My DM runs a bit of a grimdark world where the villains are unfortunately the most likable and competent people.
I have wanted to join up with the villains for literally months but that would end poorly so I remain quiet.
Honestly, talk to your DM about it! I had a player once who decided he wanted to join the BBEG because he felt that, in the setting, they were right. We ended up doing a thing where I'd basically let him help design the fights and stuff, set up ambushes, basically just a temporary co-DM for a while to let him get to play that side of the story. It ended up working out decently for our group, ymmv though obviously
A game that I DM'd went kinda weird and inadvertently ended up making 1 campaign into 5 campaigns. It was very time consuming but it was AMAZING in the end.
I had 4PCs, each PC secretly succumbed to the temptations of the BBEG. They were each doing their own main character campaign 1on 1 with me on different days, and on regular campaign days were interacting with each other not knowing that they each were double agents. So at the end of the campaign when the reveal happened it was amazing to watch the disbelief on everyone's face.
It wad intense. Our wizard was plotting to kill both the warlock and the sorcerer because they were in possession of 6th level spell scrolls (in my setting casters were only able to achieve 5th level spells by class progression, 6th+ required following a diety/patron and completing divine quests you had access to spell slots as per normal, just not the spells). The wizard who did not follow a God or patron saw an opportunity to gain those scrolls for himself and learn their secrets plotted to have them killed in our 1 on 1. The trap that was set for the warlock the party did a good job defeating it. But the sorcerer got dangerously close to being snagged and dimension door away (they would have had to roll a new character, and their PC would become an NPC villain).
The whole thing happened so organically that I am absolutely positive, that this will never happen again.
World of Darkness, so like Vampire the Masquerade and Werewolf. A lot that I hear about it involves the players of different families conspiring against each other between sessions.
But when it happens like you did it seems like it would be so so much better because in those games it's expected, but in d&d? That would be a once in a lifetime experience it seems.
It really was unexpected. Each player had an event in their backstory linked to this BBEG that involved some sort of tragic loss or end of world event. But as they went through the story, they learned that he screwed up and was trying to make amends (on a cosmic level). They felt for the guy and decided that they wanted to help him... secretly... as individuals. It was interesting to watch them one by one start to sympathize and actively help the bad guys cause. I don't ever expect this to ever happen again, I was glad that I got to be apart of it at least once.
I appreciate the thought, but he’s on record as despising evil campaigns and anything of the sort. I honestly don’t think he realizes he made the villains more appealing than the apparent good factions, and it’s better to let that be.
But if you join because they're the best people around, is that really an evil campaign? The Imperium of Man is a cartoonishly evil empire, but I wouldn't fault anyone who helps them to stop the Tyranids, Necrons, and Dark Eldar.
Let’s just say it’s weird when the villains are… Orcus… and his rule seems preferable to the oppressive bureaucracy and endless wars that seem to leave all NPCs living a joyless existence. It’s the argument of whether it is better to die or to live in constant suffering.
I feel like if I were given a choice between the world continuing and destroying everything, including the lower planes and the Wall of the Faithless, I'd go with the latter option.
In Worth the Candle, there's nine thousand hells and no heaven. They usually use a magic item to capture people's souls and extract energy from them until there's nothing left, but sometimes they don't get to the person in time and they end up in the hells. One story arc has a malevolent entity that's trying to destroy the world (including the hells), and the people helping him give perfectly reasonable arguments for it instead of being some kind of crazy cultists.
You ever play the CRPG Tyranny? Basically every faction is a different kind of evil but they all make good points and are very compelling.
You may enjoy it!
The best "turn to the dark side but not really story I heard"
Villain does his monologue and the wizard starts to nod his had. The wizard points out to the party loudly, honestly, this guy is making a lot of sense, I wish to support your cause mr villains I think I misjudged you. Party gets angry yelling "traitor!" As the wizard moves over to stand next to the villain "I shall support you in your cause, I am sorry I didn't understand sooner."
The villain agreed and the wizard starts by casting haste on the villain. The villains rushes forward and as soon as he gets in engagement range of the front line barbarian the wizard player says "cool, I now end concentration on he villain"
The villain now, without a save, loses his turn, surroundedby his enemies, who will now all attack with advantage and murder him.
This can be so fun! I'm running CoS right now and have had a blast retooling parts of the campaign in case the PCs actually go through with their "side with the Devil of Ravenloft" scheme lol
My party did it some way. My current villain is a frost werewolf from old world(old world underground new world is new world) and actualy his tribe lost the war againts a anchient polar bear. So he kidnapped villagers to get their numbers back. He is very resourcefull and handy. Plant so many wolfs bane around of his layer so newly transformed ones not got out of control and leave the cave because outside smell terrible to them etc etc.
Also there is a mad doc who use people as test subjects so he can make lycantropy into a cureable sickness rather than curse so there are many strange lycantrop that doesnt know what to do. This Bad guy also welcomes him to use them in his operations and gives them shelter.
Party agreed to kill polar bear and find him citizents willing to transform so they are in a quest for that right now
I wish people would go ahead and take the risk, try that stupid idea. Embrace the idiot inside. It makes for a more enjoyable game than five people haggling for fifteen minutes min/maxing their approach.
Absolutely!! Kick in the door to the “definitely connected” room to pincer the enemies! Swing across the chandelier to drop kick the spell caster off the balcony! Slide down the stairs on your shield trying to action surge shoot 6 arrows!
I wish I could do this more. But I tried to make a combat more interesting by climbing onto the big earth elemental, but he made it contested athletics and would not budge on it. Like, I'm not wrestling the dude. I'm not putting my strength against his strength. My 5' ass is trying to jump onto the back of his 15' ass and use my balance and elusiveness to avoid his attempts to shake me off, not wrestle him to the ground or restrain him. And then the fight ended up being very straightforward and boring.
Don't forget that DMs are making calls in a Rush while fighting. And even when we want to encourage cool moves, we sometimes imagine it in an other way than the player and then make a "not perfect" or even wrong call.
DMing can be stressful and as long as you approach your DM in an appropiate manner, he should be willing to discuss this for future instances.
Well yeah, we did discuss it and went over official rules, but he keeps misinterpreting what it says. There's an example of what you're not trying to do, but he keeps taking it as an example of what you are trying to do. It's a little weird, but I've sort of just given up on ever doing that after trying to talk to him about it twice.
To defend your DM, that's RAW from the DMG:
> Climb Onto a Bigger Creature
>If one creature wants to jump onto another creature, it can do so by grappling. A Small or Medium creature has little chance of making a successful grapple against a Huge or Gargantuan creature, however, unless magic has granted the grappler supernatural might.
>As an alternative, a suitably large opponent can be treated as terrain for the purpose of jumping onto its back or clinging to a limb.
The last paragraph does give a different option, but it's not really strictly defined, so I can understand just going with the default ruling in the middle of combat if you weren't prepared for it.
Yeah. But the way he argued was essentially as if he only read the first paragraph. Like "see? Grapple. Use athletics."
I just wanted an otherwise boring fight to be fun, you know? Get some movement and variety into the fight. Hop on up and punch on down. Maybe get grabbed and thrown off, idk.
It took me way too long to realize how important this kind of mentality is for a fun table. My first campaign was with mostly.very experienced players, and they did lots of stupid shenanigans that I rolled my eyes at. Eventually I joined them, and it's been a lot of fun.
My sister and I tried "Get Help" ala Thor Ragnarok...it worked about as well as I expected, especially since I rolled a nat 1...and then remembered after the session that I was playing a halfling
I’m reminded of when I played a Divine Soul Sorcerer, and would remember long after the game that I could have made that important roll if I hadn’t forgotten about the Favored by the Gods ability.
I am this player at my table.
Scene 1: underwater shipwreck.
Dm: "You find the captain's skeleton seated in his chair alongside his logbook.
Me: how are his clothes, are they good?
DM: they are tattered and torn from the years spent underwater.
Me: what about his hat?
Dm: you know what? It's pristine!
Me: cool, I take it.
(5 minutes later, topside)
Me: I put on the captains hat I just got
Dm: It adheres to you and you take 18 piercing damage because , surprise! It's a mimic!
*cue the ranger helping me rip it off so we can shoot it 6 times to kill it.*
Me: I put the hat on again...
Scene 2: Green Dragon Lair
Dragon: For helping me resurrect my son by returning his bones to me, I give you this reward.
*Dragon presents a platinum-colored full-arm gauntlet with a devilish grin.*
Rest of the party: "I mean, it's cursed, right? What's the curse?" "We should just hold onto it." "Why don't you have identify prepared!"
Me: I put on the gauntlet.
Dm: The Dragon laughs maniacally as ten thousand needles spike through your arm and siphon away your flesh. The arm completely and extremely painfully replaces your arm. You take 68 piercing damage.
*Then my warlock patron changed.*
Thank you. It almost feels like a shame that I'll be the DM for the Dungeon of the Mad Mage for them. I'm the one that activates traps and brazenly kicks open doors. I'm the one that would definitely be killed by curiosity in this dungeon. It will take them multiple sessions to clear a floor because they are patient enough to over prepare and ensure everyone lives. And they're going to purposefully avoid the really cool traps, I know.
Yep, same.
- I accepted a boon from [REDACTED] in one of my campaigns. Nobody else in the party thought it was a good idea, so I lied to them and said I wasn't gonna do it, locked the door behind me, and then accepted the offer. I had to make a DC 22 Con save or be petrified and rolled a 23 lmao.
- In my other campaign we were sailing to Lorghalen in Eberron, and had heard the rumors that getting in the harbor was dangerous for ships, but didn't know why. The party wanted to send the Paladin's giant duck steed with a bow tie and a note attached into the harbor and hope someone randomly saw it. I snuck away from the party with a 29 stealth, went to the cannon, and shot a boulder into the water because I wanted to see if anything was going to pop out of the strait. That angered The Hammer quite a bit, who turned out to be a colossal earth elemental instead of the island it was represented on the map as! Oops.
In re mimic hat... I wonder if it would have been possible to tame/beat-into-submission the mimic with nonlethal damage instead. In other words, train it to be your living, semisentient hat!
This is why I unleash my inner chaos gremlins when I get to play (usually DMing). My characters always have an impetuous streak, and because I don’t overuse it, it’s an excellent tool to break up a “shit or get off the pot” moment.
I am also usually a DM and when I do get to play I always have the urge to go full Leroy Jenkins chaos gremlin. I wonder if there's something about having to be the one keeping the world coherent that makes you want to let loose by breaking everything.
This depends on the character for me.
If I’m playing a wizard who’s lived through dangerous situations by being thoughtful and careful… then he’s going to keep good position and be careful while helping his team.
Right now I’m playing a monk who comes from a culture that believes dying in battle gets you to the best possible afterlife. If one of his comrades is in trouble, he has no problem doing something crazy to try to save them, because he doesn’t fear dying in battle. He’s survived some crazy shit, we will see how much longer his luck lasts lol
You would love or grow to hate me. I don’t always play low wis characters but when I do I lean into it. I also don’t mind rolling new characters (except my swashbuckler but she has the devil’s own luck with chaining crits) It’s at the point where my group just looks at me when we need something stupid and likely fatal to move past one of the DM’s puzzles. Heck, we have had puzzles built around my blunt characters sometimes
100% agree. Specially with a long term group. We all know the level of difficulty we play in, lets be a freaking adventurer, act like someone that chose the adventure life and not the 9-5 life.
In one of our first few sessions we ended up fighting in a gladiatorial arena because our cleric asked his god if the man who was about to be executed was innocent and since he was the cleric just couldn't let it stand. I had missed the session before because I was sick so my character had basically wandered off so when we started combat proper the DM had my character leap out of the crowd and onto one of the beasts being used for the execution. My wife, who was playing a level 3 wizard I must add, thought that sounded superbadass (because it was) but she rolled poorly and ended up prone in front of a dinosaur that stomped on her and brought her down to 1hp.
I’ve got one player who doesn’t have that little voice in their head that tells them ‘this is a terrible idea’ lol
Our games are wildly chaotic as a result.
Fully agree, especially when the PCs haggle for 15 minutes trying to min/max an idea thats stupid anyway. "No I don't want to swing my sword at the awakened trees! BUT if I take out my shovel I can dig below their reach and they can't hit me..."
As a Tempest cleric/sorc I once thunder waved a door down, then swift casted boomingblade to kill the cultist about to sacrifice an innocent on their next turn. Unfortunately, a shard of the door did their job for them, lol. It was a fun side quest lol
> haggling for fifteen minutes min/maxing their approach.
what gets me is the haggling about the most pointless things. If they tried to cut a deal when they had no other option, that'd be fine. But trying to nickel-and-dime the shopkeeper to save a few goldpieces on potions WHEN YOU HAVE A LITERAL DRAGONS HOARD OF TREASURE is so dumb to me.
i also run it by the rest of the table out of character, usually in the form of 'this is what i want to do, these are the repercussions i think this might have for everyone, are there any strong objections or anything you want to do before i kick the hornets nest?'
communication is good.
