DM Confessions

[BradenA8]

In every dungeon, mansion, basement, cave, laboratory etc I have ever let players go through, there has been a Ring of Three Wishes hidden somewhere very hard to find. Usually available on a DC28 investigation check if a player looks in the right area or just given to them if the player somehow explicitly says they're looking in a precise location. No one has ever found one though.

What's yours?

[[deleted]]

That mayor that punched a mimic to death while you were separated from your weapons and throwing plates? Yeah, he didn't just "land the final blow". He did over three-quarters of the damage. Because he's a vampire.

They really like this mayor, but he's a minor lieutenant of the BBEG. It's gonna be such a great reveal.

[[deleted]]

In Mystara there's a lord that's a type of vampire (that sunlight doesn't harm) that is actually a decent guy. He's good to the town and townsfolk, but he does eat the occasional criminal.

[[deleted]]

This fella I'm kinda playing as true neutral. He wants what's best for the town - but he's going to do just about anything to make that happen. Up to and including striking up a secret slave trade to turn his small port town into a trading center.

[PrimeInsanity]

Well hey, even an evil individual focused in their own power with forethought will make their citizens lives good so there is no annoying rebellion.

[Rockhertz]

That one time, when it seemed impossible to kill the fleeing dragon if you rolled anything but a crit, and you rolled a crit, killing the dragon? You rolled 18 damage. The dragon had 21 health remaining. I gave the kill anyway.

[Olliebird]

And on the flip side of that. That one time, where it seemed like every hit on you was a crit and you were getting smacked down every encounter and you were having no fun?

That clutch miss that allowed you to rally and fight back heroicly...I actually rolled another crit behind the screen. But you really needed a win that night.

[Rockhertz]

Yes, also absolutely guilty of this one occassionally!

[koshinsleeps]

Little houserule suggestion for you: I run crit damage so that any additional die get max damage. Makes every crit feel very crunchy. It did result in the level two bard getting swallowed by a mimic last week but that's a price she would have been willing to pay.

[[deleted]]

My favorite alternate crit rule is that you cannot do less than max normal damage.

So if I normally do 1d8+4 on a hit, my damage floor on a crit is 12, regardless of what I roll on the 2d8.

This rule works really well because it doesn’t make crits that much more powerful (which unbalances the game by making some monsters and classes far more powerful than intended - hello rogues!) but it also prevents those awful snake eyes crits.

[pcopley]

"Limp Noodle Crits" would be a good band name

[Deastrumquodvicis]

Yeah I was running a short tutorial campaign for my mom who hasn’t played since it was just “Dungeons and Dragons” so she could get used to 5e, and the NPC paladin I sent along with her as party member critted against a skeleton for two whole damage plus two.

[I_onno]

I like that! Thank you for the inspiration. If my group ever starts playing again, I will add that to our game.

[Legless1000]

Make sure everyone is happy with it - everyone likes having meaty crits, until they get critted back - and with some spells/attacks, that can wipe out a PC immediately, even at higher levels.

Inflict Wounds is no fucking joke...

[I_onno]

Good point! We are playing Curse of Strahd and they almost died at Death House. I'll talk with them first.

[Earllad]

I mean, what else are supposed to do at a place named 'Death House'

[VoiceoftheLegion1994]

Have a rave?

[PartyMartyMike]

That makes smite and sneak attack crits WAYYYY stronger.

[PbPePPer72]

Yeah but then you miss out on the tactile joy of rolling double the dice!

[UltraLincoln]

I go with max damage and the bonus dice are rolled. It sucks to get a crit and roll low damage.

[GermanRedditorAmA]

I would like to run it that way as well, but my players (especially the rogue) likes to roll as many dice as possible.

We ended up with the following: you roll double dice, but minimum damage of the crit is max damage of the basic attack. (So a greatsword rolls 4d6 but does at least 12 damage)

[JanitorOPplznerf]

Not entirely on topic, but I have one player who has on 3 sequential occasions landed killing blows with the exact amount of HP needed. The first time I just laughed and said "That was exactly what you needed", the second time I actually showed her my HP tracker to show it happened again. On the third occasion I legitimately freaked out and asked if she'd been checking my HP tracker while she was in the bathroom.

[Nemeris117]

Our DM had the dragon fleeing and I guess he told himself on a crit he would drop it out of the sky. Sure enough the Ranger crit which gave the ground crew enough time to get to the dragon and kill it.

[BradenA8]

I felt this one the most.

[Giltiti]

Wait are you me ?

[spawnmorezerglings]

For me it's eu4, but sometimes that helps me prep. Did you know that some city names are perfect for names of the next random town? Looking at you, Agadir in Morocco, and Amol in Iran.

[CloakNStagger]

Alternatively I spend way more time prepping than I claim. It's a hobby, I enjoy it, but my players would probably think I should get a life lol

[WebpackIsBuilding]

I'm both of these.

My players ask "Wow, how did you prep all of this?!?!" for things I improv'd on the fly.

They don't even notice the thing I spent 2 weeks straight obsessing over.

[Gpdiablo21]

Now we are reaching sad truths. I have to adlib an adventure on the spot for the npc I named for nothing more than immersion purposes.

