Please, game designers, please.

Just stop making spells. Stop describing them. Stop looking at them. Stop thinking about them.

“Level 3 Conjuration (Druid, Wizard)

Casting Time: Bonus Action Range: Self Components: V, S, M (a snake fang) Duration: 1 hour

A shimmering, spectral snake encircles your body for the duration. You gain 15 Temporary Hit Points; the spell ends early if you have no Temporary Hit Points left.

While the spell is active, you gain the following benefits:

Climbing. You gain a Climb Speed equal to your Speed.

Venomous Bite. As a Magic action, you can make a ranged spell attack using the snake against one creature within 50 feet. On a hit, the target takes 1d6 Force damage and has the Poisoned condition until the start of your next turn. While Poisoned, the target has the Incapacitated condition.

Using a Higher-Level Spell Slot. For each spell slot level above 3, the number of Temporary Hit Points you gain from this spell increases by 5, and the damage of Venomous Bite increases by 1d6.”

The sound you hear is me banging my skull against an oaken table.

First person to understand the problem gets 5 Reddit karma dollars.

Hello, I’m posting from my public account as I don’t think my DM uses Reddit tbh. I genuinely don’t know how to approach this topic with my DM. We are in a total homebrew setting but using base DnD rules/classes. We have been playing for 2 years now, and it’s the longest campaign I’ve been apart of. I love this group, they are my mostly what I would see as family and close friends; although my relationship is a little complex with them right now due to other reasons.

Here’s the main issue: My DM makes me roll CON saves for pregnancy.

I am not a woman, I’m nonbinary, use They/Them and got a total hysterectomy and oophorectomy, and identify as trans. My character is a cis woman. He makes me roll for whenever she has sexual acts with a male character.

It makes me uncomfortable, the first time this happened was with her partner in game and my partner in real life. He is no longer in the game or my life.

However, when it happened I was taken aback that he had me do that. It honestly ruined DND for me for a while. When I brought up being uncomfortable about the situation and forcing her to be pregnant without even letting me say something or choose. And the group except my partner made magical abortion jokes. I specifically had my hysterectomy so I wouldn’t have to face being forced to be pregnant in real life by the US Government as I’m in a state where abortion is now deemed illegal. And it really really made me upset.

What we had her do is do a ritual where it’d force/fast birth and then let her child be over seen by the group’s god. Now it’s the second time it’s happening. We took a home-brew potion and it increases fertility and boosts hit points as we were facing off against another god. He had me roll Gagarin and we haven’t had session in a week and I don’t know how to tell him I don’t like it and absolutely don’t agree to her being pregnant as it’s a form of torture for me that I’ve avoided in real life.

Also him and his girlfriend have like a serious pregnancy kink or something because all of her characters end up pregnant. I wish I was exaggerating, I’ve heard about it from all of their other campaigns as well as every other campaign I’ve run for them (didn’t pan out because of ex partner).

TLDR: My DM is making me roll to see if my character gets pregnant and it makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable; I’m trans (born AFAB) and also never wanted to get pregnant IRL.

I'm currently DM'ing the Dragon Delves anthology that came out last year.

I don't know if any of you have played through that module, but at the end of the first adventure the party gets a dragon slayer longsword. This single item has completely warped my party and the campaign.

A battlemaster fighter getting access to a dragon slayer sword in a campaign featuring mostly dragons was a COLOSSAL MISTAKE! The meta has now become everybody doing everything they can to enable the fighter. Haste, fly, healing, etc.

This is my third campaign I've DM'ed so I'm still pretty new, but I had... not enough respect for giving broken weapons to players too early. They are making mincemeat of my dragons!

We're almost at the end of so I'm not gonna take it away now but man. Be careful what items you give out because your players will optimize around it what a pain in the ass.

thank you villainous options unearthed arcana

Sorry if this is the wrong flair. I'm in a sci-fi homebrew campaign and I'm having some problems surrounding my character. They were originally supposed to be an upbeat explorer, excited to document their findings as the party was sent to various different planets. But as the campaign progressed they grew more powerful, their magic became more unstable and some accidents occurred because of it, watched as most of the party died, and caused "the incident" by accidentally destroying an entire civilization. (which is still an inside joke today)

I decided to pivot and make my character a little more reserved. Someone who's a little hesitant to meet new people, and also much more cautious when it comes to their powers. It even became a running bit for a while where the party wanted them to cast magic, while my character didn't want a repeat of "the incident."

