What's the dumbest ruling you heard from a DM? #1 (r/askreddit)

[@KertaDrake]

"You want me to act out actions IRL to do them in-game? Alright. I punch the nearest person..." Player turns to face the DM with a malicious grin and casts Fist.

[@SyverReborn]

A DM said to me "do ur actions IRL or they won't count in game" and I said "you are aware that I'm playing a murderous assassin right?" DM says "yeah so" so I left the room and brought back a retractable prop knife that looked real, two of my friends looked at each other and rolled thier eyes saying "here we go again" then I stare at the DM and I say "are u sure that this is how u want to play the game?" DM looks uncomfortable but still says "yeah" then I say "I'm going throw this knife in the BBEGs face" and the DM quickly stopped the session and left, me and my friends burst into laughter for like 10 mins Moral of the story is, don't be a dick DM with an attitude problem

[@knutandersson4606]

@@SyverReborn I love this story.

[@FrogEnjoyer17]

I did that to a player who wanted to bow down to pick up something. He didn’t know there were mushroom spores below a certain level so depending on how he bows down he falls asleep or not

[@AtkOfTheMox]

“Act out actions IRL” is ablest as fuck

[@laargboolag9147]

@@SyverReborn 69 likes.....noice

[@wafflesarelove5801]

As far as I've found, DM's who support the *RULE OF COOL* without letting players do literally impossible stuff are the best.

[@williamcross210]

I generally went with, describe and your character can try it. Then we will discuss your chance of succeeding and come to a mutually agreed upon chance

[@TheL0rd0fSpace]

Some players take advantage of this, though, and will keep pushing the line as far as the dm will let them, and at some point, the dm's gotta put their foot down. 😂

[@Theroha]

@@TheL0rd0fSpace Boundaries are definitely important. I had a player running a homebrew vampire. They wanted to try turning the barmaid into a vampire. Rule of cool says go for it, but I couldn't let it happen because that would make the character OP compared to the rest of the table. Gave them a racial feature that lets them burn a hit die to cast speak with dead instead, so they can still interact with their victims.

[@Matthew-Fair]

Not gonna make it so you can just jump 200ft into the air to grab onto an airborne enemy just because you roll a nat20 But you can probably just jump upwards and make a really cool flip

[@speedy01247]

I remember wanting my swashbucklers to jump on the face of a enemy and slash at another (the drop down on an enemy and attack the other thing). DM said I couldn't as A that's an acrobatics check (and therefore an action, so I can't attack), B I wanted to make two attacks and could only attack once. (Yeah I couldn't do it due to game mechanics, but the refusal to follow the rule of cool there sucked) my character was all about showboating and he was like fuck no every damn time, it made sense, but I lost love for my character as he was constantly forced to not be as showboating as he should have been. (In most cases it was purely roleplay and had no actual game changing effects) Edit, it should be noted the drop down would have been a surprise attack as we weren't in initiative and I wanted to the swashbuckling equivalent of an assassin takedown. Ended up taking them out with my hand crossbow, but it felt so boring compared to what I could have done. (Had a surprise round and beat the other guy in initiative so it ended basically the same way)

[@ancapftw9113]

*GM rules that you have to do something IRL for your character to do it* Me: "GM, can I borrow 5 black candles, a sheet of printer paper, a sharpie, and a knife?" Him: "Why?" Me: "I'm going to draw the sign of Rl'yeh on the paper, light the candles around it, cut my hand with the knife, and bleed on the page while beseething dread Cthulhu to grant me magical powers. That way I can play my Warlock."

[@SSB_Master_Hand]

Me: "I roll for Intimidation, but first..." _proceeds to grab the DM by the collar and hold up a fist ready to deck them in the schnoz._

[@Kami74159]

"Roll for attack - wait no-"

[@jakevex4198]

Nat 20 Proceeds to destroy DM is gonads

[@The_AuraMaster]

Hear me out "I need a knife." "Why?" "I play a Blood Hunter." That should change their minds real fast.

[@ntfoperative9432]

"I CAST FIST!!"

[@hellyeah6127]

I had a DM that made us attack roll every time we wanted to interact with an npc. Example: "I place my hand on his shoulder and tell him 'i bet you can do 250.'" "make an unarmed attack roll." "What? Why?" "You need to see if you can put your hand on his shoulder."

[@noodlesgamebox5903]

That... Makes absolutely no sense... I'm not trying to kill the bartender, I'm trying to BUY A DRINK! Yeah, doesn't add up.

[@voodoodummie]

*natural twenty* ... "The merchant is now writhing on the ground with a broken shoulder waiting for the cleric-ambulance to arrive. His apprentice takes over the shop. The apprentice states that '200's best I can do,' do you wish to place another hand on this guy's shoulder?"

[@robbie_uvg1457]

voodoodummie I died over this

[@GrammarPaladin]

To be fair, the DM could have easily played it off as an intimidation check, it'd be the wrong bonus, but your DM was unto something lol

[@emberfist8347]

@@voodoodummie Natural you grabbed the merchant on the crotch.

[@thevoidismyhome7242]

The story at 5:00 actually had the poster (DM) say he was wrong. He isn't a player hater, he was just tired and not recalling correctly. I barely recall classes and races beyond like five of each, so having so much information is hard to store. I say he made a mistake and owned up with saying "I was wrong" That's different. Player Haters don't own up when they make bad rulings. Good DMs OWN UP WHEN THEY MAKE BAD MISTAKES!

[@thomaslacroix6011]

I've played 3.5/ pathfinder for a long time and when I switched to 5th edition, I was genuinely surprised you could sneak attack undeads (undead, constructs and many elementals were immune to it). I expected to find the bit somewhere that said you can't sneak attack undeads and looked for a while before admitting undead have weak spots too, I guess. The DM just had an old rule from a past edition.

[@CCartman69]

@@thomaslacroix6011 I once made a mistake, first time I played 5e, and used cure wounds on an undead thinking it would do damage. My DM allowed it but when I realised my mistake at the end of the session I told her, and she said "Yeah I thought you were wrong but it was a cool one off idea so I allowed it." She's a great DM, probably the best one I've ever played with.

[@stefanomartinelli7344]

@@thomaslacroix6011 Elementals aren't immune anymore? I haven't read 5 edition, but why would that make sense? They are Just a Mass of Fire/earth/water/air, why would they have vital spots? They don't have organs

[@jtosety]

The strange part is I remember seeing somewhere that at least certain undead have immunity to sneak attack because tjey don't have working organs I don't think I ever implemented that rule and am constantly forgetting about monster resistances and the half orc (and zombie) ability to shrug off the first time they drop to 0 hp (think zombie needs a roll)

[@kani75]

@@stefanomartinelli7344 Maybe elementals arent connected to their elemental plane as whole, but by small pinhole and if you strike near that, it disturbs their energy flow.

[@Tzryylon5]

Our DM was tired and flustered when he said to our sorceress, "uh, no, you can't burn the door down, because it's made of wood." Cue him facepalming while we laughed and reasoned that if wood was non-flammable, we'll simply set all this super flammable rock alight and turn the whole dungeon into an inferno XD

[@ArawnNox]

I once had a GM trip over his words and say "We're going to send an archer who's... good at... archery."

[@Zahaqiel]

Funnily enough, cross-laminated timber *is* reasonably flame-resistant, and it's not the only kind of fire retardant wood (in fact, there is such a thing as "fire retardant wood" as its own product). I've yet to find a DM who's aware of the existence of such lumber products however. ...One day. One day...

[@icarue993]

You should really not play at 2 am in teh morning. I've made some big mistakes as a player after 8 pm. My GM was really nice and those were mostly ended up in comedy.

[@619ver1]

Reminds at the scene of malcom in the middle "Do not drink so much orange juice, that does not grow on tress....Wait it DOES!"

[@nathanthom8176]

Wood takes a long time to burn, a thick door would take some time to burn to the point it would be able to be broken down. Obviously if the party was in no rush you could take a short rest.

[@henrykunisch4714]

“This is putting me in a bad mood but a good mood for punching” lol

[@blackstone1a]

Big Barbarian Energy right there

[@jackmack4181]

Barbarians in therapy

[@alexanderthegreat6682]

Barbarians when they have to roleplay

[@joe.5103]

I felt him though, these DMs suck hard.

[@dougmartin2007]

"Humans can't climb rope." I wanted to climb a wall that was a high DC. I asked if I could just climb the rope the party had lowered for me (a much lower DC per the book), but I was told rope only ever gives a +2 to climb, you can't climb a rope. I died as a result of that failed climb roll. And, yes, this was from a guy that had climbed a rope himself in gym class.

[@SvartUlf]

Lol

[@greysonjacobs3998]

Wh-what?

[@speedy01247]

You didn't argue about this or ask if you could tie yourself to said rope and have someone pull you up?

[@dougmartin2007]

@@speedy01247 of course I argued, that's how I got the explanation in my comment. No one in the party was in a place to pull me up. Even if they were, the point is that humans CAN CLIMB ROPE! So they shouldn't have to pull me up.

[@5peciesunkn0wn]

Does...does he not realize humans come from *ARBOREAL* creatures?! As in tree-living, climbing, jumping, swinging creatures?! Of course we can fucking climb ropes! It's not a greased pole!

[@ObnoxiousFeline]

It wasn't my Actual DM who scolded me about something, it was his friend who got him into DnD. Sometimes he pipes in if the Actual DM doesn't remember or know a rule, or in recent times he does it to try and cheat. Regardless, onto the story. I was playing as a bird race that can, in fact, fly. I told the Actual DM for one puzzle I was going to fly across a huge gap in a dungeon to see if there was anything I can interact with on the other side. The Not DM piped in and said "you have to have a running start of 30ft to fly, you can't just fly whenever you want as the race you chose". It was a homebrew race that the Actual DM helped me write, and nowhere did we ever write "it needs a running start to fly". Thankfully the puzzle was that the gap had an invisible bridge anyway, so I didn't need to fly, but the Actual DM and I were both very confused by his abrupt interruption. The Actual DM and I spoke about it later and he agreed that I can in fact fly whenever I want as my bird race implies. Later the Not DM made a character of that race, and when he tried to fly in an open field the Actual DM told him "you can't just fly, you need a running start" to the displeasure of the Not DM. EDIT: The Actual DM still enforces the made-up rule on the Not DM's character every time he tries to fly, now. It's frustrated him a few times, and I laugh every time it does.