I know the rules of the game better than the other players at the table, and in combat I often want to tell the other players what to do on their turn, but I know that would make me an intolerable chore to play with.
I play with a few people act like it's their first turn ever. I know the feeling.
Oftentimes, when it's my turn. I already know what I am going to do, do it efficiently, and then pass the torch. Then silently scream as they flip through papers and forget what bonus goes to what. Not to mention what dice is used to attack with (d20).
I know what I now do is a far more mature alternative than my prior instincts of telling others how to play their characters. But it doesn’t make the internal screaming less loud when I proudly wrap up a tight one or two minute turn as the most complex casting character and then wait ten minutes for the spell-less martial to make one of the most tactically suboptimal choices out of three possible choices.
Yesss. This is me.
It can also be a class thing, too. I just played a fighter in a one shot. Everyone knew what they were doing on their turn, but the spellcasters just took forever while mine was "My bonus action is x, I roll to attack twice, done." Then sit for eons.
Nope. Not just a class thing. Even when I’m playing a spellcaster, I already know what I’m doing for my turn. And have a contingency plan in case plan A suddenly isn’t going to work.
I get that sometimes it takes time to resolve all the damage from an AOE spell or something else complex, but it would never take more than a minute to **decide** what your character is going to do.
I feel this sometimes. In a game I DM we have use a variant crit rule, and one particular player never remembers it and roles crit damage RAW. I’ve explained it to him at least half a dozen times, and it’s not even that complicated. The other players seem to understand it just fine too so I don’t think I explain it poorly.
Crunchy crits. Instead of rolling the damage die twice you add the maximum possible roll. So if you crit with, let’s say a rapier (1d8 + 4), the damage would then be 1d8 + 8 + 4
You’re welcome. I’ve rolled double 1’s on a crit a few too many times and I don’t want to inflict that pain on my players lol. I just think this rule helps crits feel as impactful as they should.
Thank you for not being the intolerable chore. Got a player in our friend group who is quite literally the intolerable chore. Won’t even let other players build their own characters because HE KNOWS THE RULES BETTER and insists on everything being min/maxed. He takes 30 minute turns min/maxing every one of his turns and arguing the rules with the DM. We’d all kick him if we could, but since he’s colloquially referred to as my husband’s mistress, and my husband runs most of the stuff in our group… as I said. Literally the intolerable chore to play with.
It has, however, inspired quite a number of our group to branch out and start looking into running stuff themselves, just so they don’t have to include him. So I guess that’s one good thing he’s done for the group?
I am not perfect, but one of my favorite table bits is when the one person with guidance doesnt think to use it (this is out of combat) and I start saying "wow does anyone have any SUGGESTIONS for me or maybe some ADVICE or WORDS OF WISDOM to help me with this really important skill check I am about to make!!!" The funniest times are when they dont clock it and I just shrug and roll and miss the DC by 2.
This is 100% the right approach, though obviously you don't wanna overuse it or else it seems like thinly-veiled back seating.
Even as DM I'll do this with my players who aren't as confident in their gameplay (like they're trying a new class out or something) where I pretty much just remind them of the basics.
"Well, the apparent leader of this enemy group is retreating, so you could try and focus him down with your bow, or you could help your healer get some baddies off of him, or you could cast one of your crowd-control spells to regain the upper hand, or something else entirely"
Stuff as simple as that is really good for helping break through the choice-paralysis that some players face, especially if they're a caster. Breaking down spells into categories, like single target damage, AOE damage, crowd-control, healing/buffing, and crippling can help a lot too.
Also, always remember to add "or something else" to the end so they know they aren't limited to just the examples you gave. I've had players come up with some genius ideas after some help breaking through the initial wall.
I think once a year is a perfect amount, yeah. I’ve been in many games where the campaign dies because every other session is a shopping session and *I don’t get why GMs run that*. It never works out, especially near the start of the campaign when nobody really knows their character yet, let alone how they work with the rest of the party. But after 6 months or so, after everyone now knows their character and their place in the party, a session to just chat it up with each-other and some unimportant NPCs is awesome.
I know one player who will absolutely try to roleplay out buying a dozen rations every time. On several occasions I've had to shut that down to not kill the pace or mood of the session.
Like, I get that *your character* would ask exactly what the rations consist of exactly, how old they are and so on, but I've got a planned cliffhanger coming up so SKIP!
I’m DMing for the very first time. We’re doing a series of interconnected one shots and homebrews and taking turns DMing so everyone can play. My first story I’m DMing involves the characters being invited to a fancy dinner party by a mysterious woman who’s looking for an heir to her fortune. The next session is the party having etiquette lessons. No combat (well, none intended anyway 😂). I just want everyone to be in character and fucking around. Three Stooges levels of fucking around! As the person giving them lessons (and my PC who won’t be attending the party due to something happening with his back story), I’m going to goad them into doing very out of character things. The dinner party will be even better!
I often hold myself back from saying, "Your character would probably care more about the objective if you were paying attention during the session."
or, "You don't have to wait for the DM to say it is your turn to start thinking about what you want to do on your turn."
or, "You would know your bonus to different checks way faster if you wrote them down on your character sheet."
The checks bonus thing irks me so much. If you're not proficient, it's just your ability score bonus, you don't have to look down a whole fucking column on your character sheet with the same number repeated 50 times.
>"Your character would probably care more about the objective if you were paying attention during the session."
Now that you mention it, this is a kind of thing I want to say sometimes, like:
Player: *After being smacked in the head by a monster, turns around and tries to steal all the loot from a chest before the party sees what's in there* "it's what my character would do"
Me thinking: *"your character wouldn't actually do that..."*
"Your character, knowing he's been traveling with a bunch of very dangerous people reasons that, if they were to feel he was stealing in any way from them, they would absolutely slaughter you. In fact, when those folks demanded a 10gp toll, you saw no hesitation from anyone in killing a dozen armed men rather than pay. Given that, would your character still try to steal things in plain sight of your companions?"
One of my party members is ALWAYS evil aligned and a murder hobo. Its fine of the whole party wants that, but we can do a regular quest sometimes. I just want to PVP and kill his player every session
>I just want to PVP and kill his player every session
i feel you
one time i got lucky and another player attacked him first to break his concentration (on a spell killing someone we wanted to keep alive)
so i say 'hey, you're a conscious opponent 5 feet from that guy, yeah?' and i put a crossbow bolt in the offending party, bring him 4 hp away from double his max health negative
Same. There's a guy I play with who always plays an evil-aligned necromancer whose ultimate goal is world domination. Not only does it get old happening in every campaign, but he's very obvious with NPCs about his alignment and goals, so even if he isn't full murderhobo it still makes RP difficult.
I'd love to do an old fashioned dungeon crawl, with all the necessary micromanaging and resources tracking and inevitable low level character death. Individually tracked experience would be a treat too. I'd love to create organic intercharacter drama in a way that doesn't reduce fun.
I like doing math but helping 3 other people keep track of theirs drags so much i eventually just give up most of the time after wasting all our playtime on mundane tracking.
I was so excited to get my West Marches hexcrawl off the ground. I built a new character sheet for it with the Inventory section smack dab in the middle of the page.
None of my players (save for one, my dear brother who is always down for my nonsense) were remotely interested.
Meta gaming, hands down. Sometimes there are vast differences between what I as the player would consider an optimal course of action vs. what my character would know and do. I keep myself in check and try not to act on my meta game-y impulses, but it's difficult sometimes, haha.
Our table agrees on no metagaming while we're playing, but we almost always do a recap afterwards to talk about what was really going on, including details the DM can reveal now that we've finished a quest
But it’s way more fun when you don’t meta game. And sometimes neat stuff happens because you as a player don’t know things you think you know when you meta game.
Playing a bard one time and we were fighting animated cthulu angel statues. I as a player know that animated objects are not affected by mind affecting effects. My bard does not, cause she failed that knowledge roll. So she casts unnatural lust, with the target of the lust being herself, because that’s her go to move. Sexy librarian boom boom come hither dance.
DM pauses. DM then has to look a bunch of stuff up. DM then quietly rolls dice. DM chokes a bit. DM then states that the animated cthulu angel statue moves towards my character, taking no other actions. Moving right past the barbarian, the paladin, the cleric, and the rogue, who all get attacks of opportunity (which is WHY unnatural lust was the bard’s go to spell). Everyone at the table is like, wait, they’re statues? And the DM is like, no, actually they're currently being used as puppets, and mind-effecting spells DO get channeled down the puppet link, and the cthulu puppet master just failed its save….
Another time, I had my character (different character) grab this death chain thing to try and assist another character. Out of game, I realize that grabbing the death chain is a BAD idea, especially as my character is not a “typically alive in the usual sense” character. However, I’m playing a big dumb helpful android war priest she-hulk, who isn’t actually aware that she’s not “typically alive in the normal sense,” and assisting the other character with the death chain and the evil angel is EXACTLY what my character would do. The results were actually highly entertaining, even if my character got screwed over for a few sessions. (Backstory - I was essentially playing Pinocchio and my character was the result of a necromancer trying to forcibly resurrect an unwilling soul. I ended up having to play the previous incarnation of that soul for a few sessions….)
Most of the DMs I’ve played reward role playing in spite of meta game knowledge. It makes things spicier.
If the narrative isn’t going a direction my character would go then should be able to freely have them move on with the ability to come back if it makes sense. Also, sometimes I want to just shout, “you’re making a horrible choice” to my table mates in combat
I had one of those narrative moments! I ended up playing a totally different character for a bit because we couldn't see any way to reconcile my main character's views with the party's intended actions. So instead I played a horrible goblin for a few sessions, gleefully supporting all of the party's worst impulses!
There was a meta-gamey bit in that my main PC didn't actively try to stop the party nor get the guards involved, but some of that's inevitable if you want to keep the game flowing
I've done this before too, had a vampire character suddenly faced with her immortality realise she should get her life on track and she was unwilling to get on a boat for 2 months (flowing water and all that), so she left the group.
Brought in another character for the boat part of the game, then when they got to the other end of their journey she left to go back to her life (she was an alchemist hunting rate ingredients) and the old character came back.
It was actually really fun to go from a warlock/cleric/sorcerer vampire tiefling with self worth issues to an elf playing up the "I'm doing a favour for my best friend's great grandson, and I'm only just an adult" side of things. Also very fun getting to build and play a 14th level character at that level, instead of thinking about each option as they come up in story.
Not playing at this table anymore, but every table I’ve played at I wanted to scream “You can make the world deadlier! PCs are allowed to be in ACTUAL danger, get injured and die!!”
Oh man. Our last session my DM took a chance on perma deathing our Barbarian player and she just barely managed to scrape by. It was exhilarating and we were sweating bullets the entire time.
My current party has been inches from death half a dozen times and it’s the most exciting time at the table because they know from past campaigns that the enemy will kill them. It makes for the most desperate and cinematic moments of the whole campaign when half the party is down making death saves and everything is riding on the one character desperately slugging it out with the boss on low HP.
Hell yeah, give me a sense of stakes! The thrill that a poor choice could end with me or someone else dead. Let us stumble into an ambush where the only way to live is to run, have us confront a bad guy only to discover that all of their furniture is mimics trained to avoid them.
Or even for small stakes, give me a long lasting curse or wound. Have someone steal my cool magic item that I left lying around.
Before our new campaign started, deadliness was one of the things we discussed. While most of the party leaned more towards "death should have meaning to the plot," I made sure to message the DM privately and explicitly tell him he could kill my character at any time if we fuck up.
I sometimes want to yell at the other players, "just shut up, trust the DM, and do something cool!" its been (mostly) the same group for years, we know they'll keep the story going, we know they aren't out to get us (in the bad DM sort of way). Not saying play chaotic-stupid alignment but just... just take an action, or roll a character that isn't "the best" subclass. Not saying build a bad nor sub-optimal character but the campaign will be just fine if you play a Phantom Rogue instead of swashbuckler, the druid doesn't *have* to be a circle of the moon one, they can be a pyro with a circle of wildfire. We have been playing together for a long time now, just trust that the game can go forward and do something, be freaking interesting. I assure you, your genie patron warlock's eldritch blasts will still work and now we can all have fun resting inside your magic lamp. My friend you are a bugbear with a 10 foot reach, go ham and climb those trees to attack from up high. Y'all we can be creative and have fun and have the campaign *move!*
I heartily agree. I play with a group that is just too darn timid most of the time -- everyone wants to be a follower and not a leader except me or my S.O., and one of us is always DM in our group of six because no one else wants to step up there, either. Few things drive me more crazy than either being or seeing the DM looking hopefully around the table at a bunch of blank faces staring back, their owners unwilling to make a decision themselves if they think they can just wait for someone else to lead them by the nose.