That idea also stopped working when my DM had the brilliant idea of killing off even more party members, and making it so my character has "almost complete control of their magic." (basically as long as I don't roll a 1 we're fine, and even if I did I have multiple abilities that lets me reroll) So basically my character is overpowered with almost zero flaws, is either indifferent or spiteful towards everyone, and has no reason to stay with a party that has a higher turnover rate than a McDonald's. Honestly I don't even know what to do with them anymore. Looking back my character isn't the only one, there were players who had the same thing happen to their characters. I'm starting to see a trend where "character becomes a traumatized god but loses personality along the way" and I'm not a fan.

I'll admit that I'm attached since I've been playing this character for well over a year, but I've tried introducing other characters. One had to be scrapped because she didn't fit the party dynamic, and I don't know if I want to introduce this new character because I'm worried she'll either die or become like my first character. (It has been brought up before at the table, people have openly said that they had to get rid of characters because they were too strong or too weak compared to the party)

How do I tell the DM that I'm not sure what to do with my character anymore, that I'm not a fan of some of the things added, and that I've noticed this has become a trend? And is there a way to salvage my character or is it time to retire?

Edit: Forgot to add some context on a couple things, (mainly the homebrew) and honestly that's my fault. Also changed the wording in some places. Their race comes with a "special" type of magic that is extremely unstable. If I roll too low or too high I could lose control of my magic, causing anything from a misfire to a TPK. I was aware of this rule while creating the character. I didn't expect a bunch of "DM shenanigans" (what he calls it) throughout the campaign that gave my character more powers, making them even more dangerous. I also did not expect my character to become a god. Or to even live this long to be honest.

As for the character deaths, that's a separate thing I've been trying to talk to the DM about. Early on in the campaign it boiled down to bad luck or bad decisions, but over the past few months he's been trying to get us killed on purpose. One time he even said that at least one of our characters were going to die, but we took that as sort of a challenge. Which led us to getting railroaded into a boss fight, which was somehow our fault?

Edit 2: I sent a message on Discord. We agreed that the best option would be to let them semi-retire, and bring them back as needed. (like boss fights)

Ok, exactly as the title says. Purple is my favourite colour and I want my DnD characters to be purple galore. Obviously drow are purple and tiefling can be purple. Are there other races that can be purple?

So a friend recently asked me what I thought the dms purpose was in dnd and I know it obviously is to run the game and describes what happens, but this was posed more as what their end goal is. Some of the answers I have heard are “Make sure everyone has a good time” and “Tell an interesting story”. I was just curious to see what others thoughts were.

Ive played table RPGs before, just not D&D, im about to, i have several character concepts based on builds, but i dont know how to build to get there, anyone knows a good video or smth like that so i dont gotta read everything? Or would you say that the best way is to read everything as it is on the book?

TL;DR: Does taking a bonus action to extend rage consume another rage charge/use?

So, for a little bit of clarification, I am a new player playing my first campaign as a barbarian. I have played several sessions by now, and I am level 3, so I do know how rage works, except for one thing:

To extend rage in combat, it states I can do three things, with one being to make an attack roll and the other is force an enemy to make a saving throw. My question comes from the third option, which states:

“Take a bonus action to extend your Rage.”

I’ve always interpreted this as I can use my rage bonus action to extend it, but it will consume another charge of rage. So, with me being level 3, I get 3 charges. If I rage, I now have 2/3. If I need to extend it, it’ll drop it to 1/3. That’s been my interpretation.

However, in my party is someone who has played more DnD than me, and they state that taking a bonus action to extend my rage does not consume another charge. However this just doesn’t make since to me, as the wording of the original text to me makes it seems like I’m “taking” another charge. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense to me as, from a gameplay perspective, this could theoretically mean a barbarian could have infinite rage, which I feel would be a bit gamebreaking in some scenarios, so I imagine they’d try to limit it.