[@alphagonomegarius5068]

this puts a smile in my face

[@d4s0n282]

that amazing enforcing a bad ruling lmao

[@ob2kenobi388]

Regarding the DM who said "Identify doesn't exist", if you want a magic item's nature to be a secret, I would do something like this: "You see a sword lying on the table. You can feel it radiating magical power." "I cast Identify." "Just as you do, you hear a voice in your head. ' _NO_ .' You are pushed 5 feet away. All you could identify was that the sword is enchanted to resist Identify. Whoever made this thing didn't want *anyone* to find out what it's capable of." Identify works on everything else, but not this specific item, which is protected against it. This keeps the item secret for whatever purpose you need, and also doesn't block off a spell from the entire game.

[@AGrumpyPanda]

I actually do agree to some extent with the notion of wanting the players to have to experiment around with their items, especially if you want to put in secret powers, I just don't necessarily agree with Identify being overpowered.

[@nvfury13]

There are enchantments (in 2nd and 3E at least) that hide enchantments (or create “layers” of enchantments).

[@MrAwesomeTheAwesome]

There is also precedence for making the Identify spell at least fizzle on the item. A Nondetection spell would make the object in question untargetable by divination spells, such as Identify. There's also precedence for casting the same spell every day for a year to make it permanent. If you had an item that you really wanted unidentifiable, and you were willing to burn a third level spell slot every day for a year, I think that's fair. You'd also have the added side effect of Locate Object, Clairvoyance, and Scrying incapable of perceiving it. Oh, and Detect Magic!

[@wolfyblackknight8321]

I wonder if the reason he hated identify was his other groups kept getting cursed items and started using identify so he couldn't screw them over with with bs cursed items

[@SephonDK]

Exactly thanks. Secret items are good. Removing a spell's usefulness isn't.

[@duckazelthethird4611]

Are we gonna ignore the fact that his health bar has been going up this whole time? Since when does reading heal you?

[@Lheticus]

Um. It's a progress bar, man...

[@Idlemage]

Heal scroll

[@sarahjustsarah7276]

Nah mate it’s EXP not health

[@evanelzinga282]

Lheticus dude it was a joke

[@Cobalt_Rain]

Clearly you are not a true reader, I have been healed multiple times by reading.

[@TheVikingWolf12]

I was playing as a Gnoll with a chaotic evil alignment, and my friend was playing as a Lawful Evil Minotaur Barbarian and neither of us was ever allowed to learn the common language because our DM said "creatures with evil alignments have no desire to learn new things". Nevermind the first villain in the campaign was a Chaotic Evil Demon who had proficiencies in all languages and when confronted about he would just say "Yeah, but he's smarter than both of you, so he understands the importance of learning new things since he is a demon."

[@gotenksta]

What an idiot, it would have been easier to say that demons are born knowing all languages, so they can easily manipulate anyone in doing what they want (or are those devils only?)

[@rainmabon8232]

This is easily the dumbest thing I read all day...

[@gotenksta]

@@rainmabon8232 "And I have been on twitter"

[@Nathan-qp9uv]

@@gotenksta i'm abit rusty but I think i remember most sentient demons having translation powers of some type

[@gotenksta]

@@Nathan-qp9uv Idk

[@windowssonic5953]

"You pick up the staff." "Can I Identify?" "No, that's banned at my table." "Cool, I use the staff." "As you use the staff, sticks of dynamite teleport all around you and the rest of the party, and everyone dies."

[@shadedias5563]

Were the DM's next words "I win."?

[@harperthegoblin]

Once had a dm rule that my greatsword on A NAT 20 got lodged in a dragons chest which fell into a pit CHEST DOWN so my magic +2 greatsword was lost to time. To this day he STILL won't admit that was wrong! Edit: I just told him about this yet he won't change his mind. Guess he was too stubborn to admit he's wrong. Edit 2: The DM was my brother.

[@ww11gunny]

that would have been cool on a nat 1

[@bangiimakwa8817]

I understand the logic though, you hit him so good the sword got stuck

[@gotenksta]

Bro, that's an epic story.

[@Calredic]

That’s dumb. By definition, a Nat 20 means you did whatever you were trying to do exceptionally well. The idea of having it somehow penalize the player is ridiculous.

[@ArawnNox]

Was the sword itself a balance issue and that was his means of removing it from the game? Not saying he went about it the right way, mind you.

[@devin5201]

The Str longbow yeah that does make irl sense, longbows are hard to pull.

[@XFeuerFestX]

Also Throwing Knives irl would take Dex to hit but Str to deal more damage. Works like that in Pathfinder too

[@danieljohns95dj]

I don't remember for 5th edition, but bows do have a strength requirement in 3.5. Dex is for your ability to aim accurately. Dex should be used for attack rolls with ranged weapons.

[@lucasstrong9208]

In 5e, Finesse lets you choose to use strength or dexterity for either melee or ranged with the dagger. If the DM wants to argue that Longbows should have Finesse, that's a no problem homebrew, but locking them to strength is just odd.

[@D1amondweaver]

Technically, if you wanted it to be realistic, it should be DEX for the attack roll and STR for the damage, regardless of weapon.

[@F0X_H0UND]

I see the DM's reasoning behind this, its a realistic view. But at the same time, these classes that are DEX based have feats and abilities based on DEX. You would have to force them to choose between being good at feats or being good at using their bows. Like seriously, imagine trying to play as a rogue or monk with this rule in 5e. Also, theres no reason to apply these super realistic tweaks to a FANTASY game. Some things, yes, need to have a bit of realism to make it make sense. But, not this.

[@ryanturner3176]

Some of these I wouldn’t mind, like the having to stabilize before healing one, or needing to train for bard secrets (Fuck the gold cost though), but these things need to be brought up before the game starts and all the players need to be OK with it beforehand.

[@brookshyde5663]

Agreed. I wouldn't mind playing with unconscious ruling. The Bard thing sounds like a really cool RP or flavor text type of thing. It could even spawn a side quest to perhaps find a teacher that is willing to impart his knowledge. Fuck the cost, though. Don't punish a player for a class mechanic.

[@josiaht9227]

A good session zero saves allot of pain

[@Kartoffelkamm]

Not sure how healing spells work in DnD, but in The Dark Eye, there is a healing spell that, when you perform well enough, can stabilize someone. Like, if the target has an open wound in their abdomen and is bleeding profusely, this spell can close the wound, if you roll well enough.

[@kedolan4992]

@@Kartoffelkamm In DND 5E, when you go to 0 hp, you fall unconscious, and start making death saving throws: 3 passes and you stabilize (you're out of the fight since you're knocked out, but you're not longer at risk of dying unless attacked again), or another character can attempt to stabilize you (using a medicine skill check or some other situational check, etc). If you have 3 fails (taking damage again adds a fail) you die, and either you have to roll a new character or need to have some form of resurrection magic used to save your character (usually expensive, and only available to middle/high level parties). If at any point while unconscious you gain hp, then you stand back up and can continue fighting. It doesn't take things like "open wounds" into account, those are just assumed to be healed by the spell normally (not counting loss of limbs/etc, unless you use the regeneration spell). Healing magic in DND is, generally, not terribly efficient to use mid-combat unless you have a pressing reason, such as being surrounded by enemies and you're worried they'll keep hitting you and kill you before someone can heal/stabilize you if you go down, or if the enemy has some some kind of nasty effect, such as "if reduced to 0 hp you die instead of going unconscious". It's usually better to kill your enemies and heal back up after combat, than to try to play a "healer" and recover your party mid-fight, unless you're playing a life domain cleric (cleric that specializes in healing, and gains a bunch of benefits to it) or something. An example of this for instance is that using a level 1 spell slot, the spell "cure wounds" heals for 1D8 + your spellcasting modifier (probably a +2-4 early in the game), while the spell "inflict wounds" causes 3D10 damage for that same spell slot (and it's not even an especially great damage spell).

[@TheRodentMastermind]

@@kedolan4992 It's why Healing Word is the go to spell.. It's a bonus action, so doesn't screw up your action economy. When someone is down on the ground it doesn't really matter how much healing you are doing as long as you are doing 1 point to get them out of death saves, and it can be used at range.... But it does end up with combats being comically like one of those Weebles with characters dropping, bouncing up, dropping, bouncing up.... Healing Spirit is another spell which is similar as once you cast it you can use a BA to move it onto a downed friend so you can continue putting out damage. I do think it's one of the real flaws of DnD because it does feel really weird and makes most healing pointless. I had a TPK in the first session of a campaign recently, the players totally outmatched the enemy, I think it was 4 Kenku. But they were new players, so kept healing rather than focusing down targets and that led to them going down one after another in a fatal cascade.

[@krymsynrayne]

One thing that sucks with bad DMs is that it can be impossible to find a good one, so players will settle for a bad one just to be able to play. The DM for the second campaign I ever played was awful. If I based my whole opinion of D&D on that campaign, I would think that the entire thing was an exercise in futile self flagellation. We were using Roll20.net for this campaign. My party was down a hallway waiting for my character to find and flip a switch to deactivate a trap. I flipped the lever and opened a secret door that had 15 goblins just hanging around inside. By the way, we were in the middle of a massive and ancient cave/temple thing which the DM had, multiple times, specifically said "showed no signs of having been disturbed for millennia." Yet there were 15 goblins just chilling in this room. Cool. Anyway, I was fucked. I was able to take one goblin down, but considering that the DM gave them all the chance to hit me before my companions were even allowed to roll for initiative, I went down. The best part? He knew I had never had to roll death saves before. So he had me send my rolls to him privately, which meant that nobody else in the group could see them. I automatically had two failures, but I rolled a nat 20 on the third. Instead of getting one hit point back and regaining consciousness (which is what is typically supposed to happen), he told me that rolling a nat 20 on a death save meant I would be able to roll again, but that I was still down. He said I had to wait for a companion to heal me. Then he said that one of the goblins noticed me still breathing and continued to hack away at my body, which killed me. All of this was before my teammates were even allowed to roll initiative. I quit the campaign after that. He was an awful DM. I found out about two weeks later that he had been conspiring with another player to kill each of our characters off and make us play characters of his design because he didn't like where we had taken the story. My death had been planned. It didn't matter what actions I would have taken, I was supposed to die there and so I did. The player our DM had been conspiring with got sick of all the double dealing and came clean to the remaining people in the group. The entire campaign ended up collapsing three weeks after I quit.

