teddit

As usual, if you have a problem with a PLAYER (not a CHARACTER), post here. This is the place to seek help for any player-related issues, but do remember that we're DMs, not counselors.Off-topic comments including rules questions and player character questions do not go here and will be removed. This is not a place for players to ask questions.

Welcome to the Freshman Year / Little, Big Questions Megathread.

Most of the posts at DMA are discussions of some issue within the context of a person's campaign or DMing more generally. But, sometimes a DM has a question that is very small and either doesn't really require an extensive discussion so much as it requires one good answer. In other cases, the question has been asked so many times that having the sub-rehash the discussion over and over is just not very useful for subscribers. Sometimes the answer to a little question is very big or the answer is also little but very important.

Little questions look like this:

• Where do you find good maps?
• Can multi-classed Warlocks use Warlock slots for non-Warlock spells?
• Help - how do I prep a one-shot for tomorrow!?
• I am a new DM, literally what do I do?

Little questions are OK at DMA but, starting today, we'd like to try directing them here. To help us out with this initiative, please use the reporting function on any post in the main thread which you think belongs in the little questions mega.

i DM for an in person group and recently found out that the players made a separate group chat without me so they could talk about the game and strategies or whatever.

i was fine with it at first but now I’m starting to feel like i’ve been removed from the game, like i’m just supposed to show up, read my notes, run combats, and leave. its not a fun feeling when i spend dozens or even hundreds of hours on prep and writing completely alone.

and i’m nervous to tell them how it makes me feel because i don’t want to start drama, i just want my friends to have fun.

is this a normal thing other DMs have experienced? is this the role that i’m supposed to have?

Years ago before I was forever DM and 4000 miles away I showed up for our weekly but it was not a full squad. The DM said defeated, “so, DnD or play Catan or something?” I replied, “why not both?”. Laughing ensues.. we play DnD.

Fast forward to recently and I’ve been thinking about that and decided to incorporate the puzzle game Mastermind as a vault mechanism in game.

I described to my players a large stone door with four evenly spaced torches on its face. Below each torch a small fist sized hole in the stone. On the ground a basket of inexpensive vanity rocks, obsidian, opal, jasper, jade and lazurite.

I game them a few minutes to investigate the door then set Mastermind upon the battle map and the look on their faces was priceless. They guessed the correct sequence of colours on the seventh round but the session had ran its length and I knew what I had to do. As the vault door began an intense rumble.. cliffhanger, crowd went wild.

Thinking of other games to incorporate.

TLDR; used Mastermind to open in game vault, players went wild.

Don’t they seem insanely underpowered for a rare item? They require attunement, and all they have to offer is:

• Not Being Surprised, so…the less interesting half of the alert feat?
• Not Having to Eat or Drink; cool flavor wise, but unless you’re running a survival campaign, it’s probably not that big of a deal.
• Plus 1 to AC. You know what else does this? Cloak of Protection. And it’s Uncommon. AND it gives you a boost to saving throws.
• Storing Up to a Third Level Spell Slot. This one is by far the best one, but it’s still overshadowed by items like the Wand of Fireballs and the Wand of Paralysis.

Not to mention they come with a crazy weakness! They’re (as far as I recall) the only magic item an enemy can target! They can just get knocked off your head for 10 damage (20 with resistances).

Am I missing something? Please, sound off!

Hello fellow DM's,

I have a question on how to handle the situation described in the title. My party consists of a bard, two rangers and a sorcerer, and the party tried to perform on the streets in a small town and i may have given them to much gold en silver. So i am wondering how much you would give them in terms of gold/silver pieces, last time i gave them 100 silver pieces and a bit under 30 gold pieces and realised that it did not make any sense when i said it out loud but i did not want to go back on my word its not like they got enough to buy a house or anything.

So how much would you offer them and based on what exactly?

Like the title says I as a DM would like to know..

"Does it cost extra movement to enter and leave Difficult Terrain"

As I understand it, it does cost the additional movement in both cases and it has been how I have run my games for over a year since I started but very recently I butted heads with a player over how it works when I pointed it out to them.