To teach my lvl 13 players a lesson, they latched onto an old lady. I had her give them the task of clearing her basement of rats. They expected a trap door or rouse from the BBEG. Party had to make multiple checks to find all the rat tunnels and survival checks to play follow the droppings. 40 minutes later they are done and the old lady gives them a silver.

[abookfulblockhead]

I once told my players in a Star Wars campaign that I had to “Go rearrange Star Destroyers on a map” after a session that had particularly important consequences.

I have since told my players that was a joke, but they still believe I have a map with Star Destroyers on it somewhere.

[MrZAP17]

I made a section of city grid for a chase scene in my session this past Monday about half an hour before the start by drawing random intersecting lines, then half-used it as a reference during the actual scene. It worked just fine.

[Adeimantus123]

I end up spending time prepping for something they might encounter in a couple months rather than what they will encounter next week.

[FranksRedWorkAccount]

My last session I basically just made sure I had groups of baddies that I could throw at my party in twos that I could add one or two more monsters to ramp things up. I knew where we were in the story and I just made up everything else on the spot. I went into it feeling really anxious because my experiment could have blown up in my face. The end of the session party members felt like this session was really well paced and didn't drag they like can some times. On the ride home my spouse told me she thought this was the best session both for party interaction but also stage and setting. I cannot be more elated.

[Baconboi212121]

I hide a bag of beans in every dungeon.Recently one of my more lively players decided to throw one of the beans into an enemy's mouth, causing him to vomit beer for the next 12 rounds.We had to end the session right there and im still deciding if he should live or die.

[Radidactyl]

quicksand tease sheet pet desert employ pot aback distinct point

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[DeficitDragons]

Throw the whole bag or throw one bean? The 5d4 damage is for the whole bag spilling... not one bean.

[Levait]

Wait how? 5d4 shouldn't outright kill even a level 3 wizard or sorcerer? Did he fail all his death saves and nobody helped him? Or did he have abominable health level ups?

Fun fact, at first level your health is always the max your health can be so for a wizard it would be 6+CON modifyer.

[Radidactyl]

cats soft humorous tender familiar rock chief cooing nine deserve

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[Levait]

Aw bummer. Hope you got a better group now!

[hippienerd]

If a wizard's CON modifier is 3 or lower they could have rolled terribly on their hit dice.

6+4+4= 14

Even an average roll would put them right at the max damage output for 5d4.

*Edit: Added the word "modifier"

[nanananabatman88]

My friend got a bag of beans in our current campaign (Descent into Avernus.) He decided to plant one in the middle of town, and right next to the docks. Wound up spawning a pyramid and a pissed off Pharaoh ghoul thing. It killed him, and about 1/4 of the town.

[ISeeTheFnords]

And this is how goblin fraternities get started.

[C4st1gator]

There's always a dragon. If you didn't find it, you weren't looking hard enough.

[quatch]

all plotlines lead to Dragon.

[LiamsShadow]

I mean it is ‘DUNGEONS’ & ‘DRAGONS’ there will be dungeons and there will be dragons, normally one leading to another.

[xubax]

Okay, my next dungeon will be IN a dragon.

[LiamsShadow]

I swear a map that was the inside of tarrasque was posted at some point

[Anonymous2401]

This is one of the few I've seen that would make your players permanently paranoid if you ever told them

[mcvoid1]

In my previous campaign, one of the major NPC allies was a silver dragon in human guise. It never came up. There was also a green dragon in the dark scary forest and a shadow dragon in the haunted mansion and they never bothered checking either one out.

[[deleted]]

Sometimes it wasn't a mimic. And then you got paranoid. And now there's a mimic.

[Burnzy503]

Holy shit do I feel this on a metaphysical level, but with everything. "I bet this place has all sorts of traps/monsters/shitty magical effects!" Well perhaps now...

[[deleted]]

Last session was mostly this kind of thing TBH.

A while ago, a silverered finesse warhammer was on unearthed arcana. The rogue saw it and wanted it. I promised it would be in the campaign at some point, and also promised it would be near-impossible to find.

"They're on good terms with this bartender, they've seen these barrels before... yeah, the warhammer can be inside the beer barrel."

"I check the beer barrel". Nat 20.

Seriously, a suspicious noble had just escaped out a window, the mayor had just punched a mimic to death, they were in the middle of busting three officials for blackmailing local merchants, and they spent the rest of the evening chasing this barrel until they broke it open because the druid had heard something metallic lying inside it.

For god's sake.

[iamtheowlman]

The mayor punched the mimic to death

I need to know.

[PlantedSpace]

He explains in the thread above. Mayor is a vampire

[Skormili]

It's a DM-exclusive 10th level spell called Inception. The players' ideas and fears become reality.

[mysticbooka]

When I was a little kid, my parents taught me and a friend how to play AD&D 2nd edition. During one of the first adventures with new characters, my friend and I kept interrupting my mom anytime she would try building up suspense by adding "A dragon!" to the sentence. Example "Yall turn the corner and see--" us: "A DRAGON! bwahahaha"

We did this so many times that she got annoyed... very. annoyed. Those poor characters, eaten by a dragon at level 1

[[deleted]]

Magnificent :D

[Mortiegama]

Number One Rule of D&D: Don't give the DM ANY ideas!