[@SSB_Master_Hand]

Jesus fucking Christ, that sounds absolutely horrific! I'm glad that campaign collapsed! I would've quit, too. No way in all the Nine Hells and the infinite depths of the Abyss am I putting up with a DM that plans my death, has me die no matter what, and then expects me to play a specific character.

[@xMasteLPx]

Yeah this sucks. I was one time playing a new campainge with a new DM because in a discord group we found some players whom like DND. So we sat down created our characters we said Standard Rules + Xanathars if we want something esle we had to discuss with all the Players not only the DM. As i wanted to play and old crazy Wild Magic Combat Sorc. Like and Old (Gandalf Level) who keeps beating people with a stick (aka Quarterstaff). We discussed if i could youse the Cantrip Green-Flame Blade from SCAG, we all agreed. So then the actuall Game day came. Es we approached a Cave with Goblins in them we decided to lure them out with sound and our Tank dwarf Paladine go forward the rest (Drow Ranger + Me) hide and fire our Spells then I'll join in Melee comabt to aid him, as we were all LV 1 and don't have much HP. AC was decent Paladin 18 me 17(Mage Armor). So yeah we make our Plan OK out there come 3 Goblins. I think neat; challenging for 3x LV 1 Players but not to hard. We roll initiative. Rolls were decent not to high not to low. Combat starts Goblins move and get advantage and multiatack. i had a big WTF in my Head. so we fight after round one our AC 18 Paladin is on 1HP. My turn Ok I use Posion Spray for a maybe a Lucky Kill. Rolls rolls 11 on D12 I: "YES!!" DM: "Ok 11 Poison DMG" I:"Nothing else?" DM: "Nope" *Next Alarm Bell in my head rings" As I'm a DM myself i know the Goblin Stats (they only have 7 HP and no resistance). ok next round our Paladin goes down. Now is our Rangers turn attacks Rolls nat 1 the DM "as you try to pull an arrow off your quiver it gets locked and you spill all your arrows on the ground you now have no more arrows." She:" I'll use my Object interaction to pick up some arrows" DM: "No you can't you need an Action to do it and it's dark you don't see them well" She: "But im a drow I have Supirour Darvision".... Next round our Paladin goes down. I get a brutal Hit now im also at 2 HP. My Turn I Attack with Green-Flame Blade nat20 I:"nice" rolld DMG 11 (2d10 QS two-handed) to the Damaged one and 2d8 15 to the other one" again noone dies. That was the Moment I litteraly Quit I called out his BS that this is not was Goblins can do and that they not eighter get Multi Attack nor adv on them. And left roll20 and Discord. Such a terrible DM

[@alphagonomegarius5068]

wow the stories in the comments are even better than the video's

[@ShaggyRogers1]

Everything about that story screams personal grudge with zero knowledge or respect of the rules. I don't think a single thing you said was actually following the rules besides the fact that DM's do have the discretion to keep death saves from being public to the rest of the group.

[@rogerwilco2]

sounds like there is something wrong with this DM.

[@calemr]

I have a GM who's mostly OK, then gets in massive arguments with players over the most trivially minor shit. Example: RAW, You can double how much weight you can drag if you have something to assist you. A wheelbarrow or hand cart? Does not count to this guy. And when I asked "So if I tear off the wheel, that reduces the weight a little, so it's Easier to pull?" To point out the absurdity of it, he just went "Yes." Dumb ruling, or just stubborn as hell DMing? He also claimed that a building storey is 10 feet (OK, fine, makes it easier to calculate.) So if I'm one floor above ground level and climb out the window, that's a 20 foot drop. Because the roof of the room I was in was 20ft high. And then he gets mad at me when I ask if climbing out the window of the ground floor is a 10 foot drop.

[@rogerwilco2]

Sounds like a person that has no imagination.

[@ob2kenobi388]

7:29 "I'm gonna use my Dragonborn breath weapon!" "Alright. Breathe fire in real life." "What?" "If you don't breathe fire, right now, you can't in the game, either"

[@blairox6031]

The only character I could play to its full potential would be a level 1 human office employee. Instead of seeking adventure, my character would probably stay home playing DnD with his friends.

[@zach415]

Just do what circus performers do. Get a mouthful of alcohol and spit it onto a lit match

[@ob2kenobi388]

@@zach415 There comes a time in every DM's life when they must assign a skill check to something incredibly insane and unpredictable. That time comes very frequently.

[@mifigor1935]

@@zach415 it's not that easy

[@colbyheninger2593]

some of these dms just need to write a book

[@jessehardin5094]

Or read one aka the MM or PHB

[@rompevuevitos222]

@Dwali Obahbwah I wouldn't either, i just would bail out immediately with the same politeness they had with me

[@ArawnNox]

@Dwali Obahbwah Yeah, that's always rubbed me the wrong way: wanting a more serious game and then one player shows up with a name akin to "Slab Beef-Broth". I was in a Shadowrun game and a player showed up with an elven ice mage... who wore all green... and bells... and a pointy hat... and hated fat men in red suits. Yes... he was playing a Christmas elf... in Shadowrun.

[@paulcoy9060]

From a letter in Dragon Magazine: Player's Monk kicks a Ghoul, DM says make a save vs paralyzation. Player asks why? DM says because it's a Ghoul. (In real life ((the game)) a ghoul's actual attack has to hit to cause a paralyzation save. It's not a skin coating, like an Enveloper, or a Gelatinous Cube. It's their Claws and Fangs that are dangerous.) This DM had no clue how an attack works.

[@noodlesgamebox5903]

Hold on, so you can't do that because i- PLAYER HATER!! My DM is going to hate be next meeting... Lol

[@meh8704]

Player: I cast light Dm: roll (Wasn’t there, but yeah it happened) Me: -has 22AC, long story- Dm: the has acidic attacks and scathed you, your armor is lowered. Me: so he got a 22+ on his attack Dm: no, his acid burns you through your armor (As a fellow dm I told him that it never worked like that)

[@Nyghtking]

Thats just stupid, if he wanted to rule acid could do that wouldn't the acid first even have to hit the AC before it could burn the armor?

[@thomaslacroix6011]

Sounds like a DM who's tired of untouchable PC but can't be bothered to make attacks requiring saving throws.

[@meh8704]

Nyghtking nothing else in the campaign had acid attacks, no players or monsters, and I think he was just new to the concept of acid damage, as he’s new to the game

[@meh8704]

Thomas Lacroix hey it’s his fault, he gave me a +2 shield plate armor, a rune stone that gives me +2 damage on magic attacks, a guillotine as a weapon, a baby white Dragonborn, and a baby timber wolf

[@TheGameinfreak]

@@meh8704 wait, how the heck were you using a guillotine as a weapon?

[@Nyghtking]

Ok, the parts that piss me off: The DM who made a nat 20 hit someone the player wasn't trying to hit, so that means there was a minimum %10 chance to hit the person since I bet a nat 1 would have also hit her, and i'm betting the odds of hitting her were higher then that since if he rolled under a certain number he probably would have hit her, so it was probably more like %30-%50, so there wouldn't be much point in even trying. The DM who said you can only perform an action in character if you can do it IRL, so I guess that should also mean that you can't cast spells because magic isn't real IRL so you can't cast spells IRL so I guess the character can't either, for that he should have to act out IRL every action he has the NPCs do. The DM who said that you can only rejoin a fight if you get knocked out by rolling a nat 20 on death saves so the clerics, paladins, ect won't be heal bots. thats literally what healing spells are meant for, so that the party doesn't just die because players are dropping, by that logic if everyone was knocked out at some point then they lose the fight and probably die since they can't rejoin no matter what except by rolling a nat 20 on death saves. The DM that says you can't catch a spear thrown by a giant, he does realize that even if you attempt it it still might not work though? the ability itself says it reduces the damage and if you negate it the you catch it, so taking the action isn't even a garentee, thats why it's even a thing monks can do in the first place. And probably a few others i'm forgetting.

[@ArawnNox]

That one about hitting the assistant really got me, too. Like, you know the DM was looking for any excuse to force something to go wrong and for the assistant to be hit. Probably for no other reason than to mess with the player, too. No story. No special reveal. Just. Fuck you for having a companion.

[@bryanwoods3373]

@@WolfJ And it's not hard to figure out how a Nat 20 would do extra damage to a straw target. Simplest is that it happens to hit were a bunch of straw has woven itself together and takes a larger chunk out than normal. Or it hits a less dense area and sinks farther than the others. Heck, you could just make it a critical success so that the feather of the arrow brushes against the assistant. If you want to take a little longer, the straw target is being held up in some way, probably with twine. That twine holding it together sure sounds like a vital area of the target. The more I think on it, the more ways I could make that Nat 20 into an epic trick shot.

[@acedaybreaker2545]

1:08 imagine punishing a player for picking a subclass that nobody wants to play. I mean, he’s already taking one for the team by playing healer, don’t bully him/her for trying to support their teammates

[@krystopherjohnson4548]

Story 1: half-elves are considered elves for anything that would affect elves or humans for anything that would affect humans. For example the magic bow that could only be used by those with elven blood, could be used by half-elves. the fact that the 5e half-elf now has the feature Fey ancestry tells you that they do count as elven four things that affect elves- just like they always have.

[@Kurgosh1]

Worst one ever. The DM was running a published module which described the tactics that the bad guys would take on the first 3 rounds of combat. The module said they'd shoot the PCs with their crossbows, charge and skewer them with their lances, then grapple the party. He read this not as tactics, but as rules. While the PCs stood helpless, the bad guys took three full rounds of actions which all automatically hit because the module didn't say they "try" to shoot the PCs, but that they do. End of the third round, PCs finally get to act, but they're all grappled or already dead.

[@anonymousguy720]

Lol

[@MichikoHoshi]

My first DnD campaign ended with me and 2 other leaving because I asked my DM if I can use a sword that aesthetically looks like a longsword and I will refer to it as a longsword, but in game mechanic will function as the same as a rapier. His reasoning for why I can't have it, "If I keep letting you get away with things, you'll ask for something more outrageous."

