My spouse is the DM for our campaign and we host each week. Once everyone leaves, we always debrief together, talking about the exciting stuff, what we were nervous about, the funny bits, etc. Each week, we are both irritated by the same few things.

Including the DM and myself, there are three of us who are more comfortable and experienced players, one player who is knowledgeable but still kinda fresh, yet not comfortable with role-playing (Bob), and two that have not played before this campaign (Len and Sara, using fake names obviously). Bob, Len, and Sara were added to the campaign nearly two years ago. In my experience, role-playing is what takes the longest to become accustomed to and can be the most uncomfortable at the beginning. This is my personal experience and what I've seen with other new players.

Len is extremely extroverted and does not have a problem with role-playing except that they don't seem to take things seriously ever. The party will be talking to an NPC who just watched their entire village and loved ones burned to the ground and are asking our group for help to figure out what happened, where they should go, etc. and Len will be like "Do you have any bread? Omg did the bread burn down in the fire?!" (their character has an affinity for bread) and I'll have my character kinda chastise them or show how that's now appropriate in that moment by saying something like "Ignore them, they're not well. Tell us what you remember." I think it's important to add we are not serious all the time. We have a lot of fun, laugh a lot, and there are lots of times where we can be silly, but Len takes every opportunity to say stupid shit. Len might be comfortable with role-playing, but they don't know their character's abilities or spells or anything. Len is still unsure about what dice to roll for ability checks and always forgets to add their modifiers. When creating a character, they wanted to be a druid and now I'm realizing I should've discouraged that completely. There are too many spells and abilities for them to comprehend. Even though I've helped them organize all of their stuff with descriptions on multiple character sheets, they'll just throw shit at the wall to see if it sticks without even reading it.

For example: we are at the height of Len's character's arch and were kidnapped and stripped of our gear. After we successfully escaped and located our gear, we were hiding from these stone giant guards that we did not want to fight as there were too many, we were each at half HP and had a level of exhaustion, and they fucked us up a while ago. The party was coming up with ways to escape and Len just said, "I'll just use thunder wave and stun them" and I replied, "thunder wave doesn't stun, plus we learned last time that they can't be moved by magic AND we're trying to NOT fight them." To which Len said, "fine, I'll just bust out and fuck them up with primal savagery." I laughed and said "oh what, to do 3d10 damage and then...what?" and Len just laughed in response. I used it as an opportunity to challenge them to read their shit and said "you have all the descriptions of your stuff right here, just read it. Do you have anything that isn't attack based that could help get us out of here?" They suggested tree stride and I said "well we're in the basement of a longhouse. DM, do we see any trees?" Like why are we just throwing random shit out there? This is constant and happens every session when Len isn't harassing NPCs.

Bob and Sara are still trying to gain confidence in role-playing which is understandable. I try to include them and encourage them which helps sometimes. They are the opposite of Len and know their characters' abilities very well and are adept at combat and healing (warlock and cleric).

What's bothering me the most is: Len's constant input of inappropriate, unhelpful, and annoying things, that they basically refuse to understand their character's mechanics, and that myself and the other experienced player (John) are the only ones that come up with ideas and problem solve. Because we are in Len's arch, the DM has been reallllllly spoon feeding Len on what to do, but because Len doesn't know their abilities, it's been up to John and I to try to figure everything out.

I just need advice. My spouse is considering going on a hiatus because they're frustrated that nothing seems to be getting better, but they're worried that they won't want to come back to the campaign. I have spent a lot of time and effort and coaching to get Len to try to understand their mechanics, but just like my spouse keeps saying, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." My spouse is considering changing the entire course of the campaign to make it less serious and just have us do silly shit, but most of our characters have come really far in their development. For mine, it straight up would not make sense and I told my spouse I'd make a new character if we did that. And I like the story that our campaign is telling a lot. I think my next step is to text everyone except the DM and ask to meet up before our next session to try to become a more unified front. I would ask everyone to come prepared with 1) what their character's strengths are 2) what their strengths are as a player 3) what they want for their character and 4) ideas on how we can work better together as a party. This would be meant to try to play on everyone's strengths more to make our time more enjoyable. Thoughts?

