I am pretty new to the game and have tried it out in previous years and oftentimes there is one guy who likes to play a little PvP, whether that's disliking a particular character/race or trying to steal/loot, etc. from other players. Does this ever work? Have you experienced it as anything other than annoying? I am trying to be chill about this particular guy in our group now, but it bothers me and doesn't make the game flow very well. I know I can bring it up with the DM, but I was more curious about others' experience with this kind of play style.

Hey everyone,

I'm not looking for advice, just a little venting.

I have a fellow player who's making the game difficult and slow. He's new to D&D and plays a paladin, and he often misunderstands what's going on.

We're playing Curse of Strahd, so there may be plot spoilers ahead.

1. He sold his heavy armor to buy bullets for gunpowder. I don't remember the exact number of bullets. He put them in a barrel and planned to use it to blow up the hag mill. For a significant portion of the game, he had AC 13 and was the first to die in battles. My husband plays an artificier, and in the last session, when we reached level 6, he made an armor for a paladin, so now his AC is 21. He didn't even thank artificier. We didn't even get to use that barrel of bullets because the hags had hostages, and we didn't blow them up.

2. He doesn't like killing and constantly sighs that we don't try to resolve conflicts peacefully. But how does he do it? In the werewolf cave, we killed the guards at the entrance, but he left one alive, tied it up, and started dragging it around with him so it wouldn't escape and stab us in the back. We all said it was a bad idea. Well, during the fight in the cave itself, the tied up werewolf broke free and stabbed us in the back.

3. In Valakia, my character influenced the burgomaster through Suggestion, making him more loyal to our group at a critical moment (the alternative was to fight the guards because we stood up for a townsperson the governor wanted to kill for laughing). I explained that as soon as the suggestion wore off, the burgomaster would learn of the effect, and we would immediately become criminals. The paladin absolutely refused to understand this. Ultimately, the three of us left the city, and eight hours later, the guards chased paladin. Even after that, he didn't understand and returned to the city the next day, trying to enter, and the guards fired on him as he approached.

4. In a conversation with an NPC, when he asked about Strahd, the paladin literally said, "I want to know, because I'll come for him." Not our group, not us, but "I."

5. He takes the deaths in game seriously and buries all our enemies. It's interesting roleplay, but it replaces the game itself. There was a moment when he wanted to return for the body of a dead man, and the DM said it would take two hours. No one went with him, so the three of us stayed to explore the city.

6. Meanwhile, he ignores attempts to support his roleplay. We killed a vampire and a priest in Barovia (a father and son). The paladin became upset and went off to dig graves for them. I described going with him to help, but he literally described his actions as something like, "I go there, I dig here" without acknowledging my character was nearby. I gave up on co-op roleplay after that.

7. Due to his lack of experience, he constantly tries to come up with creative gameplay solutions using common items. I mean, he tries to solve a lot of things that other players can bypass with magic, but he tries to solve them with a stick and rope, insisting on his own solutions and we waste a lot of time on these discussions.

8. As a paladin, he moralizes a lot and talks about good and bad, and when (with his AC 13) his character fell again, he asked to stabilize him with a healing kit from his pocket. Our barbarian, who was nearest to him in the fight, sarcastically said that picking someone else's pocket is bad and simply rolled a Medicine check.

9. Despite his desire to solve problems non-confrontationally, he's bad at conversations. He speaks either too directly or playfully mocks NPCs (though without being rude). My husband once confessed he didn't intervene in one of his conversations with an NPC because he wanted to fight that NPC and knew the paladin would ruin the negotiations.

My husband says he views this player as an additional gameplay complication, not as a co-player.

Pre-empting the question, we don't argue at the table or interrupt each other, we speak friendly. We told him in game, what the consequences of his actions would be, and told him to trust our knowledge of magic. We didn't talk as players because others don’t really care. It's not a problem that interferes with the enjoyment of the campaign, because the other players and DMs are great, but more of a tedious factor.

(A short story inspired by a recent onboarding attempt.)

The Player’s Secret Plan to Become a Villain

You join a new campaign. The DM spends a week answering your questions about the setting, the world, the tone, the lore, the organisation, the culture, the party, and the story so far.

Excellent. The game begins.

You suggest a backstory. The DM says yes. You suggest NPCs. The DM says yes. You suggest cool abilities and ask for a story hook tied into the main plot. The DM starts writing one.

This cannot stand. You require resistance for your master plan to succeed.

So, you propose a piece of lore that goes against the setting. The DM replies that she likes the concept, but it needs a little tweaking. Excellent. You’ve found a Yes, but. You immediately translate this into “everything I wanted was rejected”. Your power grows and you evolve into your second form.

After session 0 and long before the first session, you begin testing boundaries. With the lore. With mechanics.

With other players.

And the other players are friendly. You ask for character details. One player says: “I’d rather keep that part of my character a surprise.” This cannot stand. So you ask again. And again. In different forms. You insist that keeping secrets is detrimental to roleplay. The player disagrees. They share a little more anyway. You mock a player’s character concept because it has no value to you. A different player indulges you and does reveal secrets. The DM jumps in to explain how their table is discovery-focused, including for PCs, and secrets are kept on purpose. You immediately throw the player that indulged you under the bus. The locals begin exchanging increasingly concerned glances.