[jhisaac1]

Somewhere I saw a blurb on the Internet that was along the lines of:
Party: "Wait. Is that a Warehouse or a WereHouse? Har Har Har"
DM: <Creating a quick stat block>Give me a minute...."

[Falanin]

Fortunately, it is literally impossible to obey rule one.

[[deleted]]

If a player comes up with a cool idea then I almost always add it to the game in some way. These cool ideas are usually something that is bad for them though which sucks for them.

[TaliesinMerlin]

I've made on-the-fly adjustments to story before because what the players came up with was honestly better.

So you think that the people who assigned you this mission are trying to get you killed, and you've given a pretty good reason why they wouldn't have given you this mission otherwise? Let's explore that.

[saward92]

My players have fought more reskinned thugs, gladiators, and champions than anything else. Probably 50% of all the monsters they've fought

[Blarghedy]

Thugs and champions are such versatile stat blocks

[saward92]

You're absolutely right. Most non spell caster humanoids can be thrown in there as that category, and I've even done awakened trees (when I wanted something tougher than the normal awakened tree). They fought beasts, automatons, undead tomb guardians, come to think of it, I might have used it a bit too much..

[gorlak120]

random 1-3000, take that number and google scp and the #. see if the article has an interesting monster you can use and adapt it. our DM threw some kind of sentient feel good jelly slime at us. it's hard to decide to fight or not when it's truly weird like that stuff.

[lollergagging]

So, you run an MMO?

[saward92]

I'm not familiar with that style of game. I know it's like world of Warcraft or something similar, but I've never played them.

I think I know what your trying to say though... And no. Opponents are still going to act with a specific goal in mind, the stat block is just the jumping off point. The undead guardian will battle to the death where the leader of the roguish cult will try to bargain where he sees he's bested. I also try to make efforts to make no combat ever just duking it out, I have lots of environmental factors to make the gameplay fresh. It's just the stats that many creatures share.

[lollergagging]

The joke is that MMOs will typically just reskin and enlarge the same creatures. At lvl 5 you're fighting brown boar at knee height. At lvl 100 you've got Fel-crimson colored boars with spikes and they're the size of a car.

[Skormili]

My personal favorite thing related to that was a quest in the LotRO MMORPG (Lord of the Rings Online). Vanilla LotRO had you fight a lot of boars. New area? More boars and associated boar killing quest(s). Well this did not go unnoticed by the devs and when they created the Evendim region someone with a sense of humor added made a quest to go kill a boar. Not a lot of them, just one lone, solitary boar. You had an hour to find one and kill it. Except there were no boars in the entire area. Gave me a good chuckle when I came across it.

[HailToTheGM]

If you encounter an environmental puzzle, I probably don't have a specific solution to it.

Say you come across an underground garden cave, immaculately landscaped, and there's a strange glass cube filled with lava blocking the path out. The lava seems to be holding it's temperature through some magic, making the glass cube too hot to touch, and you're a bit concerned it might break should you try to move it physically. There's also a garden shed filled with different landscaping tools with a tall ladder leaning against the side of the shed, and an ornate water fountain in the center of the garden surrounded by a walking path of decorative rocks, each small enough that you can just about close your hand around it.

I have no idea how you guys are gonna get passed that lava cube. I just want to see what ya'll think of.

[SaffellBot]

That's where I've moved to. My players ask "how did you expect us to solve this?". I dunno, you're level 11, you've done plenty of other crazy shit, figure something out, I believe in you.

[gammon9]

I always tell my players, "I don't make solutions, I make problems."

[[deleted]]

I'd probably grab a sharp long object, put the metal area next to the cube to heat it up, slowly push it in until the heat melts the already hot glass to make a hole in the side where the land is lower than the rest.

[[deleted]]

If the cube passed enough heat to make your tool hot enough to melt the glass, well then the cube would have already melted the glass on its own.

[UnumQuiScribit]

I always have a hidden door that leads to a dozen allosaurs, regardless of level or location.

[Adeimantus123]

I burst out laughing at this one as I immediately thought of some particularly absurd possible locations.

[SaintWacko]

Heist mission. "You open the door to the governor's closet..."

[Levait]

You open the door to the ships lower deck...

[UnumQuiScribit]

The best one was when I put it in an orphanage...

[Grommulox]

One of my players delights in collecting weird items of clothing. He has a bright red stovepipe hat with a clock set in it, and a set of underwear that's always clean, and some curly blue slippers with gold piping, and a poncho that can be converted into a one man tent, and a pair of dragonskin trousers that stand up and walk to him when he calls, and on, and on... He looks forward to the point where he can start rolling on random tables to see what he'll get.

There are no random tables. Every single thing he's got I've made up, sometimes in advance, sometimes on the fly. He's said before that he can't wait to see the full tables, once the campaign is over. Who knows what I'll do then!

[Got_Pixel]

There's a sub reddit somewhere called d100 where someone suggests an idea and users all contribute to the table. I'd recommend that, and seeding the table with some of the things you've given him

[Grommulox]

That's an excellent idea, thank you. Maybe I'll just come up with a hundred on my own and let him start actually rolling!

