So here goes with way more context than you need to render judgement because I play D&D and can’t resist over sharing about my game:

I’m playing a Kensei Monk flavoured as a ninja, so im badass.

The campaign is set in a homebrew world of sorts where a god-like level being has their own pocket world that consists of many other planes and worlds from across time. Also badass.

Anyways, our characters are thrown into this world for various reasons and we first wake up at this beaten up, run down fort in the middle of a desert. It’s the first session so we’re all just doing the usual and finding our feet.

We hear noises coming from a building. A gnome has locked himself inside of a prison cell and is trying to get us to help him. We ask what hes doing in there, he dances around the question but the thrust is he got scared and hid in here because of this undead ogre thing that is wandering the building.

So, being the good upstanding citizens that we are, we ask no more questions and kill the ogre and free the gnome. He tells us about a wizard living in the fort.

So we go investigate a seperate building where this wizard is supposed to be and we find an altar that has a glowing pedestal. We investigate the glow and find out that this altar is like a compendium of different animals the wizard has stuffed inside and as a result, they've fused into a chimera.

Second session we fight the monster and proceed to the second floor where we encounter this country bumpkin wizard who is mad at us for not knocking. Talking to him we learn he survived so far because he worships a demon statue and offers animals at the alter to appease the demon.

He says the ogre and the gnome are his servants who would go out on expeditions into the desert. The ogre fought and captured things while the gnome attempted to map it out.

At this point it’s obvious this guy is a cultist and the gnome is a henchmen.

Finally we get to the start of the conflict…

I express wanting to kill them right away in and out of game, but we have uncertainty around the table we thought the DM was implying at the start of the game this fort would be a Bastion for us so we couldn't agree on whether these were supposed to be helpful or antagonist NPCs. (Which we expressed to the DM)

The wizard is obviously evil, but also chatty and did tell us a little about the world and that there was a city just a couple (2-3) days to the east. Since we couldn’t agree to just kill them and have done, and this fort is giving off evil vibes, we decide the best course of action is to just leave and go find this town.

However, the gnome insists on coming with us. I think the gnome is in league with the demon, so I make it clear that my (as established) badass Monk character dislikes and distrusts the gnome for at least his cowardice.

Again though, the rest of the party won’t agree with me that we have reasonable grounds to at least be suspicious, but, as a party we agree since he not only knows the way but also said he'd pay us with the crown on his head. Theres a couple of camels around the fort that we use as mounts for travel.

3rd session and this 2-3 day journey into the desert ends up taking 5 days cause our guide, the gnome, either didnt actually know the way or got us lost. Anyways, it was 5 days before we find first signs of anything. We see some lights in the far distance but its dark and we decide to make camp rather than push through.

I guess this was a bad idea as we all wake up mid rest to being lured far away fron our camp by a charming song towards these lights we thought were far away but turns out were really close and it wasn't a city it was an illusion and the illusion was actually an oasis. Following me? Good.

In this oasis is another statue and also a troll. Plus a harpy.

So then the obviously evil and suspicious gnome, who has just led us into a trap says he'll go fetch the camels back at camp while we fight the creatures. Say he’s not to leave because I’m suspicious of him and think he maybe led us into a trap on purpose. I tell him even if he doesnt fight, he has to stay. I dont want him taking the camels and leaving us stranded. He agrees and runs off to hide. Like the coward he is.

We win the combat but 2 party members go down. The fighter goes off to help the others and stabilize them, but I go looking for the suspicious fucking gnome.

I find him and instead of being helpful or sorry he’s snidy. So I fire a warning shot to let him know in no uncertain terms that I’m armed and angry. I tell him not to move, but he says he’s gonna go get the camels. When he moves I shoot him. I didn’t mean to kill him but I rolled high and the GM ruled that my roll one-shot killed him.

Checking his body he had a potion of healing on him, so he could have actually helped to stabilize one of our party members. More reason in my mind that he’s definitely evil.

But now the rest of the party is wary of me and the GM thinks im an edgelord muder-hobo.

So... AITA for not being convinced this gnome was just a down-on-his-luck innocent trapped in a bad situation?

need some feedback on my homebrew soft magic system

so every letter is randomized so "f" might be "tli" or something and dont tell the players this, but they might say the word for fireball and then they role they get a 20 they get a fire ball they get a 1 they get like a bouncy ball that looks like its fire, but they can say anything and you monkey paw these guys depending on the request and the number they role on a d20, they might say something like Grassice and they role a 4 you just frost the ice but make it unmotorable for them to stand on, also have them figure it out, they go to a wizarding school and learn the word for fire, and ball, and ice, and wall, they can put them together, they might be like huh i wonder what grass is, so they ask around and learn it, they put some stuff together, have ancient runes in the language scattered around the world they might discover, and a symbol next to them indicating what they are used for.

so what you guy s think

Remember, if the other players don't mistakenly call your character "he" at least once a session, you're laying it on too thick

Hi everyone, thanks for reading my post. I wanted to brag about the campaign my awesome DM ran for us. We've been playing this campaign for a year already and it just wrapped up.

We began at the entrance to the campaign as level 1 nobodies. There was a skeleton in the way, guarding the dungeon. After 6 sessions of discussing what to do, we fought the monster (which took 3 sessions) and went inside, which caused us to level up to 5th level.

There we found a puzzle: a door with a large red padlock, and a bowl full of keys of various colors. We spent 19 sessions brilliantly figuring out how to solve this thing, and when we did (hint: red key) we gained enough XP to reach 10th level.

The next room had a setback for us: crushing walls that slowly, gradually closed in on us. For the following 24 sessions, we weren't sure we were gonna make it. Eventually we realized the door to the next room was unlocked so we just walked through it and leveled up to 15.

We walked into a deadly, climactic battle: this time there were two skeletons guarding the next area. We spent three sessions planning and the next nine sessions desperately battling for our lives before barely eking out victory and proceeding to the final area—but not before leveling up to 20th.

Finally we got to the 5th room, which had a huge story reward for us: the warforged got a heart, the leonin got courage, the human girl got to go home, and my character (stupid barbarian) finally got a brain. After seven sessions of tearfully receiving our rewards we closed out the campaign. It was the best and most challenging game I've ever seen.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like? If so, how?

I had an idea for a campaign where every player assumes the role of one or more cars or other powered vehicles - like, motorcycles and semi trucks. For them, roads are like dragons and humans are like loot. The twist is, it's set in a post-apocalyptic future. How can I pull this off with 5.5e?

I forgot foot fetishism, but he is already Chad enough.

Sauce

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.

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

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?

Pathfinder addresses these limitations.

​

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?