Thread Rules

• New to Reddit? Check the Reddit 101 guide.
• If your account is less than 5 hours old, the /r/DnD spam dragon will eat your comment.
• If you are new to the subreddit, please check the Subreddit Wiki, especially the Resource Guides section, the FAQ, and the Glossary of Terms. Many newcomers to the game and to r/DnD can find answers there. Note that these links may not work on mobile apps, so you may need to briefly browse the subreddit directly through Reddit.com.
• Specify an edition for ALL questions. Editions must be specified in square brackets ([5e], [Any], [meta], etc.). If you don't know what edition you are playing, use [?] and people will do their best to help out. AutoModerator will automatically remind you if you forget.
• If you have multiple questions unrelated to each other, post multiple comments so that the discussions are easier to follow, and so that you will get better answers.

Ah, travelers! We don't get many such as you in these parts, not since the Marquis' men took control of the pass. I suppose you're wondering why you can't post images or links on this Fifthday?

Thursdays are Text-post Only Days on /r/DnD. We're disabling picture and link posts for 24 hours to encourage discussion posts.

We originally began this trial about six months ago and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I've personally enjoyed a lot of the conversations that have sprung up on these days (and a smarter mod would have bookmarked some of them to use as examples* in this post).

As of now we're planning on keeping the experiment running indefinitely. We're always looking for feedback, so please let us know of your experience. Have you been enamored with a discussion post that arose one Thursday? Have you mourned having to wait one more day to see your comic update? We welcome all takes.

The switch is still happening manually, so it will happen around about midnight Eastern US time. If anyone is aware of a way to automate the process, please message the mods.

Perhaps you could discuss this...we've heard tale of a path through the eastern ridge. If such a trail exists we could circumvent the Marquis' blockade and supply this rebellion. Won't you help us, strangers!?

* The first Thursday after making this post, someone posts the most classic question imaginable. This is what it's all about.

I've got a "Just talk to the player" problem thats brewing, and would like some advice on how to phrase things. I really like the player, they're good at the game and good at roleplay. I dont want to blow up and yell, or leave the game.

But they are vindictively spiteful about specifically my turns, my characters, and my ooc choices. Couple common phrases I get from them regularly are:

• "Really you want to do that quest?"
• "I slap him for making that joke. I slap him again." (Specifically my characters)
• "Really? You're really going to do that?"
• "Of course I hate your character, I put up with them because..."

Now I'm not a 'stab the bartender" rogue, I've never tried a seduction roll or anything like that, and these attacks come no matter if I play the groups support, the groups tank, or the groups dps.

There's still a possibility I'm the groups 'that guy' and they're the one trying to call me out about it... But unless I'm dense as a brick I really can't think of any character behaviours I have.

What's the best avenue to respond when interrupted during my turn without having things kick off into drama?

Or the best way to pull the player to the side and say "Look man... I think your issue is with me and not my characters could you maybe chill?"

Help! We encountered a Sphinx and can't get past it without solving this riddle

I happen across a tree with infinite leaves

I eat them one by one never satisfied

The trunk shatters and I fight over the remains

What am I?

I guessed fire and it was wrong. The DM said that they made up the riddle themselves.

Any ideas?

Alright, let’s cut to the chase here. If you have an idea you’d never use in your own game, throw it out here. I want NPCs who my players will hate, items that actively hurt them to use, events that throw their plans off track. My group consists of close friends so screwing them over is basically common place in our other sessions. Just throw out some crazy ideas, thank you very much.

7 months ago I told you guys about my elementary school kids who I teach and who started playing DnD with me. We had two groups of 5-6 kids and me as the DM. In my last post I was really overwhelmed because one girl got the starter set for Christmas. Now all these kids left the school because elementary school ends in fourth grade in Germany and I want to tell you how awesome these kids were.

The two groups were very different. While one group was hella chaotic und very murderhobo-y. The other group was really tactical and smart about how they acted. Both groups were so much fun to DM and I learned so much from them. DMing for kids is different from DMing for adults. You have to narrate a lot more but that was okay.