[@zacharyk.2180]

Me: *Casts cloud of daggers* DM: That does half damage, as he is resistant to nonmagical slashing damage Me: But it's a second level spell DM: The narration of the spell says that you put spinning blades in the air After the game, we pulled up the part of the monster manual saying that any damage as the result of a spell is magic damage and he did go back on it. Still though. Might as well, like, shatter or something

[@TailsClock]

I probably would have made the same mistake. I was under the impression that there are some spells that intentionally don't do magic damage, so that a spell caster wont be entirely useless against magic immune enemies. And that sure as heck sounds like a non magical damage spell.

[@zacharyk.2180]

@@TailsClock I can kinda see where you're coming from in that regard, but it's more the spell level expended in order to cast it. If it were a first level spell, I wouldn't be toooo torn up about it. It's more so the fact that it was a second level spell I took on sorcerer (which is magically challenged when it comes to spells known) that puts this in the history books for me lol

[@blazingfire90034]

I once had a DM say that the illusionist Bracers (a magic item that lets you cast the same cantrip twice, once using your action and your bonus action.) wouldn't allow you to make two separate attacks using green flame blade, even though the Cantrip literally says it requires an attack. His reasoning was that the spell says "As part of the action used to cast this spell" so in his mind a bonus action was not an action. You should also know that I'm a level 10 warlock, so 4 eldritch blast (with the bracers) with a plus 11 to hit and a modifier of +7 per blast was perfectly fine.

[@vaspeter2600]

That bracer would be incredibly strong on any full caster, but on a blastlock of all things? And the DM was fine with that? Bloody hell.

[@bryanwoods3373]

Was your DM not aware that an off-hand melee attack is made with a bonus action? It sounds like the magical item is basically adding the Quickened Spell attribute to a cantrip. I'd at least let you try it out for a while before deciding if it was too OP. I don't see any reason it wouldn't work that way. The point of Green Flame Blade is that you are taking a Spell action instead of an Attack action, so the Illusionist Bracers would still be casting the same cantrip twice.

[@T0mN7]

Was playing a homebrew version of the Midnight campaign. We were fighting some undead abomination made of many corpses. One of its attacks consisted of throwing one of the corpses it was made of. It was supposed to do like 2 d8's of damage. Creature attacks a party member, it hits. DM rolls damage, 3 d8's. Player complains about the extra damage. DM: ...Uh. It was a fat corpse. We laughed and he re-rolled the proper amount of dice.

[@evilauthor9953]

The worst ruling I ever had was with drowning. I was playing a water elemental character. Water and swimming were in my backstory and I had a pet that was basically a fantasy seal. One session we had a player out of town and I was controlling his character. He'd made a deal with the DM that his character would be injured and his injury would be the excuse to exclude him for combat, so when he was knocked into the water and my water elemental jumped in to save him, I assumed the "near drowning" would be the injury he'd previously agreed to, but it quickly became clear the DM was saying my character was the one drowning. The DC on it seemed insanely high and I was failing badly. When the DM read the rules for drowning, they seemed beyond insane and no one at the table could find the rule in our books. He refused to show us his copy because it was in the DM's guide. The next week, the player who had missed a session finally convinced the DM to let someone else see the rule. It was for rock elementals and assumed a base 300lbs weight. Not a rule that'd ever apply to a 95lbs water elemental.

[@AGrumpyPanda]

Not to mention that a water elemental, being made of water, does not need to breathe in water.

[@michaelpomato45]

To the DM's that wanted their players to perform IRL, I would love to play a Barbarian and show them my attacks on them.

[@Nyghtking]

I feel sorry for the spell casters.

[@hyperbannana9262]

@@Nyghtking i feel sorry for the bard

[@danielribeiro1433]

Tell the DM his NPCs are useless since he can't do what they would do. Ohh you can't breath fire, guess your red dragon can't either.

[@SaraphDarklaw]

Rip daddy was mad at you for reasons. You should apologize.

[@davemakesnoises]

IM SORRY RIP DADDY PLS DONT HURT ME

[@Lheticus]

I think this is the most ad-libbing I've heard on one of these. And I'm only 2 minutes in! XD And speaking of the story that starts around that point...what the hell kind of logic is that?! EDIT: Even after watching the whole video, the story starting at 2:01 is definitely the worst out of all the stories. Okay, maybe 2nd worst to the DM who made the fat guy physically imitate his rogue character's actions. That honestly sounded like just plain bullying to me.

[@davemakesnoises]

Commentary was requested by RipDaddy because he wanted me to help give some extra context and kinda transmit the inherent frustration of the stories to those who maybe don’t have as strong a grab on game mechanics as others. I hope you understand.

[@Lheticus]

@@davemakesnoises Hey, did I say the extra wordage was a BAD thing? Hell no, this was the best video from this channel I've seen up on it in weeks! I'm saying y'all should have the more extensive commentary like in this one MORE often!

[@davemakesnoises]

Lheticus wow i was not expecting that tbh bc a lot of ppl so far have indicated they’re not feeling it, which I understand. Thank you so much for saying that i feel a lot better about it now.

[@danielribeiro1433]

To the DM that made his player perform what the PC would do, I would just tell him he would hate perform every action his NPC would do. He might stop and fell stupid after realizing that idea was retarded

[@vladdangel]

@@danielribeiro1433 "I seduce the bar maid" *walks over to the dm, fluttering his eyes at him and places his hands on the dm's cheek"

[@abadidea5984]

"You can only charge in a straight line vertically or horizontally, because going diagonally means running in a zig-zag and that's no longer a charge."

[@Ackalan]

That man must have hell trying to navigate his way through a local town.

[@abadidea5984]

@@Ackalan Oh see here's the hilarious part; he only brought up that rule when an enemy tried to charge him from a diagonal angle. He never once adhered to that rule when he charged himself.

[@Ackalan]

@@abadidea5984 You should have asked him to just bring his everything-proofed shield. :P

[@algotkristoffersson15]

This is why grids shouldn’t be used but instead we would have maps without grids and measure distances with rulers. That way all these stupid complicated rules for diagonals go away.

[@lockwoan01]

For the "You can't whisper while stealthing" - have a Great Old One Warlock, Verdan, Kalashtar, or some other telepath in the party, or some sort of "basic sign language".

[@algotkristoffersson15]

Or charades. Seriously did those players not understand that you can communicate non-verbally.

[@lockwoan01]

@@algotkristoffersson15 Possibly. Or, maybe, the Characters in-game know the "Basic Sign Language", but the DM deems that a Player making noise is the same as the Character making noise, which would be annoying.

[@2to5Raccoons]

Playing Pathfinder I'm a halfling shifter, fairly high level. I chose to shift into a giant snake, a dire tiger and a dire wolverine to start with. We finally level to where I can have a fourth form, I want to go with the raptor dino, so I ask the GM if I've ever seen one. He has me role something and tells me no, they're pretty rare. I'm like "ok, I get that" and go with a dire bat. Good but not as cool or flavorful. We begin game and I kid you not, two minutes into the game he says "everybody roll perception" turns out he happen to run across a pack of raptors right outside our campsite. They were right there. We had never seen dinos and he said they were super rare and only in really in uninhabited parts of the jungle (which we were not). He looks over to me smiling, like "here I gave you the dinos you wanted!" Unfortunately, I had four more freaking levels to go before I could take another form. Four levels! In an incredibly slow leveling game. And he thought he was being helpful. Did he say, I'll let you switch the bat out for the dino since you haven't used it? No. I was stuck with the bat form (which I never used) and I switched to only using my best form (dire wolverine) to barbarian my way through encounters as she slowly lost the little personality I had given her as new role player. I disassociated with her and patiently waited until I could easily switch her out for a different character without them being stiffed by their introduction.

[@thomasschafer5939]

So, what yore saying is, the DM actually made you loose all interest in your own character? Ouch....

[@2to5Raccoons]

@@thomasschafer5939 yep, he had a way of doing that. I adored her on concept but couldn't stand playing her in game.

[@thomasschafer5939]

@@2to5Raccoons probably because you couldnt build her the way you wanted. She wasnt “your“ character anymore

[@bryanwoods3373]

That's the kind of thing I would have wanted to know what you wanted to do before hand so I could set up an encounter to give it to you. But if this situation occurred, I would have told you to hold off on choosing for now so that I could give you what you wanted. It's just like building up a Wizard's spell book in 5e. Technically, the spells you learn yourself are from experimentation and other notes. Even learning various class features can be roleplayed to justify at level up. I'll sprinkle tattered spellbooks and scrolls to research what the player wants and some of what I think the player needs. Give them something for a Level 2 spell knowing I'll make something a few levels later for them to use it.

[@ChibiKami]

turn the rules around on him and check the retraining rules in PF Ultimate Campaign

[@mestre12]

Also, i honestly think Long and Short Bows should be Finesse weapons. Also, daggers are finesse weapons, so, you could use stregth has the modifier.

[@BrutusAlbion]

yeah nah fam, bows are actually incredibly hard to draw especially longbows. You need to do special ''strength'' training for the muscles involved to be able to draw a bow properly. It's NOT a finesse weapon. Compound bows are a different thing entirely though. The thing is with bows, you need a lot of strength to pull it and a lot of dexterity (finesse) to aim it. You need both ... but strength comes first because you can't shoot an arrow worth a damn otherwise.

[@williamwontiam3166]

BrutusAlbion well, what about a strength requirement and a dexterity modifier? The strength could determine modifiers to range and damage while Dex is overcoming ac and damage?

[@BrutusAlbion]

@@williamwontiam3166 sure, you could make up new rules as you go along and DM whatever you want but the fact remains the same. Bows are actually more strength based than a regular sword or spear contrary to what is commonly perceived to be the case. Longbows required years of training of very specific muscles in order to pull a proper (war) longbow string. They are NOT weapons you can just pick up like a spear or sword and learn to wield in a few months.