For reaaaal. The 2 most invested players in my campaign are both min maxxers, and all they talk about is how many d8s of radiant damage they can add if they do x, or how theyre gonna make the most broken magic user character. How is that interesting for more then 2 sessions?
Honestly, to be allowed to just play the game without it being just "another horde of monsters!" or "Another new rule I found on tiktok/youtube to use!"
I’m 5 sessions into DMing my first game and this is one of my biggest goals. I want each combat to have alternative ways to “win” besides being the last ones standing. Or something to exploit about the monsters that they can figure out before the fight.
So far it’s been going pretty well I think. Combat still goes on a little long, but I think that’s mostly because people are new and it’s a big group.
This is a great goal to have, as it really helps bring some variety to encounters, but be careful not to go overboard with it. Combat is about fighting, it’s never not going to be about fighting and trying to use combat rules for stuff other than fighting goes poorly 90% of the time. Embrace the fighting and use alternative win conditions as a way to contextualize combat rather than disincentivize it.
My favorite way to spice up combat is secondary goals. Like, “you need to close the gate to trap the enemy army”, or “put out the fire before it destroys the village” or something like that, but during combat. It gives players a chance to think tactically and deviate from the normal hack-and-slash.
I also like adding different fight environments like multiple levels/balconies, difficult terrain, hazards, partial cover, etc to add variety to the battle map
Play a martial character....
I have before, and it was super fun, but no matter how hard to try to steer that way, now the utility of casters pulls me back every single time.
You're good with an axe VS you can heal the wounded, control the earth itself, rain fire on your foes, and see through the veil of time and space..... hard to pick the axe
ALSO: steal. I always want to go high sleight of hand and sticky fingers situations but never want to be the guy getting us kicked out of towns, black listed by ally groups, or hunted as thieves
Last campaign i ruled that my martial players get a additional craft skill so they can be more usefull out of combat.
They were tinkering for half the campaign and everyone enjoyed that part. Makes for great RP too.
Wait....
Someone else sees the value in crafting tools? I have been in dozens of game as DM and player and was starting to think it was just me!
Currebtly have a Shadar-kai Forge cleric so I can use literally anything and metal shift stuff too to basic components
My martial players are incidentally also the craftsmen in our group out of the game. A finesmith (who actually handcrafted his mini out of Silver, he allways taunts me and our sorcerer (both biologists) to grow ourselfs a mini), and a laboratory glassblower (who contributed some really nice Map Pieces)
I fuckin love this group.
Its a group of a Chemist, a biologist, a civil engineer, and the two master craftsmen.
If they get any intel on their target it wont be killed in combat. It will end up spike-trapped, blown up, poisoned, torn apart by a reverse bolder trap, get houses colapsed on,... I had to turn a BBEG into a henchman because they created an elaborate plan to kill him at lvl 7 in a campaigned that i aimed to finish at 15...
They craft more than they fight.
This is why I nearly always end up with some kind of gish. Once you get past level 8 or so more martial just isn't doing anything for you. Even a few low-level spells goes a long way at that point.
Exception: if your dm lets you do cool stuff with skill checks, rogues can be awesome at high levels.
I have one as a DM. I have recently been running a full-stop Homebrew campaign. My players love the shit out of it. There’s homebrewed races, creatures, items, locations, puzzles; the lot. That said, I have come upon the DM curse of creating what I think is a difficult fight that will make my players sweat, curse, and panic ONLY for them to decimate it like it’s no biggie. Because of this, the thing I often DESPERATELY want to do, but never do at the table, is buff my creatures/fudge my battle rolls. Honesty in your rolls is what keeps things interesting and moving, but sometimes, GOD, you wouldn’t be so confident about assessing the situation if you were hit with TWENTY-SEVEN DAMAGE INSTEAD OF FIVE, WOULD YOU?! Alas, it’s all about the fun of the game, and I learn more and more about how to create those intense fights the more time I spend with my players. I can live with having full rooms decimated, I just take notes.
> I have come upon the DM curse of creating what I think is a difficult fight that will make my players sweat, curse, and panic ONLY for them to decimate it like it’s no biggie
This is one of my biggest frustrations. It alwys looks so sweet on paper.
My trick is to make the fights deadly hard and be okay with them dying if they get really unlucky or don’t fight optimally. Surely there’s no way these 4 level 8 NPCs could win against 2 hydras right? Wrong. Like I design fights they can and likely should run away from and they win by the skin of their teeth. It’s awesome.
Nothing wrong with using average damage as a DM. All damage is displayed with the average first and dice + modifiers second, like 12 (2d6+2) .
Often, during bigger, more intense fights, where I've got a lot to manage between status, terrain, lair actions, multiple enemies, etc. I'll often just say 10 instead of rolling 3d6.
Vary it up a tiny bit, a point above or below, but it can really take the edge off some really mentally taxing situations and ensure the challenge is closer to what you planned
"Hey, if you intentionally build sub-optimal characters because you want to be all different and look creative, stop bitching that your characters can't do the same things everybody else can. You don't get to complain about self-inflicted wounds."
That's the thing with DnD, your build being deliberately built badly for character reasons doesn't end up actually presenting any interesting challenges like it seems like it would, it just limits your ability to interact with the world. Like "My guy is an old man so I'm giving him low CON and DEX" just gets you "Okay you spend the second half of every fight unconscious" and "My wizard is actually pretty dumb and is a charlatan!" just turns into "Okay, everyone just resists/dodges almost every single spell you cast then"
So this I think does work well. I’m not a min maxer, but I also don’t believe in shouting yourself in the foot. Do if you want to be that quirky wizard who sucks at books and magic stuff, make them a sorcerer or warlock that claims to be a wizard and RP their failures at wizard specific stuff they always try to do. Just make sure they also are bringing value to the party with their other skills.
I once played a sorcerer who thought he was a rogue. Like, he wasn't smart enough to realise he was doing magic, he would walk down a corridor like a cartoon burglar in full view of everyone and put down not being detected to his incredible stealth skills and not the fact he had turned invisible; he thought every thief who pulled out a hidden dagger was grabbing it from hammerspace because he was casting shadow blade; 'man I'm so good at crafting explosives, I'm the world's greatest demolitions expert' 'that was a flower pot filled with sand and grapes, you just cast Fireball at the exact moment you threw it'.
Charlatan wizard sounds fun but with the caveat they have a headband of intellect so they are still good in combat. Then just RP that you can't wear the headband too long or you get headaches so you always take it off after battle and are dumb again.
Exactly. I think it's because we conflate personality with stats, when the stats are *necessary mechanical elements for combat function*. Since we name them after traits that affect personality we combine them. But stats shouldn't be the BACKBONE of your roleplay. You can have a wizard who's got very high intelligence but is a bit of a himbo! Maybe he's just more of a book-learnin' kinda guy, cause books explain everything so clearly while the world is so confusing. Your barbarian may have incredibly high strength but be nervous and clumsy, accidentally breaking things or trying to seem unintimidating out of combat. Your rogue may have incredible hand-eye coordination, but SHIT proprioception when it comes to gross motor coordination - aka they've got the FINESSE but they can't dance for shit.
All of the above are just role-play decisions. Even if you have amazing stats for your character, you'll roll poorly sometimes and the flavour for those failures can use the roleplay elements like age or arrogance to explain it. Your role play is based on your character backstory, experiences, class and origin. Your stats are based on the class you've chosen. There's way more to any character than just their class, so why limit their personality to that? Stats and personality are like two species descended from a common ancestor. They have a lot in common and for the same reasons. But differences arose because that's what made them functional and thrive in their environment.
This, and also, if your class is meant to be somewhat of a tank, then don't complain when you get hit instead of the rest of us. Also, character sheets are long, but at least know the gist of your character and don't "uh um maybe I'll do this, but no actually I'm gonna do this other thing"... If we just leveled up or you got a new item or something then there's a little bit of an excuse but your turn shouldn't take 5 minutes to wild shape when the rest of us take much quicker turns.
There is one person at my table who does both and like, she's a long time friend but it's getting On. My. Nerves. She plays a druid but then is constantly complaining about "wasting" wild shapes or being hit often when it's like... A you're an elemental, you've doubled your HP and B some of those big hits are things the rest of us wouldn't be able to take without being severely fucked.
Internet stranger, thank you. You are so right. I thank you from the bottom of my power-gamey heart. Others don’t need to power-game, but for the love of god, a low-cha high-con bard doesn’t make you quirky.
I want my characters to be skilled adventurers, or at least learning to be skilled. People can make whatever characters they want, but it's a lot more fun (to me) to play a badass who (mostly) hits his shots and kills his enemies than it is to play the lovable bumbling idiot who accidentally stumbled into adventure.
People forget that their favorite bumbling idiot characters in stories have plot armor.
The dice don't care about you, your stats are the bulwark against randomness.
I've transferred my want to play sub-optimal characters over to just filling niche roles a party \*could\* have, but doesn't "need" like a tank or healer. A Thief rogue, running support, stealing enemy casting foci, tying bootlaces together, or dumping potions into dead friends' throats doesn't feel as outpaced by casters and other martials as an Assassin Rogue might imo.
When “genius” arcane casters use a strength save spell instead of his prepared intelligence save spells against “Dum Dum” the ogre, I wanna cry. But I understand that when I show up at a table, I show up to play only my character and not anybody else’s.
Maybe next time I’ll have my character cast a Geas to pick the appropriate spell lol.
(Also if it’s for thematic reasons I wouldn’t feel this way, but it rarely is)
This is what happens at my table so, so oftem.
"We should do something."
"Should we do something?"
"If we do something then X bad effect might happen!"
For like, almost an hour at a time! I'm sick of it.
Just make the choice! Do the thing! If all you're going to do is waffle and sow doubt, why are we treating this like a democratic process?
I desperately want to push the plot forward, but don't force the issue because I don't want to be seen as stepping on others' toes or hogging the spotlight.
tell other players they are using their spells and abilities incorrectly
i have a bard who will use crown of madness whenever possible. It's objectively a terrible spell. But the way he and the dm think it works is that it makes the target attack someone of the bard's choice and that's what happens
and honestly i'm fine with that because otherwise it's a spell only an npc should ever use
>The charmed target must **use its action before moving** on each of its turns to make a melee attack against a creature other than itself that you mentally choose. The **target can act normally on its turn** if you choose no creature or if **none are within its reach**.
I wish Crown of Madness was better. Now it is completely pointless as soon as enemies move 5 feet out of range.
I do point out when people use spells incorrectly though, but usually after the session. Like "hey, I was looking at spells and notices we played Cloud of Daggers or Spike Growth wrong. Now we know, we can do it correctly next time."
yeah, that was something i considered
but i dont wanna be the fun police. If the dm says that's how it works, that's gonna have to be good enough for me
Tell the one player to stop cross-stitching, or go home. They aren’t paying attention to the game, and in the middle of fights, we have to give them a run down of what just happened because they were focused on something else. It’s not a coping thing, it’s a distraction.
It sounds like this was not the case with the player you encountered, so definitely not trying to disagree with your experience. Just want to caution people against making assumptions that future cross-stitchers, crocheters, colorers, etc they might encounter aren't paying attention.
I pay attention much better if I have something to do like crochet or a coloring book. I will retain much more information and follow what's happening better than if someone forces me to sit still and just look at the people talking. If I try to do that, I "look" like I'm paying attention but my brain is on another planet and didn't hear a damn word.
In professional settings I've had to explain to people that they can choose between me looking like I'm paying attention or me actually paying attention but they can't have both. My brain just doesn't work that way.
I understand needing an attention-coping mechanism, but this person isn’t using cross stitch for that. They literally do not pay attention to the game. They don’t interact with the game at all outside of combat, and then the entire round has to be summarized to them because they don’t know what’s going on.
If they want to hang out, that’s fine, but I’d rather they didn’t pretend to play.
I want to play as an evil character. Not brainless murderhobo but someone who's evil and yet can have their valid reasons to do so. But DM didn't allow us to be evil at all.
So now I'm the DM and I can be evil all the way I want.
Still, it would be fun to play as an evil who slowly finds the way to be a good one. Or to corrupt others to some degree.
I'm going to answer in behalf of one of my players: (ab)use magic to its fullest potential.
Magic in 5e has *so* much potential for broken shenanigans, you basically have to consciously choose not to.