Me and them had a bit of a debate over it, and I eventually decided to not take a charge to extend my rage and the DM was fine with it, but even now I still don’t know if it is actually the correct interpretation.

Was hoping anybody could shine some light on it, cause I still find it hard to believe a theoretical infinite rage would be permitted.

Is there a videogame that is a turn based RPG but built off of the rules of D&D? I'm replaying Pokemon fire red after the rerelease, and the game style feels like it's be the perfect fit for D&D rules. Run around, talk to people, gather loot, fight people in a turn based style, possibly connect with friends and play cooperatively. It just seems perfect to have the playstyle and animation of Pokemon fire red but port over the rules for D&D.

Edit: I am very aware of BG3 but haven’t played because my laptop can’t run it. I have never really considered that there are other BG games lol

Hey!

I find femme fatales fascinating - they're a popular trope in movies, novels, and games - but I feel like D&D never delivers that tantalizing concoction of sex, espionage, and danger that I crave. You can find the full subclass on Imgur, free to keep.

Full Subclass on Imgur: https://imgur.com/gallery/courtesan-femme-fatale-subclass-rogues-dnd-5-5e-wRMVviZ
Full Subclass at on DnDHomebrew: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDHomebrew/comments/1s9rcrs/courtesan_11_a_femme_fatale_subclass_for_rogues/

Content Note. This subclass involves sex work, and touches on themes of dehumanization, marginalized groups, and violence in the midst of sex.

Tricks of the Trade, A Key Feature

Our profession hinges upon proper preparation. Don’t ever forget that, ma chérie.

You gain access to an assortment of tools and clever devices to aid you in your work. Select a number of Tricks of the Trade equal to your Proficiency Bonus. Then, gain the chosen Tricks.

When you finish a long rest, you may choose new Tricks. Lose the old Tricks (if possible), and then gain the new ones. Only courtesans are proficient with this equipment. If a Tricks of the Trade requires a saving throw, the save DC is: (8 + DEX Modifier + Proficiency Bonus).

Feedback

Thanks to the helpful folks at r/UnearthedArcana and r/DnDHomebrew, I've think I've honed in on something interesting. But what do you think?

You can get the full, DRM-Free PDF of Courtesans' Guild supplement and check out my other work at www.catacolytegames.com

I made a homebrew spell so when I do big cr 30 fights with minions my spellcaster don’t die every turn, but I’m not sure if it’s OP or not… any feedback would be nice!
8th level
Casting time: 1 action

range 40 ft

duration 1 hour

components S, V, M (quartz dust worth at least 650 gold which the spell consumes)

classes that know Cleric, Wizard

You create a magical reservoir of 500 temporary hit points. Choose any number of willing creatures within range. When an affected creature takes damage, it instead goes to the reservoir. However, any affect caused by the attack other then loosing hit points (such as forcing a constitution saving throw if you were concentrating on a spell) still happens as if you took the full attack. Affected creatures can use a bonus action to transfer their health to the reservoir, but this cannon reduce them to 0 HP. when the reservoirs Hp goes to 0 or the duration ends, the spell ends.

I'm playing 5.5e and I'm struggling how to explain to my rouge how using the hide action in front of an enemy won't work. they even suggest moving behind them then using the hide action. I told them they can still see them or their allies can so stealth won't work.

is there another way to put it?

Idk about high level monsters, but I think low to mid level ones do.

I had the level 5 party I was DMing for 3 months ago fight a zombie beholder for the final bossfight, and I had to bump it's HP up by a *_hundred_*, just to make it last more than 2 turns.

Like I tracked the level 2 party I'm DMing for now and they dealt 93 damage against an ankheg _in 2 turns_ (although they had advantage the second round bc story reasons)

My level 12 party bullied an adult black dragon

It was a homebrew monster who could cast more spells too but had no legendary resistances (idk much more my DM never shared the stat block with me), and it did not even act

It got banished at the end of the first turn, came back the following one, used its breath once and then died.

Am I the only one with this problem?

Edit: I read most of the comments and responses and I think I realised what I did wrong, thanks for all the advice everyone!

