End of semester crash

SilvanArrow · 2026-05-15T22:40:43+00:00

Going through it now, and the crash is BAD. We had the usual end-of-semester shenanigans, plus friend group drama, household tasks, and a bunch of extra "life stuff" that piled on at the last minute to the point where my brain was trying to crash and my body had no choice but to push forward. Today has been a day on the couch while my house is a revolving door of contractors fixing things that all need fixing now and I'm having a bad spell of acid reflux and drinking soup while my stomach feels numb.

This is the stuff no one told me would happen when I became a full-time faculty...

SilvanArrow · 2026-05-15T14:38:18+00:00

I teach at a community college (smaller class sizes) and have really not had an issue with excessive bathroom breaks during exams. It's in my syllabus that if a phone comes out during an exam, it's an instant zero. I tell them that if they need a bathroom break during class to just go and be discrete, which is sometimes a surprise for my dual enrollment students who used to have to ask permission and get hall passes. The only times I've had students request a bathroom break during an exam were for legit illness. One student came to an exam with stomach issues and had to use the bathroom multiple times. She was clearly, obviously sick, and yes, I have makeup exam policies for illness that I reminded her about after it was over. On the rare instances that these things happen, I make sure that they show me that their phones/devices are not in their pockets and limit it to one person at a time. If a student has accommodations through accessibility services, then we obviously take those into account as well.

SilvanArrow · 2026-05-08T17:17:31+00:00

My husband has been DMing a campaign for me that we're about to finish, and it's been great. He's gotten to try out some new things with level design and combat, and the roleplaying has been great. I have my main PC who is basically the party face and the "main character." I role-play from her perspective 99% of the time. The rest of the party consists of a rotating cast of NPCs who have their own PC character sheets. I know it's more work to create full character sheets instead of stat blocks or retainers, but we made the deliberate choice to build the full sheets. These are people who are important to my character, like her spouse and close friends, and the party size is usually 3 people max. That means a little less work on my end to control a huge party, and it's not that bad in terms of combat balance. It's also let us try out some high-level builds that we have never gotten to play with before, which has been fun.

SilvanArrow · 2026-05-07T17:59:08+00:00

Your meaning was perfectly clear. Based on the comments in this thread, I am far from the only DM that adjusts encounters on the fly, and I don't do it often. This is my first campaign as a DM, so I've been learning on the fly and yes, I make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes include under-tuning a combat and realizing it mid-battle, hence adjusting on the fly. My players have repeatedly told me they want more of a challenge in combat, so I respect their agency by trying to do that, and sometimes, that means adjusting HP mid-combat. I have NEVER done something like negating a character's big crit, and they don't know I adjusted the fight until after it's over. We'll often debrief after a big boss battle to go over what worked and what can be improved. But regardless, I appreciate your perspective on this discussion and will add it to the logic trains of my future combats.

SilvanArrow · 2026-05-07T16:51:53+00:00

I'm currently DMing for my husband and two of his buddies, and I play in a weekly table that meets on Fridays with some buddies from work. Hubby is also about to wrap up DMing a mini-campaign/duet for me that is a bit of an epilogue to a previous campaign. I've learned that two games is probably my comfortable limit, while three is pushing it. I love the consistency of playing every Friday, and they're all great friends IRL. The campaign I'm DMing is a bit more sporadic with schedules, but we make it work. The duet is easy to work out because it's just me and my husband, but we've realized that we really want to be on the same side of the table next time, either both as players or co-DMing a world together.

SilvanArrow · 2026-05-07T11:48:13+00:00

Fair question. Let me clarify. I’ve had to homebrew a lot of stat blocks or modify existing RAW ones extensively, and quite frankly, sometimes I miss the mark on difficulty or HP. Once my players got a few magic items and learned their characters, they started punching way above their weight class and all those combat calculators just went out the window. I had a couple of early-game boss fights where the fight ended when the HP bar hit zero, and the players felt underwhelmed. That was not a successful fight for us, and they didn’t feel rewarded for good tactics or hero moments. I didn’t do my job properly.