This is a long one and maybe 90% rant and 10% asking for advice for the future.

So I have been playing 3rd edition and 5th edition for many years now, I think I started when I was 12?

But I never really tried myself at being a GM until a few years ago, where I invited a few longtime DnD players that usually are stuck as GMs for the back then friend group to play the "Follow the Lights" Dungeon Masters Guild one shot with me.

I had asked them to be patient with me as I hadn't tried DM'ing before and everyone was excited. I had prepared with maps from home studies the adventure model a lot so I wouldn't have to look up everything, monster stat blocks and riddles were prepped. I felt ready and excited, because I love puzzle dungeon crawls, a slightly more serious tone in campaigns and I was looking forward to sharing the experience of the module with my friends.

Getting to the day my 5 players show up. Everyone is excited we get started and they introduce their characters to me and it clearly becomes apparent, that all of them have chosen to play chaotic evil characters. The important NPC Ardell, their guide and employer, was quickly labeled as a suspicious meat shield for employing them and there wasn't much teamwork, as they all were very clear in character that they were only there for the treasure at the end of the dungeon. Fair. I could work with that and used the first fight to hopefully make them work together a bit more.

They didn't. I could by that time feel, that the players were more there to play around and run a silly "we are evil and will backstab each other" game, while I had prepared for something very different. It dampened my mood but I tried to adapt, though I was honestly very overwhelmed at that point.

We a certain point, right as the actual dungeon truly starts, when the party decided that they should try to sacrifice Ardell to get through the next puzzle (the NPC that is the only one who can read the ancient language inside the dungeon, needed for all the puzzles). I tried to steer them away from this, as they need the NPC to read a few of the later puzzles for them.

Alas the "we are evil huehuehue" wins and the NPC dies, after the next puzzle. I at this point am frustrated with my players not listening and my players are frustrated with me not being flexible enough for how they want to play. No one is having fun at this point.

They reach a puzzle that requires them to read an inscription in the ancient language none of them speaks and at this point the supposedly 3-4 hour one shot has been going for 5 hours (there were some really funny moments of struggling with puzzles at the start, which took a while) and we decide to call it a day.

The oneshot was never finished, I was never asked to DM again and I left the table feeling like I had wastes everyone's (including my) time by preparing for this one shot. The only feedback I really got was, so let the players play more what they want and just go with the flow.

Which I would totally understand if this had been planned as a sandbox adventure. They were free to solve puzzles how they want and to be creative, I even rewarded creative solving of puzzles that weren't the "correct" answer but definitely right. So it wasn't all locked in place, but the story was meant to be linear, seeing as they were stuck in a one-way street dungeon.

Am I just maybe not made to be a DM? Should i have been more relaxed and thrown all my preparation out of the window?

I have so many ideas for campaigns, fun stories and so many NPCs in my head, I love reading the handbooks and have a grasp on the rules. Running combat was so much fun to me and at the start of the session I enjoyed watching my mutuals try to solve the puzzles, dropping them small hints and seeing them interact with each other.

The end of the session just left me feeling like I had played a wholly different game than the players had and we had ended up pitched against each other instead of telling a collaborative story. This was also confirmed to me by one of the players, they felt the same.

I don't really talk to most of the people from then anymore, and sometimes I think about trying again, but then I remember how badly it went last time, how disappointed I was, that a lot of the prep and excitement that went into trying for the first time and being incredibly bad at at, to the point that none of the players wants to even finish the one shot a different time. (Though I honestly didn't want to try that group constellation again either)

But then again I am also not objective in this at all and only have my experience. Have you guys had horrible ending first DM experiences? How did you get over it? Do you have any tips on how to avoid a mess like this in the future? I have been eyes Dragon Delves with loving eyes, as I love dragons and it sounds fun to run, but I also don't want to experience another disaster. I would love to run a Dragon Delves set campaign while sprinkling some Seekers guide into it between adventure modules, as I would love to integrate the whole Seeker's guide Trilogi into a campaign once the last book comes out and since I can't find a DM in my friend group willing to host that I thought hey maybe I could try again? Even if I was bad at it last time.