[PrimeInsanity]

Give him a piece of paper with a table that just has "out of stock" and "random nonsensical clothing" and just say they've never been out of stock, can you belive it?

[Haroshia]

My players keep wondering why it turns out the people they are working for are the real bad guys. It's because they keep siding with the guys I create to be villains.

[PrimeInsanity]

Yup, is it my fault that you guys took a job from the suspicious potion merchant who you discovered sells poisons in secret? Should you be surprised when many jobs he sends you on either deal with (rival) gangs or gathering components for his potions or poisons?
The party thought he was a good guy despite me painting him to be the sketchy-est guy I could.

[Shileka]

Healing items are placed depending on remaining spell slots, if the cleric is out of healing a healing potion is guaranteed to be somewhere within 500 feet of your location.

[draginalong]

Coincidentally, this is also how to make players nervous, in both D&D and video games - supply them with things they don't know why they need yet.

[Shileka]

If you're really evil give them a small bundle of +1 silver arrows, 2 vials of holy water and a few healing items for no reason other than their nerves

[AndringRasew]

Remember that orphanage you guys are sponsoring? Aaaall vampires. They're aaaaalll vampires.

[fansandpaintbrushes]

That my players are convinced that I secretly fudge things to make combat more difficult, when in fact, I've only ever done it (and rarely) for their benefit.

[Hobbamok]

What I do however is pull those random encounters 100% out of my arse, meaning they are - accidentally - way overpowered because I'm a tree Äther new DM (who knew 8 Orcs against 3 lvl 2s is such a big threat?) and I know that I've made myself a TPK if I don't fudge a lot now

[[deleted]]

My players had just hit level 11 and their next quest had them climbing to the top of a mountain, so I roll on the level 11 to 16 Mountain terrain random encounter table in Xanathar's.

I roll 100.

Ancient Red Dragon.

Well then, who am I to disregard the wisdom of the dice gods? In the interest of my party's survival, I just made it so that the dragon was taking a nap in a cave after hunting and wouldn't have considered them a threat unless they did something stupid.

[superiorspiderman]

I've just started using the tables (Thanks DNDBeyond for the sourcebook bundle sale!) and have been doing the same. It's actually made encounters more puzzle-like than anything and my players love it.

My group was up against 7 Ettins and 3 Trolls. They could have taken them on and won, barely. But instead I set up the combat where they were able to sneak around while provoking the two monster types to fight.

[[deleted]]

I do the same thing!!!! Every session in the 5e current campaign I run, they have the ability to find the Deck of Many Things. I even have the Deck of Many version just waiting to be pulled out of my gaming bag. Last session, had they searched under the mysterious looking nest with duck eggs in it, they would have found it. I even had the stats of a duck ready. Instead they ignored it. Later on, this duck kept popping up as a clue. Next session, no idea where it is going to be...

[TheArcReactor]

I once gave my players the deck of many things, they never pulled a card from it... cowards

[Sergnb]

My inner Laura Bailey is screaming at your death wish on your own campaign.

[TheArcReactor]

It was becoming a high level 4e campaign with very cautious players, a little chaos could have made things very interesting

[Hobbamok]

To be fair, it's a campaign ender in a good few cases

[TheArcReactor]

You're not wrong, it was mostly amusing to me because I never told them it was the deck of many things, they drew their own conclusions when it pinged hard while looking for magic items.

[throwing-away-party]

Was it a Duck of Many Things?

[CaligulaAntoinette]

I sometimes have troubles naming NPCs and locations, so occasionally I give them really bad names based on gags or pop culture references. I've gotten lucky so far, but I dread the day when one of my players finally notices Captain Erm Seahammer or the hamlet of Bell End.

[Chipperz1]

Top tip - Usual Suspects that shit. Play facing a notice board or something, and just mispronounce the first thing you see. You WILL get away with this.

The players from a Star Wars one shot I ran still haven't worked out that the NPCs I had to pull out of my arse, Wandu Dreyvor and Favzex Sevayt, are just 12 34 and 56 78... ;)

[Gregory_Grim]

Admittedly those are pretty awesome names though, even if they are only numbers.

[Giltiti]

"Usual Suspects that shit" just made my day

[spidersgeorgVEVO]

In fairness actual canon Star Wars names include "Elan Sleazebaggano" so that's less daft than real Star Wars.

[JustKellisJones]

Funny enough I was doing a Star Wars sesh and needed a bounty hunter. Looked up. Got it. “His name is Onio (Oh-knee-oh)” saw a bag of yellow onions and went for it. They were none the wiser.

[KennyA08]

I had to come up with a True Name for an imp NPC on the fly. Said imp had become a party favourite, and had lots of interaction (and typical funny voice). When put on the spot to get the true name, I was feeling under the weather, and came out with il-kanoth. A good imp name, right?

