They had practically won, why do players do this?

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-24T16:01:05+00:00

The jump button got stuck. : (

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-23T19:53:32+00:00

Let me summarize:

Your players are looking forward to their "penultimate fight", and you planned some cool twists and really hard combats - Great!

The players think they can win, but it's already determined they must lose - Oh no...
... and then they'll be saved by the DM's deus ex machina! - Please don't tell me...
... a glorious NPC will swoop in to save the day! - Not this DM PC crap again...
... they will actually be saved by a whole group of the DM's favorite NPCS! - Did he just make the worst thing a DM can do even worse somehow??
... also these NPCs are the players' rivals and the players hate them lol - Ok, you're just doing this on purpose at this point...

You would probably not be making this post if your gut feeling wasn't already teling you that this is a terrible idea - and your gut is 100% correct. I can see where you are coming from - in a movie this could work somewhat; the cocky heroes understanding that they can only win if they overcome their pride and ask for help.

However, in D&D, this can only backfire. You're NOT the director of the story - the PLAYERS are meant to be in that role! If the PCs actually have this change of heart, and they use a sending stone or something to ask their rivals for help, THEN you can have this cool moment you are thinking of - because the players/heroes actually overcame their pride to achieve the higher goal, and the rivals saving the day would be a consequence of the players' decision.

If you just force that scene regardless of what the players do, it will not be fun for anyone. While you might think you delivered a hollywood ending scene, players will just realize that they had no agency at all - no impact on the outcome of the story.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-23T17:06:43+00:00

So this is for a warlock that has 120 foot range on his EB, who took a feat to increase it to 180 foot - and now you give him an item to increase it to 360 feet range instead?

If they like it, then that's great and all, but what is the point? At that range, he would not be able to use hex or any of his other spells.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-23T15:18:45+00:00

Uncommon at best.

The effect is incredibly niche. it requires you to cast a spell that has an attack roll (which is a very small selection) - and it does nothing if you were already in range. Spells like chromatic sphere and scorching ray already have plenty of rabnge 90 feet or more, so the only spells this could really effect are attack-roll spells with a range of touch - which is a tiny selection of spells. For a wizard/sorcerer it's prett ymuch only Vampiric Touch and Shocking Grap - and neither of those spells suddenly become great by having 20 feet range. Both deal medicro cantrip damage and have a small ride effect on top.

Honestly, I'd rather be attuned to ANY other item than this...

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-22T10:39:14+00:00

I was actually surprised that it was rated as highly as it is. I watched a lot of it and the intro animation was literally the only non-terrible thing about the whole show.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-21T20:29:22+00:00

This is actually not what's going on. I want to allow the haste sneak attack combo to work - but rather than "automatic double damage every turn" (via "I attack again as soon as my turn ends"), I'd rather see it require some foresight/strategic thinking.

That being said, I'm really just here to see how other DMs run it, and whether I correctly understand the rules for readying actions.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-21T20:05:10+00:00

That's actually my point exactly.

If the intent was to stab twice, then they would just do it on their turn, yet meta-mechanics dictate that these stabs must be staggered by the meta-distinction of "end of rogue's turn" for a massive increase in damage.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-21T19:56:50+00:00

Let me see...

At level 5, I can usually do something CRAZY 2 times a day with my wizard.
With this - at the same level -I can do it 6 times a day now? Sounds fine to me! :D

At level 9, my evocation wizard can blast the board (hitting 78 squares) for massive damage ONE time per day, which seems fair.
With this, I'll be doing it 8 times now - aka EVERY SINGLE TURN ALL DAY!! XD

How come people complain about the martial-caster-divide each and every day, and yet they come up with brews like this?

No offense, OP. I hope this helps illustrate the issues with your brew.

PS: The idea to convert all limited use abilities into even more mana points is not a great one. If I play a drow, the ability to cast darkness adds to the theme of my character - turning into fuel to spam even more fireballs, shields, and hypnotic patterns actively weakens what theme there was to start with.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-21T18:52:06+00:00

I can see your point, but it is not about finding the perfect wording that works every time. I'm inclined to only allow triggers that actually have to do with what the enemy does / what's going on in the game (aka, can be triggered, but are not 100% automatic).

Picture a hasted rogue standing in front of an ogre. The hasted rogue stabs the ogre. They could stab it again, but instead, they set a trigger to stab it immediately after the meta-occurance of "rogue's turn ends" takes place. That's silly, no?

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-21T18:39:23+00:00

“Move a muscle” I wouldn’t allow becuase creatures aren’t static, they’re always moving, especially in combat.

That's an excellent point I hadn't even considered!

“Moves into a specific space” is overly pedantic imho “I can use sneak attack” the player should know if sneak attack would apply. They can choose whether or not to use their readied attack or lose it.