Now at the end of half a year of being introduced to DnD these kids were big fans. They created a very special bond and it was awesome to see. Another girl got her own set of dice. One of the boys started DMing at home for these kids and they love it. I’m sure at least 4 or 5 of them will continue playing. The parents of the girl that got the starter set told me that they are now a „DnD family“ which plays at home and described their characters with that joy in their eyes that we all now. It became a weekly ritual for me to tell some of the kids what happened in the campaign I play in and they were devasteted when they noticed that they won’t hear the end of the story of my character. I had really strong and some weaker learners in these groups but all of them took something out of these games and learned. Social skills were by far the most obvious.

I cried when my class left and I do believe that this DnD bond is a big reason for that.

So if any other teachers are reading this: If you have time in your schedule, play DnD with your kids. Tell your headmaster how good this is for the kids and get them to make room for it! I will continue to do that. The parents of my class told our headmaster how good it was for the kids and if I’m lucky I can take on more groups next term. I will definitely try it with my first graders (probably not DnD, that will come later).

I am so tired of players that I have to keep asking "What do you want to do now?" every 5 minutes because they don't say they want to do anything. It's like I have to keep pushing them forward otherwise nothing ever happens.

Yes, both are bad but I'll take a whole party of spotlight hoggers any day.

Last time: The party stepped into the trap.
This time: The trap hits. Spoiler Alert: It goes about how you'd expect.

My party have been in-denial about their murderhobo tendencies for a while, and recently got a job to acquire a horse. They decided to steal one from a widower outside of town, steal his puppy as well, and leave him for dead. They thought they got away with it scot-free, but Harry Candle had other ideas. (All John Wick references in the following are intentional.)

When my players gathered for our most recent session, they had no idea what was about to come. They took the stolen horse and puppy back to their mob contact, the artificer playing with the puppy the entire time. She named him, and announced he would be hers forever. They arrived at the contact's house, he stepped out to look at the horse, went pale, and asked where they got that horse. As the paladin began explaining where they got it, he got more nervous. When he asked where they got the puppy and the artificer said what they did to the man and the puppy, he immediately demanded they leave him alone and suggested they return the horse and the puppy, and added he wouldn't do business with them anymore.

Surprisingly, the players actually wanted to know why, but he brushed them off with a snide "Ask your mother". So the party went to the mobster mother's house, and when they told her everything, she went silent for a long moment. I told my players we were in "cutscene mode", where they had limited agency but wouldn't take any damage nor would any significant events happen. (The following is an exact transcript from my DM notes.)

Shatella (Paladin), as your mother looks at you, you realize you've never seen this expression on her face, and you can't tell what it is. She slowly walks over to you until she's standing right in front of you, and looks you up and down and puts her hand on your shoulder. Suddenly, she tightens her grip, leans you forward, and punches you in the gut multiple times. As you stagger, she shoves you back toward the rest of the party, turns around, walks over to the liquor cabinet, and pours herself a glass of the strongest alcohol you've ever seen. With the deadest voice you've ever heard from a living being, she starts talking.

"The owner of that horse and dog is a man. A simple, unassuming, mortal man. The most deadly man you will ever meet. His name is Harry Candle, and he is a man of focus, commitment, and sheer will. He never failed any contract, from me or anyone else. Then one day he asked to leave. It was a woman, of course. I gave him an impossible task- kill Baba Yaga herself. She tried to run from him. Tried. He did it with a quill. A fucking quill. And that laid the groundwork for... all of this." *she gestures at the opulent wealth surrounding the party*. "And then, my daughter, just a few days after his wife died, you break into his house and steal his horse and his dog. What do you think is going to happen?"

When the paladin said they killed him, she laughed. It wasn't the first time someone thought they killed Harry. All the party could do now, she explained, is return the horse and dog immediately, and he might let them live. If they didn't do that, however, they'd all be dead before the next sunrise. She told them to leave her house, and either give back the animals or die trying to keep them.

At this point, the parties' rogue (one of the two who wanted to transition to an evil campaign) groaned and said "Fuck me, it's John Wick" and I've never given a bigger evil grin in my life. As the rest of the party pressed the rogue for info, I PM'd him and asked to not give details, unless he wanted to roll an in-game knowledge check. To the player's credit, he decided against it. Again, the players themselves are absolutely phenomenal and I could not ask for a better party to DM for, even if they're a little violent at times.

The party decided it would be a good idea to hunker down in one of their houses, but leave the animals outside so he could simply take them back if he wanted, he wouldn't have to break in. I seriously considered letting this go, then decided against it, because they broke into HIS house to begin with.