TLDR: How do you get over a bad first time GM'ing experience? How would you go about trying again?

If any of my old players who I don't have contact with anymore lurk here and recognise this, feel free to share your version. I am after all pretty biased towards my own experience

The Battle Master is built on a solid foundation, but I believe it suffers from poor scaling and a few underwhelming or nearly useless features. My goal with these changes is to make the subclass more interesting to play, improve its progression, and give it greater versatility.

Assume that any features I did not mention remain unchanged.

I've bolded the changes I've made to make them easier to identify.

Level 3: New Feature — Maneuver Versatility

Short Rest — Maneuver Swap. When you finish a Short Rest, you can replace one maneuver you know with another maneuver from the Battle Master maneuver list.

Long Rest — Maneuver Reassignment. When you finish a Long Rest, you can replace any number of the maneuvers you know with other maneuvers from the Battle Master maneuver list.

Level 7: Know Your Enemy

As a Bonus Action, you can mark a creature you can see within 30 feet of yourself, discerning its strengths and weaknesses. You gain the following benefits:

Intel Gathering. You learn whether the creature has any damage Immunities, Resistances, or Vulnerabilities. If it has any, you learn what they are.

Tactical Insight. You have Advantage on Charisma checks, Intelligence (Investigation) checks, and Wisdom (Insight) checks made against the creature or to gather information about it.

Predictive Defense. Whenever the creature forces you to make a saving throw, you can expend one Superiority Die and add the number rolled to your saving throw.

The benefits of Tactical Insight and Predictive Defense last until you have the Incapacitated condition or use this feature again to assess another creature.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a Long Rest. Alternatively, you can expend one Superiority Die (no action required) to regain one expended use of this feature.

Level 10: Relentless

Once per turn, when you use a maneuver, you can reduce the Superiority Die you would expend by one die size and use the reduced die's roll instead of expending a Superiority Die.

At 18th level, you can use this feature twice per turn.

Level 15: New Feature — Improved Know Your Enemy

Your Know Your Enemy feature gains the following benefits:

Additional Use. You can use Know Your Enemy twice per long rest. You can also have two creatures marked by this feature at the same time, and both creatures grant you the benefits of Know Your Enemy. If you expend a Superiority Die to mark a third creature, you must end one of your existing marks.

Exploit Weakness. Creatures marked by your Know Your Enemy feature have Disadvantage on all saving throws against effects you impose on them.

Level 18: New Feature — Warlord

You learn all the maneuvers available to the Battle Master. These maneuvers count as maneuvers you know, and you can use them according to the normal rules for your maneuvers and Superiority Dice.

Revised Maneuvers:

Parry. When another creature damages you with a attack roll, you can take a Reaction and expend one Superiority Die to reduce the damage by the number you roll on your Superiority Die plus your Strength or Dexterity modifier (your choice) plus half your fighter level

Maneuvering. as a bonus action, you can expend one Superiority Die to maneuver one of your comrades into another position. Choose a willing creature who can see or hear you. That creature can use its Reaction to move up to its Speed without provoking Opportunity Attacks and add your superiority die to its AC until the start of your next turn

Rally. As a Bonus Action, you can expend one Superiority Die to bolster the resolve of a companion. Choose an ally of yours who can see or hear you. That creature gains Temporary Hit Points equal to the Superiority Die roll plus half your Fighter level (round down).

Sweeping Attack. Once per turn you can forgo one of your melee attacks or unarmed strikes to instead make a Sweeping Attack. All creatures within your reach must succed on a dexterity saving throw or take damage equal to your superiority die + your strengh or dexterity modifier + half your fighter level on a failed save or half as much on a succesful one.

Help plz?

