crit them, and most receive necrotic damage as normal (skeletons, zombies, ghouls...), only the higher cr undead have resistance to necrotic damage.
And healing...heals them. Overall a streamline i would say, but it does make you question your sanity on the first couple of undead encounters whem coming from older versions.
Polearm master and sentinel is a great combo. But what if your DM lets you use UA stuff. Add in the tunnel fighter fighting style. For a bonus action, you now get unlimited opportunity attacks, and instead you can use your reaction to make an attack against an enemy that moves while within your range.
The white noise as the DM contemplates the negation of the illusory images with magic missile is deafening.
I actually enjoy it when my players try to be more tactical in the combat. It makes me able to make my monsters (the ones with intelligence of 10 or higher) use more tactics with each other in the fight, allowing it to be a mind game on top of a min-max versus a non-min-max battle. So if my players are using their abilities to stun creatures in order to receive as little damage as possible, I applaud them for using their intelligence rather than just brute forcing every encounter.
I've always felt that if you know the pcs can stun, give them enough creatures that there's still a big fight to be had After that damage has been minimized via stunning. If you hold your players to higher tactical standards, chances are they will rise to the occasion and be more creative to compensate for a harder battle (within reason of course. obviously this is most useful in the eyes of having prepared encounters for your party many times before and knowing their limits)
@@user-xb5bz4fu9o This is the problem though. You have to shape encounters not to be interesting or fun in their own right, but to specifically and artificially counter the PCs abilities, which even in the best situation comes off as contrived.
@@seigeengine I disagree! not to pull out another dm's tricks, but in brennan lee mulligan's campaign the unsleeping city, there's a monk pc with stunning strike that kept fucking up his villains. the solution? to create a bad guy catered to make her upset who had in story reasons to not be able to be stunned! the combat was made 10x more interesting because of the tension between the pc's want to fight this villain but knowledge that her biggest ability was countered.
it made him feel scary and effective to this pc specifically, not contrived at all.
in my opinion, you should always be working to highlight and counter pcs abilities in combat. it makes it feel more personalized. plus adding some more baddies if you know a few will be stunned is hard to come off as contrived imo.
@@user-xb5bz4fu9o That's the exact same problem, just with a different contrived solution.
All of your villains should feel scary and effective, not just the ones carefully engineered to circumvent the PCs bullshit powers.
This shit is literally on the level of "I shoot your dude with my dude's mega instadeath laser," "yeah, well my guy has a mega instadeath laser shield!" "yeah, well my guy knew about that and secretly used a supermega instadeath laser!" You're sitting here and praising encounter design that would be funny for a small child to come out with.
Stunning strike on it's own even, isn't that nasty of an ability, but the ability to stack it + the likelihood of entering a boss encounter or other big fight rested / the likelihood of knowing if your DM tries to avoid this, that saving your ki for the big bad is likely your best move, ends up with it being ridiculous.
For reference, a L5 monk with a +2 WIS mod with that flurry of blows/stunning strike combo will manage to get at least one successful stun in 50% of the time even against an enemy with a +10 CON save.
Of course, you can counter this with legendary saves, but... that's also kind of the same thing.
@@seigeengine I know I'm late, but that's not the point at all. You're not just trying to one up your PCs, you're just introducing game mechanics that make the combat more challenging. So, as I said, if you build your encounters where the enemies synergize, this will give your party a lot of difficulty without being seen as unfair. Say, if an enemy happened to be a druid and could bind the players with a spell, it would give your party difficulty to the point they'll target that druid before any other enemy in the fight. Or say, just a guy with a bow in the back, but there's a line of enemies protecting said bowman, so the players are trying to push through that line in order to get to the bow guy.
I have been dming a group thats been level 20 for over a year now. They have clerics and mystics....
The things my bbeg's have to deal with in a weekly basis is horrific.
I love every minute of it.
Sounds like the BBEG is the one on the hero's journey.
@@daviouscram2101 This is it, this is the best comment.
