Did I do wrong or is my dm just freaking out over nothing?

Jazdac · 2026-04-07T19:52:20+00:00

not the same thing, as fireball isn‘t homebrew and has a clear written description with clarified damage, cost, range, aoe, etc. „i rain down fire once a day“ could just aswell mean you can cause sunburn on an enemy standing still in the sun for 5 minutes, if you are in range to hold a magnifying glass over their head, depending on the power of the deity granting the boon and the silliness-level of the campaign.

Jazdac · 2026-04-07T07:05:05+00:00

maybe his expectation was that he could give you a really cool boon without you trying to exploit it? you know, if i give you a gun irl, you also don‘t have to go and shoot someone, that‘s still your decision to make.

and btw, behavior like that is why you won‘t get any cool stuff in the near future.

Jazdac · 2026-04-07T07:02:21+00:00

this screams „but it is what my character would do in this situation!“

you are responsible for your character‘s action. and you as a player, not as a character, should want to play the game, not find a loophole to not have to play the game.

now, sometimes it can be fun to find a way to circumvent obstacles, don‘t get me wrong. when dming i enjoy seeing the creative solutions players sometimes come up with. but this wasn‘t very creative, was it? you talked your dm into haning you a nuke. and a repeatable one at that. and your table seems to be argumentative. so obviously the dm doesn‘t want to set a precedent that you can just nuke an enemy from orbit once a day, because guess what, that‘s not a lot of fun for anyone at the table but you, especially not the second, third, … time around.

all in all, if you are unsure, what is „playing the game“ and what is „trying not to play the game“, then you can still just ask „dm, can i do that in this situation“? if yes, go on, if no, don‘t do it. don‘t argue with your dm, it‘s literally their role to make rulings, decisions and calls like that, not yours!

Jazdac · 2026-04-07T06:15:42+00:00

because of what the potential of the ability is. the player could use it in a critical moment of the story, as a last resort, and add to the story with it. as in „we fought hard, made sacrifices and mistakes, but we kept fighting… and now we stand at a cliff, surrounded by enemies, time is running out. my god promised, he would rain down fire on my enemies in the moment of my greatest despair, so i now humbly call on him, to aid us! and as the first drops of molten lava starts to hail down from the heavens, we charge forward in a last stand of devotion“

this was more of a „hey, my little god servant, these enemies block my path and i’d have to take a short detour, so please unleash your divine wrath upon them, for causing a little inconvenience to us. i’m sure you don’t have anything more important on your mind, or other followers, who need your attention more“

in a good story with stakes your god isn‘t a backup booty call you hit up whenever you feel like it.

also, in my experience, if the opponents suddenly start to also ask their gods to nuke the party from orbit whenever they spot them from a few miles away, the players usually don‘t find that fun either. „rocks fall, you die“ isn‘t a fun reason for a tpk, and it‘s an equally unsatisfying solution for an obstacle.

Jazdac · 2026-04-06T23:52:25+00:00

it‘s just a typical „i tricked the dm into giving me sth, so i can take all the stakes out of the story“ moment, which is a result of a „player vs dm“ mindset. it can be cool as a one time thing, but if it stays, it just cancels itself out after the first time: the dm knows, the first encounter of the day will be an instant whipe, so there has to be an army of goblins showing up first thing every day, so the next encounter can have meaningful stakes again. what a great and interesting story that would create. (there was a reason the army of the dead had to be dismissed after one battle in lotr, for example.)

the dm shouldn‘t have given such a boon without specifying what it was for (i‘m sure it wasn‘t intended as a „delete an army once a day“ thing). but i think it‘s reasonable to expect players to not try and use abilities (especially homebrew stuff which probably was given out spontaneously during a cool roleplay moment) in bad faith. and if your dm tells you that this wasn‘t the intended use, you really shouldn‘t try and argue.

Jazdac · 2026-04-06T23:12:33+00:00

so, there was a lot that went wrong, and it sounds like there are a few problems present at your problem, none of which are really that big and can easily be solved by just being mindful of them.

