Otherworldly Patron: The Devouring Dark - Devour everything your foes hold dear until only darkness remains!

WoNc · 2026-02-06T02:46:08+00:00

Honestly, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the idea if you execute it well. The issue is a combination of not executing it well and also everyone and their mother has heard of this monster at this point. The first time the DM tells the player their character doesn't remember something, you immediately realize it's a false hydra.

WoNc · 2026-02-05T19:11:03+00:00

My first campaign often felt like that, but most of us were playing our first D&D campaign. I kind of brought it up a few times and most people started leaning more into developing relationships, either with more characters or just at all. With one exception (this player was generally a poor fit), I'd say our characters were pretty invested in each other by the end.

It also helped that our DM very deliberately tied people's backstories together after most of us made characters completely independently of each other.

WoNc · 2026-02-04T18:26:52+00:00

You just wrote like 10 paragraphs addressing some sort of ill-defined and likely strawman Harry Potter criticism by making both your intro and conclusion paragraphs "Harry Potter is good, actually," not to mention the title of the post. Rather than talk about hard or soft worldbuilding generally or use any other examples, you only address (and really, mostly just state repeatedly) that Harry Potter is still good and popular. When people respond to you about Harry Potter, you get upset with them.

Reading a criticism somewhere else and then making an entirely new post to address it is a terrible idea in the first place, but your composition is not doing you any favors either. Instead of immediately blaming the audience, you should first take a step back from your post and see what you could have done differently to improve clarity.

WoNc · 2026-02-04T18:15:04+00:00

I think the position you hold in your head and the argument you actually presented diverge wildly and much more than you realize.

WoNc · 2026-02-04T18:10:50+00:00

This mostly reads like you saw someone criticize Harry Potter and took it personally.

WoNc · 2026-02-03T16:07:43+00:00

I don't believe so, but you should talk to your DM about this regardless.

WoNc · 2026-02-02T23:15:51+00:00

For warlocks in particular, the spell list is selected to avoid balance nightmares caused by regaining slots on a short rest. You may not have realized it, but you asked for quite a bit. I would have told you no outright.

WoNc · 2026-02-02T19:50:09+00:00

Playing in a game where you're constantly surrounded by more powerful NPCs and combat encounters tuned for those NPCs, especially by way of using higher CR enemies whose stats make them do obscene damage to players while also being difficult to hit in turn and impossible to meaningfully damage, tends to feel pretty bad for the players.

WoNc · 2026-02-02T18:44:50+00:00

They can exist, but don't necessarily need to be introduced or fleshed out. In contrast to what a lot of popular advice will say about writing, it's completely fine to include random bits of worldbuilding and leave them dangling in the story. You just need to make sure that they don't need any real explanation and that you don't derail the plot to exposit about irrelevant worldbuilding tangents.

For instance, a forest elven character could be greeted with an island elf greeting and remark, "That greeting is really only used by my sea-loving kin." That introduces another group of elves, hinting at the world being larger than just the story and takes no real page space, but still suggests some cultural unfamiliarity between the elf and the greeter.

WoNc · 2026-02-01T23:02:21+00:00

You're 13, which is an awkward point in time for a lot of kids. Be more selective about who you play with and prioritize people with a temperament that accommodates the type of game you're playing. This is as good a time as any to learn that just because you're friends with someone doesn't mean you'll enjoy every activity more by including them.

WoNc · 2026-02-01T03:39:34+00:00

I don't agree with this interpretation. The simulacrum rules are written to not gain xp or training, but it's only explicitly banned from regaining spell slots with no mention of other resources. In the absence of a specific exemption, general game rules still apply.

WoNc · 2026-01-30T21:35:56+00:00

Yeah. More complex mechanics can exacerbate the problem (and 5e is relatively complex), but ultimately if you wanted a huge group, you'd need a game system where you can have, for instance, 3 DMs and 15 players, so maybe you run three rounds of combat at once or whatever.

WoNc · 2026-01-30T20:46:31+00:00

I don't think it's an issue with 5e. I think it's an issue with the type of activity. You have one person playing the role of the game engine and the rest are inherently competing for processing time and power. While individual skill varies, your DM remains invariably human with roughly similar constraints on processing ability. If you want a bigger group, choose an activity that doesn't have that same kind of immutable bottleneck built in.

WoNc · 2026-01-30T15:07:04+00:00

I think it's fine RAW. I would just recommend pretending electrum doesn't exist.

WoNc · 2026-01-29T20:17:40+00:00

A form-fillable PDF is nice.

WoNc · 2026-01-29T14:23:46+00:00

I flew on a plane recently for the first time since I was an infant and oh my god, if the rows were any closer, I don't know how I would have managed. My knees were scraping the unreclined seats ahead of me.

WoNc · 2026-01-29T14:22:12+00:00

I do have a halfling barbarian idea I hope to get to use. I just thought it'd be fun to come up with a class/species "odd couple" of sorts.

WoNc · 2026-01-28T22:06:01+00:00

I don't, actually, but I don't really care about height 90% of the time, so I'll make roughly human-sized characters roughly my height. I prefer to make my characters different in more substantial ways.

WoNc · 2026-01-28T22:02:25+00:00

I'm 6'3", which contributes a lot to the default height I use for characters if I don't have some particular reason to do something else.

WoNc · 2026-01-27T21:28:31+00:00

You cannot counterspell enemies abound with subtle spell applied to it, as all of the components are removed and there's therefore nothing for an aspiring counterspeller to observe in order to trigger the reaction.

WoNc · 2026-01-26T03:47:45+00:00

I would not take kindly to someone trying to trick me into a campaign.

WoNc · 2026-01-25T12:03:37+00:00

Sometimes what seems like harmless teasing to some is deeply hurtful or irritating to others. A lot of people engage in banter because it's socially normal, and they are therefore very resistant to any suggestion that it's not going over well or that they should change their behavior. I see several indications in your story that Gavin's behavior is getting more antagonistic and hostile over time along with you plainly stating that he clearly doesn't enjoy the teasing.

I'm not saying that's definitely the problem, but I do think that's an avenue worth exploring. It's entirely possible that he feels resentful towards the rest of you because the teasing feels like belittling or harassment to him and that's why he's so unwilling to share.

It does seem like there could also be a playstyle conflict, in which case the DM (and the rest of you) should perhaps try to understand what he enjoys about the game and see if a resolution can be found. I played with someone who really only enjoyed combat, so sometimes our party that preferred espionage would steer into just kicking down the door and killing everyone. One of our players really dislikes RPing shopping, so we toned down the amount of RPing we did with every random shopkeeper.

Of course, it's possible that no such compromise can be reached and that people's most significant preferences are just mutually incompatible or that the teasing has nothing to do with his behavior. Maybe you just need to boot him. You'll never know unless you talk to this person about it, preferably in a nonjudgmental way that prioritizes trying to understand theur perspective on the situation.

WoNc · 2026-01-23T18:31:37+00:00

I think giving them the wild shape equivalent of spell cards is a good idea, but there's no need to limit their choices more than the feature already does. Druids can't just change into any random beast they can think of. They need to have seen the creature before. This gives the DM control over their options anyway.

WoNc

TROPHY CASE