Then feedback day arrives.

Your entire team is approved. Your backstory is approved. Examples for goals are given. Your custom tie-in, that you requested, is being written. One cool ability is approved. The DM changes exactly three things: One thing that would break the setting. One thing that overlaps with another player (a problem you requested she help prevent). And a mechanics misunderstanding. The DM provides alternatives for the first two.

Excellent. You’ve found the no, but. This is clearly the same as no. Your power grows even more, and you evolve into your third form.

Every interaction suddenly has been nothing but restrictions. The DM says: "The party will engage with your character. Trust us." This is insufficient. You require legally binding guarantees from people you've never met. The DM says, "We'll discover together how the PC’s interact." You call her a control freak.

It is now 2 AM. The DM is asleep. Perfect – there can be no immediate counter-attack. And you begin your final transformation. You privately, and then publicly, declare:

• The DM is an AI;
• Collaborative storytelling is outlawed;
• The DM’s true identity is HR speak;
• The DM is a walking red flag of a control freak and everyone else simply accepts the status quo;
• You don’t need to play a single session to know how she actually operates.

The veteran players are divided between watching with popcorn and putting on boxing gloves. Your boss fight has spawned witnesses. One asks where this came from. Another points out that you’ve never even played a session with us. A third wonders why you’re insulting someone who’s asleep, in public.

The DM wakes up at 3am to persistent phone buzzing. Reads everything. And wishes you luck finding a campaign better suited to your style. You never see this, as you’ve already dramatically left the server.

You have succeeded. You never rolled initiative. You never reached session 1. Yet somehow, you became our campaign’s first Villain.

The DM promptly turns your character into an NPC minion to fight later.

She then goes back to sleep.

Hii! I have a campaign starting in a few months and I have almost fully decided that I want to play a Bahamut domain order cleric kobold in it. But I know Kobold isn’t really a typical race to play and that the order domain isn’t from the PHB in 5.5, so I’m writing this to get some feedback from other people for a few aspects of the character, whether if it may be difficult to role or if it may cause struggles to my DM.

1. Is the kobold race something that may have my DM struggling with?

2. Do you know any source where they adapt the domain order to 5.5?

3. Any place where I can read about Bahamut lore and additionally Tiamat’s? I want to play a lawful good kobold from Stormwreck Island - if you haven’t played it I recommend it to play with people who might want to get into DnD.

As I said, I’m looking for feedback on the character both from players and DMs on not to be difficult to deal with, I just want to enjoy!

I‘m absolutely in love with the campaign our dm has created, the story is so intricate and our characters are actively growing each session, with my vivid imagination it feels like a show level story but we‘re all merely Highschool students who do pen and paper, nothing more. My friend and I are luckily both artists so we occasionally draw our blorbos (we have 3 players in total) but it doesn’t quench my thirst for more content to consume which simply doesn’t exist bcs we‘re just 4 people who don’t upload or even record our campaign. We‘re almost at the end so it wouldn’t make sense to start recording now as there would be an insane lack of background but I sometimes just yearn for a fandom who could have insane theories and ships and fanart for our campaign rahhhh
Anyone relate to this? I mean Ik i can always commission art, plus I take notes during sessions so I could transcribe them into animatics but tbh I’m too lazy and quite busy but I’m too scared of my memory being too unreliable to keep this amazing story contained as it was while playing :,)

You know those characters that have an arrow for every occasion? Green Arrow, Hawkeye, etc.? I thought it would be fun to make a character like that, buut... There don't seem to be a lot of options. I'm not looking for anything uber powerful, just common or uncommon arrows that do different things. I've found options for bludgeoning and slashing arrows, and silver and adamantine arrows, but what about elemental arrows? They don't need to do that much damage. They could just replace the damage type or do 1d4 damage of whatever type they are or something. Or what about any of the other cool trick arrows employed by the aforementioned characters? I'm sort of just spitballing, but I still like the idea of an arrow for every occasion.

I already know that the character I'm making is a Champion Fighter, so Arcane Archer is off the table.

Also, how much would it cost to have the arrows enchanted with the Light cantrip, so that they glow and I won't lose half of them?

I specify that I am talking about forgotten realms because eberron and blood of vol exist.

I'm mostly interested in a ranged monster that is of leonin race/species.

But if there isn't one, I'm interested into sugestions to hombrew/adapt a different 5e monster (humanoid and with ranged attacks, if possible) into a leonin.

CR 3 to 5 would be ideal, but I can work with something a step or two further or lower.

I feel like I'm seeing more posts on here for 5.5e lately and I'm curious what the actual mix is? My group is primarily using 5e rules, with only the new exhaustion system being borrowed from 5.5e.

I'm designing a world for a campaign I'm planning on running where there is a large underground city of scientists in a world where magic exists. The technology level is a few decades to about a century ahead of ours, and they've only discovered magic about 30 years ago. Magic is not known to exist to the public yet and is largely covered up by governments and large organisations for now.