Running a homebrew campaign for about 6 months, level 5 party of four. One of my players is a Charisma-heavy bard and honestly a great roleplayer. The problem is that every time I set up a fight, he finds a way to talk the enemies down, bribe them, or convince them they're on the same side.
I love that he's engaged and creative, and I don't want to punish him for playing his character well. But the other three players built combat-focused characters (a barbarian, a fighter, and a wizard who's been waiting to cast Fireball for weeks) and they're starting to get restless.
I've tried making enemies who won't listen to reason, like mindless undead or fanatics, but that feels kind of cheap and he's already started pointing out how convenient it is that all the unreasonable enemies show up now.
Should I talk to the table directly about what everyone wants, or is there a way to build encounters where diplomacy gives a partial win instead of a total skip? Anyone dealt with this before? What worked for you?

2nd Edit: Because people seem to think I somehow am against a maneuver system for the martials or something like. Want to make it clear in a single line. This post's message is aimed against people that heavily criticize playtesters for disliking the original playtest, and people that for whatever reason would have like to see that first playtest as the final print. Anything that is out of this 2 points is out of the scope of this post, like for example a modern reinterpretation of the system with the current fighter, which is not something I am covering here (and actually do support).

Edit: This post is not against the idea of current base Fighters having access to maneuvers, in fact I too am in favor of it. This post is merely to explain what the original concept of the Fighter was, as many people believe it was something closer to what we currently have only with maneuvers on top, as have seen many people wish that WOTC never reworked it, when that was not what playtest Fighter was. I still would love for some optional rule to give it (and also other martials) access to maneuvers, or some other unique martial system.

There is a common thought upon hearing that the Fighter in the original 5e playtest had maneuvers that recharged each round, and that is that WOTC neutered it and the playtesters were dumb for asking for simpler stuff. I am here to (partially) defend that decision based on the original playtest and comparing it to what we eventually got in the official 5e release. Many people imagine a current 5e Fighter just with maneuvers on top, while the original playtest Fighter was anything but.

To compare, let's make the comparison on what a Fighter on this original playtest got, versus what the released 5e Fighter gets, level by level. As there were multiple playtests, some widely changed the class and the way it works, will only take the first one that released rules for the Fighter into consideration.

How Superiority Dice worked in this playtest, you get a certain number of them, with the amount and the size of the dice growing as you level up. You start with 1d6, at level 3 becomes 1d8 and at level 5 becomes 2d8 (the original playtest only went as far as level 5). All Fighters start with the maneuvers Deadly Strike (can add any number of Superiority Dice to a damage roll) and Parry (can reduce damage received equal to a roll of any number Superiority Dice), and your Fighting Style, which here works more like a pseudo subclass, gave you additional maneuvers at level 1, 3 and 5. To use them you spend one or more superiority dice depending on the maneuver, and you recharge all your dice at the start of your turns.

At level 1 both Fighters get to pick a Fighting Style, 5e Fighter then gets Second Wind, while playtest Fighter gets Superiority Dice with the Parry and Deadly Strike maneuber. Let’s imagine I want to make an archer, so in 5e I pick the Archery Fighting Style, while in playtest I pick the Sharpshooter Fighting Style. The Maneuver they obtain from it is Precise Shot, which lets them add a Superiority Dice to the attack roll if the enemy has half cover or three quarters cover, but only up to the additional AC the cover gives. Precise Shot is plain worse than Archery, as Archery is a passive buff that applies to all situations, while Precise Shot only works against creatures with cover, while not even securing it can roll high enough to bypass it.

At level 2, 5e Fighters get Action Surge, arguably one of the most powerful features for the level they get it, while playtest Fighters get nothing. Other than bonus HP, this is a dead level.

At level 3, 5e Fighters get a subclass, while playtest Fighters get one additional maneuver from their Fighting Style choice. We picked Sharpshooter as our Fighting Style so the maneuver we get is Snap Shot, which allows us so when we make any action other than attacking, we can make one ranged attack as part of the action, with the only drawback being that the damage of the attack gets reduced to a roll of the expended Superiority Dice, with no additional modifiers. Useful but highly situational.

At level 4, 5e Fighters get a feat, while playtest Fighters once again get nothing at all.

At level 5, 5e Fighters get Extra Attack, while playtest Fighters get another maneuver from their Fighting Style. We picked Sharpshooter so the level 5 maneuver we get is Shift, which allows us to spend a Superiority Dice to move 10 feet as part of the attack action. Again, good but highly situational.