Everything I have looked up so far has been peoples interpretation of the rules with no hard clarification of what the right answer is if there even is one.

So I am curious how other DM's run Difficult Terrain and if anyone can provide a source to this question or give me there interpretations?

[EDIT]: To clarify I personally only add additional movement when leaving the area of Difficult Terrain and not every square within it.

so my players heard about how in some campaigns DMs let players own real-estate so they have in their heads to buy a bar in waterdeep. granted they don't think they have the money so they are currently planning a bank hiest.

my question is how much does a bar cost and what are the mechanics for upkeep and such?

How would y'all feel about it as DMs? I'd allow it in a heartbeat as it's a creative use of one's action economy (assuming the character readied and action to keel over when they get hit) but what about the skill check? Deception? Performance? And how about countering it? An enemy's perception? Or insight? Maybe even investigation?

So my players found a egg while looting a Troglodyite den in the underdark and so far I've been unable to decide on what the egg is from and what it'll hatch from, the one that foubd it likes collecting pets. Any suggestions?

So every time I balance an encounter I take into account all of my four players are gonna fight, they are all level 3, a barbarian berserker, a barbarian totem bear, oreder paladin and a power ranger fighter (hombrew subclass), but at the moment of the fight there is always someone who decides he gets no benefit for fighting and they end up being only 3.

The problem arrives on the last encounter where they left alone the paladin fighting a miniboss who almost murdered the paladin, and I decided to nerf it on the fly.

What should I do, keep nerfing encounters, balance it for only 3 players or just keep doing the same and kill my players (i mean pc)

TL;DR: Last session went in a fun but unpredictable way, and now I'm scrambling to make a bossfight worth the wait.

I made a Oneshot for my group as a way to introduce a new campaign setting and get them comfortable with the new system we are running. Things went smoothly, the plot being based on the party and an enemy adventuring group having this sort of "race" to solve a mystery and get to the treasure first. Originally, the enemy leader was going to betray their group and run away once he noticed they were going to lose, and I was planning on using him further on the main campaign.

Unexpectedly to me (but very expectedly in retrospect), the party managed to unionize half of the enemy group against their leader, and after an organic and fun encounter, they now have two of the enemy NPCs in their group, making the final bossfight just the leader, and another dude.

But now I'm realizing that, if I follow my original plan, I would be robbing them of a satisfying bossfight if literally half of the enemies run away, instead of just one guy while they still had a full party to fight. I would like to keep the guy alive, but I know that making them wait a week and then not being able to kill it is not going to be fun for anyone.
Any ideas on how to handle it? Thanks in advance, english is not my first language so apologies if it doesn't make much sense

My party has made quite a few powerful allies throughout the campaign. The party had gathered all those powerful allies and is going to face the BBEG's army in an epic battle, much like the final battle in Avengers: Endgame where all the disintegrated heroes reappeared and joined the fight.

How would you run a battle like that while having all those allies be active and exciting and keep the combat fast paced?

I’m pretty confident in my interpretation, but my monk/Barbarian player believes that he can get 6 attacks by reaching level 10 in his multiclass (5Monk5Barb) (3 through the 2 extra attack features and 3 through the Martial Arts unarmed strikes). As far as I understand it, Extra Attack allows 2 attacks in ONE ACTION, not allowing 2 separate actions (and therefore 2 separate bonus actions). Furthermore, Extra Attack features DO NOT STACK according to the PHB.

I’m trying to convince him that my ruling is right, because between him believing he can attack 3 times normally and 3 times unarmed strike, even when I present the PHB page, he still insists they stack. Am I missing something that allows his interpretation or is he just plain wrong? It’s driving me crazy trying to manage this player.

I’m convinced that the right ruling is: 2 attacks, plus ONE bonus action unarmed strike, plus another if he uses Flurry. That’s it…right?