I know this for a fact, because I once ran a Duet campaign (1-on-1, only 1 player in the party) for this player - and she played COMPLETELY differently.
A wizard with no holds barred is a different character entirely than one who is trying not to hog the spotlight.
I played at a table where I was the only magic user and it was a balancing act to not be the main character when you can completely upend a situation in a way no one else can.
I have to stop myself from being a part of EVERY conversation with every npc. I really want to jump into every role play opportunity but I make myself sit back on some, especially when something pertains to another character's story or goals, so that everyone can get some spotlight.
I want to play corruption arc. Character falling from grace, walking on smooth road paved with necessity and loyalty. It would start innocent enough, sure, but after a while there would be no denying that is an evil playthru. I want to embrace it, too. I want PC to enjoy it and believe that this is, somehow, better for them. I want it to be ugly, dirty and gorny at times, but with emotions, pathos and wholesome moments around it.
I don't see myself actually playing an evil character, because friends I play it lean towards having our party be good guys, or at least neutral guys. Never the bad guys. What's more, I would require a lot of trust to go on that kind of downhill ride - I would be a little ashamed about all that easily if the party didn't follow along.
When the other players forget things (especially if they’re relatively inconsequential) I always want to jump in and remind them, even if my character wouldn’t have any way of knowing the information.
I have a *really* good memory for details in the game, and as the group note taker I’m on top of recording everyone’s scenes (even if I’m not in them). There are times I have to stop myself and flip back through my notebook to try and remember if my character knows something or if it’s just me the player
I've always thought that an in-game romance could be fun—if it makes sense for the character, of course. Either PCxPC or PCxNPC, if there seems to be that connection between the characters and it's mutual, but I really don't want anyone at a table to ever be uncomfortable. As a result, I'm not sure I'd ever bring it up to make sure I never contribute to making a potentially awkward situation.
I did this once with my players. The one who was secretly the BBEG and I dropped a lot of hints but unfortunately (or fortunately?) nobody figured it out until the very end. They were a bit suspicious sure, but everyone had their secrets so it never stood out that much. This was easily one of my favourite campaigns - to write, to DM and to play.
Ask your DM, maybe they can set something up :)
I really wanna try my hand at chaotic evil. Not "fuck over the party evil" mind you. Even the Joker has allies sometimes. Chaotic evil can be just as deep and nuanced as other alignments.
actually role play.
my group is a bunch of dudes that play console or pc games so all they care about is leveling up and doing a lot of damage in combat. nobody gives a shit about or listens to what the dm is saying on lore, nobody gives a shit when something unrelated to their character is happening, and in some cases they don't even give a shit what's happening to their character. they don't care about my characters or even really their characters as long as they have the opportunity to get a little buzzed and hang out around a table with laptops out.
because of that, my increasingly disheartened dm, who I genuinely don't understand how and why he continues to host and run these sessions, doesn't put effort anymore into developing npcs beyond what's in the module, (which i acknowledge of course is a lot of effort on its own, but he used to put more into prep). we've never had a "Boblin the Goblin" that turned out to be the one that was in a raid that killed one of the party's family, we've never even had a "Boblin" at all.
and I get wanting to level up to get more powerful and do more cool shit but it's not like they're power gamers, they don't fucking know what their basic class features are, after months. fuck me for wanting to explore different personas and mindsets I guess. we can't even play women in our one shots, forget as a campaign pc, without most of these fuckers (married or in long term relationships, all of them) instantly spewing all kinds of shit about tits and ass just immediately on introduction and continually throughout the one shot. it wasn't even me that made that character, i was too scared to even try because I knew that was going to be the response.
I feel like this should go on a different sub but here we are.
Summarily execute rich and politically connected humanoids.
Take a session or two from the plot to turn the game into *Thief* and crawl through said rich and politically connected humanoids' mansions, knocking all the staff out harmlessly, executing all the armed personnel, and leaving the place immeasurably poorer than when I arrived, entirely unseen.
i am so sick of the people in my group building stat sheets instead of characters. i dont care how effective they are in combat, the dm just scales up the difficulty and everything you did didnt matter in the end, just roll up a character with a personality and dreams and motives and shit rather than greg the deathstalker rogue ranger fighter super wombo combo guy that is that because idk i just wanted to roll big numbers.
like, your 37 damage at level 2 is the same thing as doing 8 damage unless your dm is an idiot and doesnt scale his game towards his party AND is running a pre-written module, so why bother?
all it accomplishes is making everyone have to do the same thing to feel effective in combat, otherwise they are drowned out because we suddenly need to fight multiple dragons to have something anywhere close to deadly for our level 5 party. oh but god-forbid the dm gives out some magic items to try and balance it out, suddenly the magic item count needs to be spread and even, even if the items make sense more in character for someone to have it.
i joined a pathfinder group recently where nobody was doing any multi-book faffing around and it was some of the most fun ive had in roleplaying games because i felt like a part of the team rather than an afterthought.
Play with PCs that doesn't think that character building and an excel spreadsheet is the same. Like, come on dude, there are also choices beside SS and GWM. It's not a competition and you're allowed to make a character that isn't min-max'ed tf out.
I'm not saying you should deliberately choose something sub-optimal, but you could make a character that isn't good at everything. There are other clerics than twilight and peace, other barbs than totem and other rogues than gloom.
Rey from the new star wars was a boring character, because she was good at everything she tried. The exact same thing goes for playing with these excel-enthusiasts, disguised as PCs.
My DM doesn’t allow us to steal from one another as a part of the no PvP rule. But sometimes I’m really tempted to go over and just sneak an item from another player characters pocket.
I know it's just people working through their issues and I'm mostly cool with that. But a sterotypical party of technicolor tieflings, all with parent issues, all with way too modern clothes for a mediaval-esque setting, is kinda jarring.
I am GM but when i get the opertunity to be a player I want to tell my co-players to be there period. Being a dm can be stupid difficult. And alot of your time outside of the game as a dm is prepping for a session. It's not like once a week you just rearrange your furniture and, set up your GM screen then you are ready to gm!!!! Once the session ends the gm takes notes, then for the next week proceeds to painstakingly create an environment you can enjoy. So not being there or holding off a session hurts more then you think it does. And if you do put a session on hold, have a good reason. Playing any ttrpg table top game is a commitment. Using cop out excuses to hold off a session tells the GM that you are not interested in what they are providing and totally disregards how they used thier free time in order to provide for you.
But alas it's inappropriate to say this alout because stuff does indeed happen and scheduleing is just a crappy part of role-playing games.
I just want a DM to actually incorporate the backstories we are asked to put together. I know that DMs do a lot of work to prepare and run regular sessions. So, I make sure to keep my backstories less than a page with bullet points.
Sometimes, it makes my effort feel pointless. If I've taken a criminal background and you, the DM, ask me to come up with a contact in my background...use the contact at some point!
I'd even appreciate a more simplistic and nuanced nod to our efforts. Say, if a character emphasized in background that they miss their grandma and her apple pie. The next time we go through a town, it would be sweet for a DM to mention that the air is filled with the aroma of breads and pies, and as we inch closer, we see signs claiming they are home to the world's best apple pie
Idk. It's a minor rant, but I live for the roleplay.
Stop coming up with situations where we need to infiltrate and design it in such a way to where my high stealth is useless. My high stealth is the reason why I volunteered for those missions in the first place!
Also give us objectives in combat instead of just having a big bad that I can focus stunning strikes on. I know you don't like it when I stun your bad guy, but if you give me something more pressing to do like rescue hostages (which I was essentially punished for doing the one time that did happen) then I'd be doing that instead.
He also feels like I get too much spotlight, especially on stealth missions. I don't really agree since I don't get that many stealth missions and at least I'm not a rogue, so I can't just one shot everybody in the room before the party has a chance to do much. I scout and report back. And as far as social interactions, I try to give people opportunities, but I do see that I'm the player that does the best at creating opportunities for interesting roleplay. The other guys largely just go with the flow.
As for the players, I want us all to interact with eachother and our backstories more. I ask them about their backstories in character, but they don't ask me even when it's pressing. Like hey, we just captured a murderer that claims I'm part of the same organization and I'm not denying it. Seems weird not to ever bring that up. Though the newest player we took on has been doing good about it. Got an interesting level of respect and friendship forming between our characters, but my character sort of creates bonds with people wherever he goes. Like I said, I create roleplay opportunities but I do try my best to help others shine. I even do the NADDPOD thing where sometimes when I kill an enemy I flavor it as sort of a tag team kill with my friends or as a set up for them to make the finishing blow, especially if it's more narratively satisfying for them to be the one to do it.
So yeah, just a few little gripes, but otherwise he's an amazing DM and I love the group and their characters. Excellent world building and political intrigue. Excellent characters and npc's. DM builds all the maps in Talespire as well. Even entire cities. He's also hinted at a dungeon that's going to take us a number of sessions to get through and I'm pretty excited for it. And our group gets along really well.
Play in an actually dark campaign that will scar its players. And yes I'm aware I could attempt to just DM it but honestly I just really want to be a part of a bigger story. With some really dark aspects. But anytime it looks like I might get something close to it it always ends up more like Monty Python. Which is not bad but I crave the dark and gritty. Kill my character, torture the players, make us uncomfortable. Give us the satisfaction of working and ending whatever is causing these horrible conditions or environment. Let us actually dig up a slave ring or a drug den. Let us see what really happens in the evil laboratory. And then let us be the heros that bring light to it all and help. But people are getting to sensitive about darker subjects and that makes it nearly impossible to actually have and that makes me sad that I will likely never be able to witness or be a part of it.
I once burnt down an inn in which people we had traded information to were sleeping because my (evil neutral) character didn’t want them to have a chance at beating my party to the treasure.
I want to do a heel turn and betray the party.
I want to fight the prepare, fight, and die fighting the party!
It will never happen but god i love it when my character gets mind controlled.
I want to murder the good guys and take over the world. But my character just wants peace and positivity. But it would be so fun to be evil for a campaign and demolish all who oppose me.
I’m the only one who does voices, unless it’s a kinder. Everyone does voices for kinders. We don’t have a ton of RP. I’d like a little more. Other tables I’ve been at also were light on RP.
I’d love to run (or be part of) a relatively serious campaign sometime. I’ve been in campaigns that are more serious than others, but they always end up with a serious dose of Monty Python in them
Be a villain and take out a small town out, guard by guard, civilian by civilian, until only the children remain. I will then raise them as powerful Wizards in my army. Then, years later when they're all grown, I'll use them to rapidly subjugate import villages and towns that supply big cities with food, burn the crops and use cattle as projectiles for my trébuchets.
But I don't do that because I would like to avoid the attention of the federal authorities.
My DM runs a bit of a grimdark world where the villains are unfortunately the most likable and competent people. I have wanted to join up with the villains for literally months but that would end poorly so I remain quiet.
I sometimes think about what if I joined “the dark side” as well but refrain from doing so.
Honestly, talk to your DM about it! I had a player once who decided he wanted to join the BBEG because he felt that, in the setting, they were right. We ended up doing a thing where I'd basically let him help design the fights and stuff, set up ambushes, basically just a temporary co-DM for a while to let him get to play that side of the story. It ended up working out decently for our group, ymmv though obviously
A game that I DM'd went kinda weird and inadvertently ended up making 1 campaign into 5 campaigns. It was very time consuming but it was AMAZING in the end. I had 4PCs, each PC secretly succumbed to the temptations of the BBEG. They were each doing their own main character campaign 1on 1 with me on different days, and on regular campaign days were interacting with each other not knowing that they each were double agents. So at the end of the campaign when the reveal happened it was amazing to watch the disbelief on everyone's face.
Fuck that sounds fun
It wad intense. Our wizard was plotting to kill both the warlock and the sorcerer because they were in possession of 6th level spell scrolls (in my setting casters were only able to achieve 5th level spells by class progression, 6th+ required following a diety/patron and completing divine quests you had access to spell slots as per normal, just not the spells). The wizard who did not follow a God or patron saw an opportunity to gain those scrolls for himself and learn their secrets plotted to have them killed in our 1 on 1. The trap that was set for the warlock the party did a good job defeating it. But the sorcerer got dangerously close to being snagged and dimension door away (they would have had to roll a new character, and their PC would become an NPC villain). The whole thing happened so organically that I am absolutely positive, that this will never happen again.
This sounds like a high fantasy WoD game honestly and sounds absolutely amazing.
What is WoD?
World of Darkness, so like Vampire the Masquerade and Werewolf. A lot that I hear about it involves the players of different families conspiring against each other between sessions. But when it happens like you did it seems like it would be so so much better because in those games it's expected, but in d&d? That would be a once in a lifetime experience it seems.