[@TalkativeHands]

@@BrutusAlbion k

[@rompevuevitos222]

Long bows are "finesse" weapons, all ranged weapons use DEX, only thrown weapons can be used with strength, which is why the dart says finesse (even then, it's ranged so you can only use DEX anyway) That's why crossbows are not finesse but are still DEX based

[@lincolnhoffman2574]

One time my dm said that we weren’t allowed to one shot enemy’s because “it wouldn’t be fair” it made fighting low level enemies take way too long

[@bongosmcdongos4190]

I physically cringed reading that

[@AkariEnderwolf]

I had a DM that ruled that weapons that were "attatched" to a mobile suit are "free actions" to use for attacks. He didn't tell us this until after using this against us and wiping out the mobile suit of one of our party members in one turn from near max health... oh and the enemy that did this was using the abilities and stats of a CR12 enemy while we were a party of level 2 characters while he claimed it was a CR4. This dm also had the same ruling about going down meaning you are out for the entire fight, and if anyone was in melee range, undefined distance between us and enemy units, then we weren't allowed to target any enemy that was not the one we are "in melee" with, for example, to help save a party member low on health with a attack, we couldn't just tank the AOO and use a ranged attack, we had to actively disengage before we could do anything to help our other party member. This DM also had a god complex and said the rules don't apply to him. if the rules don't apply, are we even really playing a game, or are we just watching as the "DM" just makes rulings any way they want just to kill the party? I could go on for a while venting about this guy, but if I did then this comment would be more of a wall of text than it already is.

[@katapiesi]

TLDR: forcing people to RP mental/social skills when they don't have those actual skills and they rolled well. And not allow OOC player interactions to compensate for not actually being their characters who have lived so close together for so long. I have a general issue when I - as a person who is not good with sculpting words on the spot or when anything other then pure focus is happening (i.e. having fun) - have to either come up with my persuasion or idea my character who is smarter and more charming then I just rolled a nat 20 on. I understand it's more fun if it's RPed, but forcing characters to RP their mental/social skills to succeed is the same as making you do the physical movements. If you need a narrative work with the player and the rest of the table, don't tell me I can't talk the guard down just because /I/ couldn't when /my character/ could. Why roll for skills of you're going to hing whether or not the persuasion happens based on the players ability to persuade you, the DM. A second pet peeve a lot of mine a lot of DMs do that is more a play style issue is not allowing any OOC or minor meta gaming. Like discussing what the characters should know, often your party has spent /A LOT/ of time together, you should be able to OOC discuss with your rouge which target they wanna flank - your fighter should be able to pick up social cues from the rogue as to which target they wanna sneak attack or even how characters are likely to act - you may only interact with the other PCs for a few dozen hours across a whole campaign but your characters are likely to have spend days/weeks/months/years together in one of the most intimate relationships (comrades in arms) - /they will know more about each other then the players know of their PCs!/ I'm not saying huge meta should be allowed, but small bits that help the team sort out things their PCs know and how the party works.

[@grinnylein]

I once played with the rule that if you rp such an interaction in a fun or cool way, then you can get advantage on the roll, but you don't have to

[@ArawnNox]

I grew up playing a game that had an introvert/extrovert score and players at the table didnt reflect the scores on their sheets, so we defaulted to allowing die rolls to cover what we couldn't do very well ourselves. I've carried that over to allow players to use dice as a crutch when their RP skills fail them.

[@bryanwoods3373]

@@grinnylein I've played with various groups that did something similar; but part of it was that if you could roleplay the interaction really well, you just succeed. If it came to a crux decision, the roll would be at advantage or disadvantage depending on what was said and the dynamics of the exchange. But there was no real penalty if you had to describe how you were trying to say stuff. Like you said, some people just have trouble thinking fast or in the right ways in those kinds of situations. It's a practiced skill.

[@icarue993]

I really hated that... kinda still do. But I got better at making arguments because of it. I play 2 games, one heavy RP, one heavy mirderhobo (the RP table forced me to RP... duh). But thatnks to that, when the murderhobo table tried an intrigue campaign, I was a decent face. Sadly, I have to arrive 1hr later to the game (switching games) , and they usually kill/or spoil any kind of diplomacy option.

[@calemr]

I am socially inept. My 20Cha Half-elf Bard? Probably isn't. I don't gotta display my sword technique to make an attack roll. I say "I try to hit that thing." I should be allowed to say "I try to make this guy more friendly towards us."

[@Cthulhu4President]

I take issue with just one thing said in this video: "If you take issue with letting your players play THEIR characters in YOUR world, then don't have a world." No, don't have players. Having a world, without players, is called creative writing. - I don't understand why a DM would have you miss your target but hit an ally on a 20. Technically yes, you cannot crit a straw target because it has no vitals. However, you would still hit it. - You can't sneak attack undead for the same reason you can't crit undead... Unless they've changed that from 3.5 In the case of undead they have no vitals, no different than the straw target.

[@notbob555]

In the case of undead, i'd say you should be able to crit or sneak attack as there are still better places to attack. In the case of a zombie, severing the tendons will still stop it from moving. Slice off it's jaw and it can't bite. etc. Also, 5e stopped caring about that anyway.

[@quinnsundquist-carr3634]

If we're gonna argue how the target one is justified, be got a Nat 20. Bullseye.

[@bongosmcdongos4190]

It is changed in the new editions yes. That's for the best really. You can easily flavor it as cutting the zombies tendons so it can barely function as a threat. Vital striking is far too narrow a niche

[@frederekmaier3354]

Rather good ruling by my dm. The trickshot story reminded me of an incident at our table. The rule is you call what you are going to do and roll. A mate at my table was rolling shit the entire evening. So he called out "I'm going to totally miss the bandit" cue a NAT 1 our DM said" well you wanted to miss, so you now crit I guess? "

[@reinubekun146]

“If your not gonna have fun with the players go play with yourself” it took me a second or two to realize that joke lol

[@aetherian_wolf]

this entire episode is essentially "what is the best possible way to guaruntee that I will have no friends by te end of the day"

[@J_BiggityBar]

So this is less of a mechanical ruling and more of a "LORE" rule? I once played in a game with a DM that said unless you were playing a wizard/cleric or had a scholar background you were illiterate no matter ur intelligence score. At first, I thought it seemed dumb but then I figured if most npcs and players are illiterate it could be interesting and fair. That game ended up being very frustrating for many reasons one being the fact I ended up being the only person in a party of 4 that could not read and write. Also, we spent quite a few sessions trying to do research and solve a mystery that basically required being able to read so I was bored out of my mind. The "reasoning" was that the game was medieval themed (even though the world has thousands of years of lore and yet ppl never learned to read outside of scholars and priests?). It wouldn't have bothered me so much if we didn't end up spending so much time at an ancient ruined city with a library and massive lore drops that usually required the ability to read.

[@doctorheadcrabmd667]

I mean... if it's ACTUALLY medieval themed... then yeah... literacy in the middle ages was something like 10-20% of the adult male population... and like... 2-5% of women. So having the vast majority of people be mostly illiterate... or else know how to read but not write... is fairly accurate. And most of those people who could read? Noblemen, well-to-do tradesmen and merchants, and the clergy. We humans have something like 100,000 years of history and lore... much of it written and lost time time... more of it recalled through storytelling and song and other oral traditions. If your character is frustrated about not being able to read, did you consider having one of the literate party members teach you?

[@unwithering5313]

@@doctorheadcrabmd667 DM probably wouldn't have allowed that to happen as it would go against his fantasy of only the chosen ones having literate prowess, chances are he would have said 'Should of chose a wizard, cleric or scholar' or some other low stuff like that

[@basedeltazero714]

@@doctorheadcrabmd667 The literacy rate in the middle ages was probably higher than that. There's an awful lot of *stuff* written down by peasants and other common folk that it just doesn't gel for literacy to be so rare. That said, still likely the exception rather than the rule, and most people wouldn't be particularly well-lettered. (If you've seen pre 1800s-English, you've probably noted they're basically making up the spelling as they go). It's also worth noting that their standards were, if not higher, then _different_. In the middle ages 'literacy' was knowing how to read and write in Latin and Greek. It seems quite likely that while only 10% of the population could do that, the percentage that could read their own native language was higher. This would be especially profound among women, who didn't generally have formal education but were often responsible for bookkeeping and complex domestic affairs, especially among the nobility. In D&D-land there are even more advantages to literacy and I'd expect the bias against women (in this statistic) to be further reduced. The assumption of 'Everyone is basically literate' is... perhaps optimistic but not absurd.

[@ArawnNox]

Its not a default standard in the game, no. The general assumption is that everyone can read and write. In previous editions barbarians were illiterate by default but that's been dropped since a barbarian doesnt necissarily represent primitive tribesmen. A setting in which literacy is rare could be pretty neat, but it doesn't sound like the DM did anything with it.

[@619ver1]

@@doctorheadcrabmd667 Not true, the reason the number is so low in statistics of these kind about medieval times is cause it only counted reading and writing latin as being literate. SO if you were in england and wrote and read english, you are still an illeterate.

[@ISuperGenXI]

I had a DM that ALSO didn’t like the identify spell. He wouldn’t give us ANY information if we used it, and he once called a grappling hook (that he designed) “overpowered” because I wanted to pull myself up to the ceiling and hang there out of enemy reach to heal. He tried everything in his power to make my fall; asking for roll after roll. I never used it again after that, and he kept asking “uh why don’t you use the grappling hook?” Gee... I WONDER WHY.

[@AbusiveCactus]

Call me a player hater, but I banned Goodberry, Create Food and Water, and Purify Food and Drink in my recent campaign. However, I did tell my players that these spells would be banned before they made their characters and they agreed. So far, no-one has complained.

[@khanscoutduck2011]

I’ve just started playing dnd with some friends recently. Im enjoying it, thank you for making content to continue to give me more to apply to my baby dnd existence.

[@an8strengthkobold360]

Sneak attack should be renamed. It's closer to exploiting an enemy's vulnerability or fighting dirty. Or 1 v 1ing them as a swashbuckler.

[@fishyfishyfishy500akabs8]

I think even turning it into surprise attack or sucker punch would be better

[@yanderenejoyer]

Cunning Attack

[@darioschottlender]

I don't play DND, so I was surprised someone complaining about a sneak attack working... Well, when you are not sneaking. How does it work then?

[@krzysztofbandyk168]

@@darioschottlender You can deal additional dmg when you have advantage on a roll or (optional rule) when your enemy is distracted by another combatant the name is unfortunate it's more oporunistic than about sneak but the archetypical rouge will use it as a "sneak attack". Not to be confused with assasinate which turns stealth attacks into crits.