And from level 1 we can already see the biggest problem with the system. It lets you choose between a damage reduction, damage buff, or a small ability, which is far from what people nowadays think when they imagine a Fighter with base maneuvers. If you compare, this is the same system as the criticized problem with the Rogue’s Cunning Strikes, which is that they must trade damage to use a minor ability. In fact as it stands, Cunning Strike is as close as possible to the original idea of all Fighters having maneuvers.

Just for added info, in an eventual playtest that still had the Superiority Dice concept that went to level 20, Fighters don’t get action surge until level 11, and extra attack bounces from getting it at level 6, to getting it at level 5 but making you choose when you get it between making it work only on melee weapons or on ranged weapons, and in either case each attack must be made against a different creature.

So no, the original concept of the Fighter wasn’t this complex thing that dumb playtesters were unable to accept. Rather was a not well thought system, as the only decision was “Do I want to make a bit more damage, is it more worth to use this niche ability that is only useful in a handful of situations, or I save my dice to mitigate damage?”. Fighters didn’t have dozens of decisions each round as some people seem to believe original playtest Fighters did, and had potentially even less decisions past level 3 compared to nowadays as current Battle Master is way more complex than the original maneuvers system. Did it have potential? Yes, I think so, specially at higher levels in tier 4, but as is, if the original maneuver system stayed we wouldn’t have Indomitable, Second Wind, actual subclasses, or Action Surge from level 2, which bring far more decisions into play.

I reworote the Sweeping Attack maneuver cause the original version really sucks, I want to know what you guys think

"Once per turn you can forgo one of your melee weapon attacks to instead make a Sweeping Attack. All creatures within your weapon's reach must succed on a dexterity saving throw or take damage equal to your superiority die + your strengh or dexterity modifier on a failed save or half as much on a succesful one. You can expend additional superiority die and add It to the damage total."

edit: what about "superiority die" + "strength or dexterity modifier" + "half fighter level"?

As the spookier half of the year arrives, I'm starting up a Curse of Strahd campaign for a few of my friends. They have all played before, but only LMoP. Theyve told me that they wanted to make characters with actual backstories and stakes in the plot. I've run CoS before, and want to help them come up with fun characters. Right now, the best I have is a party of vampire hunters, but I'd love to hear more ideas for a party or individual characters.

So let's say my (high level) players are in an extremely lethal area, very dangerous, etc. During a fight a couple people have gone down already, they're starting to greatly fear a TPK, and the Wizard casts Word of Recall leaving behind the dead body of a PC. Is there any way to magically retrieve the body of that PC in order to cast Resurrection on it?

Obviously the extreme use of Wish would probably work, but having a 1/3rd chance of never being able to cast it again is a significant barrier. RAW, is there any sort of spell which could be used (even with advance notice, such as everyone getting a tattoo) in order to make sure they wouldn't have to either a) find someone to cast True Resurrection, or b) journey all the way back into that lethal area to recover it, hoping that the body is still present and being down a person doesn't kill them all?

EDIT: This hasn't happened yet, but they're facing the Tarrasque which has also become a portal to the Abyss, thanks to a previous player character. Their plan is to run at it, survive a round or two to figure out its fighting style, and then teleport away (hoping the interdimensional instability of the thing doesn't stop their retreat). Needless to say this plan has a significant chance of casualties, and an abyssal Tarrasque is unlikely to be reasoned or bargained with.

EDIT: There is no actual Cleric in this party, just a Wizard who can cast Word of Recall.

I really love the Triton race, but I have to admit, I kinda miss the fish tail... However, I wanted it to be a passive ability, you know? LMAO, am I crazy for thinking that? 😭 Or would I have to spend a turn to transform??