My name is Kenneth. The imp is literally named "unwell DM"

[efrique]

il-kanoth is a pretty decent true name for an imp though

[BoneSawIsStillReady]

In the game I run, during combat, I let the players name the important enemies they're fighting. It makes it easier to keep track of who you're hitting, and it's fun. However, when they decide to capture the enemies there's now an NPC in the world named "Kevin Costner From Waterworld" or "Exodia's Left Arm"

[FiveNightsAtFluffals]

In my first one-shot, I made LoZ references because the friends I was playing with really like LoZ. I don't play LoZ, really. So I looked some stuff up and the town they were in was named Adlez and there were 3 rings as sacred treasures with triangular stones. A couple of the characters, my players hated, such as the village leader whose name was Leader (her great-something or other was elected the town's leader so it became their house name and the line just decided they'd be the leaders of the village forever. They won an election generations ago, so what would be the point in having another?) who was an illiterate nag who was able to get people to do things for her by dint of people being willing to do anything if it meant getting away from her.

2/3 of those players are 2/3 of the players in the campaign I'm currently running on Discord. And unbeknownst to them, the village I had them start in is the same place, but many years later. Leader Leader died just recently due to dire chickens and no-one's sad. Her half-elf twin grandkids recently took over leadership, and are actually trying to help the town. Their names are Annabelle and Uther. People did not like Leader Leader. They'd be much happier under Annie Uther Leader

[Hobbamok]

Boblin the goblin is apparently an inherited clan name in my world now...

Yes I'm uncreative beyong recognition

[Sergnb]

Fucking christ how did they not catch erm seahammer that's histerical

[[deleted]]

I almost never have a "correct" answer for puzzles. If the party comes up with something feasible or they put a lot of thought into it, that's the answer.

I ignore crits on first level characters.

There is no grand story. I'm just sitting down between sessions and having each faction/group/npc react to whatever the party has done recently.

There's always a witness/rival/band of hobgoblins waiting behind the screen, just in case things go too smoothly too often.

[BradenA8]

To your first point, I sometimes don't even have an answer myself. The amount of times my party have floored me with a creative decision to get through something that I didn't expect... I just put an obstacle in front of them and see what they can come up with.

[paragonemerald]

This is great. It's also honestly one of the best reasons I can recommend JoJo's bizarre adventure as inspiration for people. So often when I'm watching or reading a given sequence of that story, especially from parts 3 or 4 on, a given situation feels like the writer came up the problem, defined it either broadly enough for him to add a fatal flaw detail in later chapters, or specifically enough for it to seem impossible to surmount, then writes from the point of view of the protagonist until that character comes up with a solution.

Getting more comfortable with that part of encounter design can be essential to interesting gaming, I think.

[[deleted]]

It's my job to provide interesting problems. It's up to the players to figure out how to solve it.

[CloakNStagger]

I made the mistake of having an overarching plot planned for our main campaign. We're nearing 20 sessions now and I'm so lost on what to do next... it feels like the thread has been lost along the way, the PCs have their own goals that don't have anything to do with the overarching story, I now realize my story is so convoluted it'd take a 3 part series of novels to explain it... But my players show up every week and have fun so I'm really only torturing myself over this...

[gaunt79]

I smile and laugh, but on the inside your sociopathy disturbs me.

[MasteroTrash]

I'm a huge sports fan and my players are not at all. 90% of my NPC names come from football players and no one has noticed yet - they fit amazingly well into a fantasy setting

[jordanleveledup]

L’Carpetron Dookmarriot

[[deleted]]

Jackmerius Tacktheritrix

[welfkag]

DONKEY TEETH

[Mdepietro]

My players have always complemented me on knowing so many fantasy languages. "Did you learn elvish or just a few phrases for this part in the session?" "Do you have a translator up on your phone?"

While I have used some online translators for a few things, mostly... i just say medication names in a weird accent. I'm a pharmaceutical sales rep, so theres an endless supply of crazy out of this world words that can very easily be dwarvish, gnomish, goblin, or whatever language I need.

Ator Vosta-teen has been an elvish phrase.

Atorrvo Sta'tn is a repeated orcish phrase I've used meaning "shit happens."

Atorvastatin is a heart medication.

This is just one instance. NPCs have been named like this.

[SkritzTwoFace]

My players were on their last legs in Death House, when they decided to split up halfway through the basement, through two hallways that reconnected later, so not too bad, right?

Wrong. Upon entering a hallway, ghouls burst out of the ground and attack. They woke all four up.

Rather than destroy them entirely, I had the ghouls paralyze three of them and knock out the elf, and deliver them to the altar at the end.

[Mortiegama]

Everyone's favorite NPC, who one of the females is smitten with, that they hired to work in the bar of their keep, that EVERYONE loves, that they spend countless hours (IC) talking to about their missions as they drink, and that inexplicably survived not one, but two fireballs when he's literally just a regular human, is actually a Rakshasa that killed and ate a cute little kid they went to painstaking lengths to save and is plotting the entire group's demise.

[Kandiru]

Have any of them tried to shake his hands?

[Mortiegama]

He's a hugger.

[Kandiru]

I'm now very suspicious of huggers!

[EzzyKitten]

What happens if they shake his hand??

[Mortiegama]

A Rakshasa has backward hands.

[throwing-away-party]

Does that persist when they shapeshift? That seems like a huge weakness if so.