[@lordmars2387]

@@darioschottlender rogues in 5e dont get more than 1 attack. But if they setup their attacks they have the best scaling damage in 5e. It's balanced to go off almost every round.

[@deathsheir2035]

Um... pretty sure I remember reading somewhere, that Half-Elves counted as both human and elf, for the purposes of spells, and effects that target them...

[@graveyardshift2100]

Honestly a lot of these were just things that the dm should have clarified as houserules at session zero.

[@Psil33t]

So one of these stood out to me. As a GM I personally don't allow Identify for similar reasons. I am clear about this up front and generally any sort of purchase of a magical item will come with full knowledge of how to use it (unless the shop keep doesn't know it's magical but hey do you want it cheap or with perfect information?). And honestly I made this change because I found that it added quite a bit of fun to the table. For example, a while ago my players found a figurine of wondrous power, griffon for super cheap from a fence/pawn shop. Now this would have been OP as hell at their level, but the fence thought it was just a statue. So the rogue had to use his influences to figure out which thief sold him the statue, they had to find him and track which house he stole it from (the manor of a local lord). They then sneaked into the manor to try to find the lord's journal, ended up finding not only that (which contained the command word) but realized the lord had connections to a local cult of devil worshipers which then springboarded into a campaign-wide plot hook. All of which I thank on Identify not being in the game :P Also to be fair I do allow identify-like effects. Say Divination or the Commune spells, however because those are higher levels it ends up feeling a bit more impactful and more of a decision on whether or not to do it, which is where I prefer it to be. Anyway happy to debate on its inclusion in games, and thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[@DankCorpse]

The identify one was well within reason. It super stood out for me.

[@eimillian216]

I don't mind how my character is described as feeling situationally, like, "You begin to feel fear as you see the ogre take one last swing at your beaten and bloody form.(I had 2 hp left) Just before the giant club reaches you, you notice it stop. You look toward the ogre and see that it died mid swing from something." This would later lead to the main story that the DM had planned out for us, as a way of leading into it.

[@NiennaNeryam]

It's also quite useful when making skill checks. Things like: "You are convinced your disguise is flawless" when you roll a nat 1. It enhances the experience. But I also had a DM rule that our lawful good Cleric whose deity didn't like things like Hobgolbins and such, still wouldn't kill off the last one because it was "not lawful". Like seriously who are you to decide.

[@eimillian216]

NiennaNeryam yeah, I don’t mind them giving their descriptions pizazz or making the game more fun with nat 1’s and all that, but if they make a stupid rule like the human and elf favored enemy doesn’t count half elf

[@calemr]

@@NiennaNeryam I'm pretty sure if your Lawful God says to do something, it's a lawful act to do it, by definition.

[@NiennaNeryam]

@@calemr exactly! If your god says all goblins are evil and should be eradicated, then that is the law you have to abide by!

[@disableddragonborn]

My first ever session. I had recently learned that goblins are drawn to sparkly and/or shiny things, so when we had to get past a group of goblins, I used prestidigitation on a rock and made it sparkly and shiny, intending to distract them. After that, DM tells me he homebrewed his own goblins. From what noticed about the goblins, it seems like the only difference is their affinity for sparkles.

[@bryancobb2335]

The healing from unconscious story actually does address a real issue with healing in 5e, in that it's a far more efficient use of healing to wait until the target is unconscious. Best anecdote to demonstrate involved a Paladin in one game using lay on hands: Tank takes 40 damage and goes down. Paladin heals for 1 and he gets back up. Takes another 35 damage and goes down. Gets healed again for 1. Not to say that DM's solution wasn't bad, but I could see what he might have been trying to fix.

[@danielribeiro1433]

Queue grave clerics. Their healing spells automatically heal what the maximum roll would be on unconscious targets

[@Accomplisss]

Yeah with Healing Word being a bonus action the game loses the sense of urgency with death

[@cameronhector9074]

Variant and homebrew rules exist exactly to dissuade this. I give PCs a point of exhaustion the first time they drop in a day, and a steadily harder CON save on each susequent drop to not gain more levels of exhaustion. It doesn't stop the "just as effective at 1hp" issue, but it incentives keeping people alive over whack-a-mole healing.

[@alexw8357]

it said that they were using the rule to avoid the need for a 'healbot' but as far as I can see this variation would necessitate a healbot party member far more than the default rules.

[@alexw8357]

@@Its_Shio That's not a bad idea, and it's nice to see exhaustion get some more use. I like that healing is not so necessary in 5e but that seems like a decent rule if I ever wanted to make healing more important.

[@BarrakDraconis]

DM #1 allowed someone to make a Reflex save to avoid a melee attack, by spontaneously taking a 5-foot step. This only came up in PvP. When I was making the attack. After I'd also taken several "called shots" to the eye and both testes. DM #2 required wizards to keep track of the contents of their spell component pouches. And then assigned costs of over 1GP to every component with an unlisted cost, so Eschew Materials feat was useless. The first was only revealed after the game had actually begun, in the first combat encounter, when my spell component pouch was suddenly revealed to be empty. And the second was only revealed after I took the feat (yes, every component spontaneously became more expensive when I reached third level). DM #1 created a dungeon themed around sleep and dreams. Argued that the Elven magical-sleep immunity didn't help against his magical sleep poison because it wasn't causing "sleep", it was causing "induced unconsciousness with visions". DM #2 has a low-level party encounter a Manticore in a "courtyard with a high, vaulted ceiling". Party leaves, shuts the doors, uses Arcane Lock to seal the doors. Manticore flies up over the walls to engage us, completely ignoring the ceiling previously described.

[@mythrilsentinel1]

Ok, ready for this one? It is so petty, it still irks me to this day (and this happened 10 years ago). Playing a Ghostwise Halfling rogue. His story was that the paladin of the party was trying to reform him. He's hired along with the pally to do his stock in trade as a "mechanic". My mistake was trying to actually, you know, Roleplay his activity. Party member playing a Dwarf Mage (DwM) says he's looking over my shoulder to observe what My PC is doing. I start by pulling my kit out of my pouch, and unrolling it to prepare for the task at hand. I pull out a hollow reed as my first action during this moment. DwM demands to know what the reed is for, and being as patient as my halfling can be, tells him that it is part of his routine as a trap finder, for blowing the dust off of something like a magical sigil (you know, you touch it, you set it off). Player running the Pally immediately jumps in to argue the point of me even having a hollow reed in my thieves' tools. He argues that I shouldn't have that because his last character (a rogue) didn't have one. Yes, ladies and gents, he was arguing over my PC having a frickin' Drinking Straw. I asked the DM, "Does my describing this activity give any bonus to my roll?" Dm replied in the negative, but Pally and DwM kept up the argument. Finally, I told the DM, "My rogue quietly replaces his reed into his kit, rolls it up, and lets the party know that he couldn't find anything." Yeah, but you didn't roll your check, so your PCs doesn't know that for sure!" says the DwM, and the Pally chimes right in and insists I make the roll. DM insists I make the roll. OMFG, really? These guys didn't get the fact that the rogue was deliberately not looking, plain and simple. So I roll, I don't even look at the die and repeats what he said. Low and behold, the party mage steps forward into the intersection I was checking, and sets off the trap, ironically a magical sigil, that fried his PC for half his HP. And what do they do? DwM and Pally want to kill my PC for being deceptive... I ask the DwM player, "Does your PC have Detect Magic?" "Yes" Then why didn't he use it?" "Because you're the trap smith, that's your job, and we trust you to do your job." "I tried," I explained, "but you found it necessary to argue over my PC possessing a drinking straw." Shocker, DM sided with them, and turned my PC from true neutral, to Neutral Evil on the spot, and allowed the Pally to smite my PC... even though the Pally was the one responsible for forcing my PC to "turn to the dark side".... isn't that against the pally code? Shouldn't he have lost his god's power? Pally missed me, in any case, and used up his smite for that day.

[@bongosmcdongos4190]

Well if it helps, your group was wrong entirely.

[@mythrilsentinel1]

@@bongosmcdongos4190 well after two other incidents i dropped that group entirely... And wound up in an even worse crowd... And after that i joined a meetup group, was given the group after a time and now its the largest dnd group in Alberta.

[@torch1028]

"Im gonna go down this hallway" *moves token to indicate where i intend to go* "You activate 7 traps in a row and take 3 bajillion damage and are stunned " " i would have logically stopped at the first one" "You didnt say you stopped" Bro throw me a bone

[@daylendbristol7012]

My DM is pretty good usually and new, but here was the scenario: We went into a town where livestock was mysteriously going missing. The townspeople mainly thought it was the orcs. We went to the orcs to investigate, and found they had a well-spoken leader who said basically they didn't do it. As we were trying to investigate more the DM had a handful of townspeople run past us, 5 players, angrily and ready to kill the orcs. He didn't let us stop them despite 2 or 3 of my party members saying they'd like to grapple the NPCs, saying 'They went by too fast'- this is an important detail for later. I cast calm emotions, manage a shaky truce between the orcs and townspeople, then two dozen wolves descend upon us (note: the orcs had killed a wolf before we got there, so I don't think them coming was railroading). Then for some reason we find out the orcs are attacking us too, which the DM says is just a consequence of the pandemonium going on, not necessarily because their leader wants us killed (this is where the real railroading began- ignored the truce we made with the orcs earlier). I'm always a roleplay heavy character and as a cleric I always try to avoid combat if I can manage it- so what I do is cast incite greed on all of the wolves- only 4? Of the roughly 2 dozen succeeded the save, so I had about 20 wolves following me. On my next turn I disengage, then try to move behind a group of orcs, passing by 3 on the way (my plan was just to bring the wolves to the orcs so they could just fight one another without too much direct combat from me and the party). My DM rules that he will 'never allow disengage to work on multiple enemies, especially when you are going toward them' despite the rulebook saying explicitly disengage lets you move without taking attackS of opportunity. His logic was you'd never avoid getting hit in real life by just giving up and walking on by- nevermind that this logic literally means disengage in general would never work. I later made the point that disengage was an action, implying it was less giving up and more actively avoiding attacks whilst moving. He refused to budge. Oh, and remember how the villagers somehow successfully evaded 3 grapples (which the DM has us roll as attacks) earlier, despite running right toward and by us, thus provoking attacks of opportunity in a strict mechanics sense? Yea...