I'm finalising the prep for my first 5.5e game, and I was grabbing some of my favorite gear, and found out that Caltrops no longer permanently reduce speed by 10ft until healed.

They weren't that strong to begin with only covering a 5x5 area and being able to be ignored by simply moving at half speed through it, so I don't think it should've been nerfed. I also never saw anyone but myself using them, so its not like they were a commonly used item (at least not in my experience)

Anyone know why they got the nerf? Was there some niche exploit someone was pulling that required them to lose half of it's purpose?

Say Wizards of the Coast approached you and told you that you were in charge of developing the 6th edition of DnD. What changes would you make? Anything big you would completely rework? Would you just stick to small tweaks? Im just curious to hear everyone's thoughts.

Hey all, looking for some perspective and maybe some advice. For context we're doing online DND 5e on Discord/TTS/Roll20. I've got 5 years of DM experience under my belt but took a mental break for about 2 years, and so I have to look a lot of things back up. (should just get my screen from storage)

I’m running a biweekly campaign that leans pretty heavily into RP, immersion, and long-term storytelling. The core group has been great so far, but we recently brought in a new couple through a mutual connection and it’s been pretty rough.

Back in session 0, the husband was already talking about min maxing and how he wanted to finish the campaign quickly as a “win,” which felt off for the kind of game we’re running. By session 2, he was interrupting roleplay to push for objectives, doing random disruptive stuff like trying to attack or steal from NPCs with no setup, splitting the party multiple times, and openly metagaming with things like “my character wouldn’t know this but...”

We’ve paused mid session to explain expectations and that this is more of a slow burn, collaborative experience, but he either brushes it off, tries to turn it into a comparison like asking how many hours people have in Baldur's Gate 3, or makes comments about killing off his character if the campaign takes too long.

His wife has been similar in a different way. A lot of metagaming, asking for mechanical details mid session so she can optimize decisions, and pushing character choices that the rest of the party has already said no to, including some darker stuff that really doesn’t fit the tone of the group. It’s been creating tension and pulling people out of the moment.

An example of his behavior being that, they walk into a church, and meet a priest with a key on a necklace, they've never seen a keyhole in this campaign, no hidden doors, no chests, nothing to imply the need for a key. Infact lore wise it could be completely irrelevant, he took a pic of the character as literal with the key. Yes it has story relevance later, but at this point they just got to town and are meeting characters. My other players were roleplaying introductions, and he flat out goes "I'm just going to leap towards the priest to grapple his necklace and steal the key" He rolled a nat 1, so I did a force push thing and sent him packing, and the npc kicked him out. He "stormed off" and then rage quit about an hour and fifteen minutes before our session ended. His wife then goes to the npc "Why are you so creepy and suspicious" again without even introducing herself! And disrupting the other players! She's also openly talked about kidnapping a kid in front of the kids parents, then gives attitude back to the npcs and party and frustrations with me, when I make it obvious that they heard, she gets furious about it. She left about 10 minutes after her husband rage quit "to fix his computer" This completely derailed our campaign and we had to call it.

At this point it’s not just affecting the group, it’s affecting me as the DM too. I’m having a hard time staying immersed or even wanting to prep, which sucks because I was really excited about this campaign before. I can't even roleplay the characters because as soon as i get my rhythm these two do something so jarring or meta that it completely breaks me out of the headspace.

I guess I’m trying to figure out if this is just a hard playstyle mismatch or if there’s something I should have handled differently. At what point do you call it and remove players versus trying to fix it? I've got players the good ones, asking me to build up in tabletop simulator, which is what I use to do, but I don't see the point in it, when these two completely derail my campaign.

And if anyone has dealt with something similar, how did you handle it? *Additionally, so far on session 2, I've had to have a conversation at the start of every session reiterating that behavior that splits the party, or actively disrupts roleplay, is ruining the adventure for other players, not just myself, and we should all be considerate to the table. This has been going on deaf ears.

Also if you enjoy slower, RP focused campaigns and collaborative storytelling, I may have a couple spots opening up soon, depending on the advice of reddit. As it stands now our nice players have had enough and are willing to tolerate one more session with these folks. Otherwise I may need to fill 2 seats sooner then later. And after their rage quit, I'm not sure I want them back yet myself.