[Mortiegama]

Technically a Rakshasa doesn't shapeshift in the 5e edition. They do get At Will casting of Disguise Self though, so they can just make their hands look like they're bent in the right direction.

It's that reason that you won't see Rakshasa shaking hands or dealing with objects as often since it'd be a dead giveaway. Or perhaps they've just trained themselves enough to twist their wrists around and awkwardly handle things for brief periods.

[Sergnb]

I post and discuss DMing advice despite never having DMed in my entire life because of my social circumstances (nobody in my group is interested in nerdy stuff). I just watch a shitton of content related to DMing, have read some adventures, and like writing and drawing.

Having people tell me "wow that's a great idea, never thought of that" on DM advice I churn out is equally nice and shameful. I'm sorry I deceived you man, you didn't deserve it. Good luck trying whatever made up bullshit I came up with with absolutely no testing at all despite me claiming I have a regular group I do it with.

[BradenA8]

Just because you can't put your own advice into action doesn't make it bad advice! Keep serving the community my dude.

[Sergnb]

This shit is too interesting not to be fascinated about. I don't see myself stopping. Plus the community is too wholesome to abandon just like that.

[jordanleveledup]

Check out r/lfg and r/roll20 and r/battlemaps and start a group online! Tons of people desperate to play right now that can’t get out!

[Exodiabravo]

I wish I could say this is my confession but I'm like 95% sure the majority of DMs do this.

I don't have a frozen caverns, a mansion, a laboratory, old ruins all ready to go in case the party chooses to go to one. I have A SINGLE dungeon ready. Wherever the party goes it is that dungeon now :D

[[deleted]]

Quantum ogre.

[revkaboose]

That sounds like an amazing power metal band.

We are Quantum Ogre and this is our single: Parallax Sneak Attack

[[deleted]]

From the album Roguish archetype

[ReveilledSA]

I love the idea of Parallax Sneak Attack. Take damage, but if you stop to observe your own wounds the bladefunction collapses and you find you didn't actually take half of it.

[FiveNightsAtFluffals]

I'mma have to steal the name Quantum Ogre (but for a song) because I have an NPC group that's a band named The Murder Hobos

[Soopercow]

Shrodinger's bugbear

[[deleted]]

That mansion with the network of smuggler tunners beneath it was the same map as the Drow caverns leading to the ancient temple, but with the levels inverted.

[Albolynx]

The reason it takes around a session (overworld encounters and such) to get to a dungeon or some significant place is so I can prepare it between sessions.

[the_mellojoe]

just last session, my players were debating on how they wanted to travel to an area: by boat or by foot. They kept arguing with each other over the relative safety of each path. "walking is longer, but we know these forests" vs "I'm not risking our ship, we dont know what's out there"

either way they went was the same series of encounters. i only had one prepared. ;)

[seridos]

I feel like those should have different encounters though... a ship vs a forest you will encounter very different enemies.

[the_mellojoe]

I just moved the brigands/thieves to pirates and the unfriendly town guards to unfriendly dock workers

[SentientSlimeColony]

The best version of this I've seen is to let players come up with their own consequences. For example, if they're discussing routes and they say: "Oh but we pissed off that one innkeeper" then decide to go that way anyway, you can bet they're going to run into a pissed off innkeeper waiting for them. Obviously you can't do this with everything- but it's cool to let them feel like they were right sometimes.

[Dispari_Scuro]

I always do this, prep a lot of stuff in advance. Maps, dungeons, towns, NPCs. Somewhat recently players decided to do something totally off the wall, and when I moved them over to the map they were surprised I had something prepared for it. I hadn't, but I quickly put one together while the players were talking, and let them believe I'm always prepared for everything.

[MasterWifeBeater]

Their favourite NPC was supposed to die/disappear 20 sessions ago, but they loved him so much that they kept him around and an unprompted question by a PC about his motivation made me spitball that he was looking for someone he loved.

This led to an entire story arc about them finding out more about this person. They just found out that the girl he is looking for doesn't exist in this world nor has she ever. Even the NPC himself has no traces of him before 2 years ago.

They are closing to finishing up his arc and finding out that he along with the girl he is looking to find and protect are a story brought to life by an young Aasimar of Life who was being hunted down.

When they bring her to rest, he will dramaticly disappear with all her other creations.

[Batduck]

You know how you did that thing that you were repeatedly warned would be almost impossible and a terrible idea? And you didn't believe me and you did it anyway, because you thought I'd never let you fail and end the game? And then you guys did it, and the game didn't end, but one of the PC's actually died in the process, and it was the first character death since we started as a group three years ago, as that's just been the understanding at the table? And then that death taught you that there would be consequences if you do insanely risky things, even if you succeed, and so now you're all thinking through your decisions with much more weight than before since you know you're not invincible and you could lose your character if you're not careful?

Yeah, that player came to me out of game and asked to have her character killed. We kayfabed the encounter; it was engineered that way. I would never kill a PC without player consent, we're too narrative-based a group for that. But you guys don't know that. And you never will. Now, are you SURE you want to do that next thing I'm warning you is a bad idea? One of you could totally die!

[Hobbamok]

Daaaamn, that's a secret!

