Last campaign I ran the paladin was so proud of herself for smiting down a couple lesser demons and gushed about it for the rest of the week. So for the next 3 arcs of that campaign I snuck in a cambion who was hounding the party and got his lights clocked in multiple times just knowing the dopamine release it gave that player even when every ‘challenging’ encounter crafter for that group was done in about 5 terms and took me nearly and hour to craft ahead of time.

To me as the DM it’s your job to learn what quirks or functionality of the players particularly enjoy about their characters and find a way to sneak in encounters, puzzles or situations that give that player time to shine and enjoy it. Even and especially if it trivializes the challenge you put into it.

The number of online dms I hear complaining about flight speed races and flight spell boggles my mind. You just got licence to make 3d puzzles and encounters. And also show those players why spiders in magic the gathering had the ability to defend against flying creatures through out the 90s

not sure. i think i’d rather dm for my nieces and nephews.

Let your players do cool shit. Let them be good at what they built their character for. You can challenge them while still giving them opportunities to be awesome.

But you know that I know that you know that I know!

I tailor my encounters to what my players like, not what’s going to challenge their dice and IRL luck. If my players are finding themselves having to cheese their build and pick the optimum feats and talents just so they can stand a chance, then I’ve failed as a DM.

If you’re cheesing your build because you want to feel powerful, just tell me, and I’ll do a campaign where you can feel powerful without needing to cheese your build. You should be able to make the character you want to roleplay as without feeling like you’re inadvertently gimping yourself.

It’s why I like Genesys and Powered by the Apocalypse, because those are RP heavy systems that don’t require you to spend ages messing with stats in order to play the character you want to play.

Some people like to cheese their build to feel clever. But then again, solving riddles has a similar effect.

Tbh, I don’t really get why this is an issue. As a DM I balance the game however feels good for everyone. My main strategy is that being more powerful shouldn’t make the game easier but should give you more freedom and options.

And the game should never be too hard. To most people, losing a character sucks really hard, so character deaths should always be consentual.

Congratulations, you found out what DnD actually stands for: Damage and Damage. Everything that helps you deal more damage is cool and innovative and everything that doesn’t deal damage is just a waste of time.

But here comes the problem. Your fertilizer bomb is extremely effective at doing the only important thing in the entire system. So why don’t you use it every time against all of the enemies?

Your DM has two choices if you decide to do that: Either block you from doing so which will almost always feel forced or use enemies with bigger hp pools which is effectively a debuff to all other character abilities. Either way sucks. Welcome to DnD!

You just gave a perfect example for my “How do I deal even more damage?” point and you don’t even realize it. Do you? If all you have is a hammer…

I mean, the Monk being immune to poison doesn’t save anyone else in the breath attack.

Part of D&D is building synergy between the classes and operating as a team. At the same time, it’s the group’s biggest vulnerability.

Mind-splort the meat shield, gum up the support, grapple the damage dealer, or backstab the controller. Suddenly, the team is scrambling as their game plan falls apart.

And green dragons have so many tricks up their sleeves! The last thing I’m worried about is the breath weapon. It’s our horny bard falling for her damned come-hither smile that keeps me up at night.

I very much did not. He was complaining about D&D having spells that made him feel bad and I offered an example of how there’s more to 5e than spellslots to get the job done.

Do you think we don’t also talk our way out of problems? We do that all the time. I routinely, even with -1 charisma, would do shit all the time to get us out of dangerous fights and solve problems in more ways than “gun”.

And none of you have even given examples as to why other systems are better so please, do go on.

I’ll say that it’s less of an issue, 9 times out of 10, because what they’re going to be good at is weathering repeated encounters.

There’s so many monsters that do poison damage - especially in the mid levels - that you’d be hard pressed to run a campaign where they just stop showing up. Are you just not going to send anyone through the Underdark because a Monk is in the party? Stop using half the demons, aberrations, and magical beasts in the MM?

But for climatic fights, it can add to the drama when the encounter is on disadvantagous terms. Sometimes the cool shit is overcoming the seeming impossible.

I’m that weird exception about character death, partly because I like building new characters, and partly because I like seeing characters get cool ends. Like my low-mid level bard who, while the party was on its last legs in a boss battle, leapt at the dragon’s face from an elevated position to attack at its face, mouth, throat, whatever he could get. IIRC, that bard and the dragon both died from that choice.

Edit: The campaign was at that point based in a small-medium town in a cold region. I remember the town had like 4 notable families, ones whose names meant something to folks in the area, and my bard was of one of the upper couple ones. So his death was definitely storied, crazy Uncle Artanis who died saving his friends and the region from a dragon.

My replacement character was a half-orc cleric who had trouble figuring out how to respect both halves of his heritage, and, in a big BSOD moment, rather than execute the defeated members of an orc tribe who refused to change their ways, he cast off his magic gear (armor, weapons, rings, whatever he had) and just walked off into the snowy forest, never to be played again. Which was just the only action I could imagine for him; he had “life” inside my head, and it was what “he” chose (I do not have DID).

That was 15+ years ago, and I only recently decided that he ended up forming a community of outcasts, people who couldn’t find a place in the world, and sponsored conscientious adventurers. I like to think that tribe of orcs, if they survived, at least respected his community and didn’t try to raid it.

That’s totally ok, and that’s also quite consentual.

I’m just against killing characters just because of bad dice rolls or stuff like that.

I don’t understand how silence “hard-counters”… I mean it blocks most casting for a round but it’s only a 20 foot sphere, that can easily be moved out of. Yes it gives like one turn of disabling a caster, but honestly, lots of spells give that already.

Dilligent casters in a magic heavy setting probably know the dangers of silence and have prepared ways to work around it.

I just don’t understand how it’s possible, like you say, “hard-counter every boss”. In specific situations, sure. But “every”? That would seem to me like just not a very smart/tactical DM you play with.