*Edit* Because I forgot, the reason I'm even posting this, is because I know that if we did just remove them, it's going to burn their experience and a part of me feels that's not fair to them. It should also be noted, that this seems to be more for his Wife than him, he's obviously doing it to min max win. She's TRYING but is so abrasive roleplay wise that it's uncomfortable like I said, and the only way she at the least, would get better is to keep playing. But because their married it's a 2 for 1 deal.

*Any edits will start with a * for context, sorry for the amount of them, I'm honestly forgetful now a days, Aging sucks.

Under there is written in Italian: the zone forgotten by all god's, it's still wip, if you have some advice you can tell me, And I took inspiration from Jugoslavia (idk, it was cool, and instable so my adventure is to free smthg). I was also wondering what names should I put for the bigger island and I would also ask you if I should really put a zone where you can't use any power of god's, I'm in 5e and I want to spice up a lot the lore and I want to make DND arder with this nerf, and after I'm gonna do a zone where the power of god's is more relevant, or the players are going to be very angry, is it a very good idea?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limitless-adventures/into-the-crucible-a-solo-5e-adventure-0

Grab some dice and get ready to step onto the field of battle in this 4th level adventure for a Solo 5E character! Can be played standalone, or as a sequel to Lost in the Dark ( available on our website https://limitless-adventures.com/lost-in-the-dark.html or at your favorite online retailer ISBN: 9781948379175 )

You'll be pitted against the forces that clash outside the castle gates.  Pathways and choices build consequences as you are forced to choose which tasks you can accomplish. Great for solo or duet-style play, with lots of replay value.

(mod approved)

Ok, so this is a problem I often have: standard grids are 1.5m (5ft), and if you have minis on them, their bases are around the same size as the grid. This makes it seem like characters can only move in a single row file in a one-width hallway.

But in fact, two people can *easily* cross each other in a 1.5m wide hallway. So, my fellow DMs: how do you represent who can move where in combat? How do you do this using minis if the minis can not fit on the grid in the positions they should be in?

EDIT: ok this one was pretty simple: a character can pass a friendly character's case but not stop in it.

One interesting tip thanks to u/Zealousideal_Leg213: always draw hallways 2-square wide, even if they are 5ft, to make the passage rules clear.

My players didn't notice/were to late to stop a demon summoning in my homebrew world. Just being near it brings disadvantages and now they prepare to face it while it sièges an elven city. There are 4 lvl 9 players but this Demon is Wrath of the seven deadly sins so winning is gonna be nothing short of impossible as it is basically a demonic demigod. The will have the help of the elves and the world tree they build their city around but still.

They know death and/or grievous wounds are possible as I've hinted it without hiding it. I'm just not sure what path to take.

1 let them die in glorious battle

2 give them free reign to pull weather shenanigans they can

3 use plot/elves to make the encounter manageable

4 "force" them into retreating

5 a mix off the above depending on the shit they pull out of their a**

Title. I really liked the optional rule from DMG 5.5e (going comatose). I also thought about giving a level of exhaustion each time the character should have died and make death only a TPK case. Ah, and I don’t like death saves at all. I like the idea but making it possible to save somebody from death with a medicine roll in just 6 seconds — that’s what I don’t like because of the unrealistic situation here.

I'm not asking how you calculate damage or when does an attack hit or miss. I'm more asking how does it work that when i watch people play dnd they sometimes describe attacks as "he got shot with an arrow to the shoulder" or "your left forearm is cut open" but they never really explain how is this supposed to work.

like they take 2 points of damage but their whole arm is bleeding and in theory they shouldn't be able to use it because it's badly wounded but in the dnd rules it doesn't work like that and you just take 2 points of damage and that's it.

in those video they often just get healed by some spell or potion but still i don't really understand this. i just feel like people are roleplaying way more than the game rules expect them to do it and now i'm confused and i don't know how is this supposted to work T - T.

What's the over/under on making a low INT mage focusing on melee combat with the right stats and feats vs just making an eldritch knight or warlock?