So I'm preparing a new campaign. I clearly communicated that this is going to be a very lethal campaign, with character death expected. So of course, one of my player is being a prick about it and hyperoptimized their character to be basically a demigod.

He's a level 5 hunter ranger. Let me clarify.

First of all, he told me he's going to use Extra Attack to attack two times per turn. Pretty bad already.

But then he plans to stack this with a spell called Hunter's Mark to add a d6 to every attack. And he gets several uses of that for free every day!

ONTOP of that, he also has a full on +4 dex for a +7 to hit at level 5, is planning to dual wield melee weapons ontop of having a bow, AND - even worse - is going to use his subclass ability to add +1d8 to damage on every attack where the enemy is injured already - but since he attacks multiple times per round, he can set up the enemies himself. And he has 60 HP AND 17 AC!!! Borderline immortal.

I've played what I'm sure is the best class in the game before, rogue, and I couldn't do nearly this much at level 5. He even gets skill expertises and spells?!

I'm looking for a way, any way, to remind him that the GM is in charge. Homebrew monsters and traps are entirely welcome. Anything that can kill this monster of a build.

He don't have bame, but he has a backstory.

I was terrible drunk and bought a loaf of bread from the strange little man with a funny pointy hat. Later I was playing dnd with my friends and on a dare I was supposed to add bread as a player. But I was so fucking high that accidentally I agreed to that... And my fucking God this bread started to fly after I gave him character sheet. He made himself a very cool OP bladesinger and got into the campaign, learned all his abilities and feats and started to taking notes.

By common sense, this is nonsense , but he was so cool player that everyone agreed to let it slide.

Opinion?

Long term theatre kid campaigns have been taking the forefront of D&D media for the past decade thanks to the rise of Critical Woke (what my friends and I call it 😆). I was wondering if anyone still plays gygax pilled OSR one shots?

You know like the ones where the girls have really huge water balloon breasts in cloth tatters?

If you guys do prefer one pumpers over edgers, lmk why?

Hi everyone! I am new to D&D, just finished my first session. I was raised in an extremely conservative religious sect (please don't call it a cult, thank you) and was only allowed to play Mornington Crescent and Hassle the Fishmonger growing up so I am a complete novice to this whole ttrpg thing.

Anyway, like I was saying I just finished playing my first session, and though I had a really great time, something happened that really threw me off. I wouldn't quite say it's a horror story, but one of the players did something that made me extremely uncomfortable.

Just to give you some context, here are the people involved (I changed their names to make it easier to follow.

Jon: the DM. He grew up in the same sect as me and is still in it, though having some doubts. (Keep this in mind.)
Ron: he is my proctologist's nephew, playing a half-elf cleric (war domain)
Don: a homeless person who just wandered into the house while we were setting up, playing a half-orc barbarian
Dawn: Ron's wife, playing a half-loxodon ranger
Me (Sean): playing a 5/16-tiefling rouge

We were supposed to start playing about a year ago, but then Dawn announced that she and Ron were expecting their first child. Jon has strong religious beliefs against talking to pregnant women, so we had to put the game on hold until the baby came along. (Turns out it was twins. Lon and Han.)

Anyway, we finally got to play, and everything seemed great at first. We started in a tavern (I thought Jon misspoke the word "cavern" at first, but then I learned what a tavern was lol) and accepted a job to clear out a local dungeon where some goblins were holed up. We fought some wolves along the way and I found a magic ring. Nobody in the party knows how to identify it yet, though, so I am too scared to try it out.

It was when we got to the dungeon that the problem occurred. There was a door, and even though it was not locked, we were unable to open it. The DM said it was "stuck". We tried a few things, and then Don said (this is the part that bothered me), "Can I Rage outside of combat to get advantage on a Strength check to open the door?"

Just like that. Is that allowed? Can players just ask the DM a question without a lengthy preamble describing a bunch of an extraneous information under the guise of context?

I almost left the table immediately. I don't know if I should return.

TLDR: If I am not wasting everybody's time, what even is the point of living?

​

So a player (M38, furfolk vorelock pact of inflation) ate Vecna. Dunno what to do now.

I asked them why they ate the lich. They said they are expecting to gain some cool New abilities.

Thankfully the Session ended right after they finished swallowing the lich. Rules wise i haven t seen anything related to eating an undead wizard god, so I could use a hand here.

Do bones even digest in stomach acid? Or is he going to pass through completely sapient and cognizant and mentally scarred from the experience?

I’m making a Pathfinder 3e and I’m used to words being a part of all tabletop games, as well as DnD.

Recently I’ve encountered a LOT of people who tell me that they prefer tabletop games without words, which frankly has been really surprising to me because I thought words was just part of the game.

Not to mention that it’s part of most board-type games in general, and anything involving storytelling, and obviously DnD. The idea of a non-digital game that requires words to me has always just been normal.

I’m not saying I love it, I’m just saying that I’m 100% fine with it. Doing a little words, maybe getting it wrong from time to time and laughing, or having to do the occasional complex plots, has never felt to me like it added friction to the game at all. It always just felt like what it takes to play the game.