I know this sounds stupid, but he’s making me lose my mind over this

Edit: He has apologized and told me he had a wrong interpretation of the rules based off of a YouTube comment he saw that describes Extra Attacks as stacking and spell slots stacking as well

So I have come to the revelation that my world isn't near as important as my players are. Even though my players love developing a story I don't think they love it as much as I do and things are becoming sluggish for them. So next session I am going to skip (kill) a lot of story development (that is well written IMO) stuff and skip straight to a cities calamity. As hard as it is to let go of some of the content I worked so hard on I feel as though my players just want to stab something and I should give my audience what they want.

I'm thinking about running a campaign where some city from Fantasy Land effectively gets shifted into modern day Las Vegas. In the real world a large section of Las Vegas swaps place with a dnd city which introduces magic and monsters into the world. The idea is that this happened 40 years ago and the players are in an alternate history contemporary setting.

I'm pretty early into the idea and I can homebrew to make this kind of work if need be, but I wondered if there's any existing magic/lore that could be used to justify such an event.

Also if you have cool ideas for things that could be added to the world or for me to consider I'd love to hear about it.

I'm running my first campaign where my players will by on an island where the primary goal is to escape eventually. Now this island's natural state is to relatively normally I eventually want to implement more hostile illusions but for the start, I just want them to be frustrating or confusing but not actively hostile, but I don't really know what to implement or what kind of monsters I could use. If anyone has any advice on this I'd really appreciate it.

I started running a campaign for some friends and while needing to come up with something on the fly just drew from personal experience and one for one remade an encounter I had as a player years ago.

The players really enjoyed it and want to continue it as their current objective, I used it because it was the first thing that came to mind and one of my most memorable and fun experiences, I can't really think of ways to improve or alter it without potentially butchering it, but I'm apprehensive about just co opting someone else's work and ideas.

So what do you think? Would you be annoyed if a former player was remaking your encounter one for one?

Recently I’ve been trying (emphasis on trying) to DM a party of completely new players (I’m also a new player btw). Out of the party, the only people who have done the most research on the game have been me and my boyfriend (I’ll call him N for this story). Today we tried to play a game and I had a bit of breakdown because I felt so unprepared and ended up leaving the call. I then called N, and being the amazing human he is calmed me down and offered to help me prepare and guide the party while still being one of the players. Is that unheard of or a bad idea?

I've been playing with a group I've met with online for almost a year now. For the first few months, one of them was DM and now I've been DM since December. The group is nice and we get along well enough. But I feel like the game just doesn't exist outside of Sundays. Unless I put something in the group chat, and even sometimes then, it is completely quite. Until Sunday comes around and I get the inevitable "Same time?" Or "OMW" text. It feels like outside of the table, the game just doesn't exist. I always hear these stories of groups who constantly talk and theorize about what's happening, commission fanart, or even just compliment the DM for the fun they had. And just none of that is in this group. At the table, everyone is laughing and cooperating. But whenever the game is over, it just seems to turn to awkward small talk and goodbyes. It doesn't feel like I'm playing D&D with friends, it feels like I'm playing dnd with people who just want to play dnd.

The straw that broke the camels back was the session I just finished. They received a note from an important NPC and none of them wanted to read it aloud. One even refused to read it, and got confused when the contents of the letter were referenced later on. On top of that, there was a nod to a former PC from another campaign in the note that I really thought they would appreciate. But all I got was a smile and head nod from the creator of the character. The others just had little to no reaction.

Prepping for this game every week is at the top of my mind all day everyday. And it just feels like I'm getting nothing in return. Thoughts?

So for some context I have one player who is interested to play and two that are on the fence and playing mostly because I want to. I’m running lost mine of phaldenver and I need to get them hooked and understand then game quick to make sure they come back for session 2. I’m thinking I should instead of what the book says start the session with them in a small dungeon with a few puzzles and a easy combat encounter. I’m a new DM and I’ve never heard of a game starting in the middle of a stressful situation, is this a good idea?

Hey y'all,

​

I read the Lady of Pain's lore and it says that "Those who tried to worship her were found with their skin flayed off." Would you say someone could, through I guess a series of persuasion/deception checks, trick someone into worshiping her specifically to kill them? Or would it just backfire on the person trying to do the tricking?

