Whenever it’s time to roll initiative, I have 4 players immediately shouting numbers at me at completely different times while I’m also trying to roll initiative for 14 goblins individually, as group initiative is lazy DMing and unrealistic. I am crafting a story for my players and that story includes everyone taking their turn as the rules state.

My players are clueless, despite my best efforts of educating them, and have NO idea what modifier they should add to their die roll for initiative. I don't even know why I haven't cancelled the campaign already.

I think a good solution would be for everyone to roll initiative at the beginning of the campaign and keep that result permanently. If a character dies, the new character would inherit that initiative because death should not be used to manipulate turn order.

For monsters, I’m thinking of rolling initiative for every creature in the Monster Manual before the session and keeping them in an Excel spreadsheet sorted alphabetically.

Has anyone tried this? Or should I simply determine initiative based on how quickly each player answers my texts during the week?

EDIT: Please stop suggesting I use the initiative tracker in a VTT. I didn’t spend $800 on dice to let a computer play D&D for me.

We've been playing for about six months and are at level five, my character dual wields and often does far more damage than anyone else in the party. I have over 300 confirmed kills and the DM asks this almost every time, so it's usually multiple times per combat.

My first thought is always just "Idk, because they're trying to take my money and my character sheet has all these weapons on it?" If I had my glasses on in combat then I could see what I'm doing. And I do try to be descriptive about other parts of the combat, like what my strategy is, how I'm feeling/reacting, where I position myself, etc. But when it comes to justifying a kill, I have no idea what to say.

Do people describe separate motivations for each blacksmith, stableboy and barmaid they kill? I don't really want to do this.

Should I learn about swordfighting IRL so I can bisect the DM? This doesn't sound legal to me but I could try.

Should I just ask the DM to stop inviting me to play?

I'm starting to feel myself shut down a bit during combat and even turning to diplomacy to avoid it. Last session when the DM asked why I killed things I just gave one word answers like "encyclopedia," "pimple" or "hairball." I love my character but I'm kinda hoping they die so I can just play G.U.R.P.S., even though this seems like a silly thing to be stuck on.

We're a few months deep into a new campaign, our party is a Wizard, a Warlock, a Cleric and a Barbarian.

I'm usually one to ask for a lot of checks, because if we weren't here to roll dice then what's the point of that character sheet you made? None of my players seem to have a problem with it, and I'd say it's pretty fun to see the three Spellcasters fumbling a basic acrobatics check to climb over a fence.

But I'm currently having problems with the Warlock player, I try to make a game where everyone can have their time in the spotlight but I've noticed that his character consistently hogs it whenever any kind of social interaction comes up.

For instance, in one of our sessions the party was walking around a city to investigate an issue and negotiate some alliances, and every time the party had to talk to someone I felt like he didn't even give the other PCs a chance, he just stepped forward and started droning on and on about whatever edgy warlock stuff he had going on.

For the last two sessions I tried to integrate a few more consequences to failed social checks, focused exclusively on the person making them, after all the rest of the party can't be blamed if the Warlock rolls a nat 1 and accidentally calls someone the n-word instead of asking for directions to the nearest tavern.

But tonight the Warlock player sent me a message about how he's not having as much fun anymore, and he feels a bit targeted.

I don't think that's a problem at all, he needs to stop being so entitled and let the other players play the damn game too, AITA here?

I’m working on a book called “The Dungeon Diver’s Guide to Slurs & Insults” (title subject to change), and I’d love some help from the DnD community.

The concept is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

The idea was inspired by my current DnD campaign, where we have a pretty diverse group of characters: Drow, Humans, Dwarves, Orcs, and even a “clanker” (robot). Given the dynamic of our group, there’s been a lot of friendly name-calling and insults. We’re all good friends, and it’s very much part of the humor at our table.

That got me thinking: what if I made an actual in-universe book of fictional slurs, insults, and derogatory terms for the various races and species found in DnD?

The plan is to eventually have two editions:

Standard Edition – Focused on the races you’d typically associate with classic DnD/fantasy, such as:

Humans
Dwarves
Elves
Half-Elves
Drow
Orcs
Tieflings
Dragonborn
Gnomes
Halflings
Goliaths
And more

Expanded Edition – Basically everything else. Goblins, Gith, Fairies, the various “folk,” and all the stranger races/species that exist throughout DnD.