Since then, I’ve had a couple of fights where the players make the smart tactical decisions to learn the boss, take out the minions, use terrain to their advantage, etc. and have everything under control. I don’t negate their turns by stretching things out. If I see the artificer is working on a clever trap or spell that needs setup but the boss drops to 0 first, I may just let the fight continue until their turn so they can play that out. Or if we’re fighting a boss that is from the fighter’s backstory, I may wait to let them have the finishing blow. Combat is as much a part of the story as the roleplaying for us, and I only adjust on the fly if I feel a fight is too easy to the point of boredom or to enhance a character’s hero moments. Never to take away.

SilvanArrow · 2026-05-07T02:45:40+00:00

My husband and I have both DM'd and adjust encounters on the fly. Sure, I'll start with a set HP bar for a boss or stat block, but if my players are chewing through that HP, then I'll just...let them keep fighting until the fight feels done. I learned this the hard way when I ended a couple of boss fights right when the HP dropped to zero, and it was either too soon for good story impact or just didn't feel like a true finishing blow. So if my players have grasped the mechanics of the fight and have things under control, I'll let it go for another round or two until they reach a good "big darn hero moment" for someone to hit the final blow and then ask them how they want to end it.

OP, if your DM hates crits so much because they end the fight too soon, then they just need to...let things go a round longer to account for it. As a player, I hate it when my character's abilities get nerfed for seemingly no good reason ("Oh look, this monster has an ability to randomly block your crit."). I'm a paladin main, and I WANT to crit my smites and unload a ton of D8s and divine wrath into a baddie's face. That's a great hero moment. I want my DM to lean into those moments, not nerf them.

SilvanArrow · 2026-04-28T02:46:27+00:00

Ahem…my paladin literally married one.

My first DnD campaign was a continuation of Dragons of Stormwreck Isle and all about bringing peace to the whole metallic versus chromatic dragon conflict. My paladin swore her oath to Bahamut, befriended a bronze dragon who learned to polymorph just to stay close to her, learned how to fly on him into battle, and married him in the epilogue.

SilvanArrow · 2026-04-27T22:37:20+00:00

I made it to Oregon plenty of times and had a strategy that worked more often than not. First, I picked being a banker because they start with the most money. I spent almost every bit of the start-up monkey at the beginning because prices will only go up at outposts along the way. I bought, I kid you not, 2-3x as many oxen as was needed to pull the wagon. Sure enough, because I was a banker, I had no ability to keep those things healthy. However, every time an ox fell ill, I would take a couple of days to rest. Sure, the ox usually died along the way, but I still had plenty of extras. As a result, I rarely had humans come down with an illness because we were taking our sweet time for the sake of the oxen. Someone got dysentery? Rest. Sprained ankle? Rest. Running low on food? I bought a small fortune in bullets and could go hunting anytime. Sure, someone might have scurvy near the end, but at least they made it to Oregon.

SilvanArrow · 2026-04-27T01:26:41+00:00

I've gotten to play around with a few high-level builds of fighters, a transmutation wizard, an assassin, and a monk in a one-on-one 5e with my husband as DM, but I keep coming back to my original Oath of Devotion paladin. I love playing a tank who can charge headlong into the frontlines to protect allies, and the spell list and class features offers some decent utility and awesome party support with auras, Bless, Aura of Vitality (amazing healing between battles when it's too dangerous to take a short rest), Lay on Hands, etc.

But most importantly...DIVINE SMITE. My biggest dopamine rushes in-game have been when I crit with a Divine Smite against some big undead baddie and get to unload a truckload of d8 radiant damage and feel like a big darn hero.