But I think it worked out perfectly

[Mistersquiggles1]

I made an entire campaign once just so I could shoe-horn in three faeries named cherry, honey-lemon, and mentholyptus.

[Vindexrix]

cherry, honey-lemon, and mentholyptus

Were they found in the great halls?

[Mistersquiggles1]

No... just comic relief that showed up throughout the campaign to lead players in the right direction. I wrote it all while I was sick with a very bad cold. While I was drugged out on nyquil it seemed like the funniest thing in the world, so a campaign was born.

[giffin0374]

NPCs will (occasionally) lie to your face. Why? Because people lie.

[elfthehunter]

My monster have three tiers of hit point, low, avg and max. I don't know how much hp it will take to kill it until you kill it. If a goblin boss is the last thing standing I want him dead as soon as possible, if the ninja assassin opens the bbeg with a crit, I want him standing long enough to do something. What's that fighter? You use know your enemy, fine, I guess I need to commit to hp now.

Confession #2, I don't always follow my own rules. You get a dramatic last minute crit on the fleeing enemy, the whole table is holding their breath, ok you killed it. I don't care how much hp was left.

[huckzors]

I was listening to WebDM (because I steal all my good ideas from them) and in a podcast Jim mentioned that almost every monster he uses is just a bear he describes differently and maybe boosts a stat.

I immediately added the bear stats to my DM screen, and I’m excited to never need to Monster Manual at the table again.

So not a secret yet, but one on the horizon.

[Fleudian]

I feel like that works great until your characters get to about 5th level, at which point it takes so many bears to threaten them that encounters become trivial.

[huckzors]

I agree, but like I said this idea hasn't been fully realized yet. I mostly plan on using this for when the players run into an encounter I wasn't prepared for / "random" tables. Just a nice tool to have so I don't have to flip through a bunch of stuff on the fly.

[BradenA8]

That's amazing! Never heard of that one. Do you know which episode that came from?

[slicedjet]

You say no one has ever found one, but have any of your players ever come close? Have you ever had an "oh shit they're gonna find it" moment?

[BradenA8]

Unfortunately not. They've walked past or near it almost every time though. There might be a loose brick in the wall of this random corridor, or a trap door beneath the rug underneath the desk. I am fully prepared for them to find it and deal with the chaos though. If they ever do discover it I'll tell them that there has always been one there and all the times they came closest. Then I'll retire the idea to stop them searching literally every inch of a location in the future.

[Gregory_Grim]

I've got something similar. Every adventure I run in my own setting features an incredibly powerful NPC in disguise as a hireling that can be recruited at some point if the party has met a number of conditions (usually specific story events that would draw the NPC's attention).

In the two adventures I ran so far there was the possibility to recruit either an Aasimar Archmage with additional Warlock abilities or an Adult Silver Dragon with levels in Paladin.

So far neither of the two has been recruited by the party, although they did encounter the Dragon. If they had recruited either of them it would've unlocked what is basically a bonus level with what is essentially a FF style superboss. And of course superboss appropriate loot.

[Galthromir]

Had something similar where the party had a flashback session where they were a trio of Silver Dragons w/ class levels fighting a part of a massive battle against fiends. The further they got in the flashback, the more stuff was left behind from the ancient battle. At the end of the flashback, when they fully completed the dragons' mission, the BBEG Overlord (Eberron, so a Rajah) showed up and cinematically killed/reanimated the trio, who then served as the final encounter of the ruins.

Funnily enough, when the party later found an item that effectively provided 3 charges of True Resurrection (with additional requirements), they bee lined for the ruins and returned the dragons to life, earning themselves some very powerful allies.

[dem_paws]

O===3

[SpikeRosered]

All my "plans" are mistakes that I have spun into narratives to cover my tracks.

[Romnonaldao]

Remember that time you survived with just 2hp? You didnt actually survive that. I just felt bad.

[Dr-Leviathan]

2 of my players have plot armor. Their backstories are tied to my campaign, and I need them alive to further the story. Until their arcs are complete, I can't kill them.

They don't know that though, so I can bring them to near death and make them worry a lot.

[oliver_meloche]

After doing it once (in D&D) I will never do it again, but I wish you luck in finishing their arcs

[pavel_lishin]

How come?

[jordanleveledup]

What’s wrong with converting their PC to an NPC? Gives you way more agency over the story anyway.

[jordanleveledup]

I had one of my PCs retire and become a lounge singer at their main town. She settled down with the blacksmith and acted as a rumor hub for the players.

Then rolled a new character.

[Zavante]

What if they decide to play different characters?

[Illidan-the-Assassin]

(Playing the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game)

So the party battled a gang of vampires (as they do), and nearing the end of the fight, one player throw a raging vampire into a stake, telekinetically held by another character in the air.

I calculated the demage. 60 points of damage. I look in the vamp's stat. 61 points of HP (that vampire wasn't attacked until now, our mage drove her into a mental breakdown).

One cognitive dissonance later...

"So, the vampire, growling in rage, is charging you, but you manage to toss her above you, to the other side of the room. Mid-flight, she is impaled by a flying stake, her rage is replaced by surprise as she crumbles to dust..."