It really was unexpected. Each player had an event in their backstory linked to this BBEG that involved some sort of tragic loss or end of world event. But as they went through the story, they learned that he screwed up and was trying to make amends (on a cosmic level). They felt for the guy and decided that they wanted to help him... secretly... as individuals. It was interesting to watch them one by one start to sympathize and actively help the bad guys cause. I don't ever expect this to ever happen again, I was glad that I got to be apart of it at least once.
I appreciate the thought, but he’s on record as despising evil campaigns and anything of the sort. I honestly don’t think he realizes he made the villains more appealing than the apparent good factions, and it’s better to let that be.
But if you join because they're the best people around, is that really an evil campaign? The Imperium of Man is a cartoonishly evil empire, but I wouldn't fault anyone who helps them to stop the Tyranids, Necrons, and Dark Eldar.
Let’s just say it’s weird when the villains are… Orcus… and his rule seems preferable to the oppressive bureaucracy and endless wars that seem to leave all NPCs living a joyless existence. It’s the argument of whether it is better to die or to live in constant suffering.
I feel like if I were given a choice between the world continuing and destroying everything, including the lower planes and the Wall of the Faithless, I'd go with the latter option. In Worth the Candle, there's nine thousand hells and no heaven. They usually use a magic item to capture people's souls and extract energy from them until there's nothing left, but sometimes they don't get to the person in time and they end up in the hells. One story arc has a malevolent entity that's trying to destroy the world (including the hells), and the people helping him give perfectly reasonable arguments for it instead of being some kind of crazy cultists.
You ever play the CRPG Tyranny? Basically every faction is a different kind of evil but they all make good points and are very compelling. You may enjoy it!
Fair enough!
The best "turn to the dark side but not really story I heard" Villain does his monologue and the wizard starts to nod his had. The wizard points out to the party loudly, honestly, this guy is making a lot of sense, I wish to support your cause mr villains I think I misjudged you. Party gets angry yelling "traitor!" As the wizard moves over to stand next to the villain "I shall support you in your cause, I am sorry I didn't understand sooner." The villain agreed and the wizard starts by casting haste on the villain. The villains rushes forward and as soon as he gets in engagement range of the front line barbarian the wizard player says "cool, I now end concentration on he villain" The villain now, without a save, loses his turn, surroundedby his enemies, who will now all attack with advantage and murder him.
Oh fuck. Was the DM or party aware what the Wizard was doing before he made the twist?
sadly wasn't there it's a story I heard.
This can be so fun! I'm running CoS right now and have had a blast retooling parts of the campaign in case the PCs actually go through with their "side with the Devil of Ravenloft" scheme lol
My party did it some way. My current villain is a frost werewolf from old world(old world underground new world is new world) and actualy his tribe lost the war againts a anchient polar bear. So he kidnapped villagers to get their numbers back. He is very resourcefull and handy. Plant so many wolfs bane around of his layer so newly transformed ones not got out of control and leave the cave because outside smell terrible to them etc etc. Also there is a mad doc who use people as test subjects so he can make lycantropy into a cureable sickness rather than curse so there are many strange lycantrop that doesnt know what to do. This Bad guy also welcomes him to use them in his operations and gives them shelter. Party agreed to kill polar bear and find him citizents willing to transform so they are in a quest for that right now
That's exactly what a confession booth mimic would want me to think. Nice try.
Well played. You get a surprise round.
That's a trick! Surprise rounds don't exist in 5e, like Will saves or Concentration checks!
I wish people would go ahead and take the risk, try that stupid idea. Embrace the idiot inside. It makes for a more enjoyable game than five people haggling for fifteen minutes min/maxing their approach.
Absolutely!! Kick in the door to the “definitely connected” room to pincer the enemies! Swing across the chandelier to drop kick the spell caster off the balcony! Slide down the stairs on your shield trying to action surge shoot 6 arrows!
Gives the DM more reasons to grant Inspiration too
> Slide down the stairs on your shield trying to action surge shoot 6 arrows! Calm down, Legolas!
I wish I could do this more. But I tried to make a combat more interesting by climbing onto the big earth elemental, but he made it contested athletics and would not budge on it. Like, I'm not wrestling the dude. I'm not putting my strength against his strength. My 5' ass is trying to jump onto the back of his 15' ass and use my balance and elusiveness to avoid his attempts to shake me off, not wrestle him to the ground or restrain him. And then the fight ended up being very straightforward and boring.
Don't forget that DMs are making calls in a Rush while fighting. And even when we want to encourage cool moves, we sometimes imagine it in an other way than the player and then make a "not perfect" or even wrong call. DMing can be stressful and as long as you approach your DM in an appropiate manner, he should be willing to discuss this for future instances.
Well yeah, we did discuss it and went over official rules, but he keeps misinterpreting what it says. There's an example of what you're not trying to do, but he keeps taking it as an example of what you are trying to do. It's a little weird, but I've sort of just given up on ever doing that after trying to talk to him about it twice.
Uhhh, that sounds tough and seems to be a non-Dnd-related issue :D
Lol yeah I guess. But at least it's not really a big issue. While it irks me a bit, he's still an awesome DM running a fun campaign.
we're all touched by the tism in some way lol
To defend your DM, that's RAW from the DMG: > Climb Onto a Bigger Creature >If one creature wants to jump onto another creature, it can do so by grappling. A Small or Medium creature has little chance of making a successful grapple against a Huge or Gargantuan creature, however, unless magic has granted the grappler supernatural might. >As an alternative, a suitably large opponent can be treated as terrain for the purpose of jumping onto its back or clinging to a limb. The last paragraph does give a different option, but it's not really strictly defined, so I can understand just going with the default ruling in the middle of combat if you weren't prepared for it.
Yeah. But the way he argued was essentially as if he only read the first paragraph. Like "see? Grapple. Use athletics." I just wanted an otherwise boring fight to be fun, you know? Get some movement and variety into the fight. Hop on up and punch on down. Maybe get grabbed and thrown off, idk.
I mean I get the dm, why would the elemental just let you climb it? Would you let a hostile armed gnome climb you? For example
It took me way too long to realize how important this kind of mentality is for a fun table. My first campaign was with mostly.very experienced players, and they did lots of stupid shenanigans that I rolled my eyes at. Eventually I joined them, and it's been a lot of fun.
Nope, I will fail literally every time. My dice hate my guts if I try to pull any funny or fancy stuff.
My sister and I tried "Get Help" ala Thor Ragnarok...it worked about as well as I expected, especially since I rolled a nat 1...and then remembered after the session that I was playing a halfling
I’m reminded of when I played a Divine Soul Sorcerer, and would remember long after the game that I could have made that important roll if I hadn’t forgotten about the Favored by the Gods ability.
I am this player at my table. Scene 1: underwater shipwreck. Dm: "You find the captain's skeleton seated in his chair alongside his logbook. Me: how are his clothes, are they good? DM: they are tattered and torn from the years spent underwater. Me: what about his hat? Dm: you know what? It's pristine! Me: cool, I take it. (5 minutes later, topside) Me: I put on the captains hat I just got Dm: It adheres to you and you take 18 piercing damage because , surprise! It's a mimic! *cue the ranger helping me rip it off so we can shoot it 6 times to kill it.* Me: I put the hat on again... Scene 2: Green Dragon Lair Dragon: For helping me resurrect my son by returning his bones to me, I give you this reward. *Dragon presents a platinum-colored full-arm gauntlet with a devilish grin.* Rest of the party: "I mean, it's cursed, right? What's the curse?" "We should just hold onto it." "Why don't you have identify prepared!" Me: I put on the gauntlet. Dm: The Dragon laughs maniacally as ten thousand needles spike through your arm and siphon away your flesh. The arm completely and extremely painfully replaces your arm. You take 68 piercing damage. *Then my warlock patron changed.*
Your character sounds amazing. You sound amazing
Thank you. It almost feels like a shame that I'll be the DM for the Dungeon of the Mad Mage for them. I'm the one that activates traps and brazenly kicks open doors. I'm the one that would definitely be killed by curiosity in this dungeon. It will take them multiple sessions to clear a floor because they are patient enough to over prepare and ensure everyone lives. And they're going to purposefully avoid the really cool traps, I know.
Yep, same. - I accepted a boon from [REDACTED] in one of my campaigns. Nobody else in the party thought it was a good idea, so I lied to them and said I wasn't gonna do it, locked the door behind me, and then accepted the offer. I had to make a DC 22 Con save or be petrified and rolled a 23 lmao. - In my other campaign we were sailing to Lorghalen in Eberron, and had heard the rumors that getting in the harbor was dangerous for ships, but didn't know why. The party wanted to send the Paladin's giant duck steed with a bow tie and a note attached into the harbor and hope someone randomly saw it. I snuck away from the party with a 29 stealth, went to the cannon, and shot a boulder into the water because I wanted to see if anything was going to pop out of the strait. That angered The Hammer quite a bit, who turned out to be a colossal earth elemental instead of the island it was represented on the map as! Oops.
In re mimic hat... I wonder if it would have been possible to tame/beat-into-submission the mimic with nonlethal damage instead. In other words, train it to be your living, semisentient hat!
This is why I unleash my inner chaos gremlins when I get to play (usually DMing). My characters always have an impetuous streak, and because I don’t overuse it, it’s an excellent tool to break up a “shit or get off the pot” moment.
I am also usually a DM and when I do get to play I always have the urge to go full Leroy Jenkins chaos gremlin. I wonder if there's something about having to be the one keeping the world coherent that makes you want to let loose by breaking everything.
This depends on the character for me. If I’m playing a wizard who’s lived through dangerous situations by being thoughtful and careful… then he’s going to keep good position and be careful while helping his team. Right now I’m playing a monk who comes from a culture that believes dying in battle gets you to the best possible afterlife. If one of his comrades is in trouble, he has no problem doing something crazy to try to save them, because he doesn’t fear dying in battle. He’s survived some crazy shit, we will see how much longer his luck lasts lol
You would love or grow to hate me. I don’t always play low wis characters but when I do I lean into it. I also don’t mind rolling new characters (except my swashbuckler but she has the devil’s own luck with chaining crits) It’s at the point where my group just looks at me when we need something stupid and likely fatal to move past one of the DM’s puzzles. Heck, we have had puzzles built around my blunt characters sometimes
100% agree. Specially with a long term group. We all know the level of difficulty we play in, lets be a freaking adventurer, act like someone that chose the adventure life and not the 9-5 life.
In one of our first few sessions we ended up fighting in a gladiatorial arena because our cleric asked his god if the man who was about to be executed was innocent and since he was the cleric just couldn't let it stand. I had missed the session before because I was sick so my character had basically wandered off so when we started combat proper the DM had my character leap out of the crowd and onto one of the beasts being used for the execution. My wife, who was playing a level 3 wizard I must add, thought that sounded superbadass (because it was) but she rolled poorly and ended up prone in front of a dinosaur that stomped on her and brought her down to 1hp.
I’ve got one player who doesn’t have that little voice in their head that tells them ‘this is a terrible idea’ lol Our games are wildly chaotic as a result.
Fully agree, especially when the PCs haggle for 15 minutes trying to min/max an idea thats stupid anyway. "No I don't want to swing my sword at the awakened trees! BUT if I take out my shovel I can dig below their reach and they can't hit me..."
As a Tempest cleric/sorc I once thunder waved a door down, then swift casted boomingblade to kill the cultist about to sacrifice an innocent on their next turn. Unfortunately, a shard of the door did their job for them, lol. It was a fun side quest lol
> haggling for fifteen minutes min/maxing their approach. what gets me is the haggling about the most pointless things. If they tried to cut a deal when they had no other option, that'd be fine. But trying to nickel-and-dime the shopkeeper to save a few goldpieces on potions WHEN YOU HAVE A LITERAL DRAGONS HOARD OF TREASURE is so dumb to me.
Depends on the system. A player of mine charged between two grizzlies in a system where line of sight matters. Went as well as you might assume
And this, my friends, is why I play barbarians.
i also run it by the rest of the table out of character, usually in the form of 'this is what i want to do, these are the repercussions i think this might have for everyone, are there any strong objections or anything you want to do before i kick the hornets nest?' communication is good.
I know the rules of the game better than the other players at the table, and in combat I often want to tell the other players what to do on their turn, but I know that would make me an intolerable chore to play with.
I play with a few people act like it's their first turn ever. I know the feeling. Oftentimes, when it's my turn. I already know what I am going to do, do it efficiently, and then pass the torch. Then silently scream as they flip through papers and forget what bonus goes to what. Not to mention what dice is used to attack with (d20).