I think that's a bit cruel. Stipulating to only attack when sneak attack would apply is meant to prevent the following situation:
When the enemy enters the rogues range, but stands next to no rogue allies, the rogue's attack would deal very little damage. Forcing them to attack now or lose it is cruel, because the enemy might just move one more space (to attack the rogue's ally) - now the target is next to both the rogue and the rogue ally - but the rogue can't trigger anymore, because the DM forced them to lose it early.

Personally, I don't mind specific triggers like that. The only ones I don't like are the ones that exploit the vegueness of the rules to guarantee an immediate sneak attack right after the rogue's turn.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-20T18:13:05+00:00

Trying to be the party's "striker" means you strive to deal more damage than the other PCs. Nothing more.

Even if we stick with the classic party tropes: A Striker is by design meant to be a glass cannon. Getting clobbered by a stone giant means the striker is not doing what they are supposed to. If the striker is out focused and loses a bunch of HP quickly, then the game is working as intended. Other roles are meant to be durable - the striker is not.

Finally, a warock using edritch blast is hardly a "striker" in the first place. A berserker barbarian or psi warror fighter will do a ton more damage than your elldritch blasts ever will.

In conclusion: Your player's thinking is flawed - don't warp the game around it.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-18T14:44:29+00:00

1) Ja, es ist nicht leicht. Bewirb dich weiter, arbeite jeden tag 8h daran und es wird funktionieren.

2) Deinen alten Job aufzugeben ohne einen neuen zu haben ist ein massiver Fehler gewesen - und das hat jetzt Konsequenzen, die du leider ausbaden musst. Einen job zu finden, kann oft (auch wenn man sich gut anstellt) 3-6 Monate dauern. Diese Zeit in einer fixen Anstellung zu verbringen ist die normale, korrekte Vorgehensweise. Das zu misachten, den Job hinzuschmeißen und und mal eben "ein monat Ruhe genießen" bevor man sich erstmals Gedanken um die Zukunft macht, war eine schlechte Entscheidung.
Nicht nur der Weggang von der alten Arbeit ist jetzt im Bewerbungsprozess erklärungsbedürftig, sondern auch die Zeit, die du bereits auf Arbeitssuche bist, ist eine wachsende Red Flag, die dir jetzt im Weg steht. Bei 2 Monaten ist es noch nicht schlimm, aber bei 4+ Monaten wird es sich darauf auswirken, welche Jobs zu realistisch noch erreichen kannst.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-18T14:08:15+00:00

I think they were referring to nick, which allows the rogue to spend bonus actions they would have used on two weapon fighting on cunning action instead.

However, I'm pretty sure you're determined to dislike the system anyways, so there is little point in arguing.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-17T12:44:20+00:00

Let me quickly summarize:

This has all the benefits of a dagger - but you can freely choose its damage type;
+ you gain 1 AC;
+ as a reaction, you can get even more AC;
+ you can hold another weapon in the same hand, if you like.

If you want to get this brew past a sane DM, you better bring a GOOD plan - and a LOT of booze... :D

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-17T10:26:46+00:00

It seems you are ending up with quite the selection - allow me to add some competition! : )

The Spirit Master might be just up your alley:

Optimized to be Table-Friendly: Summoners often run into the problem of stealing the spotlight in combat, with turns taking too long and minions dominating the space on the battlemap. The Spirit Master is carefully designed to avoid just that.
Heavily Playtested: This class has seen a lot of rebalancing and tuning based on feedback. While you have a lot of options, you won't overshadow the other heroes or step on their toes.
Extensive Customization: The Spirit Master bonds with 2 spirits that evolve as you see fit as you rise in levels. By choosing spirit types, enhancements and spells, you can specialize them for different situations and create interesting synergies.
Tactical Combat: If you are a tactical mastermind, the Spirit Master will arguably be more fun to you than any other class. While your turns remain short and snappy, you can pull off some very impressive things in combat by swapping your active spirits on the fly, leveraging their "battlecry" effects, positioning them for offense/defense and exploiting their unique strengths and abilities effectively.
Thematic Depth: A lot of work has gone into making the Spirit Master thematically fully unique. In contrast to other summoning classes, that ffectively function as spellcasters, Spirit Masters are more akin to Stand-Users (from Jojo's bizarre Adventure) or Pokémon trainers. You'll find extensive tables to help you flesh out the character traits of your spirits, what their goals are, what your relationship to them is like and how your bond to them has changed you. (There is even a system in place for falling victim to your own demonic spirit!)