[@CrazyGoGoVrose]

Tbh the not letting woodshape make crystals makes sense tho it would set a weird precedent as the spell just can’t do that... could make it look like a super cool intricate carving or something but can’t make crystals

[@cesarmenoncin7396]

Me playng rogue in 3.5 D&D on a undead campaing Rogue, in 3.5, can only sneak atack if the enemy is flank or unaware, and half of the monster manual are imune to sneak attack Expecialy undeads FINALY FIND SOME NON UNDEAD CREATURES!!! Wainting he finish his turn so i cam FINALY sneak attack I sneak attack... DM: "he turn around to face you with a free action, and because hes not unaware of your presense you cannot sneak attack anymore".

[@Danodan94]

I don't get why so many DMs love to cripple rogue damage.

[@darioschottlender]

I'm a DnD noob here, can I ask how a sneak attack works? Cause in most games the enemy needs to be unaware for you to have a sneak attack bonus... What is it if not that?

[@Draxen1123]

@@darioschottlender In 3.5 you either need the opponent to be unaware, or attack from a side while having an ally fighting that opponent on the other side for a flanking attack. The issue here is the DM gave the enemy a free action outside of that creatures turn just so a sneak attack couldn't happen.

[@dagmarbelesova4284]

I think the problem might be the word 'sneak', which people just take too literally and assume you have to be sneaking/surprise someone. If it was called finesse attack or tactical attack or something I'd imagine this would come up a lot less if at all.

[@vaspeter2600]

@@dagmarbelesova4284 It would be helpful but, at least in my experience, another part of the problem is that less experienced and/or savvy DMs just get scared of the player rolling too many damage dice at once and think that "something dealing so much damage at once on a normal attack must be overpowered".

[@polojn]

This happened mid combat: I casted Fog Cloud, the DM mentioned that the enemies have DarkVision meaning they can see perfectly through the fog and now have advantage on attacks against Players. Lo and Behold 2 other teammates went down that round and the DM mentioned, "You should have never casted Fog cloud or chosen it at level up. DarkVision can only be stopped by Darkness spell and not Fog Cloud." I mentioned what kind of bullshit logic is that, they can see in the dark not through a fog. When you take a shower and have heavy steam in the room is it considered darkness? DM responded with "creatures with dark vision can see gray blobs in the fog and can decipher the targets clearly." Now I am down a spell known because my idea of Fog Cloud was a Smoke Bomb spell, but nope dark vision has pure advantage. Never mind how broken that sounds, sharpshooter + crossbow expert with temporary advantage on all attacks. This makes us waste a turn to figure out if the character has DarkVision, then Fog Cloud next turn. Which I already planned on it being a defensive spell.

[@SaftonYT]

1:42 I can actually get behind the idea of longbows being finesse weapons. It gives players more latitude and makes sense from a realism perspective. I know, I know, it's a fantasy setting with magic and dragons. But to expand on what I mean, English warbows and the like historically required the user to be fucking *jacked* simply in order to feasibly manage the draw weight for a single shot, let alone sustained fire. There's precedent for medieval English longbowmen being identified by their skeletons alone because of significantly over-developed bones in their shoulders and upper back from years of archery practice that began in their youth. In life their musculature would have stood out, too.

[@ArawnNox]

But... they already use Dex. Finesse lets a weapon trade strength for dex for attack and damage, not the other way around. In older editions longbows had Strength Bonus requirements to wield effectively (IIRC you wouldnt get the full bonus if the bow had a higher bonus than you). It may not be 'realistic' but I'm fine with that rule being gone. I'm not a fan of rules bloat.

[@ryanrodgers3099]

I love watching/listening to these. Always makes me feel infinitely better about my DM'ing abilities

[@TheSpencermacdougall]

"ArE yOu ThE dM?" "No,we are the ones with a brain"

[@Nyghtking]

"Keep up that attitude and you won't be for long."

[@harperthegoblin]

The rules exist to protect the players from the DM, not for the DM to punish players!

[@marleygoodfellow7965]

ah yes because players are known to be excellent at running games for other people. big brain time.

[@il_norko_distorto]

I'm always super nervous when I have to make a ruling and I tend to believe that's a good thing. Keeps me in check and helps me prioritize fun over my ego

[@shripnidley101]

this video incited ptsd in me, in a way i really didn't expect...

[@davemakesnoises]

^^this tbh

[@johns9652]

Yeah, can relate. I love my DM, one of my best friends, our group has been playing for 20+ years. However, he sometimes can infuriate me. One of the worst things about him is that he has certain classes/races that he fanbois, and tends to favor them heavily. Totally triggered right now about this story: Once, in an Underdark encounter, we were trying to explore a cave system to reach the Underdark. I don't remember the details anymore, suffice to say we succeeded, and encountered a Drow patrol. Our party's wizard, not known for being overblessed with Wis in real life, says he's gonna cast fireball. Cue the typical game scene where the rest of the players are like 'NO!!! that's dumb'. Because the Drow were 50% magic resistant or better (this was AD&D, 2nd ed), and the front line (meaning me, a Dwarven fighter, and I think a Human barby) stood a better chance of taking damage than the enemy if he screwed up. Remember how I said the DM was a fanboi of certain things? Well he probably read every Drizzt Forgotten Realms Novel. So he says, 'sure you wanna do that?' and the mage says 'yep'. DM: 'OK, but because you're in the back rank, there's a chance that your "pea-size magic that turns into a fireball", actually hits another player's weapon or helmet or shield because they're all in the way'. I went nuts. I was like 'whoa, there is already a system in place for whether or not it works, it's called a saving throw'. 'No need to penalize it further'. He insisted on like a 5% chance per character between mage and enemy. "You're all in a confined area, it's a tunnel'. WTF ever. Fine. The chance fails. Then, when the chance fails, he says 'Ok, well because it's a matriarchal society and the fighters are only there to be bodyguards to the evil priestesses, one of the fighters lunges forward'. 'He puts his body in the way of the fireball, causing it to detonate early, and (dice roll), succeeds on his magic resistance roll'. Front line, give me a save vs spell.' Pandemonium. Game breaks down into an hour long argument about alignment and how Drow are evil and don't perform heroic actions. With the DM saying it's not even heroic when they know they're likely to be ok, especially if it gains favor with Lolth.

[@hugs4evry171]

When a Nat 20 wasn't enough to intimidate goblins to tell us who their leader was...

[@popudoculis6155]

Watching this video I can agree that all these DM rulings are pretty bad except for one and that is the only being able to use strength for using a bow or throwing daggers because I could see where they're coming from because using your physical strength to draw the bow and fire it or using your physical strength to throw daggers so I could see where they're coming from I would personally rule it as you could use either or instead of only being able to use strength but that's my own personal opinion

[@RoxyGotMoxy.]

I love you just getting progressively more and more Cartman with every reading for the first half of this video 😂

[@davemakesnoises]

I love you too 👁👄👁

[@RoxyGotMoxy.]

@@davemakesnoises haha awww 😘

[@destroidhak2556]

"DM'ing is fun, you should try it sometimes." He's trying to pass the forever DM curse. Do not fall for his trickery

[@deathminion11]

LET ME OUT godamnit

[@AugustQ-p1w]

I was a theatre kid in high school, and I truly think the improv exercises we did helped me, as DM, make the game more fun for both me and my players. Some of these DMs definitely need to learn to "yes, and" (within reason, obviously.)

[@TanitAkavirius]

"Player hater!!" - Rule lawyer

[@DrJekyll51]

Here's mine, my first ever time playing D&D was maybe 15 or so years ago, my ex father in law agreed to DM me an out neighbor, they've played for decades going as far as claiming to have been on a game with Gygax himself, anyway I spent a good 3+ hrs rolling up a character, jumping through all the hoops they wanted cuz i really wanted to play, i was very shy an insecure so they took it serious, i did everything required for stats, abilities, equipment the works, i made a rouge theif thinking id he useful with traps an whatnot, i was using Dragon Age as a guideline, after i was done I had a great character loaded with all the tools an toys needed to be a fun burglar, then the story starts "you've been imprisoned by the sky giants, you have no equipment or items, you have mo memory of who you are or remember your skills an abilities..." what? "A guard comes in what do you do?" "Uh? Can i fight him so we can escape?" "He easily overpowers you, you're knocked out" Fast forward a while an we somehow escape, they're doing exp an gold an im confused, they ask how many levels I gained an got annoyed when my sheet is blank, spent 20 minutes doing my xp then started the next area where my theif was killed by a giant's club after he dropped it on me, they tire up my character sheet an started the session over to "do it the right way", total creation time: 3+ hrs, total play time: not even an hr, I haven't played since an live through stories like these, i might play again one day, slowly building a Dwarf on the reroll app, i even ordered dice online only to find out i was scammed an only got a partial refund after literally literally months of emailing, just noticed the video title, thought it was shitty DMs, my bad

[@ala5530]

In partial defence of the DM at 7:30, I have in the past played in groups that have required something like that, but only if the action the player was wanting to do was difficult for others to visualise as originally described (in which case, a "best efforts" was usually good enough, or they could try rephrasing how they described it), or was so egregiously ridiculous that no-one could possibly perform it (In one case, a dwarf fighter wanted to shield-bash the attacker on his left using a boss-gripped shield, whack the guy on his right with his mace and hack at a third guy with his greatsword in the same round, without dropping/sheathing anything). In that case, the rule was "if you can demonstrate how anyone could possibly do that, you get to try". In context though, that DM seems to just be being a jerk.

[@Axileoni]

i feel like (and i'm not a dm) if the players are all ok with attempting their character's actions themselves it should only bein their favor, ie to prove that they *can* do something, not that they *can't* .