Are you our DM? We're level 29 atm, with one Wizard/Mystic and a Paladin/Cleric/Warlock (while I play a Ranger/Druid), and I also love every minute of our game.
Good luck to your group, hahaha!
Sounds like the justice league fighting off a monster of the week tbh, haha
The last one close to home as a druid player, when you have the power it is hard to resist the urge to summon 10000 rats to fill the area.
Ah yes, the death rattle that's happened multiple times before, that the players have experienced multiple times before, but forget about the moment the encounter is over.
It's amazing how versatile you are. You're able to completely convincingly be a total Chad, Knowitall, a sore loser and a creative DM all at once
During one session my players took a turn I was not prepared for and went to a town that was just being founded and built. I explained to them explicitly that this was a new town, there would be a lack of available provisions, the local shop isn't even open yet, and due to recent attacks by bandits, almost everything of value was locked away.
The players found the owner of the local shop and convinced him to open up his not yet open shop, just for them, explaining that he has nothing on the shelves yet and everything is locked in the back room. The rest went like this...
Player 1: "So what does he have available?"
Me: "You'll have to ask him. As he told you, everything is locked away in the back room."
Player 2: "I'll just browse whatever is on the shelves."
Me: "There is a fine collection of dust and nothing else."
Player 3: "So there is nothing on the shelves?"
Me: "For the fourth time, there is nothing on the shelves."
Player 4: "This is stupid. What kind of shop doesn't have anything on the shelves?"
Me: "A shop that was just built last week and isn't even open yet."
Player 1: "Fine. I ask the shopkeep what he has available."
Me: "The Shopkeep says 'I'm sorry sir, the shipment of supplies came in just yesterday, I haven't memorized everything I have. Perhaps you can tell me what it is you are looking for and I will see if I have it in the back?"
Player 1: "This is stupid. Can't you just give me a list of what's available?"
Me: "Sorry sir, I have no such list."
Player 1: "No, not him, you. Can't you just give me a list?"
Me: "I don't have a list. I told you, I am making this up as I go because you guys did something I didn't expect."
Player 1: "ugh.. Fine. I guess.. I ask the shopkeep if he has anything that can help me."
Me: "Help you with what sir?"
Player 1: "With.. you know.. stuff.."
Player 4: "Do you have anything for a warforged monk?"
Me: "I'm sorry, I am afraid I know nothing about the warforged or monks or what they might need."
Player 4: "This sucks."
Me: "Don't any of you have any idea what supplies you might need?"
Player 2: "I could use some rope. My rope got lost in that cave a while back."
Me: "Ok. That's good. The shopkeep goes into the back and brings back a 50ft length of hemp rope."
Player 4: "Do you have anything I can use to kill dragons? We need to kill a dragon."
Me: "Sir, I'm just a shopkeep. I wouldn't know the first thing about slaying a dragon."
Player 4: "Ok fuck this guy. I use flurry of blows on the shopkeep."
Me: "Ok.. you just murdered the helpful shopkeep for not knowing things he had no business knowing."
Player 4: "Good. Fuck him. I go into the back room. What's in there?"
Me: "Crates and sacks. Lots of crates and sacks. By the way, you are supposed to be neutral good, not chaotic evil."
Player 3: "you are supposed to be a good DM."
Me: "5 seconds after you entered the back room, a massive explosion erupts from the rune on the wall behind you dealing 100 damage and destroying everything in the room. The room caves in around you, burying you in debris. This guy was serious about his security."
After the session we always have a short meeting to voice concerns and whatnot to make the next session more enjoyable. All 4 of them did nothing but whine about the shop not having a ready made list of items on the shelves for them to see. It didn't matter how much I explained to them that the shop was not open yet, that the whole thing was off the top of my head, or even that this was a great opportunity for them to have acquired items they might want, but that I might not have thought to put into an inventory, or even that to this day, many small shops in parts of Europe do not even have display shelves, and instead you literally go in, request an item, and an attendant gets it from a back room. They would have none of it.