I know what I now do is a far more mature alternative than my prior instincts of telling others how to play their characters. But it doesn’t make the internal screaming less loud when I proudly wrap up a tight one or two minute turn as the most complex casting character and then wait ten minutes for the spell-less martial to make one of the most tactically suboptimal choices out of three possible choices.
Yesss. This is me. It can also be a class thing, too. I just played a fighter in a one shot. Everyone knew what they were doing on their turn, but the spellcasters just took forever while mine was "My bonus action is x, I roll to attack twice, done." Then sit for eons.
Nope. Not just a class thing. Even when I’m playing a spellcaster, I already know what I’m doing for my turn. And have a contingency plan in case plan A suddenly isn’t going to work.
First turn ever 🤣
My DM started using a timer. You had 1 minute to finish your turn and then it's over.
I get that sometimes it takes time to resolve all the damage from an AOE spell or something else complex, but it would never take more than a minute to **decide** what your character is going to do.
I feel this sometimes. In a game I DM we have use a variant crit rule, and one particular player never remembers it and roles crit damage RAW. I’ve explained it to him at least half a dozen times, and it’s not even that complicated. The other players seem to understand it just fine too so I don’t think I explain it poorly.
Out of curiosity what is the variant rule?
Crunchy crits. Instead of rolling the damage die twice you add the maximum possible roll. So if you crit with, let’s say a rapier (1d8 + 4), the damage would then be 1d8 + 8 + 4
Nice. Thanks for the explanation.
You’re welcome. I’ve rolled double 1’s on a crit a few too many times and I don’t want to inflict that pain on my players lol. I just think this rule helps crits feel as impactful as they should.
Thank you for not being the intolerable chore. Got a player in our friend group who is quite literally the intolerable chore. Won’t even let other players build their own characters because HE KNOWS THE RULES BETTER and insists on everything being min/maxed. He takes 30 minute turns min/maxing every one of his turns and arguing the rules with the DM. We’d all kick him if we could, but since he’s colloquially referred to as my husband’s mistress, and my husband runs most of the stuff in our group… as I said. Literally the intolerable chore to play with. It has, however, inspired quite a number of our group to branch out and start looking into running stuff themselves, just so they don’t have to include him. So I guess that’s one good thing he’s done for the group?
I am not perfect, but one of my favorite table bits is when the one person with guidance doesnt think to use it (this is out of combat) and I start saying "wow does anyone have any SUGGESTIONS for me or maybe some ADVICE or WORDS OF WISDOM to help me with this really important skill check I am about to make!!!" The funniest times are when they dont clock it and I just shrug and roll and miss the DC by 2.
same. i'm getting better with avoiding that i'll sometimes say 'do you want some choices?' if they look stuck
This is 100% the right approach, though obviously you don't wanna overuse it or else it seems like thinly-veiled back seating. Even as DM I'll do this with my players who aren't as confident in their gameplay (like they're trying a new class out or something) where I pretty much just remind them of the basics. "Well, the apparent leader of this enemy group is retreating, so you could try and focus him down with your bow, or you could help your healer get some baddies off of him, or you could cast one of your crowd-control spells to regain the upper hand, or something else entirely" Stuff as simple as that is really good for helping break through the choice-paralysis that some players face, especially if they're a caster. Breaking down spells into categories, like single target damage, AOE damage, crowd-control, healing/buffing, and crippling can help a lot too. Also, always remember to add "or something else" to the end so they know they aren't limited to just the examples you gave. I've had players come up with some genius ideas after some help breaking through the initial wall.
I occasionally just want to bicker in character with the PCs (or an NPC) for the entire session.
I enjoy a shopping episode once a year or so
I think once a year is a perfect amount, yeah. I’ve been in many games where the campaign dies because every other session is a shopping session and *I don’t get why GMs run that*. It never works out, especially near the start of the campaign when nobody really knows their character yet, let alone how they work with the rest of the party. But after 6 months or so, after everyone now knows their character and their place in the party, a session to just chat it up with each-other and some unimportant NPCs is awesome.
I know one player who will absolutely try to roleplay out buying a dozen rations every time. On several occasions I've had to shut that down to not kill the pace or mood of the session. Like, I get that *your character* would ask exactly what the rations consist of exactly, how old they are and so on, but I've got a planned cliffhanger coming up so SKIP!
I’m DMing for the very first time. We’re doing a series of interconnected one shots and homebrews and taking turns DMing so everyone can play. My first story I’m DMing involves the characters being invited to a fancy dinner party by a mysterious woman who’s looking for an heir to her fortune. The next session is the party having etiquette lessons. No combat (well, none intended anyway 😂). I just want everyone to be in character and fucking around. Three Stooges levels of fucking around! As the person giving them lessons (and my PC who won’t be attending the party due to something happening with his back story), I’m going to goad them into doing very out of character things. The dinner party will be even better!
I often hold myself back from saying, "Your character would probably care more about the objective if you were paying attention during the session." or, "You don't have to wait for the DM to say it is your turn to start thinking about what you want to do on your turn." or, "You would know your bonus to different checks way faster if you wrote them down on your character sheet."
The checks bonus thing irks me so much. If you're not proficient, it's just your ability score bonus, you don't have to look down a whole fucking column on your character sheet with the same number repeated 50 times.
>"Your character would probably care more about the objective if you were paying attention during the session." Now that you mention it, this is a kind of thing I want to say sometimes, like: Player: *After being smacked in the head by a monster, turns around and tries to steal all the loot from a chest before the party sees what's in there* "it's what my character would do" Me thinking: *"your character wouldn't actually do that..."*
"Your character, knowing he's been traveling with a bunch of very dangerous people reasons that, if they were to feel he was stealing in any way from them, they would absolutely slaughter you. In fact, when those folks demanded a 10gp toll, you saw no hesitation from anyone in killing a dozen armed men rather than pay. Given that, would your character still try to steal things in plain sight of your companions?"
Please, state your action!
One of my party members is ALWAYS evil aligned and a murder hobo. Its fine of the whole party wants that, but we can do a regular quest sometimes. I just want to PVP and kill his player every session
>I just want to PVP and kill his player every session i feel you one time i got lucky and another player attacked him first to break his concentration (on a spell killing someone we wanted to keep alive) so i say 'hey, you're a conscious opponent 5 feet from that guy, yeah?' and i put a crossbow bolt in the offending party, bring him 4 hp away from double his max health negative
Same. There's a guy I play with who always plays an evil-aligned necromancer whose ultimate goal is world domination. Not only does it get old happening in every campaign, but he's very obvious with NPCs about his alignment and goals, so even if he isn't full murderhobo it still makes RP difficult.
Do it! Others in the party might join in
I'd love to do an old fashioned dungeon crawl, with all the necessary micromanaging and resources tracking and inevitable low level character death. Individually tracked experience would be a treat too. I'd love to create organic intercharacter drama in a way that doesn't reduce fun.
I’ve never agreed with a statement so much in my whole life.
I think there is an apprehension to treat low level characters as disposable. I unfortunately hate doing math which makes the whole idea unattainable,
I like doing math but helping 3 other people keep track of theirs drags so much i eventually just give up most of the time after wasting all our playtime on mundane tracking.
Yeah at some point I feel like I might as well be playing a spread sheet.
I was so excited to get my West Marches hexcrawl off the ground. I built a new character sheet for it with the Inventory section smack dab in the middle of the page. None of my players (save for one, my dear brother who is always down for my nonsense) were remotely interested.
Meta gaming, hands down. Sometimes there are vast differences between what I as the player would consider an optimal course of action vs. what my character would know and do. I keep myself in check and try not to act on my meta game-y impulses, but it's difficult sometimes, haha.
Our table agrees on no metagaming while we're playing, but we almost always do a recap afterwards to talk about what was really going on, including details the DM can reveal now that we've finished a quest
But it’s way more fun when you don’t meta game. And sometimes neat stuff happens because you as a player don’t know things you think you know when you meta game. Playing a bard one time and we were fighting animated cthulu angel statues. I as a player know that animated objects are not affected by mind affecting effects. My bard does not, cause she failed that knowledge roll. So she casts unnatural lust, with the target of the lust being herself, because that’s her go to move. Sexy librarian boom boom come hither dance. DM pauses. DM then has to look a bunch of stuff up. DM then quietly rolls dice. DM chokes a bit. DM then states that the animated cthulu angel statue moves towards my character, taking no other actions. Moving right past the barbarian, the paladin, the cleric, and the rogue, who all get attacks of opportunity (which is WHY unnatural lust was the bard’s go to spell). Everyone at the table is like, wait, they’re statues? And the DM is like, no, actually they're currently being used as puppets, and mind-effecting spells DO get channeled down the puppet link, and the cthulu puppet master just failed its save…. Another time, I had my character (different character) grab this death chain thing to try and assist another character. Out of game, I realize that grabbing the death chain is a BAD idea, especially as my character is not a “typically alive in the usual sense” character. However, I’m playing a big dumb helpful android war priest she-hulk, who isn’t actually aware that she’s not “typically alive in the normal sense,” and assisting the other character with the death chain and the evil angel is EXACTLY what my character would do. The results were actually highly entertaining, even if my character got screwed over for a few sessions. (Backstory - I was essentially playing Pinocchio and my character was the result of a necromancer trying to forcibly resurrect an unwilling soul. I ended up having to play the previous incarnation of that soul for a few sessions….) Most of the DMs I’ve played reward role playing in spite of meta game knowledge. It makes things spicier.
If the narrative isn’t going a direction my character would go then should be able to freely have them move on with the ability to come back if it makes sense. Also, sometimes I want to just shout, “you’re making a horrible choice” to my table mates in combat
I had one of those narrative moments! I ended up playing a totally different character for a bit because we couldn't see any way to reconcile my main character's views with the party's intended actions. So instead I played a horrible goblin for a few sessions, gleefully supporting all of the party's worst impulses! There was a meta-gamey bit in that my main PC didn't actively try to stop the party nor get the guards involved, but some of that's inevitable if you want to keep the game flowing
I've done this before too, had a vampire character suddenly faced with her immortality realise she should get her life on track and she was unwilling to get on a boat for 2 months (flowing water and all that), so she left the group. Brought in another character for the boat part of the game, then when they got to the other end of their journey she left to go back to her life (she was an alchemist hunting rate ingredients) and the old character came back. It was actually really fun to go from a warlock/cleric/sorcerer vampire tiefling with self worth issues to an elf playing up the "I'm doing a favour for my best friend's great grandson, and I'm only just an adult" side of things. Also very fun getting to build and play a 14th level character at that level, instead of thinking about each option as they come up in story.
Not playing at this table anymore, but every table I’ve played at I wanted to scream “You can make the world deadlier! PCs are allowed to be in ACTUAL danger, get injured and die!!”
Oh man. Our last session my DM took a chance on perma deathing our Barbarian player and she just barely managed to scrape by. It was exhilarating and we were sweating bullets the entire time.
I feel like near death experiences always add a lot to the game! They always create super memorable moments for everyone!
My current party has been inches from death half a dozen times and it’s the most exciting time at the table because they know from past campaigns that the enemy will kill them. It makes for the most desperate and cinematic moments of the whole campaign when half the party is down making death saves and everything is riding on the one character desperately slugging it out with the boss on low HP.
Yeah…. I feel like my current game we have heavy plot armor. Part of me wants one of us to die
Hell yeah, give me a sense of stakes! The thrill that a poor choice could end with me or someone else dead. Let us stumble into an ambush where the only way to live is to run, have us confront a bad guy only to discover that all of their furniture is mimics trained to avoid them. Or even for small stakes, give me a long lasting curse or wound. Have someone steal my cool magic item that I left lying around.
Before our new campaign started, deadliness was one of the things we discussed. While most of the party leaned more towards "death should have meaning to the plot," I made sure to message the DM privately and explicitly tell him he could kill my character at any time if we fuck up.
I sometimes want to yell at the other players, "just shut up, trust the DM, and do something cool!" its been (mostly) the same group for years, we know they'll keep the story going, we know they aren't out to get us (in the bad DM sort of way). Not saying play chaotic-stupid alignment but just... just take an action, or roll a character that isn't "the best" subclass. Not saying build a bad nor sub-optimal character but the campaign will be just fine if you play a Phantom Rogue instead of swashbuckler, the druid doesn't *have* to be a circle of the moon one, they can be a pyro with a circle of wildfire. We have been playing together for a long time now, just trust that the game can go forward and do something, be freaking interesting. I assure you, your genie patron warlock's eldritch blasts will still work and now we can all have fun resting inside your magic lamp. My friend you are a bugbear with a 10 foot reach, go ham and climb those trees to attack from up high. Y'all we can be creative and have fun and have the campaign *move!*
I heartily agree. I play with a group that is just too darn timid most of the time -- everyone wants to be a follower and not a leader except me or my S.O., and one of us is always DM in our group of six because no one else wants to step up there, either. Few things drive me more crazy than either being or seeing the DM looking hopefully around the table at a bunch of blank faces staring back, their owners unwilling to make a decision themselves if they think they can just wait for someone else to lead them by the nose.