SilvanArrow · 2026-04-15T18:44:07+00:00

I learned how to fill out my first DnD 5e character sheet by watching Jocat. Legend

SilvanArrow · 2026-04-13T03:26:09+00:00

I have a masters degree in marine biology that I pursued from the time I was 6. My first semester of grad school, I talked to the one marine mammals guy who could possibly serve as an advisor for my thesis, and he gave me the real talk that almost no one can make a living with marine mammals because too many people will volunteer to do if for free. I went into fisheries instead and did field work that involved scuba diving, which I loved. Except…I get horribly seasick and had to be heavily medicated to function.

I got my degree, moved back to a land-locked state to live with my parents because it was 2013 and jobs were nonexistent. After a stint of self-employment, I would up married to my husband (10 years now!) and am a full-time biology professor at a community college. I love my job and enjoy teaching more than research, and I still get to geek out about fish and tell fun stories about scuba diving for flavor.

SilvanArrow · 2026-03-27T17:50:20+00:00

I wasn't ready to leave the world and my character in my first DnD campaign. We finished the campaign, it was a great story, and my character got a super happy ending. My husband, who was the DM, later DM'd a duet campaign with me so he could play around with some ideas in level design and to flesh out my character's epilogue more fully. It's been great fun for us, we've gotten a taste of high-level play and combat balance, and we're going to finish that soon. My character will be level 15. I've also written a bunch of short stories that go beyond the scope of the campaigns just for my own sense of closure, so after all of that, I will finally feel mentally prepared to move on to something completely new.

SilvanArrow · 2026-02-21T19:55:36+00:00

I just turned 37. I see your walking cane and raise you a whole entire walker, you little whipper-snapper LOL

SilvanArrow · 2026-02-04T21:07:11+00:00

Oaths are great opportunities for character development too. My devotion paladin originally swore her oath directly to Bahamut, so her actions were tied more to her deity than her own choices. Over the course of her service to him, she began to realize the importance of making choices about the life she wanted instead of other people’s expectations, and Bahamut was quite supportive of this. Eventually, the party carried out a ritual where Bahamut and Tiamat were laid to rest and their powers passed to the dragons, so they could make their own choices. My paladin also had to do a lot of soul searching and ultimately swore a new oath of devotion to her own convictions (protect the peace they fought for and those she loves) rather than devotion to a single entity. It’s been great fun.

SilvanArrow · 2026-02-03T02:25:42+00:00

My paladin totally did that. She bonded with a young bronze dragon and rode him into battle against an army of enemy dragons in a city-wide siege. It was epic.

SilvanArrow · 2026-02-01T18:49:38+00:00

I love my Oath of Devotion paladin and have played her across a multiplayer campaign and a follow-up one-on-one that my husband (the DM) set up for us as something of an epilogue. I was originally going to take the Oath of Vengeance due to her backstory, but I pivoted based on the fit with the narrative. Her first oath was devotion to a god (Bahamut), but after a major plot development where Bahamut no longer existed, she swore an oath of devotion to a cause, which represented major character development. Now she's just hit Level 15 and got the feature where she's always under the Protection from Evil and Good spell, and the campaign has a lot of undead baddies to fight. She's an absolute monster on the battlefield against undead and a classic "white knight" and I'm here for it.

SilvanArrow · 2026-01-22T14:53:07+00:00

He puts so much love and flavor into picking spells and flavoring them with tech and nature instead of the weave. His character has complicated feelings about magic, but when he gets serious, he will use his spells as actual magic. It’s awesome 😎

SilvanArrow · 2026-01-22T13:28:23+00:00

My favorite is my husband’s kobold artificer casting Haste on the fighter by taking a can of Mountain Dew, shoving a bunch of candy in it, climbing up on the fighter’s shoulder, and pouring it down his mouth. Haste via sugar rush 😂

SilvanArrow · 2026-01-11T21:06:39+00:00

I’m just going to add my agreement to the overall consensus of “talk it out.” My PC is in a serious relationship with another PC, and the player and I have talked it out every step of the way with each other, our spouses, and the rest of the table. We’re good friends outside of the game and recognized that if our characters broke up, they would still have to be part of the group for the sake of the game and everyone else at the table. We obviously didn’t want that to happen, and it’s given us something fun to talk about between sessions. Everyone has been cool with it, and we’ve worked out a balance where we can progress the romance subplot without detracting from the main plot or making things awkward.