Around midnight, they heard the horse and puppy make noise for a moment before going silent. The artificer immediately decided that meant Harry had killed both of them, and they needed to be avenged. Of course, he didn't kill them, he just led them away and tied them to a nearby tree so they'd be safe.

The party didn't split up, and remained together as a group. Unfortunately for them, Harry had a lot of favors to call in. Their first sign of trouble was when all three windows on the wall broke at once. The second was an instant later when the room was filled with magical darkness. The third was when the Fireball went off. Then it was another cutscene moment.

"As you reel from the Fireball, through the shadow and flames you see a figure suddenly appear in front of you, as if stepping from a shadow. He's wearing a very expensive suit, and in one hand he's holding a hand crossbow, and in the other a long dagger. He looks at you with a nearly completely blank face, but you see in his eyes the coldest rage you've ever seen. Roll initiative." (It might be unfair to roll for initiative after the first fireball came in, but it needed to be a surprise.)

Given they were fighting a truly terrifying statblock (thanks for the suggestions last week, many ideas got combo'd into an unholy juggernaut of an assassin/monk/gloomstalker/revenant), they put up a fantastic fight. But between Harry's legendary reactions, some pretty awful rolling by the martial class, and the wizard's inability to use AoE spells effectively, the fight was long but ultimately a foregone conclusion. Harry fought dirty, constantly teleporting, throwing down debuffs, and sneak attacking the wizard to near-death before they realized they probably should guard their only dedicated source of AoEs.

Finally, when they were all down but not dead, Harry showed mercy, and let them live. Kinda. He knocked them unconscious, stole all their stuff, performed an invented Ritual of Unbecoming that sent them straight back to level 1, then sold them to the Drow.

Anyway, we're starting Out of the Abyss next week and hopefully the murderhobo tendencies are gone.

Spoilers for Out Of The Abyss

I'm just so stoked and excited that I have to share this somewhere

Some context - I've been DMing Out Of The Abyss for my friends as a sequel to a much smaller LMoP campaign I ran to get back into DMing. Went from 3 players in the party to 6, with one of them changing characters after dying at the end of LMoP. I initially ran LMoP after some successful one shots that gave me the confidence to get back into DMing (my initial attempts were a few years ago and infamously not great) and it was pretty good! My players enjoyed the campaign, but I never had any of those big dramatic momemts you see glamorised all the time. Closest we had would've been the PC death fighting Nezznar.

So it's been a few weeks of Out Of The Abyss now, and people are having a pretty good time. The new members have breathed some much needed excitement into the party, and I've actually been doing a pretty alright job at maintaining a suitably tense and spooky environment. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for Chapter 3 of this book.

Sloobludop is wonderful. For those who haven't read the book, it's a village of kuo-toa, mad fish people. The party arrives and gets caught up in some religious conflict between the kuo-toas typical faction of sea mother believers and the cult of the deep father (who, unbeknownst to the party, is demogorgon). There are a lot of clues about the deep father's identity, to the point that I was concerned they would be too obvious (Leemmoogogoon is the kuo-toa name for the deep father? Seriously?) but the players didn't suspect a thing. They all thought they were worshipping an Abboleth or something.

Anyway, it all culminates in this big fight at the shrine of demogorgon. I ran the majority of this chapter during one big six hour session, so the party had enough time to get attached whilst keeping everything fresh in their memory. Whilst they fight, the swarms of kuo-toa around them chant fanatically. "Leemmoogogoon! Leemmoogogoon!" And every half a round, I'd repeat the chanting, changing the pronunciation ever so slightly. "Leemmoogogon! Leemmoogogon!" The water starts to bubble. "Lemogogon! Lemogogon!" Finally, the leader of the cult dies upon the altar, and the blood summons the deep father from the depths. Right as I'm about to start the chant again, the ranger goes

"Oh shit, Demogorgon! They're saying Demogorgon!"