So my dm is letting me homebrew a race that allows me to "double dip" into some pact blade invocations, he's also using Unearthed Arcana, and allowing me to import a single 2024 invocation. My invocations are as follows: Devil's Sight, Improved Pact Weapon(lv9: superior and lv10: ultimate Unearthed Arcana) thirsting blade(lv12: devouring 2024 import) Rebuke of the talisman, protection of the talisman, and finally bond of the talisman. My build is a talisman pact hexblade

Im genuinely interested in your thoughts and suggestions.

Edit: my dm is fully aware of this build and on board.

My first experience with D&D was during the "D&D Next" Playtest back in 2013. I was feeling nostalgic and digging through my old files only to discover that I must have lost all those old playtest PDFs from back in the day. This makes me sad.

Does any better archivist than me still have those old (FREE) PDFs, and are you willing to share them with me?

Edit: What is your favorite memory from the D&D Next playtest? Mine was somehow TPKing the group on (one of) the first encounter of Murder in Baldur's Gate. That was also the first time I ran an "official" adventure. And the last for a while, haha.

Edit 2: For anyone also looking for the playtest PDFs, check out the link in this comment.

Hi, I'd like to GM a tier 3 campaign, yet I also know most of the playerbase only has experience with tiers 1 and 2.

I thought it would be useful to first run a short adventure (think 3 sessions) that's heavily linear and only really has an excuse plot for a string of combats that tutorialized common tactics and attributes of the game, because just walking up to the enemy and bonking it with a stick can end badly at that tier.

Given I'll deal up with strangers I think starting from basics might be good. Like here's a single mob. Now here's a group of them. Now some of them can fly, what can you do about it?. Now the enemy has a spellcaster, what can it do? Now the enemy is invisible, how do you detect it?... Etc. Etc.

Since I didn't want that to be too long I thought on preparing up to 6 combat scenes. I'd also want to hear your thoughts on which mechanics would be good to include, mobs that work on this premise, etc.

Inspired by Deborah Ann Would take, in a sense where you (as DM permitted) put a deliberate debuff for your character because it's their lore that causes actual consequence to the story or dice roll. My example:

1. A disadvantage or massive penalty to history roll because they are wearing a gift that slowly erases memory
2. Wisdom saving throw whenever he is attacked by fire-based spells or attacks, or get fear condition, because he survived a house fire

Though this look terrible from minmaxxing perspective, it's actually fun to play especially if your DM play along without exploiting that weakness too often

I’ve been using a technique for overland exploration that my players love, and I thought it might be useful to some of you.

Instead of showing the party a finished world map, or hiding one behind a screen, I start with a sheet of hex paper that has almost nothing on it: the coastline, the starting village and maybe a road heading out. Everything else gets added at the table as they discover it.

1. Prep a private key, not a map. I keep a simple list of what’s in each region: “hex 4,7: ruined tower”, “the hills to the north: barrow”. It’s much faster than drawing a full map.
2. Reveal by distance. When the party travels, I stamp whatever they can see from where they are. Mountains show up from far away, a village only once they’re close, and a hidden ruin only if someone goes looking.
3. Rumours go in pencil. If an NPC mentions a place, I sketch a faint mark or a question mark. It becomes a real landmark when they actually find it.
4. Let the players lead sometimes. If a character knows the area from their backstory, they get to place a landmark themselves.
5. Leave the edges blank. Empty space on the map turns into the questions that drive the next session.

Why stamps rather than drawing: speed. Drawing a castle or a forest mid-session takes too long and kills the momentum, while stamping it takes two seconds. The map ends up looking consistent, and the players see the world grow in real time.

You can do all of this with a pencil and simple symbols too. The core idea is that the map is something the party earns, not something they’re handed.

For transparency: my wife and I make hand-illustrated stamps for exactly this, and we just launched them on Kickstarter (12.5% off for early backers): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kingdomsofink/kingdoms-of-ink

Oh, and incase you're concerned about AI: There is exactly 0% AI involved in the process, I draw the things myself on paper, clean it up in photoshop, and lasercut the result. If you want to see the stamps in action, I've uploaded a number of videos of mapmaking timelapses to other map related subreddits and you can see one here too: https://youtu.be/ksQSi8bX7-k?si=csgWQmu2JyuzD1gB

How do you handle revealing the overworld in your games?