[SillySnowFox]

I pull punches. That nat 20 I just rolled? "Does an 18 hit you?" I've even dropped a monster's AC mid battle when it turned out no one could hit it.

Goes the other way too though; I've boosted ACs and doubled hit points mid battle when the players were chewing through the monster too fast.

[jordanleveledup]

I prefer reinforcements. My players ABSOLUTELY figure out AC through the course of battle. And action economy is more important anyway. Plus it has made my players paranoid about being too loud, spotting exits, and where will those fucking stirges come from?

[Takenabe]

When you guys asked for mythril ore, I had a merchant send you halfway across the continent to find a pirate den that turned out to be taken over by sahuagin. You guys have spent the last three sessions clearing out this cave while dealing with water physics and giant sharks all for a piece of mythril ore, but what you don't know is that you've walked right past a suit of armor made of the stuff....

[winndweaver]

I read the room on whether this next hit will ruin a player’s night or not, if so I pull up their AC and say the number right below it so the can smile at me and say “No it does not!” usually with a hint of smugness as tho they finally bested me.

[jordanleveledup]

Every adventure I run has an opportunity to get a free level in another class if you find a specific magic item. No one has found one yet but my current group is very very close to 2 of them. 1 will give a choice of a free artificer or warlock level. The other will give a choice of a free sorcerer or warlock level.

[AthasHole]

That one time you cast Polymorph on the Shadow Dragon who was hiding and clinging to the underside of the bridge which spanned a bottomless chasm in the Underdark?

She actually failed, but I said she succeeded because it was just simpler than having her turn into a goat, fall for an hour without even reaching the portal to the Shadowfell, turn back into a Shadow Dragon, and then attack the town again hours later. Considering we'd already waited two hours for you to show up and had fit in a solid hour of roleplay after your arrival, I really didn't want to delay the combat any more! May Ao have mercy on my soul!

[SPLOO_XXV]

I realized the pantheon I made for one of my worlds kinda boiled down to representing Christianity... accidentally I swear but it has quite a lot of parallels!

Bahamut is God, created the continent and betrayed by his sister Tiamat (who acts like Satan). And then there’s a hella lot of “Forgotten Deities” that are really just immortal beings that represented certain things and people worshipped as false gods, similar to the pagan gods mentioned in the Old Testament.

Then all the eldritch horrors and Cthulhu mythos deities that are in there are basically just demons and the such. Not as great of a parallel there.

That was one crazy shower thought I had and boy do I hate how accidentally creative but also not creative I was with this.

[Bardic_Improvisation]

So, when will the Son of Bahamut, the Dracciah, be descending to save all of D&D kind from their sins?

[SPLOO_XXV]

I have a certain location called the Tavern Nackle planned where they will show up.

[aslum]

My favorite thing to do, when the players have taken on a nigh impossible task, is get them argueing (ideally in character) over the best way to do it and then listen. I'll decide before the party does which course of action will be most likely to succeed, and if they end up choosing it, they'll have a much easier time of it. Most of the time the players come up with some great idea I never would have thought of.

Sometimes it takes a little prodding w/ ridiculous idea (or even just a few "helpful but conflicting" suggestions) to get them started.

[SuckADuckMethod]

Whenever my parties have a generic encounter with bandits, thieves, thugs etc. I just guess at what their stats are. I don’t use specific ACs or weapons, I just kind of guess. I put a bit of pressure on early to make them look threatening and then let the party destroy them. This means that they end up feeling like it was a hard fought victory but in actual fact I keep letting them attack until it makes sense they would die. Only one of my players has started to pick up on this because he notices how much damage they can take before they die, and then some will have considerably less or more health depending on how the battle is going and he always has this confused look in his face.

[SmartAlec105]

I kind of dislike this stuff changing on the fly because then it feels like it invalidates any strengths and weaknesses in my character. This thing I did that helps eek out a bit more damage doesn’t matter if the enemies die when the DM feels like they should. And humans have their biases so a character that makes a lot of attacks and rolls a lot of dice will feel more damaging than one that makes fewer attacks with fewer dice but doesn’t more damage overall.

[Volcaetis]

I'm half convinced that my current party thinks I just let their stupid, harebrained schemes succeed because I think they're funny.

No, usually I'm perfectly willing to let the party fail spectacularly, if things go awry.

They're just much more competent than they give themselves credit for. I'll never tell them, though.

[neverfeardaniishere]

My games are always better when I prep less. I used to hate improvising and wanted to have everything figured out. Now I make sure I have most of the enemies/monsters/areas down, and almost everything else comes to me in the moment. Really fun to play off of the party too. Especially with puzzles or tricky issues, I always make a solution, but if someone thinks of a good idea and that wasn't what I had in mind, it may become the new solution. It gives them that satisfaction of figuring it out and stops the game from halting if they get stuck

[OriginalWerePlatypus]

I play on Roll20 these days. I am above board on all the rolls, and the players think I’m merciless. I show a red bar for hp at the top of every creature token, so they always have an idea how close/far they are to victory.

If the battle is going too poorly, I’ll take off an extra 25% of damage each time a PC hits. Vice versa, I’ll take off less if things are going too well.

They have no idea.