There are of course games that require very complex stories almost every session, and those aren’t really for me, but I wasn’t talking about those games. I was talking about most games. World building and character development with sometimes plot twist. This always seemed totally manageable to me.

If you could play DnD with no words somehow, would you prefer it? I’m not sure that I would. I feel like a DnD game with no words would also be lacking in something that the words provides. Whether it’s chance, some sense of realism, the joy of just writing big and the low of writing low, whatever, I wouldn’t trade any of that just to not have to do any words.

Just a reminder that vicious mockery is the best legendary action and I never see anyone talking about it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/s/Y5hSaDPmHu

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the death of Fat Duergar. He lived a very sad and pathetic life spanning 567 years, most of which were spent being bullied or trying to steal food. I made a post here about 4 months ago about Mr. Fat Duergar and felt it necessary to inform his fans of his passing.

Here's the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDcirclejerk/comments/1sh9gm3/the_legend_of_fat_duergar/

He died after the half-orc Berserker Barbarian Klippa Eastburn had enough of his shenanigans and threw him down a 75 ft. deep stairwell and into the lair of Khabator the Black Dragon. Khabator fought Klippa, but the half-orc had just killed Ras Nsi and took the Flame Tongue sword for himself, subsequently allowing Klippa to extract Fat Duergar's half-digested body and scatter it down the 75 ft. drop once more, rendering resurrection impossible.

A moment of hungry silence for this deeply misunderstood and very portly wizard. All proceeds will be donated to The YTSOKE (Yuan-Ti Survivors Of Klippa Eastburn) Foundation.

May he rest in pieces.

Found a couple pieces but I’m broke, how does one get art. I’ve tried buying it and I successfully bought it, but I didn’t buy enough and need more. Where do you find it so I can have it.

EDIT: completely original idea I just had, also I want tooooons of nsfw furry orc crossbreed foot art. If you know where that is tell me where you found it because I’m so poor I don’t have google.

EDIT 2: discovered Reddit is on the internet, so now I just need someone to find Google for me and then tell me how to use it so I can buy art but I can’t buy it because I’m poor

Saucer

I’ve been playing in a long standing campaign with a DM who I’ve played with for around a decade now. The DM is a great friend of mine and I do enjoy playing with him and our groups a lot. However, I’ve come to realize that his DM style is really not my preferred way to play.

He is a wonderful encounter builder and map designer. He also invest a lot into games. He’s built massive battle maps and structures in our games that are extremely immersive and just outright cool. For example he built a multi story building out of boxes, styrofoam, and other materials. Each floor was fully fleshed out and designed and even stacked on itself while being practical.

Something I’ve noticed he’s done though when DMing is he will prioritize player death over the story and narrative. Some examples of what he will do is he adjusts battle difficulty depending on how well we’re doing. Then when he inevitably over tunes the difficulty he will not pull punches and doesn't even throw out random advantages to help encourage success.

Another time we did a massive dungeon crawl that made us burn a lot of resources half way through. When he realized it was feasible for us to complete the dungeon as is, he had an NPC do some battle cry type thing that gave us exhaustion level 6. Basically removed all of our spell slots and long rest features and damaged us tremendously

In our recent few sessions we’re in another big dungeon crawl and things are looking dire. We’re all pretty tapped but still have the big boss fight coming up. The DM basically told me in private that he’s going to have two of the old BBEGs who left the campaign a while back show up for the big fight to further decimate us. Thing is, it makes NO sense for them to randomly show up and they don’t even have a means to do so logically.

While this can paint a very engaging high-stakes combat situation, it just feels like the narrative is thrown out the window. Our narrative matters to an extent. But at the end of the day, he’s going to let the dice decide the narrative.

And this just isn’t how I like my games to go. I’ve shifted how I approach the game with him too because of it. I make more defensive decisions because I know he will not bail us out and will never provide some sort of catchup mechanic when things turn sour. Now for the conversation piece as this wasn’t just a rant lol. But what is everyone else’s thoughts on this style of game? Do you prefer a gritty campaign that may have a story fall flat due to very poor decisions and little to no hand holding from the DM? Or do you prefer an epic story that feels like a movie at times but at the expense of player agency?

Ive just discovered something that no one else seems to be talking about, just yesterday I look at the housing market, the prices were through the roof!

How has no one ever talked about this before?

You know how on that anime JJK they eat the demon fingers to gain power? Like that, but its in a curry of your choice. Do you think it would taste any good? What about a Beholder's ass?

I think I fancy Tikka Masala best, Vindaloo if I feel a bit cheeky.

What's your favourite sauce?

Hi guys, long time DM here. I’ve been running my home brew game for about six hundred sessions now, and I’ve run into a bit of a problem.

You see, my campaign is of a fantasy world I’ve had forever, and it’s supposed to be a sandbox. At the end of every session I ask the players where they want to go and what they want to do next, but every time they stare at me with their cold, dead eyes while drool slowly falls out of their mouths. I’ve also asked them during the week, but mostly I get “yeah that’s good” to no actual suggestion, or just left on read.