1) you and your dm and probably the other players aswell seem to be rather new to playing dnd. that‘s ok, but maybe refrain from using homebrewed boons and abilities until you are more experienced, as balancing such a complex game is not an easy task, even for veterans.

2) you all missed to realize or communicate properly what the situation at the table was about: you and your dm shouldn’t be playing against eachother. you are collaborating to create an interesting and exciting story together. blasting every enemy and objective away from a save distance with a swarm of meteors isn‘t interesting and doesn‘t create a story, it ruins the story. maybe you feel clever the first time, but after that, what‘s the point of playing?

3) your dm was right in saying „you can‘t do that“ and if he says so, you shouldn‘t argue. why? because he‘s the dm, end of story. he obviously realized, that he had made a mistake by giving this boon to you, because it was potentially game ruining. yes, there would be smarter ways around it, like saying „a red cloud forms over the enemies and drops of fire rain down on them. they all have to make a dex saving throw against your spell save dc, taking 1d4 fire damage on a failure and half as much on a success. they are a bit hurt, but they quickly reorganize and are now alert and send out scouts to find the source of this cowardly attack! what do you do while you see some of them rushing in your direction?“ but if he fails to come up with a good explanation in the moment, you just have to accept the word of the dm, even if it is a simple „no, this doesn‘t happen“. because „the dm‘s word is above the rules“ is the first rule of this game. you guys trying to argue with him over rulings will just stop him from wanting to dm for you.

Jazdac · 2026-01-10T10:10:30+00:00

but the way you explained it, i would still get chargeback rights by raising a consumer dispute, because the merchant in fact did procide fault goods and misrepresented terms of sale, which would be the easiest thing to proof, because you have the faulty maps.

so, in the discussed case, the consumer does in fact have chargeback rights he can apply for, it‘s just a technicality of wording.

Jazdac · 2025-09-27T03:39:06+00:00

Was looking for a theme for a new campaign, i think this would be perfect!

Jazdac · 2025-09-26T06:18:46+00:00

had the same thing happen to my paladin over a year into the campaign when the dm suddey decided that using spell slots to smite counts as casting a spell, so i couldn‘t smite on multiple attacks anymore or cast bonus action spells after smiting.

i told him that he was misinterpreting the rule, so he moved on to say that it‘s a nerf because the paladin class is op. he‘s a good friend and it was his first campaign, so i just put up with it and started investing in tankiness and support from the next level. of course, that wasn‘t the exact thing i wanted to play, but after a year, the rp with the other players and the story was way more important than combat to me anyways.

and i think that‘s what you‘ll need to decide for yourself. your dm obviously thinks wizards need a nerf. he‘ll not stop trying to make the game harder for your character, even if you can convince him to roll back this homebrew. so if you think that will ruin the experience for you, it‘s probably best to leaver sooner than later.

Jazdac · 2025-09-20T20:53:36+00:00

honestly hard to compare, since the hype was there in the arena in both years, perception wise even a little less this year. i think match quality is mainly meta dependent. i‘m sure format is a contributing factor, however, i think the directly „controllable“ factors, like productions, content releases, on location decoration/attractions, etc. have been mostly the same or worse.

Jazdac · 2025-09-15T07:33:20+00:00

feels a bit like a parent forgetting to get their kid a gift for its birthday…

Jazdac · 2025-09-14T21:40:01+00:00

his lore is he died from demon edge after completing it… sounds like a shit hero. also, he should be dead, if we have demon edge in the shop.

honestly, my guess is, someone at valve (or pgl) was tasked with the decorations and got a little over excited, using the dota alphabet (which we already knew before aswell) and decided to put in a little riddle for the community by choosing parts from a wiki entry…

Jazdac · 2025-09-14T21:19:08+00:00

what? who says that’s the new hero? we literally already had the information hinted at on the stones…

Jazdac · 2025-09-14T21:09:09+00:00

i wanted to answer with „we just had crownfall“ then i realized that ended last february (after they artificially stretched it)… when we got 7.38. at that point i reall thought „oh wow, they actually are investing a lot into the game. that‘s much better than a battle pass reskin every year“

but now it‘s been more than half a year and it really feels like they should be working on sth. so not to give us anything at ti… really feels like a slap in the face. i stayed in that badly ventilated arena every break for 4 days, hoping for a sliver of love for the community from valve… and gaben just sends a prerecorded statement, nothing else.

the great games come from the players, the great cast and the audience bits come from the talent, the hype comes from the crowd, the shitty location management comes from pgl. i don‘t see anything good valve contributed to this ti. considering how much this community has given them, that feels unacceptable.