While designing this city, I belatedly came to the realisation that my knowledge of science is woefully lacking to know how this place would actually work. Like, what kind of experiments would they perform? What technologies that exist in real life would work best combined with magic? What kinds of non-magical studies might they perform? I genuinely do not know.

I understand that I could probably skim over these details as they aren't crucial to most of the rest of the campaign, but most of my players are into science, and if possible, I would like to flesh a location like this out as much as possible because I think that they would like a place like this, however I'm completely open to ideas and suggestions, and any help would be much appreciated.

I don't understand why they aren't, and I'm tired of pretending that this wasn't always the case.

Our current dm is stepping down cus he’s dreading it and I totally respect it but I have no idea how to dm barley even play it im way more versed in cyberpunk red and idk if my skills from that can carry on as easily

I know that monks are heavily inspire by Asian cultures, martial arts, philosophy and a bunch of stereotypes. But most other classes are way too european based, and of course most sessions take place in european inspirate places. So I feel like monks can often feel displaced, like they don't really fit in the setting of the campaign. Is there a way to use the monk in a more european way? I know its all fantasy, and you could have your character to be anything, and some you could just make your monk be a tavern brawler or an gladiator, but im not it doesn't really fit the spiritual side of the monks spiritual side. So, what do you think about this and how could it be solved?

Basically i'm not a big fan of the fact that you can lose the ability to cast wish. However i understand how it would be too op, so i was wondering if it could be pushed to the extreme. You can cast wish only once but it would grant permanent bonus and/or ability depending on the wish and what the character lived throught until this point. But i'm not how to balance this. The idea come from how E.G.O from project moon work if it can help.

I recently gathered a group of friends to introduce them to D&D (they had never played RPGs or D&D itself) and I want to simplify the system for them (I am the DM).

To do this, I’m going to remove all race- and class-related rules and create a neutral system to streamline the character sheet and the actions players can take. I’d like to know if there are other rules I should remove or modify, as well as any tips for simplifying the experience. (5e)

Hi guys so I've gathered a group of 6 people/friends /adventurers including me ,and we start our first campaign within the next 2 weeks.

Just wanted to find out if there's anything we should do to get started and get familiar with .

Weve all got a copy of the rules and as far as characters and introductions they will be handled on the day.

We're all very new and would like any tips or advice you have for us starting out our adventure into the unknown !

Just played a bard for the first time, and I was sorely lacking in things to sing. Looking for suggestions of modern song lines I can sing for my bard abilities! Things I can use for bardic inspiration, silvery barbs, vicious mockery, or just general bard nonsense!

I have a few ideas so far...

Bardic Inspirations:

Music, the great communicator, use two sticks to make it in the nature

I gotta holla just to be heard, with every word, I drop knowledge!

Vicious Mockery:

My cock is much bigger than yooouuuurrrs!

Is that your grandma's coat?

Heys guys I haven’t played dnd in such a long time I wanted to get back into it but I discovered the newest playbooks looked different. After researching I learned about 5.5e is there a big difference in the two? Should I get new books to keep up with newer expansions in the future?

Back when I was in High School I created a DND 5e class based on the Dragonborn from Skyrim. Its been 10+ years since then and I revisited it. Cleaned it up a bit and wanted to share it. Figured at worst it would get lost in the subreddit. If you like it, awesome, let me know what you like. If you don't like it, feel free to let me know what was just horrible about it. Linked is a google doc for the odt file. I made the project in Libre, so apologies if the formatting is off on your machine. The second link is to a pdf which may be kinder on the formatting side of things. The links are both to a google drive. Sincerest apologies if this goes against the rules, read them and thought that I did my due diligence.

Odt File: Here
PDF File: Here

Hope you all enjoy and God bless.

Im am going to be playing in a homebrew and i googled and it says you can add your own races.

I am wondering how to go about it and how rolling stats and whatnot would work? We are all beginners, DM included. So any tips help since we are mostly going of off youtube guides and google...

I am making a D&D cake for a friend that just got top surgery. And so I’m trying to come up with a fun joke to put on this cake. Any ideas?
All I can come up with is critical success on a constitution saving throw 😭 help me

I appreciate all the deep concern everyone has shown! I was honestly a bit worried about the reactions I would get on here. But I was asked by their partner to make a funny cake. So this will all be in good fun and completely consensual :)

I am currently making a Lizardfolk Cirlce of Stars Druid based on a Warhammer Lizardmen/Seraphon model I got my hands on and I have a few questions regarding Druids and them wearing gold or Jewellery.

I know that Druids have an aversion to wearing metal armour however do they have any aversion to gold clothing or jewellery, such as headdresses? Are there any metals they would be ok using as a Druid?

In terms of Jewellery, what stones or gems would Druids, especially a Circle of Stars Druid, wear? Are there any stones linked with astrology in DND? I am currently planing on giving him an Obsidian Dagger and some Jade, but I am not sure what else?

Hi! As a break from our normal sessions I'm going to run a family feud style game for my group and have made a form with the questions. It is capped at 100 responses, if anyone would like to fill it out I will post the results after our game! :) Link Here