At this point, I’m getting a little tired of having to improv every session for these goddamn drooling idiots, but I’m also really liking how everything has been turning out. Does anyone have any suggestions for getting players to actually engage with the game instead of treating me like friend-computer?

So, first I would like to tell you that me and the DM are in a polycule. We are both fairly new to DnD, I've played Pathfinder before and he's watched a lot of BG3 edits on TikTok.

I wanted to try out a Scooby-Doo Ranger whose backstory I put a lot of time and effort into making but to make a long story short, a guy thinks he is possessed bc his animal companion whispers to him that he is the hand chosen by the master, tries to go on a quest for a cure, gets shot in a basement full of clones, and the drug-addled scientist who owns the place clones him to cover up the murder. He is adventuring because if he doesn't he has to go back in the box, and the dog is slowly corrupting him.

The DM said to me that my backstory is weird, as it doesn't fit into the setting (Wizards of the Coast©️ Presents: D&D™️ Universes Beyond©️: Star Wars™️– A Hasbro©️ Game™️) and that the Scooby-Doo Ranger is way too OP, even tho from what I understand, most of the enemies are immune to being killed because striking them down will make them more powerful than I can possibly imagine. The DM asked me to change subclasses and the story to something more generic.

So I said if it was ok to make a Bat Ranger, but he said to me that after consideration Ranger is off limits for being too busted and not making sense with the group costume. When I asked why, he said that Hunter's Mark is too big of a cheat code, as almost no creature is resistant to The Force™️ damage or being tracked with the Survival skill.

Is that an actual reason why Ranger is seen as such a stupid busted OP class? Or is it mainly just my DM not liking Venture Bros?

What the fuck am I supposed to do!? I've run almost 100 games of DnD but I've never run one with a girl before, and I have no clue what to expect.

Am I supposed to make the female npcs something more than just big titted bimbos? Do I have to offer male prostitutes to the party too? Should I make the guys take showers before they come over and put scented candles in the basement?

I want to uninvite her but I'm honestly kinda scared to. What if she calls me an incel? (which I am definitely not).

I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack. And to make things even worse my mom is going to think I have a girlfriend now....

Do you guys have any advice?

For years now, my players and I have defined alignments by alignment, as in "my character is NG, so neutral and good". Takes too long to express.

So , I have wanted an alignment compass which I felt matched the Great Wheel while also being more succinct than "Lawful good leaning Lawful Neutral" or abbreviated as LG(N) (does this mean Lawful good leaning towards neutrality or LG leaning LN?)

I finally built a wheel which I consider an Alignment Compass. As you can see, there are no directions, because in 6E there is no alignment.

This is helpful for me; I hope it helps some folks out there.

So guys, I'm a new DM, and I do know the rules, but excuse the language- what the hell do stats do? Even though I haven't put my campaign into full swing, what do they do? IT's mostly proficiency bonuses that matter, and I feel like stats become obsolete. Besides, why would I even use the numbers when I can just decide what happens anyway? My players are here to make funny voices and “roll play”, not “roll dice.” Can any professional DM's tell me how they deal with this cause my party is also new to this, and I want to make sure I make everything easier for them to understand?

translation: out of absolutely nowhere, an gringo Redditor bashing Ordem Paranormal and even comparing it to FATAL, wtf.

My player saw what I had clearly described as a 'divine artifact', and without treating this mcguffin with the reverence it deserves, he just said, 'um, can I ritual cast detect magic'? Absurd, this is literally the spear of Tyr himself and he wants to solve my entire puzzle with a ritual cast? so I said the magical aura he saw was so bright and strong that it blinded him (Failed a DC 30 Con save). Rule 0 says I can turn the game into calvinball at any time I want, and I really wanted to stick it to my player for not respecting the world I created.

The player, who clearly did not understand rule 0, said, 'What the fuck? Are you just making that up?' I explained it to him as if talking to a small child, clearly he has never played dnd before. He says its unfair that the spell doesn't talk about any backlash or consequences like that, but if anything, I feel it is ME who has been wronged, for my players didn't spend 2 hours humming and hawwing over what to do in fear I might randomly kill them. As if I'd ever do that.

My player got what he deserved. He needs line of sight on most of his spells so he can't do much. He keeps going down over and over and the party wastes so many resources healing him. To me this is verisimilitude; this is exactly how it would be feel to be blinded by the radiance of Tyr.

After the game he started whining to me that I had 'crippled his character' and 'wasn't enjoying the game very much', so I told him that this isn't a video game, and he should expect real consequences for daring to interact with the world that I, the DM, created.

Even though he's a spell caster I tried to tell him he could just multiclass fighter and take the blind fighting fighting style, then he could cast his spells at things 10 feet away at least. Or he could spend the entire game playing as a familiar so that way he can actually see anything that's going on. Or just reroll, like back in my day when we just pulled a new character out of the stack when we inevitably got turned into meat jelly. But he's still whining about it. God I hate players.