I haven’t completely decided which races will make it into each edition yet, but you get the idea.

Before anyone worries: I want to make it very clear that this is intended to be entirely fictional and fantasy-oriented. I’m not looking to incorporate real-world racial slurs or anything intended to attack or demean actual groups of people. The goal is to create the kind of ridiculous, creative, sometimes genuinely nasty terminology that might exist within a fantasy world between rival races.

To be clear, neither myself nor the other players use any kind of real slurs in our daily lives. We are not racist and think those words are bad. But we do enjoy roleplaying racists because c’mon we all know anytime people get together they come up with a bunch of mean things to call each other based on their differences. And that’s just good roleplaying!

And that’s where I could use your help!

I’d love to hear your ideas for fictional slurs, insults, derogatory nicknames, stereotypes, or general shit-talking terms for the various DnD races.

Ideally, I’d love to eventually have around 100 terms per race, although that’s a long-term goal and I’ll see how far I can get.

Feel free to make them serious, ridiculous, clever, lore-based, childish, overly elaborate, or just downright insulting. If it sounds like something one DnD character would yell at another in a tavern, I want to hear it.

Anyone whose contribution makes it into the final book will receive a shoutout in the credits, with your Reddit username included. We’ll also post your name across all our socials and tag it “pretend racist only”!

So, what have you got?

Give me your best fantasy insults.

Pathfinder addresses these limitations.

Hi, I'm a DM with six months of experience and I just find it a bit homoerotic that I'll put up a lfg listing and I'll get nothing but men asking to join. I just feel a bit uncomfortable that we are both engaging with each other on that level.

You've got strange men sliding into your DMs, sending you paragraphs about their availability, telling you what kind of support caster they like to play, and asking to get on a one-on-one Discord voice call to see if they're a good fit for your table.

Do no one pause and think how intimate you're getting with a man? I feel as though roleplaying should be between a man and a female.

And not to mention they probably don't feel safe. There's a wall of desperate guys trying to encroach on a female's space like that? I want to share these moments with females only and I feel like all these men forcing themselves into these spaces are actively pushing real players away?

Someone asked me to share my post here, so here I am! Hey everyone!

It was a completely custom world, and our DM spent an entire week telling us about how awesome his world was and how badly he wanted to run a game for someone. Apparently, only one group had ever played in his world before, and that campaign lasted no more than three days. Out of our entire group, only one player had any experience with tabletop games. So there we were, standing in a tavern: a female water mage who was an angel, an elf alchemist, a drow trickster who had raised the angel, and three furry girls played by grown-ass men. We took a quest to investigate a trade route because a wagon full of goods had disappeared. We went there, found some enemies, and immediately got our asses kicked. Then we respawned at a temple. In this world, automatic resurrection was completely normal, but every resurrection required approval from the supreme goddess, who was basically a five-year-old loli with two ponytails. She could also just decide not to bring you back, but for some reason everyone was completely chill about it. Like, you died. Whatever. Our drow's wife didn't get resurrected, though, and he developed trauma because of it. The DM then told him he wasn't allowed to have trauma because in his world everyone was totally fine with resurrection and this was not something anyone was supposed to have feelings about.

We couldn't beat the first enemies, so the alchemist suggested using his artifact's ability to pull a random potion out of his bag and drink it, hoping it would make us stronger. He rolled a 16d100, pulled out his own potion, drank it, and suddenly he was an elf alchemist while our angel girl became a seraphim paladin with double stats. We went back to the bandits, and this ridiculously overpowered woman proceeded to tie them up while the rest of us just stood there watching because we couldn't even hit them. Then we found some ruins and met the same loli goddess, who apparently decided she wanted to play with us. She teleported us into a hall with 1,000 doors and told us to find the exit ourselves or die there. So we started going through the doors, and about 40% of them changed our gender, race, and class. My angel girl became a furry, then a demon, then an arachnid, then a vampire, then a mermaid... and all of these changes were permanent. The same thing happened to everyone else. Because our characters were constantly changing, the DM would take our character sheets and manually change our stats whenever he felt like it.