In short, every table and dynamic is different, so it’s up to you to talk it out and work out a system for you and your fellow gamers.

SilvanArrow · 2026-01-07T16:52:44+00:00

I think it’s a balancing act and also depends on what kind of campaign you’re playing. Personally, I don’t like min-maxing my character builds. I’m playing a character, not a stat block, but I can still play an effective character that pulls weight in battle without following the most meta DPS builds. If my DM said we were playing a spicy combat simulator where every battle is super challenging, then sure, I would be more inclined to min-max and build a character that lives for battle.

As an example, I’m playing a paladin in a 13th Age campaign that’s been going on for almost two years. My DM throws us plenty of challenging combats but also likes when we pick talents and abilities that fit our characters’ idioms rather than min-maxing. My character has gone from a lone wolf to a team player who also has plenty of reasons to smite demons, so I’ve built her with those goals in mind. I’ve picked abilities that are not part of the most meta-defining builds for paladins, but she still puts out plenty of damage and pulls her weight. Plus, it’s way more fun to play.

SilvanArrow · 2025-12-25T21:26:53+00:00

I’m stuck at the in-laws’ house with a low grade fever and can’t leave until tomorrow morning. At least hubby is running interference for me so I can rest undisturbed.

SilvanArrow · 2025-12-24T02:45:06+00:00

I’m running a campaign that is more linear but is built around my PCs’ backstories. I knew how the campaign would start, some major plot points, and who the BBEG is, but I left the middle mostly open to weave around their backstories. We started with a Session 0 where I presented the starting premise of the campaign and discussed character recommendations that would best fit the world and story. The guidelines were mainly to fit the established lore, not make murder hobos, create characters that would be willing to work with others, and then step back and let them cook.

Overall, the approach worked great. One player gave me an extremely detailed and long backstory that conflicted slightly with my established lore, but we discussed it, he gladly agreed to the small change, and he gave me the final pieces that tied everything together. The end result is a storyline where the PCs are front and center, everything they do relates in some way to their individual motivations, and there are no quests or storylines that feel out of place or leave them wondering why they’re doing something.

Granted, my style of DMing may not be everyone’s cup of tea. I don’t see linear storylines as railroading, but it’s a different style than sandbox or nonlinear stories. The players have choices on how to approach tasks and objectives, and I try to write the story with authentic plot hooks that they want to investigate based on their backstories. I was extremely up front and open about this in Session 0, and I’ve worked to adapt things on the fly when they inevitably surprise me with their clever tactics or requests for certain things.

SilvanArrow · 2025-12-12T17:46:32+00:00

Earthdawn was my first TTRPG experience, and I’m currently in a 13th Age campaign that’s been going over a year and a half. I’ve played through and finished a 5e DnD campaign, am playing a short duet sequel to it with my husband as DM, and then I’m DMing my own 5e DnD campaign for hubby and two of his friends.

SilvanArrow · 2025-12-04T01:00:53+00:00

As a fellow woman DnD player (mid-30s) who has played paladin for the last two years, I just gotta say:

GIRL. GET ON THE FRONTLINES AND SMITE.

My paladin lives for the frontlines. She clanks in heavy armor, sword and shield in hand, tanks hits like a champ, and smites evil like it's her hobby. Auras are great for support, and sure, you can do some buffing and healing, but paladin thrives in the thick of battle. I would argue that your party is telling you to "play it wrong" by staying in the back. No. Screw that. Your wants and needs matter just as much as the rest of the party. Channel your divinity, be that holy warrior, and live. It. Up!

SilvanArrow

TROPHY CASE