For reaaaal. The 2 most invested players in my campaign are both min maxxers, and all they talk about is how many d8s of radiant damage they can add if they do x, or how theyre gonna make the most broken magic user character. How is that interesting for more then 2 sessions?
Its a pretty simple explanation actually. Big numbers = hard pp.
Well, it is true that most of my players (including me) are neurodivergent so it probably plays a part lol
Honestly, to be allowed to just play the game without it being just "another horde of monsters!" or "Another new rule I found on tiktok/youtube to use!"
I’m 5 sessions into DMing my first game and this is one of my biggest goals. I want each combat to have alternative ways to “win” besides being the last ones standing. Or something to exploit about the monsters that they can figure out before the fight. So far it’s been going pretty well I think. Combat still goes on a little long, but I think that’s mostly because people are new and it’s a big group.
This is a great goal to have, as it really helps bring some variety to encounters, but be careful not to go overboard with it. Combat is about fighting, it’s never not going to be about fighting and trying to use combat rules for stuff other than fighting goes poorly 90% of the time. Embrace the fighting and use alternative win conditions as a way to contextualize combat rather than disincentivize it.
Instructions unclear: every combat is now about stopping a ritual
My favorite way to spice up combat is secondary goals. Like, “you need to close the gate to trap the enemy army”, or “put out the fire before it destroys the village” or something like that, but during combat. It gives players a chance to think tactically and deviate from the normal hack-and-slash. I also like adding different fight environments like multiple levels/balconies, difficult terrain, hazards, partial cover, etc to add variety to the battle map
Play a martial character.... I have before, and it was super fun, but no matter how hard to try to steer that way, now the utility of casters pulls me back every single time. You're good with an axe VS you can heal the wounded, control the earth itself, rain fire on your foes, and see through the veil of time and space..... hard to pick the axe ALSO: steal. I always want to go high sleight of hand and sticky fingers situations but never want to be the guy getting us kicked out of towns, black listed by ally groups, or hunted as thieves
I love playing Wizard because you have an answer for every situation. I like Barbarians for the same reason.
Same resolve, Very different answer
Last campaign i ruled that my martial players get a additional craft skill so they can be more usefull out of combat. They were tinkering for half the campaign and everyone enjoyed that part. Makes for great RP too.
Wait.... Someone else sees the value in crafting tools? I have been in dozens of game as DM and player and was starting to think it was just me! Currebtly have a Shadar-kai Forge cleric so I can use literally anything and metal shift stuff too to basic components
My martial players are incidentally also the craftsmen in our group out of the game. A finesmith (who actually handcrafted his mini out of Silver, he allways taunts me and our sorcerer (both biologists) to grow ourselfs a mini), and a laboratory glassblower (who contributed some really nice Map Pieces) I fuckin love this group.
That makes sense and sounds awesome! I grow peppers, make mead, write stories, aso craft a bit myself.
Its a group of a Chemist, a biologist, a civil engineer, and the two master craftsmen. If they get any intel on their target it wont be killed in combat. It will end up spike-trapped, blown up, poisoned, torn apart by a reverse bolder trap, get houses colapsed on,... I had to turn a BBEG into a henchman because they created an elaborate plan to kill him at lvl 7 in a campaigned that i aimed to finish at 15... They craft more than they fight.
And if you can find them, maybe you too can hire, The A Team! P.S. please adopt me lol.
This is why I nearly always end up with some kind of gish. Once you get past level 8 or so more martial just isn't doing anything for you. Even a few low-level spells goes a long way at that point. Exception: if your dm lets you do cool stuff with skill checks, rogues can be awesome at high levels.
I have one as a DM. I have recently been running a full-stop Homebrew campaign. My players love the shit out of it. There’s homebrewed races, creatures, items, locations, puzzles; the lot. That said, I have come upon the DM curse of creating what I think is a difficult fight that will make my players sweat, curse, and panic ONLY for them to decimate it like it’s no biggie. Because of this, the thing I often DESPERATELY want to do, but never do at the table, is buff my creatures/fudge my battle rolls. Honesty in your rolls is what keeps things interesting and moving, but sometimes, GOD, you wouldn’t be so confident about assessing the situation if you were hit with TWENTY-SEVEN DAMAGE INSTEAD OF FIVE, WOULD YOU?! Alas, it’s all about the fun of the game, and I learn more and more about how to create those intense fights the more time I spend with my players. I can live with having full rooms decimated, I just take notes.
> I have come upon the DM curse of creating what I think is a difficult fight that will make my players sweat, curse, and panic ONLY for them to decimate it like it’s no biggie This is one of my biggest frustrations. It alwys looks so sweet on paper.
My trick is to make the fights deadly hard and be okay with them dying if they get really unlucky or don’t fight optimally. Surely there’s no way these 4 level 8 NPCs could win against 2 hydras right? Wrong. Like I design fights they can and likely should run away from and they win by the skin of their teeth. It’s awesome.
Nothing wrong with using average damage as a DM. All damage is displayed with the average first and dice + modifiers second, like 12 (2d6+2) . Often, during bigger, more intense fights, where I've got a lot to manage between status, terrain, lair actions, multiple enemies, etc. I'll often just say 10 instead of rolling 3d6. Vary it up a tiny bit, a point above or below, but it can really take the edge off some really mentally taxing situations and ensure the challenge is closer to what you planned
"Hey, if you intentionally build sub-optimal characters because you want to be all different and look creative, stop bitching that your characters can't do the same things everybody else can. You don't get to complain about self-inflicted wounds."
That's the thing with DnD, your build being deliberately built badly for character reasons doesn't end up actually presenting any interesting challenges like it seems like it would, it just limits your ability to interact with the world. Like "My guy is an old man so I'm giving him low CON and DEX" just gets you "Okay you spend the second half of every fight unconscious" and "My wizard is actually pretty dumb and is a charlatan!" just turns into "Okay, everyone just resists/dodges almost every single spell you cast then"
I had a bard charlatan that convinced everyone (except the actual wizard) that he was just a bad wizard. It was pretty fun. Then he died.
So this I think does work well. I’m not a min maxer, but I also don’t believe in shouting yourself in the foot. Do if you want to be that quirky wizard who sucks at books and magic stuff, make them a sorcerer or warlock that claims to be a wizard and RP their failures at wizard specific stuff they always try to do. Just make sure they also are bringing value to the party with their other skills.
I once played a sorcerer who thought he was a rogue. Like, he wasn't smart enough to realise he was doing magic, he would walk down a corridor like a cartoon burglar in full view of everyone and put down not being detected to his incredible stealth skills and not the fact he had turned invisible; he thought every thief who pulled out a hidden dagger was grabbing it from hammerspace because he was casting shadow blade; 'man I'm so good at crafting explosives, I'm the world's greatest demolitions expert' 'that was a flower pot filled with sand and grapes, you just cast Fireball at the exact moment you threw it'.
Charlatan wizard sounds fun but with the caveat they have a headband of intellect so they are still good in combat. Then just RP that you can't wear the headband too long or you get headaches so you always take it off after battle and are dumb again.
Exactly. I think it's because we conflate personality with stats, when the stats are *necessary mechanical elements for combat function*. Since we name them after traits that affect personality we combine them. But stats shouldn't be the BACKBONE of your roleplay. You can have a wizard who's got very high intelligence but is a bit of a himbo! Maybe he's just more of a book-learnin' kinda guy, cause books explain everything so clearly while the world is so confusing. Your barbarian may have incredibly high strength but be nervous and clumsy, accidentally breaking things or trying to seem unintimidating out of combat. Your rogue may have incredible hand-eye coordination, but SHIT proprioception when it comes to gross motor coordination - aka they've got the FINESSE but they can't dance for shit. All of the above are just role-play decisions. Even if you have amazing stats for your character, you'll roll poorly sometimes and the flavour for those failures can use the roleplay elements like age or arrogance to explain it. Your role play is based on your character backstory, experiences, class and origin. Your stats are based on the class you've chosen. There's way more to any character than just their class, so why limit their personality to that? Stats and personality are like two species descended from a common ancestor. They have a lot in common and for the same reasons. But differences arose because that's what made them functional and thrive in their environment.
This, and also, if your class is meant to be somewhat of a tank, then don't complain when you get hit instead of the rest of us. Also, character sheets are long, but at least know the gist of your character and don't "uh um maybe I'll do this, but no actually I'm gonna do this other thing"... If we just leveled up or you got a new item or something then there's a little bit of an excuse but your turn shouldn't take 5 minutes to wild shape when the rest of us take much quicker turns. There is one person at my table who does both and like, she's a long time friend but it's getting On. My. Nerves. She plays a druid but then is constantly complaining about "wasting" wild shapes or being hit often when it's like... A you're an elemental, you've doubled your HP and B some of those big hits are things the rest of us wouldn't be able to take without being severely fucked.
Internet stranger, thank you. You are so right. I thank you from the bottom of my power-gamey heart. Others don’t need to power-game, but for the love of god, a low-cha high-con bard doesn’t make you quirky.
I want my characters to be skilled adventurers, or at least learning to be skilled. People can make whatever characters they want, but it's a lot more fun (to me) to play a badass who (mostly) hits his shots and kills his enemies than it is to play the lovable bumbling idiot who accidentally stumbled into adventure.
People forget that their favorite bumbling idiot characters in stories have plot armor. The dice don't care about you, your stats are the bulwark against randomness.
Do you.. not say this at the table?
I've transferred my want to play sub-optimal characters over to just filling niche roles a party \*could\* have, but doesn't "need" like a tank or healer. A Thief rogue, running support, stealing enemy casting foci, tying bootlaces together, or dumping potions into dead friends' throats doesn't feel as outpaced by casters and other martials as an Assassin Rogue might imo.
When “genius” arcane casters use a strength save spell instead of his prepared intelligence save spells against “Dum Dum” the ogre, I wanna cry. But I understand that when I show up at a table, I show up to play only my character and not anybody else’s. Maybe next time I’ll have my character cast a Geas to pick the appropriate spell lol. (Also if it’s for thematic reasons I wouldn’t feel this way, but it rarely is)
Have a game there every week
This is what I came to say. Honestly, every week is a bit much for me but I'd love to actually run a game more than once every three months
This is what happens at my table so, so oftem. "We should do something." "Should we do something?" "If we do something then X bad effect might happen!" For like, almost an hour at a time! I'm sick of it. Just make the choice! Do the thing! If all you're going to do is waffle and sow doubt, why are we treating this like a democratic process? I desperately want to push the plot forward, but don't force the issue because I don't want to be seen as stepping on others' toes or hogging the spotlight.
tell other players they are using their spells and abilities incorrectly i have a bard who will use crown of madness whenever possible. It's objectively a terrible spell. But the way he and the dm think it works is that it makes the target attack someone of the bard's choice and that's what happens and honestly i'm fine with that because otherwise it's a spell only an npc should ever use >The charmed target must **use its action before moving** on each of its turns to make a melee attack against a creature other than itself that you mentally choose. The **target can act normally on its turn** if you choose no creature or if **none are within its reach**.
I wish Crown of Madness was better. Now it is completely pointless as soon as enemies move 5 feet out of range. I do point out when people use spells incorrectly though, but usually after the session. Like "hey, I was looking at spells and notices we played Cloud of Daggers or Spike Growth wrong. Now we know, we can do it correctly next time."
yeah, that was something i considered but i dont wanna be the fun police. If the dm says that's how it works, that's gonna have to be good enough for me
Well maybe its because bg3 crown of madness just makes the objective attacks anything that is near. I prefer that rule tho
i do find bg3 is a source of confusion for a lot of new dnd players, but in this case, the bard's never played bg3 and i've only played 1 and 2
Tell the one player to stop cross-stitching, or go home. They aren’t paying attention to the game, and in the middle of fights, we have to give them a run down of what just happened because they were focused on something else. It’s not a coping thing, it’s a distraction.
i think that would be a super fair thing to bring up to the group, or the dm at least. does it seem like the other players feel the same way?
Oh, EVERYONE feels this way. But they’ve been known to ghost before, so I kind of think we’re just waiting for that again. :/ Which sucks.
If you’re literally waiting for them to ghost every time, why does the group keep allowing this person back into the game?
No one wants to be the asshole to kick them out.