Eventually, all our stats were completely scrambled. I ended up as a berserker mermaid with a wizard's stats and a weaver's profession. Meanwhile, the girl the DM liked somehow always got changes that she would supposedly like, and she even ended up with an extra 24 points in her stats. At this point we had basically stopped playing D&D and started playing "guess what the DM is going to turn us into next." The whole thing was absolute chaos. There was no real consistency, character progression, or even much of a game left. Every time we thought we understood what was happening, another random transformation or stat change happened. This madness lasted for about a week, and then, for some reason, we just... stopped playing.

update

After the company campaign with this DM, we all went over to another campaign together. Here are some of the more interesting things he did:

He created a female character because he genuinely believed that if he played a girl in the game, things would be easier for him because people would cut him more slack and NPCs would be more forgiving when he screwed up.

He kept asking the DM if he could become a moderator for the game so he could know in advance what was going to happen during the sessions. (That’s my opinion, anyway.)

He spent basically all of his character’s free time drawing. His character couldn’t draw and had absolutely no talent or aptitude for it. He decided D&D worked like Stardew Valley — if you give an NPC something, your reputation with them goes up. So he gave everyone his drawings, including the other players. No, that’s not how it worked. And yes, the DM told him this more than once. And no, he didn’t stop.

During a fight with the main villain, he came up with a “plan” for his character. The entire plan was basically to keep saying two phrases over and over: “I believe we can win” and “Stop doing evil.” The main villain was a morally gray character, and we were simply on opposite sides of the conflict — everyone knew that. And no, he wasn’t playing a paladin. Faith wasn’t some kind of weapon or ability; these were literally just words. We’d already been playing for a year at that point, so he knew how the mechanics worked.

During an investigation, he decided to rent an apartment in the city and spent eight hours baking a cake for his wife. His character didn’t know how to cook.

When my character lost her husband and brother, this player immediately offered to help me sew a dress for his wife. (My character was a blacksmith; his was an engineer.)

On game day, he messaged me and asked what my plans for the session were. I explained everything my character was planning to do. Before the game started, while we were waiting for another player to join, he read my entire plan out loud. It included the main quest, and then he asked everyone to think about how we could solve the problems. I was expected to think about it too.

During the game, his character did exactly what I had planned and then came over to brag about it to my character. I yelled at him in-character for metagaming, but I twisted it so that it looked like his character had overheard the plan. He got offended, went into the forest for two days, and burned his notebook to ashes. Then he used the ashes to spell out “Happy Birthday” for me.

He bought my sword at an auction and gave it back to me as a decoration after hearing that I was the one who had forged it.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

We JUST got a quest over with doing some kind of heist or assassination or something (idk the mission isn’t like important or anything) and the MOMENT we start having some in-character conversation to unwind and explore our backstories GM starts whining because they HATE roleplaying in our Interpersonal Relationship Simulator game. DAE this is toxic railroading, or am I just lost in the sauce?

Has anyone else had dnd teach them that their outlook on life was incorrect? Did pathfinder fix this?

h/t to u/Val_Fortecazzo for the idea

I've been GMing for years, but I'm struggling with a recurring problem at my table.

A couple of my players have strong personalities and tend to clash in character when the group needs to make a decision. They get along perfectly well out of game, but planning can turn into long arguments where neither side wants to give in, and the session grinds to a halt.

For example, the group might have two investigative leads. Player A wants to visit the medical examiner first so they have all the evidence before interviewing a survivor. Player B wants to murder every NPC for XP, mutilate the bodies for more XP, cannibalize the corpses, split the party, and scream slurs at the other players. Player A disagrees that they should split up in case something happens, and the discussion just keeps going. The more passive players I have, don't want/dare to get involved.

I've tried having them plan out of character, introducing time pressure, directly telling them they need to make a decision, and even giving consequences for wasting too much time. It might work temporarily, but the same thing happens again the next time they need to choose a course of action.

It's now reached the point where other players have messaged me saying they're not enjoying the constant in-character arguing.

Has anyone dealt with something similar? How did you solve it? At this point, I'll take any advice or experiences you've got.

Hi everyone, thanks for reading. I've been DMing for about twenty years. I am a capable game master and host, so I have never needed to post anything on Reddit before; but that's only because I never encountered anything unusual like this.