That night I made a short list of nearly useless items and pulled it out every time they entered a general store in any town or village. No matter where they went, it was always the same nonsense. Pots and pans, 10ft poles, 20ft ladders, 100lbs bags of rice, a single chicken egg, etc. And the idiots never complained a single time. As long as they had a list to look at, they were happy.
How did it happened? DMing for these guys Sounds kinda sad and scary for me
I'm worried, did you tried to find another group?
Don't tell me you're still playing with them
@@smokeymokey3002 No. I haven't played for several years. I got a job working 70+ hours a week, all odd hours, mostly on-call. I just don't have the time anymore.
Imagine trying to order at a restaurant but you don’t have a menu. You probably could, because you have years of experience knowing what kinds of food are out there. Sure, if you went to a specialized restaurant with no menu, you might struggle to ask for something that they could make, but you wouldn’t need to struggle to ask for *something* because (for example) you know that rice exists and is relatively common. And you could use the back and forth between you and the waiter to get a better idea of what they could make (“we don’t have rice, we make bread” for example) and then make a better request the next time.
So, your players’ *characters* probably have experience walking around general stores and seeing what they have for sale, but your players appear to not. They have no idea what TO ask for because they have no idea what they CAN ask for. This is why they want a list so badly - they are trying to buy into your world as a real place, with its own customs, so they want to know what their characters would know. You cannot resent them for not having knowledge that you are refusing to share.
I know you want your players to be creative, but for the love of god, just let them know what’s even possible to ask for. It is utterly insane to suggest that a SHOPKEEPER wouldn’t have a basic “list” or idea of things the players could ask for. If you want your players to know how to do something, you need to TEACH THEM.
I sure hate it when my players use tactics…
if im dming, and the zombies are getting chumped, suddenly from the trees, a grotesque (ogre zombie basically) shambles forth, bigger bite, thicker skulls, pluuusss they throw sticks as javelins for some tasty ranged damage. >.> take that prepared and well equipped adventurers
Oh no, what did I do?
Is this revenge for the door
You went 10 episodes without a character dying maybe?
@@Chkprofilename hold the fucking phone you did not just post a tutorial on how to air fry potatoes
@@abrahmhatcher2385 yes. Cause he is a bot that trys to trick peaple into clicking links to inflate the viewcount. Don't ever click those links that in unprompted "here is the clip" comments.
Also, if you get a reply saying "you won a prize, contact me here in the username" that is also a much more malicious bot trying to scam you.
I love how it’s so often the ‘oh right, they have that’ moments that make DM’ing so funky at times. Still, it’s awesome when a player whips out the most insane, asspull BS to save the day. I dunno.
The magic missile to counter Straahd's illusion was actually a very clever play. I would encourage stuff like that
I feel like Spencer's fabulous humor is improving your skits. That last one, funny on so many levels.
"if anything happens to us during this fight, it might be a little challenging"
Cut to my party in Curse of Strahd, where they split up and our bard with negative perception (he rolled 4 1's in character creation, we had to use those) walks up top the attic with the vampires.
I'm sorry that shouldn't be possible even if you are using the rulebooks rules on rolling for character creation the minimum should be a 9 I believe. And if using just a d20 once again the common rule is reroll anything below a 9.
@@nate235gaming Rolling 4d6 and dropping the lowest number is a very common way of rolling stats. Meaning if you get unlucky enough to roll 4 1's you'd have a three in the stat, therefore making it a huge negative. That is what op meant when they said "rolled 4 1's in character creation".
@@nate235gaming You even acknowledge it's a common houserule. Also known as homebrew, it's not a rule in the rulebook, so that shouldn't matter if they are "using the rulebooks rules" as you said. Ignoring the fact that it isn't a common rule, having negatives be a possibility is the entire point of rolling. 3 is the lowest possible, 1 on each dice.
@@globalgamer119 I see I had a miss understanding I thought op was saying the character had 4 1's on their character sheet, and also yes the lowest is a 3 mb.