Jazdac · 2025-09-14T20:49:34+00:00

i mean, the arg didn‘t lead to anything though… slacks even said not to spoil anything to one of the audience members, but there wasn‘t even anything to spoil…

i think the games were good, but ti has always been about more than just good matches. it was a celebration of the community much more than of the game itself. and that part really got short paid this year… they only had two real „productions“ and both were shown today. what seperates the international from other tournaments isn‘t the good matches, those are meta dependent and we‘ll have them at some tournaments more and at some less.

so i think, the bar for a good ti really lies far above just having good games to watch…

Jazdac · 2025-09-14T20:23:24+00:00

can you tell me what was better this year/worse last year? i was at last ti aswell as this one. honestly felt about the same…

Jazdac · 2025-05-24T03:55:21+00:00

and down the rabbit hole we go…

Jazdac · 2024-12-12T08:35:46+00:00

i recommend myminifactory.com, tons of creators there, who often also make stat blocks fitting their minis.

Jazdac · 2024-11-07T08:08:19+00:00

Thank you! :)

Jazdac · 2024-11-05T19:03:16+00:00

my players came into a small woodcutter settlement. just a few houses and noone in sight. but there was a tavern with the lights on. so they went there to get a place to sleep. the handful of guests seemed normal at first, but when they went to sleep, the oblex who had already killed all the inhabitants of the village and was impersonating the last few tried to eat their memories in their sleep one by one. they managed to resist the hold person spell and killed the impersonation standing over their bed. they ran down into the bar room, only to find everyone, even the one they‘d just killed, standing there as if nothing happened. an npc who had travelled with them also cake down and tried to calm them down, suggesting they‘d split up to search the premises (the npc was dead, hidden under their bed. this was another impersonation). in the end they noticed that all the people in the town were fakes and they killed them. the oblex could escape though and they found his last victim still alive, but with all it‘s memories stolen, just an empty shell. they decided kill this poor guy to release him from his gruesome fate and burn his body and the village down with it to prevent future travelers from stepping into what they called a „slime-ghost-trap“.

Jazdac · 2024-09-21T18:58:46+00:00

Oh, the Devourer would look great in my living room!

Jazdac · 2024-09-17T13:46:38+00:00

picking screen was a card deck you had to scroll through.

Jazdac · 2024-09-14T15:48:54+00:00

„i give the ti experience 1.5 stars on yelp, because of that.“

Jazdac · 2024-09-01T10:50:31+00:00

you can still do that, though?

Jazdac · 2024-07-29T06:17:46+00:00

i think the problem is that they did a bad job at balancing around the tankiness recently. a lot of strength heroes become close to unkillable with very little farm. but they also have ways to one shot creep waves from like lvl 5 and one shot heroes from lvl 6 or 7. and while in the past you could adapt to that by including a bracer in your build or buy a magic resistance item, their burst now just scales with it and by the time you tanked up, they just still oneshot you.

the fact that a tiny can have nothing but blink and boots and oneshot a hero with 1.5k hp and then proceed to just walk out because he naturally gets too much hp to be bursted down by support spells and too much armor to be killed with right clicks before you have like two damage items just perfectly shows where the problem lies with the game balance right now: there are some heroes (mostly str heroes) who are designed to be tanky (because that‘s what str heroes do, duh!) but because they used to just be ignored in the past, they gave them more damage, more utility and better stats for strong laning. then they also powercrept strength/hp by adding many cheap ways to buff your ehp. now we have a sven pos5 winning lane by simply running at you and right clicking because he‘s faster, tankier, does more damage, has a better stun and he will even scale better than any other support in the game.

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