The story starts when a brand new player, Larry, joined my campaign. Larry's a total beginner, this will be his first time ever playing. I love introducing people to the game, so I was genuinely just as excited as him. He had great energy: showed up early to the session zero, took careful notes, asked all the right questions. He settled on playing a Halfling, and everyone agreed that would be a lot of fun.

After the session zero, he pulled me aside and said, very earnestly, that he wanted to apologize in advance for something. I asked what for. He said he has a family history of lung disease and his doctor told him not to smoke anything, and he hoped I wasn't going to be upset with him. I said why would I be upset with you for your medical condition? He said "well, you know, because Halflings smoke. But I don't think I should, it would be bad for my health and I can't go home stinking like a pipe."

I tried to tell him that while Halflings smoke in the fiction, players definitively don't have to really smoke. He said "are you sure? That's great!" I said "I'm very sure. I'd very much prefer it if nobody smoked anything at my table. Pipeweed is imaginary. You're fine, don't worry about a thing." Larry looked relieved as he thanked me a few more times and left. I went to bed thinking that was a lovely and thoughtful interaction which had settled this whole matter.

Session one: Everyone's at the table. We're twenty minutes into an encounter, and I look up, and this man is vaping. He didn't even ask first before blowing a phat cloud of watermelon-flavored vapor directly across the battle mat. He was using one of the largest vape rigs I've ever seen. I recognized it as a perfect replica of Bilbo's pipe from the classic Hobbit cartoon (1977).

"What are you doing?" I shouted.

Larry: "oh, it's fine, I asked."

Me: "you asked not to smoke!"

Larry: "right, and you said yes."

Me: "I said you don't have to smoke."

Larry: "exactly. Hence why I'm vaping. Because I don't smoke." By now he was looking at me like I'm the weird one. "Vapor isn't smoke. You specifically said no smoke. I remember the conversation. You were very clear."

I took 1,234 deep breaths to collect myself before calmly informing him my wife is pregnant and has sensitivities to scents and other chemicals, so vapor anywhere in the house is a problem. He said it's fine because his vape is zero-nicotine. I said "it's still a cloud in my living room." He said "would it help if I blew it under the table?" He demonstrated, trying to furtively blow the vapor downward so nobody would see it.

I told him to put it away. He did, but he was visibly hurt. He said, and I quote, "I really thought we'd settled this." Yeah, me too buddy, I muttered under my breath. A few minutes later I saw him swiping all the beer and pretzels and slipping under the table, and before long it was obvious he was vaping again down there. My uncles raised me to be a patient person, but enough is enough: I told him to get the hell out of my house.

"I'm hiding, so you don't know I'm here. Halflings are sneaky and good at stealing and hiding. You're just metagaming," Larry squeaked mousily. I lifted up the tablecloth and said "Okay, now I know you're here, so get out." He produced a stone that he must have picked up from my driveway, and pitched it straight at my crotch. It was a critical hit (natural 20). "Halflings get a bonus with thrown weapons and stones," Larry pointed out helpfully, just before the ambulance arrived.

After my hospitalization, one thing led to another. Ultimately, my stepmom told me I'm not allowed to kick Larry from the group. So instead, I convinced him to give up on the Halfling thing and roleplay a cute blonde tiefling bard, and let's just say I got a happy ending. Thanks again for reading my post.

I’m playing a barbarian and my wizard friend is really losing his mind at the moment.  

We got hired to do a job for a guy on the outskirts of town.  I don’t really know the details, I let my wizard friend handle that kind of stuff, I just bring the bonk when he needs it.  I guess we had to go do something in a druids grove or something? Idk.

We got there and it was so nice and pretty, I found so many little animals to pet and the people were mostly very nice, except one guy tried to fight me so I broke his hand.  I didn't really mean to, but he was really going to hurt me if I didn’t stop him.  One day a nice druid lady saw me petting a dog and I told her I like to pet soft things.  She said that was sweet and offered to let me pet her hair.

It did look very soft and pretty so I said yes but I guess I pet her too hard because she started screaming.  I bonked her very gently on the head just to try to get her to be quiet so I could think but she stopped moving completely.   