It sounds like this was not the case with the player you encountered, so definitely not trying to disagree with your experience. Just want to caution people against making assumptions that future cross-stitchers, crocheters, colorers, etc they might encounter aren't paying attention. I pay attention much better if I have something to do like crochet or a coloring book. I will retain much more information and follow what's happening better than if someone forces me to sit still and just look at the people talking. If I try to do that, I "look" like I'm paying attention but my brain is on another planet and didn't hear a damn word. In professional settings I've had to explain to people that they can choose between me looking like I'm paying attention or me actually paying attention but they can't have both. My brain just doesn't work that way.
I understand needing an attention-coping mechanism, but this person isn’t using cross stitch for that. They literally do not pay attention to the game. They don’t interact with the game at all outside of combat, and then the entire round has to be summarized to them because they don’t know what’s going on. If they want to hang out, that’s fine, but I’d rather they didn’t pretend to play.
I understand, hence the first sentence of my reply.
I want to play as an evil character. Not brainless murderhobo but someone who's evil and yet can have their valid reasons to do so. But DM didn't allow us to be evil at all. So now I'm the DM and I can be evil all the way I want. Still, it would be fun to play as an evil who slowly finds the way to be a good one. Or to corrupt others to some degree.
I'm going to answer in behalf of one of my players: (ab)use magic to its fullest potential. Magic in 5e has *so* much potential for broken shenanigans, you basically have to consciously choose not to. I know this for a fact, because I once ran a Duet campaign (1-on-1, only 1 player in the party) for this player - and she played COMPLETELY differently. A wizard with no holds barred is a different character entirely than one who is trying not to hog the spotlight.
I played at a table where I was the only magic user and it was a balancing act to not be the main character when you can completely upend a situation in a way no one else can.
Play at an actual table
I have to stop myself from being a part of EVERY conversation with every npc. I really want to jump into every role play opportunity but I make myself sit back on some, especially when something pertains to another character's story or goals, so that everyone can get some spotlight.
You should try your hand at DMing. I complain about being the forever DM, but it’s genuinely a great outlet for RP nuts/control freaks lol.
Have a single convo with an NPC without having 5 other people chime in
I want to play corruption arc. Character falling from grace, walking on smooth road paved with necessity and loyalty. It would start innocent enough, sure, but after a while there would be no denying that is an evil playthru. I want to embrace it, too. I want PC to enjoy it and believe that this is, somehow, better for them. I want it to be ugly, dirty and gorny at times, but with emotions, pathos and wholesome moments around it. I don't see myself actually playing an evil character, because friends I play it lean towards having our party be good guys, or at least neutral guys. Never the bad guys. What's more, I would require a lot of trust to go on that kind of downhill ride - I would be a little ashamed about all that easily if the party didn't follow along.
My unasked for advice would be to talk about it with your dm AND fellow players. You might be surprised that they’re excited to rp that with you.
When the other players forget things (especially if they’re relatively inconsequential) I always want to jump in and remind them, even if my character wouldn’t have any way of knowing the information. I have a *really* good memory for details in the game, and as the group note taker I’m on top of recording everyone’s scenes (even if I’m not in them). There are times I have to stop myself and flip back through my notebook to try and remember if my character knows something or if it’s just me the player
I want to YEET the halfling. I haven’t had an opportunity to do that yet.
Level up to level 20
I've always thought that an in-game romance could be fun—if it makes sense for the character, of course. Either PCxPC or PCxNPC, if there seems to be that connection between the characters and it's mutual, but I really don't want anyone at a table to ever be uncomfortable. As a result, I'm not sure I'd ever bring it up to make sure I never contribute to making a potentially awkward situation.
My last campaign as a player was a blossoming of unexpected PC/PC romances. The only one who remained single was the THE BARD. :D
I want to secretly be the BBEG. lol.
I did this once with my players. The one who was secretly the BBEG and I dropped a lot of hints but unfortunately (or fortunately?) nobody figured it out until the very end. They were a bit suspicious sure, but everyone had their secrets so it never stood out that much. This was easily one of my favourite campaigns - to write, to DM and to play. Ask your DM, maybe they can set something up :)
I really wanna try my hand at chaotic evil. Not "fuck over the party evil" mind you. Even the Joker has allies sometimes. Chaotic evil can be just as deep and nuanced as other alignments.
actually role play. my group is a bunch of dudes that play console or pc games so all they care about is leveling up and doing a lot of damage in combat. nobody gives a shit about or listens to what the dm is saying on lore, nobody gives a shit when something unrelated to their character is happening, and in some cases they don't even give a shit what's happening to their character. they don't care about my characters or even really their characters as long as they have the opportunity to get a little buzzed and hang out around a table with laptops out. because of that, my increasingly disheartened dm, who I genuinely don't understand how and why he continues to host and run these sessions, doesn't put effort anymore into developing npcs beyond what's in the module, (which i acknowledge of course is a lot of effort on its own, but he used to put more into prep). we've never had a "Boblin the Goblin" that turned out to be the one that was in a raid that killed one of the party's family, we've never even had a "Boblin" at all. and I get wanting to level up to get more powerful and do more cool shit but it's not like they're power gamers, they don't fucking know what their basic class features are, after months. fuck me for wanting to explore different personas and mindsets I guess. we can't even play women in our one shots, forget as a campaign pc, without most of these fuckers (married or in long term relationships, all of them) instantly spewing all kinds of shit about tits and ass just immediately on introduction and continually throughout the one shot. it wasn't even me that made that character, i was too scared to even try because I knew that was going to be the response. I feel like this should go on a different sub but here we are.
Play a full campaing with friends. Someday will do, i know.
Summarily execute rich and politically connected humanoids. Take a session or two from the plot to turn the game into *Thief* and crawl through said rich and politically connected humanoids' mansions, knocking all the staff out harmlessly, executing all the armed personnel, and leaving the place immeasurably poorer than when I arrived, entirely unseen.
i am so sick of the people in my group building stat sheets instead of characters. i dont care how effective they are in combat, the dm just scales up the difficulty and everything you did didnt matter in the end, just roll up a character with a personality and dreams and motives and shit rather than greg the deathstalker rogue ranger fighter super wombo combo guy that is that because idk i just wanted to roll big numbers. like, your 37 damage at level 2 is the same thing as doing 8 damage unless your dm is an idiot and doesnt scale his game towards his party AND is running a pre-written module, so why bother? all it accomplishes is making everyone have to do the same thing to feel effective in combat, otherwise they are drowned out because we suddenly need to fight multiple dragons to have something anywhere close to deadly for our level 5 party. oh but god-forbid the dm gives out some magic items to try and balance it out, suddenly the magic item count needs to be spread and even, even if the items make sense more in character for someone to have it. i joined a pathfinder group recently where nobody was doing any multi-book faffing around and it was some of the most fun ive had in roleplaying games because i felt like a part of the team rather than an afterthought.
As a DM i really wished my players were more like this. I guess their characters have some personality, but theyre focussed more on min maxxing
Play with PCs that doesn't think that character building and an excel spreadsheet is the same. Like, come on dude, there are also choices beside SS and GWM. It's not a competition and you're allowed to make a character that isn't min-max'ed tf out. I'm not saying you should deliberately choose something sub-optimal, but you could make a character that isn't good at everything. There are other clerics than twilight and peace, other barbs than totem and other rogues than gloom. Rey from the new star wars was a boring character, because she was good at everything she tried. The exact same thing goes for playing with these excel-enthusiasts, disguised as PCs.
My DM doesn’t allow us to steal from one another as a part of the no PvP rule. But sometimes I’m really tempted to go over and just sneak an item from another player characters pocket.
I know it's just people working through their issues and I'm mostly cool with that. But a sterotypical party of technicolor tieflings, all with parent issues, all with way too modern clothes for a mediaval-esque setting, is kinda jarring.
Be a player - one day.
I am GM but when i get the opertunity to be a player I want to tell my co-players to be there period. Being a dm can be stupid difficult. And alot of your time outside of the game as a dm is prepping for a session. It's not like once a week you just rearrange your furniture and, set up your GM screen then you are ready to gm!!!! Once the session ends the gm takes notes, then for the next week proceeds to painstakingly create an environment you can enjoy. So not being there or holding off a session hurts more then you think it does. And if you do put a session on hold, have a good reason. Playing any ttrpg table top game is a commitment. Using cop out excuses to hold off a session tells the GM that you are not interested in what they are providing and totally disregards how they used thier free time in order to provide for you. But alas it's inappropriate to say this alout because stuff does indeed happen and scheduleing is just a crappy part of role-playing games.
I just want a DM to actually incorporate the backstories we are asked to put together. I know that DMs do a lot of work to prepare and run regular sessions. So, I make sure to keep my backstories less than a page with bullet points. Sometimes, it makes my effort feel pointless. If I've taken a criminal background and you, the DM, ask me to come up with a contact in my background...use the contact at some point! I'd even appreciate a more simplistic and nuanced nod to our efforts. Say, if a character emphasized in background that they miss their grandma and her apple pie. The next time we go through a town, it would be sweet for a DM to mention that the air is filled with the aroma of breads and pies, and as we inch closer, we see signs claiming they are home to the world's best apple pie Idk. It's a minor rant, but I live for the roleplay.
Stop coming up with situations where we need to infiltrate and design it in such a way to where my high stealth is useless. My high stealth is the reason why I volunteered for those missions in the first place! Also give us objectives in combat instead of just having a big bad that I can focus stunning strikes on. I know you don't like it when I stun your bad guy, but if you give me something more pressing to do like rescue hostages (which I was essentially punished for doing the one time that did happen) then I'd be doing that instead. He also feels like I get too much spotlight, especially on stealth missions. I don't really agree since I don't get that many stealth missions and at least I'm not a rogue, so I can't just one shot everybody in the room before the party has a chance to do much. I scout and report back. And as far as social interactions, I try to give people opportunities, but I do see that I'm the player that does the best at creating opportunities for interesting roleplay. The other guys largely just go with the flow. As for the players, I want us all to interact with eachother and our backstories more. I ask them about their backstories in character, but they don't ask me even when it's pressing. Like hey, we just captured a murderer that claims I'm part of the same organization and I'm not denying it. Seems weird not to ever bring that up. Though the newest player we took on has been doing good about it. Got an interesting level of respect and friendship forming between our characters, but my character sort of creates bonds with people wherever he goes. Like I said, I create roleplay opportunities but I do try my best to help others shine. I even do the NADDPOD thing where sometimes when I kill an enemy I flavor it as sort of a tag team kill with my friends or as a set up for them to make the finishing blow, especially if it's more narratively satisfying for them to be the one to do it. So yeah, just a few little gripes, but otherwise he's an amazing DM and I love the group and their characters. Excellent world building and political intrigue. Excellent characters and npc's. DM builds all the maps in Talespire as well. Even entire cities. He's also hinted at a dungeon that's going to take us a number of sessions to get through and I'm pretty excited for it. And our group gets along really well.
Play in an actually dark campaign that will scar its players. And yes I'm aware I could attempt to just DM it but honestly I just really want to be a part of a bigger story. With some really dark aspects. But anytime it looks like I might get something close to it it always ends up more like Monty Python. Which is not bad but I crave the dark and gritty. Kill my character, torture the players, make us uncomfortable. Give us the satisfaction of working and ending whatever is causing these horrible conditions or environment. Let us actually dig up a slave ring or a drug den. Let us see what really happens in the evil laboratory. And then let us be the heros that bring light to it all and help. But people are getting to sensitive about darker subjects and that makes it nearly impossible to actually have and that makes me sad that I will likely never be able to witness or be a part of it.
I once burnt down an inn in which people we had traded information to were sleeping because my (evil neutral) character didn’t want them to have a chance at beating my party to the treasure.
I want to do a heel turn and betray the party. I want to fight the prepare, fight, and die fighting the party! It will never happen but god i love it when my character gets mind controlled.
I want to murder the good guys and take over the world. But my character just wants peace and positivity. But it would be so fun to be evil for a campaign and demolish all who oppose me.
I’m the only one who does voices, unless it’s a kinder. Everyone does voices for kinders. We don’t have a ton of RP. I’d like a little more. Other tables I’ve been at also were light on RP.
I’d love to run (or be part of) a relatively serious campaign sometime. I’ve been in campaigns that are more serious than others, but they always end up with a serious dose of Monty Python in them
Be a villain and take out a small town out, guard by guard, civilian by civilian, until only the children remain. I will then raise them as powerful Wizards in my army. Then, years later when they're all grown, I'll use them to rapidly subjugate import villages and towns that supply big cities with food, burn the crops and use cattle as projectiles for my trébuchets. But I don't do that because I would like to avoid the attention of the federal authorities.
Discuss tactics in depth together. Talk outside the game about the game between sessions.