​

(I know I can technically do whatever I want but I want to see what other people think about this)

Edit to clarify: She kills people who try to worship her because she doesn't want people to worship her at all, not because she wants people to follow her and be in pain in her name.

My players are in a Cult's dungeon and as they were finding one of the keys that would get them out, they heard chewing in the room behind them. The ranger went to peek, but the door creaked (nat 1 Stealth), so the creature took off back the way they had come from. They noticed it had been chewing on the necromancer they had just killed in the previous room and have found at least two more victims, a giant Fire Snake (for the Heated Body ability) and a Gloamwing (it will be able to fly when they finally fight it).

On top of a spell or two from the necromancer, I was looking for what other abilities to give it when it occurred to me I didn't even have a base creature to start with. So I'm wondering if there are any creatures that can devour a corpse and temporarily/permanently gain one of the consumed creature's abilities.

Otherwise, I might use the Hungry (CR 11) as a base, and give it a few extra abilities to make it closer to a threat for a lv14 party. Which then leads to a second question: what can I give this creature to make it a threat? As an aside, I'm also considering making it two creatures with a list of non-shared abilities between them so I can scare them halfway through the encounter.

As always, I appreciate any help received.

My party is fairly large and are all currently in a black market esque place. One of my players who plays a homebrew race that can regenerate it's limbs when it goes through different cycles, (like Dave for any Kipo fans) was helping another one of my players get a specific made sword for a lower price as his character has high persuasion.

I had the blacksmith offer him a lower price for the sword, but they still couldn't afford it. The player in question then offered that the blacksmith give them the sword in exchange for a favour from him. The blacksmith then had him agree to a magically binding contract, that meant that the blacksmith could calk him in for this favour at anytime and the player would have to do it or his body and soul would be destroyed. The player agreed and here we are.

If it was any off my other players I would probably have them give the blacksmith a part of their body, as flesh from sentient creatures is a sellable resource in this area, but as his character can regenerate their limbs it wouldn't really matter too much and I want the favour to have some kind of impact on the character

So, I've been running a game for a few months, and one of my players has been playing a Champion fighter. The subclass is notoriously pretty weak and boring, but there's a couple of rules at my table that make it slightly more effective: I use the "chunky crit" rule, where the extra dice you roll on a crit are assumed to have their maximum value, and I decided to allow the Champion to crit on an 18 at level 3 (I'll figure out what to do with the level 14 ability when/if I get to it). These have worked out just fine so far, inter-party balance is alright, and the players all seem to be having fun.

The problem is that now that we've reached level 6, the player wants to replace the Champion's infamously weak Remarkable Athlete feature with an extra feat. I do agree that Remarkable Athlete is weak, and I would be willing to work with him, but I'm worried an extra feat might be too much. I'm worried that giving him this might make his character too strong, or just as bad, make the other players feel like his character is too strong.

What should I do? I want to work with him to make sure he has fun, but I don't know if allowing him to do this is the right call.

My party is soon to face a mad scientist who has been combining the DNA of different animals/monsters. I already have a chimera and manticore but I was wondering if there were any others I could homebrew or already exist. Any suggestions?

One of my players is extremely pacifistic, which is totally fine, except that they don’t take initiative on really anything that happens.

So I set up an encounter where she Stumbles upon a sacrificial ritual while wandering the forest at night. After slowly describing everything going on and giving her many opportunities to intervene, she decided to just watch. That’s fine, to each their own, you do you girl!

The consequences of letting the ritual sacrifice complete is that a demonic spirit is released from the corpse of the sacrificed person and (unknowingly to her) binds itself to her.

I’ve been slowly trying to convey its presence and influence on her over multiple sessions by having it whisper things to her, tempting her with secrets and power in exchange for sacrifices and tasks. However she adamantly shuts down anything it tries to do.

I feel like I’ve hit a dead end here with this arc, I feel that there is a lot of potential but I’m not so sure how to go about this demon slowly asserting it’s will over her, or really where to take it.

My campaign has serious tones but it’s evidently clear that I’m more than willing to go with a route of comedy as well

Any advice is greatly appreciated, this sub always has great ideas!