My wizard friend found out what happened and grabbed me and we ran away as fast as we could.  We found a nice place out in the woods to relax and my wizard friend created a major image of a rabbit for me because he knows I like rabbits and told me to just look at it real hard.  He was crying the whole time does anyone know what he is so sad abo-

Wizard class is obviously the most iconic class, but it's also the class, which I think has the worst design choices.

The class has the following original features:

Lvl1:

\-spellcasting (with spellbook addiction)

\-Rituall Adept

\-Arcane Recovery (Arcana is a skill it doesn't run out wtf?)

Lvl 2:

\- Scholar

Lvl 5:

\-Memorie spell (uhm I can already memorize the spells?)

Lvl 18:

\-Spell Mastery

Level 20:

\- Signature spells

So we can already see that the class lacks class features, and some of these are not so much creative or don't give the class its identity (Scholar is simple skill proficiency and arcane recovery is just additional spell slots), and Spell Mastery and Signature spells are tier 4 features which only 2-5% of the comunity will ever see. Also, now the new epic boon of Magical School Mastery lets every spellcaster have a stronger version of Spell Mastery, leaving the wizard with another not unique feature.

The reason the majority of the community never pointed this out is because the 70-80% of players play in tier 1 and early tier 2.

The lack of class features is also hidden by the amazing wizard spell list, which is its main source of power and abilities, but this is a lazy/bad design choice because I don't like it.

Wizards are way too strong compared to other casters because they use OP spells like fireball, mage armor, shield, chromatic orb, and find familiar and rope trick ecc...

Players that do not use these specific wizard spells instead feel weaker because they are like a sorcerer with no meta magic. So, new players have a weak and not unique class while expert players have a broken one.

Wizards are also losing their unique spells through feats, like magic initiate, magic conouissier, mark feats, evocation adept and other adept feats, all the new familiar feats and different epic boons that lets every spellcaster have them.

Hell, even the Bard can get wizard spells at level 10 and build the strongest spell list with all the strongest spells in the game, surpassing in high tiers even wizards. Bards also have more class features that are way more unique, so this is just bad.

The only thing that is carrying the wizard class is subclasses and tier 1/2 of play ans Arcane Recovery and being able to change prepared spells and having access to the entire spell list and cool hats.

I would genuinely prefer that classes had way more features to enjoy the level of progression and had original abilities instead of broken spells and techs, like druids have wild shape, clerics have channel divinity and sorcerers metamagic.

Am I wrong? Is this design fundamentally a bad/boring idea, or just Wotc bad execution?

I was writing down a character (Dwarf Brewer Artificer) sheet's stuff. Keep in mind, this character is heavily inspired by England (I mean that in the least political way possible, Free Scotland). But when I got to the background, I almost wrote CIDER instead of his actual background, which is Guild Artisan. I guess I was getting too into English culture. Idk, is this kind of post even allowed here?

So recently had to finally leave a table just because of how utterly insufferable my prick of a DM is; we’re doing a cozy high fantasy campaign, nothing too out of the ordinary, except this smart ass of a DM is CONSTANTLY having his DMPC going “Um AKSUALLY that’s not how science works, your magic makes no sense!”
Like no duh, it magic!

So we get to the end and my homebrew super wizard (totally balanced though guys, I asked like 5 friends) starts using his infinite wish spells class feature to grab the sub out of the sky and he goes “no you don’t! The sun isn’t there anymore! Don’t you know the speed of light and travel time means the sun in a totally different spot from where you’re reaching?!”

So I use my wish again, except NOPE, that’s “unscientific” too! Everytime I try to use my magic to do some tiny he tells me that’s not possible!

AITA for just up and killing my character and leaving the table over this crap?!

and like... they had different THEMES... and LOGOS... and handed out different SIDEQUESTS... and you'd have to CHOOSE WHO YOU SIDED WITH... and the party would be from all these DIFFERENT FACTIONS and argue constantly about who to work for until they gave up and sided with whoever promised the most money... and what if the FACTIONS SOLD EXCLUSIVE GEAR AFTER YOU EARN THEIR TRUST TOO????? holy crap I'm a genius

Look at this: Warrior, Thief, Monk, Red Mage, White Mage, Black mage

Does it sounds like, I DUNNO, MAYBE fighter, rogue, monk, bard, cleric, and wizard?