[@Kekkersboy]

Had a dm in a game called awaken. It uses a money system similar to white wolf where money is a stat rather than an actual number of currency on your person. My character had a night at a bar and woke up pickpocketed.no equipment was taken just on hand cash. The GMC ruled that he lost a pip of wealth because of it. My character had the wealth stat maxed at 5 and this brought me to 4. Essentially a single pickpocket roll brought my character from being one of the wealthiest people on the planet to just being really rich

[@DNDiscussions]

6:18 honest mistake as a new dm. this is actually what i have been doing for the past two sessions (my first ever game, and im the dm) good to find this out this early on seeing my entire party can cast spells lmao

[@Esperologist]

I was hoping to see the useless 'Find Traps' ruling. My GM based it on his interpretation, but it took a fairly bad spell and made it complete trash. The spell basically informs about what kinds of traps are within range and line of sight. I was prepared to debate for getting a count, since in theory it tells me each trap that it detects and we were entering what was marked as a mine field. My intent was to gauge density. What I got was that vision is limited by heavily obscured areas, such as darkness. Since it was night, that meant my vision was limited to the range of my torch. Therefore, my 'line of sight' was 20ft since the torch was behind me a bit. In the end, I got 'there are no traps.' He later admitted that he thought I would be told exactly where the traps were and didn't want to give it to me... but also that he believes he interpreted the vision thing correctly. For most things he DMed well or in favour of fun... but this ruling of line of sight being limited by vision as an error. Line of sight only cares about if there is a physically direct path... it does not care if you can actually see it. Find Traps is dead to me and I will never use it again without homebrew improvement (or official, but they won't).

[@BobTheBob84]

When i started to dm years ago, i was pretty unexperienced and so was my players. I recall that for rolling stealth into an enemy base you had to have the cloathes of the enemies (like a spy infiltrating), but i asked them every time for an int roll, because i tought it made sense that they could forget to WEAR THE CLOATHES HAHAHAHAHAH The worst part is that they tought this made sense too

[@zEr-ne5ri]

@Gabriel Hafliger wot the Fu?! I want to slap that person............. oh Wait.

[@rogerwilco2]

I don't understand how you can think like that.

[@lemonknife]

i really like the additional commentary in this video! adds a bit of life and also sometimes helps me understand why the things being told are as bad as they are

[@Dloin]

i can understand the bow thing. i practiced archery and watch alot about medival archery. Archers are really buffed dudes because its fuckin hard to draw a longbow and i never understood why it is dex. And i think that dex is far more diverse then strength and i hate that. Bows should be strenght based and crossbows dex based. I dont dm. Tried it once and iam not good at it. Now calm down :P

[@mestre12]

That is why, if i would DM, never going to happend, i would make Bows Finesse weapons.

[@TheZandaz]

It's because strength would only affect if you can draw the bow fully. Not drawing a bow fully makes it near useless. Once you draw it fully, any exctra strength is wasted, and it's all about accuracy, which would be dex to move it quickly in order to hit a target that's trying not to be hit

[@martingammill-beck5846]

Perhaps a less clunky way to implement that idea would be to add a minimum strength score needed to fully draw and fire a bow. Kinda like what dark souls has.

[@Battleguild]

There is an item from the Waterdeep book called the oversized longbow. It deals 2d6 piercing, requires Str for damage and Dex for accuracy.

[@Rabijeel]

Disagree. Did mostly all of it myself to some degree (No Bolas or that stuff - but Archery, Crossbow Shooting, throwing Darts, Shuriken, Kunai, Knifes and Axes. For Bows, Strengh is a requiremet, something that let you use some certain Bows and others not. But, this is about Hit and Damage, and both has a lot more to do with Dex than Strengh. Also, holding a Crossbow (should be Dex as well) need more Strengh to hold them without shaking through the Weight it has - but thats it. Again, this is more kinda "With a Str of 8 you can not use it". But Hand/Eye-Coordination is explicitly bound to Dex. And that is what you need in Shooting all along. Even if you throw an Axe, it is Dex. Else, this Kid on the Medival Camp would not have demolished thoose Hunks throwing "full power" in the Competition. And on Darts.... well, just find that Guy who hammers in the Darts with all his strengh and look how well he performs (hint: He does not). In Melee, Dex is for Hit as well - Str just helps. But, the Speed and Precision of an Attack ("Edge Alignment") is far more important for the Damage than the raw Strengh - even when you use Axes. So, if you want "Realism", give the Str Bonus for Damage on every Weapon, but use Dex Bonus for Hit. With Finesse, some Weapons may alter Damage Bonus to Dex as well. Normally, both should be used in 2/3rd Dex and 1/3rd Str. Or apply both Bonus all the Time. Idc. Or, you just enjoy the Rules as they are as they are for Fun-Reasons that way: Easy, simplified and Balanced between the Classes.

[@juanfisi]

I gets bows should be strenght based weapons, but as such it creates an imbalance in the stats nobody neads to deal with.

[@savaiiheaven8143]

Whispering would give away your position. The solution would be to learn sign language or move away from the enemies before talking.

[@gotenksta]

I think it's somewhat reasonable to make a Stealth check when whispering. Also, some creatures have better hearing or smelling than their sight.

[@AlteredNova04]

Yeah I was wondering what the heck was wrong with that ruling, seems pretty reasonable to not let your players strategize telepathically when they are trying to hide from a monster.

[@miguelrincon614]

I was once playing a tiefling that had a necklace made of fingerbones (purely aesthetic), the DM said that if i entered a town or city i would get arrested for it... I then chose mask of many faces to hid it, he wasnt happy but the game went on. After I was posing as a wounded guard using MoMF to get past a guard in a door so I cast "friends" on him, the DM said i had disadvantage because the guard was really focused doing his job...

[@rh3280]

9:06 I actually have a kinda weird ruling for this, magical healing works like normal but alchemical healing (potions, healing kits, etc) make the target succeed a death save for each die-to-be-rolled and if that stabilizes them you roll those dice and gain that many HP, not sure how y'all will feel about that tho

[@jackoneilsg1]

Longbows or bows in general as strength based attacks definitely makes sense. The stronger you are, the heavier the pull weight your bow can have and therefore the further and harder you can shoot. English longbow Archers where some of the most elite units on medieval battlefields, because it literally took years of training to even develop the muscles and coordination needed, to draw, aim and fire an English longbow.

[@soulweaver64]

I mostly agree on that whole spells are either saves or attacks one, but I feel sometimes its warranted. But only if the spell is specifically designed and balanced around it, like the infamous Disintegrate. Don't want players doing 22d6 damage and turning people to dust at level 11 just by hitting their touch AC - give high fort characters the chance to take only 5d6 damage instead.

[@Welp...OkThen]

I would sometimes imply a similar rule to that one about getting the player to do the action in real life, obviously I wouldn’t limit the character to what the player couldn’t do. But my rule was more of: **rouge wants to flip around dagger in hand before throwing it** me: if you can do that irl, I’ll let this attack be a crit **hands fake foam dagger** rouge’s player: **fails to flip** Me: okay, just roll normally then That’s what that rule SHOULD have been

[@LuminousLead]

You've got a lot of anger and frustration that you're aiming at the DMs in the story. I'm not saying they haven't earned umbrage, but I think it would be kinder if you laughed at the absurdity of the situation instead of vilifying their failures.

[@marleygoodfellow7965]

this. it can be stressful remembering all those rules and making one ruling the players don’t agree with isnt the crime of the century.

[@Badartist888]

As a DM I specifically put in things so people can use their favourite spell/ class ability against them. And I often react like they 'got me'. Makes the game a lot more fun for players. The only query I get from my, limited, house rules is that I don't do the optional flanking rule (aka the flanking rule) but that is because I often put a lot of minions in battles (as the game is designed for) and players get frustrated at being crit multiple times by goblins and the like.

[@dylanburris9593]

Bro why are you so triggered. Not everyone is a playerhater and sometimes dms make mistakes. It really just matters if we can learn from those mistakes and get better as dms and as players

[@ultimateninjaboi]

Oh my god, the fucking critical hit one infuriates me to no end. Especially because hes WAY beyond wrong, likely knows it, and is still trying to pull the "read the rules," shit

[@MalevolentDivinity]

When I tie a knot it's very theatrical, and success is based on whether or not I can get someone else to take pity and do it for me, so I understand that ruling.

[@fairystail1]

....it's a noose int it?

[@AccidentalNinja]

I was playing in a Resident Evil-style game, & we had figured out that getting injured by the monsters can lead to you becoming a monster. An NPC accompanying us had been injured but our medic had done really well treating him so we thought he'd be fine. Later he started transforming right next to my character, so I tell the GM I'm capping him right in the middle of the transformation. GM says I can't, explaining that it's "cinematic" when I ask why. That GM had some issues with railroading.

[@ChibiKami]

"I cinematically bust a cap in our zombie friend's forehead"

[@DXKramer]

I had a DM tell me to make a character in 2nd edition "by the book," then got mad later because I made the character "by the book." I was a cleric. Apparently my spell repertoire were supposed to be randomly determined at character creation and every time I leveled up.

[@daxwadley7385]

At 1:37 the person mentions how it was strange that longbows used strength under that DM, which realistically speaking is not too strange. A lot of longbows throughout history had very high draw weights so you had to be very strong to use them, and previous editions addressed this by adding the composite longbow, which did intact use strength for damage rolls, so it could have been a DM who was used to older editions. Throwing knives in 5e are throwing finesse weapons, so if the DM made them purely use strength it would be wrong, but you can choose between strength and dexterity.

[@DavidTorres-pz6ii]

"I'm not in a bad mood, I'm in a good mood for punching" That line is a keeper

[@bodaciouschad]

I think that the DM who said "you can't sneak attack that undead" was trying to argue that the undead aren't inherently hostile, but tripped over their own words and said something stupid instead. My guess is that the DM was trying to imply that the players really should try resolving this situation without backstabbing the first npc they see, but just didn't have the verbal finesse to pull it off. The undead might have been Marceline the Vampire Queen or a regular, hostile zombie for all we know. There isn't much context.

[@danielribeiro1433]

That guy apologized. That's nice, my man was just tired and confused

[@Bethorien]

undead are also immune to sneak attack and crit in every edition other than 5e.

[@bodaciouschad]

@@Bethorien that makes a degree of sense. A crit usually is like losing a limb, be it an arm, leg, being ran through the torso or having some blade on throat action. None of that would necessarily kill an undead. Even a beheading just results in a zombie's head that wants to nibble on your toes.

[@ArawnNox]

@@bodaciouschad In older editions it was because they're already dead and criticals represented hitting vitals. Elementals and Constructs were also immune to crits/sneak attack.

[@Bethorien]

@@bodaciouschad one very speciifc example of this kinda thing is a 3.5 spell called beheading scarf, it says that constructs, undead, and oozes take a static amount of dice damage regardless of whether they saved or not when a normal creature dies if it fails its save.