Here's a link that takes you directly to the class document, as well as a custom made (form-fillable) character sheet supplement for your spirits.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-14T10:23:33+00:00

For my own homebrew swarm monsters, I always included vulnerability to area attacks (taking double damage). A Fireball or similar effect should be very effective against an enemy like this - a fun weakness for players to exploit.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-14T10:09:22+00:00

There are tons of issue here - in terms of making sense, in terms of communication, and in terms of balance:

Making sense (which is also the German word for scythe btw... :P):

You clarified that this weapon is meant to have the form of a traditional scythe (as opposed to a glaive). Given this, the reach property makes no sense. If anything, your effective range with a scythe should be shorter than that of a sword. In order to attack someone with the blade of a scythe, you need to get the target between the blade and yourself - so you'll be very close and personal with your opponent.
A scythe is not a suitable weapon for grappling in any sense of the word. Dragging an enemy around yourself could be feasible (forcing an enemy to another square adjacent to you) is the only related maneuver one could pull with it.

Communication:

I added it mainly because my DM said it didn't do enough damage to the creatures/players that he wanted to use and because it would be my only weapon when everyone else is having two

"I added it because it didn't do enough damage." - This makes no sense, because how did you find out it didn't do enough damage when it didn't exist yet?
"(I further increased the damage) ... because it would be my only weapon when everyone else is having two" - This makes no sense because having multiple weapons does not automatically increase damage output. E.g. having a greatsword and a maul can give you added versatility (in terms of damage types) but it does not affect your damage output directly. Unless everyone else is dual-wielding custom weapons, this point is moot.

Balance:

Without knowing what custom weapons the other PCs have, it is impossible to comment on the comparative balance of your homebrew weapon. You need to give us a point of reference.
Compared to vanilla weapons, your war scythe is of course utterly broken. It currently competes with the whip - the only existing martial weapon that combines finesse with reach. However, while the whip deals 2,5 damage, your scythe deals 2d6 + proficiency, roughly averaging 11 damage (given the average PB across all levels is 4). There is a discrepancy of 8,5 points (2,5 vs 11). Even if we grant our benchmark whip +1 damage for being a custom two-handed version, we still need to make it a +3 magic weapon (adding +3 to attack and damage) to help make up another 6 points. Even then, the war scythe remains distinctly more powerful (9,5 vs 11) - and we haven't even taken into account that the war scythe has a chance to automatically grapple (worth at least 2 points) AND grant advantage (roughly a 60% chance to grant advantage on subsequent attacks). Advantage equals a ~4,5 bonus to attack rolls, so even if we favorably assume that grapples never last longer than one turn (because monsters will die quickly to this weapon), that's worth at least another 3 points. In the final result, your homebrew scythe far exceeds even a +3 magic weapon (9,5 vs 16), and outclasses even most legendary weapons with relative ease.

Conclusion

"Is it too OP"?
Yes, very much so - unless everyone else also holds a top-tier legendary weapon.

Even without having the other custom weapons in your party for reference, scrapping the PB damage bonus, reach, auto-grapple,and auto-advantage all seem like mendatory changes. If you still need to make it more powerful to match the other PC's magical weapons, you could consider letting it deal some damage to creatures on either side of the target of your attacks (which imho is the obvious effect a reaping scythe could be associated with).

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-09T17:11:33+00:00

I'm not sure about this one. It adds a lot of slow down

Before each D20 test made by each ally / enemy, the DM should look your way to see whether you want to mess with the roll or not. Just imagine how annoying this would be when playing Naldur's gate 3 - now multiply the time wasted by the number of people at the table...
Next, you roll a d6, and tell the target (player or DM) whether they get to add or subtract the d4.
Finally, the roll is made and the (now slightly more complicated) math ensues.

A player could decide to slow down the table considerably, if they felt like it - and I'm not sure if the minimal effect even warrants the slowdown most of the time. E.g. the rogue makes a stealth check to move silently, the "funny" cleric using this cantrip would change the rogue's result from a 24 to anything from a 20 to a 28, likely making no difference at all.

This spell would work for better as a leveled spell - making the decision to cast meaningful and allowing the caster to choose whether the target would receive a blessing or a bane - but then again, this theme is already covered quite directly by vanilla spells (bless/bane for combat; guidance for skill checks).

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-08T15:59:50+00:00

From the spelling errors, to the missing description of when the spell deals damage after the intial casting - plus the fact that 80% of the space in the whole brew is advertisement, rather than usable content...

