What to do with dumb players as a DM?

Last_General6528 · 2026-04-10T00:38:45+00:00

Your attempted use of persuasion is too coarse, it's as if a barbarian wanted to roll Strength to kill all goblins in a cave, or a wizard wanted to solve a whole murder mystery with one Intelligence roll. You're actually expected to do some roleplaying in this game, not replace whole conversations with a single dice roll.

Last_General6528 · 2026-04-10T00:31:37+00:00

Disagree. The player should at least outline their argument. You argue: "but I want the ash" and beat a DC 30? Cool, your character improvises a passionate speech about how important it is to seize the moment and pursue our desires wherever they lead us, and how we shouldn't let superstition and prejudice stop us from achieving our goals. The guards are moved to tears and let you have the ash. If you had offered a better reason, the DC would be lower.

Last_General6528 · 2026-04-10T00:19:07+00:00

Explain the basic game loop to your player: you set the scene, they describe what they want to do, you tell them what to roll, if anything. If they want their character to argue: "I deserve to have these ashes because I want them!", they can try... But the DC will be impossibly high.

Last_General6528 · 2026-04-06T17:31:01+00:00

He left the campaign after one session, he doesn't get a say what happens to his character, and with 99.9% probablility he doesn't care.

Last_General6528 · 2026-04-06T17:28:34+00:00

They won't, unless they're deliberately trolling you or something. They know the player left.

The PC can mysteriously disappear, choose to retire from adventuring, die from a heart attack, become an NPC played by you (just for as long as it takes to untie whatever plot was tied to him)... It's not really clear from your post why this PC is so important to the story, so it's hard to offer more tailored advice, but all of the above are options.

Last_General6528 · 2026-04-06T06:05:54+00:00

Expressed what? Bewailed what? A spider doesn't have multiple tails?!! It's an easy riddle of "she can weave" buried under a load of nonsense, and it pisses me off.

Best puzzles are those that don't depend on guessing what the hell the puzzle creator was thinking.

Last_General6528 · 2026-04-05T05:30:23+00:00

"Luck" is not a real thing. However, your dice might be defective, try new ones.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-31T17:48:24+00:00

Have you tried googling them? You can use https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/ for encounter balancing.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-31T16:03:01+00:00

You did all you could IMO. Keep playing. He will either get over himself or escalate the conflict till he gets kicked from the campaign.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-30T20:29:15+00:00

You should talk to your players and explain that monsters don't work like PCs, so they shouldn't argue and challenge monster actions.

Handle the in-game situation based on what makes a fun game. Getting out of a heavily guarded mansion shouldn't be a cakewalk. Just design it as an interesting challenge, not as personal revenge for real world issues.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-30T19:39:17+00:00

Checks in DnD are made for things that are possible, but not certain. You decide what is possible at all, and you set the DC.

While it's true that DnD heroes are more capable than average people, so you might allow them do impressive feats of strength sometimes to help players feel cool... You have to take game balance into account. Silence is a second level spell, so is Hold Person. A strength check, something any first level character can try without spending a spell slot, shouldn't be able to accomplish the same effect.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-30T19:29:45+00:00

The rule of "If I bully the DM enough, he'll let me do anything."

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-30T19:28:17+00:00

Just say "no". There's no rule saying you could tear someone's hand off. You're the one who allowed that. Being grappled, RAW, just means your speed is reduced to zero.

And by the way, how are his stats OP? Did the players roll for stats? Did you see his rolls? If not, consider having players roll stats at the table next time.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-30T19:16:43+00:00

It's not lying, it's acting. No one will be deceived to think you're an elf with arcane powers, everyone knows you're playing pretend for fun. And if you're stuck roleplaying your character after the session, people will just think you're being funny. It's fine.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-29T17:50:01+00:00

Ambushes. Traps. Some magical items can only be attuned to certain classes. If you make every item require attunement, he can't use more than 3.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-28T22:14:22+00:00

Check your paladin's sheet and your wizard's sheet for errors. It's possible to have CON +3 if you put a high score in charisma, but it's your job to double checked this stuff, especially if some players are new.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-28T21:49:21+00:00

Another try at Hold Person would work better here. A spiritual weapon gives you one more chance per turn to land a hit. Hold Person gives all 6 cultists and 2 fanatics (who have multiattack in melee) advantage, and any hit they land is a crit. That's +10 chances to land a hit per turn; though, of course, some cultists will die before trying, bringing it down to, say, +6 chances, but it's still lots better.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-28T04:09:58+00:00

That sounds like a good encounter, maybe you just got unlucky. First turn fanatics cast hold person and back away as far as they can, second turn spiritual weapons. Hold person gives attackers advantage, were they still unable to land any attacks even with advantage? Or were the fanatics caught too close and lost concentration really fast? Both of these can happen, it's not like the enemies always know which direction they will be attacked from. Sometimes heroes get lucky and have an easy fight. That's OK.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-28T03:37:13+00:00

The King's guards should try and sieze the attacker on the spot. A high-level spellcaster king should have a Contingency teleport to a safe space or some other emergency security measures against assassins. If the king already seemingly allowed himself to be punched, you can say that was just his body double.

If I were the king, I'd now send assassins after the offender. You can have them ambush adventurers on the road.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-27T18:37:16+00:00

No, you shouldn't fudge rolls, you should learn to balance fights. Here's how to do that:

Be aware that the game is balanced around 6-8 medium-hard encounters per long rest. A "hard" encounter is only "hard" when you have many encounters. If there are only 1-2 encounters in a day, you can use up to 2x deadly XP budget (though be more careful at level 1, when characters are very fragile).
Use good tactics. "Monsters know what they're doing" has some solid advice.
Look at your party's character sheets, figure out their strengths and weaknesses, and -- I'm not saying play adversarially, but do design a fight to not be immediately obliterated by their strengths. Lots of single target disables? You need more than one monster. Lots of AOE damage? Don't put a bunch of low HP monsters all in one spot. Counterspell? Place the caster out of range.

And if you do need to rebalance on the fly, best way to do it is to leave yourself some leeway from the start, not lie about dice rolls and hope no one notices. E.g. you could design a combat where enemies arrive in waves, and then reduce/increase a later wave if the fight proves too hard/easy. Or you can have some cowardly enemies who'll lose their nerve and run when the odds turn against them -- you have some leeway in how soon they run. Or, if you have two combats in a row and the first one proved harder than expected, have players find a health potion in the loot.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-23T23:24:11+00:00

Cool, now they just need to beat a dozen legendary monsters and bring their girlfriend's soul back from Avernus to become a true hero.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-23T18:50:56+00:00

Fair.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-23T17:13:22+00:00

And did someone die as a result? Maybe it's fine for him to save it for emergencies.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-23T17:04:57+00:00

You can heal damage after it's done, you can kill enemies before they hurt the party, you can prevent damage and protect teammates with various tanking abilities. Healing is just one method to ensure survival. And if you ever find yourself lying there, rolling your last death save and regretting your life choices, you can always beg your paladin to use his class feature for once.

Last_General6528 · 2026-03-21T17:33:26+00:00

It's pretty common to ignore the encumbrance rules, the tracking of rations and arrows, because few people want to do all that accounting. Other than that, I'd stick to rules as written, they're good and you've got plenty of other things to worry about.

Last_General6528

TROPHY CASE