@@nate235gaming I should have been mor clear about it, yes its was a single stat where he rolled four 1's, which is so rare (0.08%) we couldn't let the chance slip by. It is against common rulings, but the rule of cool beats most rules anyway.
I always adore those moments when the players do something you hadn't thought of and you just are left going "huh, that... Was a thing that happened". Thank you so much for visualising that for me. :)
Reminds me of the time I used Misty Step on my Warhorse from Find Steed on my Paladin to teleport both him and the horse (Self targetting spells affect Find Steed as well) into a fortified tower where some casters and snipers with 3/4 cover were taking potshots at the party while they dealt with things outside.
"How high up are they? 20 ft? And I can see through the slits they are using? Ok, I misty step both me and my horse up there."
Dm: *doing math and elevation measurements* "Holy shit ok, that works..."
An hour later my very hurt but very much alive Paladin (and still alive war horse with 1hp) greets the party as they finally get inside and see the carnage of what could have been.
Me Vortex Warping a vampire into a river
@@Soriosh It's up to your DM obviously, but with how movement works in 5e you shouldn't need to do any math in that situation. I've noticed that a lot of people try to apply real-world logic and use Pythagoras' theorem every time elevation is involved, but RAW you're just supposed to use the larger of the two distances. It's like how if you're in a 30*20 room, it just takes 30 feet of movement to walk from one corner to the opposite corner, even though logically the corners would be ~36 feet apart.
Tl;dr If you're doing Geometry in your D&D games, then you're probably just complicating things for no reason.
@@Smashface_McBourbondick What is RAW?
@@hllyenaylleth9576 It stands for Rules As Written. Also, if you ever see someone say RAI, that means Rules As Intended.
4:09 Twice*
Stunning strike requires you to hit a target with a meele weapon attack, flurry of blows are unarmed attacks and as such can not be stunning strikes.
His reaction to that magic missile solution seemed more impressed than angry
Player: "I summon snakes."
DM in an Indiana Jones costume: "... Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?"
Thing is player can't choose what they summon, only their CR
@@Tespri A really bad ruling I think, it's my biggest gripe with sage advice. Making the DM pick every time the spell comes out is another way to clog combat as the player has to then figure out the stat block and strategy for a creature they didn't know or want. Beasts are universally easy to hit and usually quick to kill.
It's an unnecessary gimp to druids (probably one of (if not **the**) weakest classes in terms of raw spellcasting.). I've been on both sides, rolling up a nice avian Shepard druid and wanting to fight the enemy (flying fiends) alongside an eagle. Got stuck with "wolves" and the spot was wasted.
On the other end, having to learn every elemental, fey, or beast below CR 2 so I could offer our conjurer decent options in a game I ran was terrible. It was too much to hear in mind and the stat blocks made the player take time learning creatures they had no interest in. Letting them learn a few they liked (Giant octopus/Roctopus became their go-to) was more fun for them, and better for the table
“DPS… very dangerous. You go first.”
Stibbles performed a "Snek Attack". That'll be 1000 d6 crushing damage.
I’m glad you’ve broken your habit of saying “blank” is dumb when your upset because it would be a bad idea to lead an episode with “players are dumb”
but they are though
@@Agamemnonoverhead true, coming from a player
@our hero have you just gone and sent us air frier potato wedges
Why? He has done that, and it went great. It's true. Players are people, and people are dumb.
No, no, this is accurate.
I liked the polearm one. The whole point of polearms is not allowing the enemy to get close. Of course this means it should be impossible to hit someone within 5ft with a polearm, but that's just D&D for you...
The snakes reminded me of a time when I played with my dad, and we didn’t quite know the rules yet. We were playing Tyranny of Dragons, and I was running 3 characters, along with my brother, who ran 3 also. We got to the bit where we need to save the guy on the mountain of the dragon cults lair area, and my Druid decided to summon giant eagles, to carry him, untie the guy and get out.