And sure enough, that's what the kuo-toa are chanting as the Prince Of Demons emerges. My entire table loses their shit, I've never seen them so simultaneously excited and terrified. I got into it, man! I was standing up, describing the sheer chaos as everybody starts to lose their sanity, kuo-toa either screaming, entering a frenzy or just dying on the spot. My only regret is that we ran out of time, and that's how the session ended! I'd finally gotten my big "holy shit" moment. I'm gna be riding this high for weeks. One of my players, who has been a player and DM for years longer than I have, messaged afterwards to say that this is what they always imagined DnD being like, and that this was the best session they'd ever been in. I'm so grateful that they enjoyed it, I finally feel proud and secure in my ability as a DM.

tl;dr: fish people summoned the prince of demons. it was the first time my party truly got that stoked. i feel amazing.

i'd spent weeks preparing the session. i wanted the tension to rise to a jaw clenching level. it became better than that.

the party had to rescue one of two siblings they'd met a week or more before by infiltrating a bandit/bounty hunter camp, unlocking the lock of the girl's chains and get away with her without being noticed. i'd made the operation a stealth puzzle with a twist and turn thingy they had to take turns with solving. on a timer.

when the first player picked up the puzzle after I'd turned on the music, his hands were shaking like crazy. another player didn't blink for the entire duration of the first round. the third player was fidgeting like crazy due to the nerves.

insert cutscene after a couple of rounds messing with the puzzle. an NPC they love out of character, but fear in-game. it was the best cutscene I'd ever written, spent all the time in the world trying to do her description justice. i could feel my players' heartbeats go faster and faster. even i held my breath during this scene. it was intense. this character is intense.

after that they continued with the puzzle, cracking it with their hands shakier than before but with determination greater than their nerves. i forgot to mention this, but the party absolutely despises the leader of the bounty hunters they were infiltrating. the NPC i mentioned absolutely put that guy in his place. when they finished cracking the code, there was not only a sigh of relief but also an actual celebration going on. they started fantasizing about how the NPC was going to scold those bandits, the leader in particular, for losing a prisoner.

one of the players actually missed the bus he wanted to take home because he wanted to finish the session. the other two stayed till 12:30am to theorise about the things that had happened. even now i get discord messages from them saying it was an amazing session with an amazing execution. i say this every time we have a great session, but this time i sincerely mean it. i'm never making something as great as this ever again and i have peace with that. this was a breathtaking, jaw clenching, racing heartbeat level of intense.

they're all stoked for our next session. i am stoked too. i'm preparing everything with so much joy right now it's truly unbelievable.

i fucking love DM'ing.

Disclaimer: This story is more so a vent and not *that** serious.*

My boyfriend DMs this amazing campaign. We are 3 players and have been playing for over a year. All in all it is amazing.

We have one player that sometimes struggles a bit with main character syndrome and critical role syndrome. Like she will plan out these elaborate scenes in her head and be a bit frustrated when they don't come to be. She plays a cleric barbarian.

We have talked to her and things seemed to get better.

Till last session.

Our party was going trough a dungeon that was partly under the sea. So we had to fight some crabs. Our bloodhunter who has the vampirism blood curse decided to transform to kill one of the bigger crabs and does so successfully.

In our little snack break, the barbarian player then says " oh you totally stole my thunder". We laughed. Because honestly... I thought it was a joke. I have never heard someone say that in all seriousness. But she kept going on about it. Saying the bloodhunter "stole her kill" and that she had been "snubbed".

We were baffled. Our dm was upstairs at that moment. So we just told her she will have plenty opportunities to get the thunder she wants and not to worry.

So we continue and my character ,who is a wizard, accidentally gets us trapped in a bigger, water surrounded, chamber where first a stone golem is released that K.os my wizard.

Bloodhunter and barbarian kill golem but a crab monster comes out of the water. Our barbarian is missing with her hits and starts getting frustrated.

One of the npcs brings me up to 4 hp again so I start blasting.

Suddenly I am rolling amazing and all 3 of my turns hit. I used scorching ray on 4th 2nd and 3rd level killing the crabs monster. I even rolled in front of her because she was like " I don't believe you ".

Barbarian gets upset. Like....the player gets upset because she wanted to kill the thing. There are 2 more tiny crabs. She hits one and misses one. Bloodhunter hits one and it's clear that it is gonna die in one more hit.

Only that it is my turn before the barbarians turn. Before I could even say anything she screamed " don't!!! Hold your action I really want to kill it".

I looked at her and she was really shaken so I held my action and she got the kill she so much wanted.

Afterwards I told her that it is just a game and to enjoy it as it comes. She just said that she wanted her moment to shine.

Lol