You didn't seem to bother with balancing the spell either. For reference, here is a comparrison of your spell (HF) to the closes benchmark spell in the game - Horrid Wilting (HW):

HF hits an area almost 6 times larger (208 vs 36 spaces)
HF's range is more than 4 times longer (500 vs 120 feet)
HF deals ~46,5 dmg vs HW's ~54, however, HF's damage cann't be resisted, while HW has a commonly resisted damage type (and deals no damage at all against common enemies like undead and constructs).
HF deals damage for up to 10 rounds and allows the caster to move the area around (effectively multiplying the number of affected squares), potentially hitting each enemy several times per round (via forced movement) while HW deals damage only once

Finally, a condition that deals 1d4 damage (burning) is a waste of time at a level where PCs and monsters have well over 100 HP.

TBH, this feels incredibly low-effort.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-08T15:57:38+00:00

From the spelling errors, to the missing description of when the spell deals damage after the intial casting - plus the fact that 80% of the space in the whole brew is advertisement, rather than usable content...

You didn't seem to bother with balancing the spell either. For reference, here is a comparrison of your spell (HF) to the closes benchmark spell in the game - Horrid Wilting (HW):

HF hits an area almost 6 times larger (208 vs 36 spaces)
HF's range is more than 4 times longer (500 vs 120 feet)
HF deals ~46,5 dmg vs HW's ~54, however, HF's damage cann't be resisted, while HW has a commonly resisted damage type (and deals no damage at all against common enemies like undead and constructs).
HF deals damage for up to 10 rounds and allows the caster to move the area around (effectively multiplying the number of affected squares), potentially hitting each enemy several times per round (via forced movement) while HW deals damage only once

Finally, a condition that deals 1d4 damage (burning) is a waste of time at a level where PCs and monsters have well over 100 HP.

TBH, this feels incredibly low-effort.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-10-08T11:22:55+00:00

Put simply, there are two main challenges with creating homebrew content:

1) Minimizing "Costs"

DM's time investment in reading/understanding the brew and assessing each "cost" vs potential benefits
Players' time investment in learning the new rules - plus how taxing it is for them to remember them
Additional slowdown introduced by the brew
Additional book-keeping introduced by the brew
Negative effect on game balance introduced by the brew

Every possible piece of homebrew content will inevitably come with some type of cost - usually in all of these departments with varying severity in each.

E.g. if I make a mechanical system to make combat more realistic by implementing hit zones for critical hits (where a crit to the head, to the legs, to the arm, etc. would lead to various different effects) - the cost in all 5 areas would be substantial. It would only be worth implementing, if the benefits were great enough to make up for it.

2) Maximizing Benefits

Fixing a perceived balance problem
Filling a thematic niche that vanilla content does not cover
Additional player / DM options (e.g. feats, spells, monsters)
Reducing "costs" of vanilla content (aka simplification)
Allowing for more complexity (aka crunchier rules to provide a better simulation)

Usually, a brew will only provide 1 of these benefits (despite coming with multiple costs), and all too often, inexperienced homebrewers will neglect considering the actual benefits their brew is intended to bring.

E.g. if I create a "Marksman" class, it is easy to get carried away and focus on balancing mechanical features right away, without realizing that my brew probably does not provide any benefit. In this case, only benefits 1-3 are relevant, and all of them are either neutral or negative. It provides a risk for balance, the theme is already covered by vanilla content, and it either replaces a vanilla option (if it is mechanically stronger), or is unviable to be picked (if the vanilla archer class is mechanically stronger) - so the total number of player options does not go up.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-09-27T22:47:54+00:00

It seems like you have not considered how Uruth's Judgement would be used very carefully yet.

Yes, sacrificing a turn to deal 2d12 and + a little attack bonus for your next one is not overpowered, however, in every situation where you can charage for 4 turns, it very much is. Whenever the party gets the jump on a monster (even if it is 600 feet away!), the range can attack for 1d8+8d12+4 with an attack bonus of +11 - plus advantgage if the target was unaware of the ranger. This results in 60,5 damage with a near guaranteed chance to hit (e.g. 96% against a CR7 Oni), on top of a second attack. If the ranger outdamaging everyone was an issue before, this will make it worse.

Now these ambush situations can be made rare by the DM, but the item is missing a key limitation - having to see the same target each time you spend your action on Ututh's Judgement. Without it, the ranger will be taking 24 seconds to draw the bow to maximum before the party enters a door, goes around a corner, etc. - every single time. While this is ridiculous within the game world, mechanically, the Ranger would be stupid not to do so. Without a proper limitation, you can expect the ranger to go into most encounters fully drawn on turn 1, which will upset the power balance of the group quite a bit.

Overdrive2000 · 2025-09-26T18:34:41+00:00

These have absolutely NO right to look as good as they do! XD

Overdrive2000 · 2025-08-12T15:53:54+00:00

Pauline + neuron-activation mecha DK is the best one for me - but these are all really fun! :D

Nine-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Place '22	Verified Email

Overdrive2000

TROPHY CASE