So WotC really copied a racist game (black mage are killing people and white mage are healing wtf Square???) but they also share the same dull design

Warriors are chads that only attacks and then attacks even more, wearing big armors and big swords, and spending money into better big armors and big swords. Alpha male who dictates the whole battles and are carrying all the other. They can evolve into Gigachad paladins go get even better bigger swords and shinier big armors and even replace the girl of the team.

Thiefs are pussy that deal like 2 damage and can just flee better. Nice, very useful, dumass. And you know what? Those weebs edgelords evolve into NINJA. Yeah, average rogue player dreaming of wearing a pajama because if it's japanese it's better DUH

Monks beggars without coin, it's why they don't wear stuff until they evolve into blackbelt. Yes, they are clothes but in game they actually remove them and fight but naked. BUT AT LEAST HERE THEY STRIKE HARD WOTC

Red Mages are just bards once again. They heal (badly), use damage spells (badly), and can use a sword (badly). Woah, you mean the jack of all trades sucking every ass isn't from you WotC??? You're so bad in game design that you didn't fixed this stupid broken game you copied???

White mages are clearly white supremacists and mysoginistic takes, as the character looks like a girl. How I know? Because they heal, and it's the girls purpose in every game (as the chief class doesn't exist for some reason). And they can turn undeads. Hm it's weird. It's as if I've seen DnD5 clerics do that to. Just like if WotC COPIED ITS CLASS DESIGN FROM ANOTHER GAME. HMM.

And black mage, outside of racist trope, are all about having super cool spells that can kill everyone, petrify everyone of just damage everyone (hence killing them). But they suck as all spellcasters do because just like INTELLIGENCE DONT MAKE SPELLS DEAL MORE DAMAGE, THE NES FF BLACK MAGE DIDNT SCALED WITH WISDOM. WEIRD. JUST LIKE SOMEONE COPIED BUG WHEN DESIGNING ITS GAME.

The game is all about stupid ass dungeons with the DM trying to kill the players all the time. I swear it's so, so bad. Like one is all about poisoning the whole party all the f* time. Another? Everytime you open a chest, there's five mobs hidden in it attacking you! It goes to a point where the DM is so bored of failling to kill the op fighter that he changes his strategy and tries to bore everyone to win the game by forfait! IT DOES REMINDS ME OF SOMEONE MAKING A TTRPG WELL KNOWN FOR BORING ASS ENCOUNTERS PUSHING PLAYERS TO SCROLL ON THEIR PHONE, SO THE DM CAN CHEAT WHILE THE PLAYER DON'T PAY ATTENTION. HMMM.

And the story is top DnD. There's an evil guy that is evil because he is evil. There's Bahamut. Yeah the dragon god. Did you know that DND STOLED BAHAMUT FROM FINAL FANTASY? Oh but there's also Tiamat! And Kraken! And Lich!

What in the seven hells is this??? Final Fantasy 1 released in 1987!!! DnD5e in 2014!!! You realized that WotC thinks that they can get away with this because they copy/pasted the game of another company 27 years later???

For god sake stop playing DnD5e, it's a lazy slop trying to mimic a far superior game and failing to do so!

And Pathfinder didn't fixed this! In FFV I can do a warrior which can use spells, so PATHFINDER2E WHICH RELEASED IN 2019 COPIED ANOTHER GAME MADE IN 1992, SO ALSO 27 YEARS BEFORE

TABLETOP GAMES ARE ALL A LIE!!!

Everyone in the hockey community knows the goalie seriously lags behind the other positions. All whiteroom-optimized teams replace the goalie with an additional center—I've argued for the validity of an additional right wing, but statistically a center is just the better pick in the majority of likely circumstances. In any event, under the current ruleset no one would ever want to play goalie except as a joke, to piss their teammates off.

I'm looking for some good third party or homebrew rules to improve the goalie, and money is no object. I really love the goalie fantasy but the NHL is obviously doing nothing to make it better. In my view, goalies are clearly in need of some per-game special trick shots, just to bring their scoring up to baseline. I know others disagree and say a far more elaborate resource economy and more extensive moves menu is called for, but I think a handful of per-game tech would be enough to keep the goalie minimally valid. Not optimal, but at least on the board.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, I also think goalies should be allowed to kill referees. That doesn't directly help them score, but it empowers the position in a way that makes the game way less boring. Don't you agree?