My players are currently in the middle to the end run of dragons of Ice vale keep. They just went through the dungeon of dragons barrow and collected the dragon sword. Problem is only one character is proficient in long swords. He’s a bard with one level of paladin and would be very inefficient with the weapon because of his low strength. There are six players, and I was thinking about asking each of them what weapon they are best with and rolling a six sided dye to determine what the new weapon would be instead of a long sword. Should I just let the results be what it is and they cannot use this weapon efficiently or should I Retcon and change what it is.(by the way this is totally my fault for not checking if anyone could use the weapon before presenting it.)

And why do you use it?

To clarify, I'm not looking for weird rules interactions or 'technically RAW interpretations', but plain written rules which state something you don't think most players know. Bonus points if you can say which book and where in that book the rule is from.

For me, it's that in order to use a sling as an improvised melee weapon, it must be loaded with a piece of ammunition, otherwise it does no damage. - Chapter 5 of the Player's Handbook, Weapons > Weapon Properties > Ammunition.

With the recent release of MPMM there has been a bunch of talk on if the book is "worth it" or not, if people like the changes, why take some stuff away, etc. But the thing that really confuses me is something really simple but was previously a nice touch. The average height, weight, and age of each race. I know WotC said they were taking out abilities that were "culturally derived" on the races but, last time I check, average height, weight, and age are pretty much 100% biological lol.

It's not as big a deal when you are dealing with close to human races. Tieflings are human shaped, orcs are human shaped but beefier, dwarf a human shaped but shorter but how the fuck should I know how much a fairy weighs? How you want me to figure out a loxodon? Aacockra wouldn't probably be lighter than expected cause, yah know, bird people. This all seems like some stuff I would like to have in the lore lol. Espically because weight can sometimes be relevant. "Can my character make it across this bridge DM?" "How much do they weigh?" "Uhhh...good question" Age is obviously less of an issue cause it won't come up much but I would still like to have an idea if my character is old or young in their species. Shit I would even take a category type thing for weight. Something like light, medium, heavy, hefty, massive lol. Anyway, why did they take that information out in MPMM???

TL;DR MPMM took average race height, weight, and age out of the book. But for what purpose?

Edit: A lot of back and forth going on. Everyone be nice and civil I wasn't trying to start an internet war. Try and respond reasonably y'all lol

What are some really annoying character archetypes you wish people would stop playing I’m really curious lol

Edit:Holy fucking shit I didn’t expect this to get so many likes lmao

Hello I've played 5e for over 6 years, now and generally I have made it a personal rule to respect the decisions of my group, even when I don't like them. However last night pushed me over the edge.

I rolled good on inititive and saw 16 guards after the door all buched up in a 30 by 30 room oh yeah, it's hypnotic pattern time. Beleive it or not they all failed! I was so happy now we could move on or take them down 1 by 1 to make this encounter super easy. My wizard on the next turn says he want's to cast fireball, and it would hit me. This crap had been going on for awile now, but this time I had to say something. "No! Please for the love of god don't do that!" "All of the guards are already incapacitated, if you damage them I would have wasted a 3rd level slot, you will damage me with a fire ball, and then the guards will wake up and attack me, it makes zero tacticall sense to do that!" He said it was his turn and he wanted to cast fireball, I got the DM involved, to please overule this decision, as I really don't what my character to die. The dm basically said "Hey this isn't my problem, and it's his turn he can do what he wants." I went down with 2 failed death saves, and my group limped away with a sliver of hp.

I talked to the player afterwords "Look it may sound really stupid but what you did last night made me legitimatly angry. D&D is more then just shooting damage at the monsters to me, it's about working together. When you attack monsters under the effects of my magic it stops working, for this relationship to work I need you to work together with me." He basically said that he can do whatever he wants. I taked to the DM and he said that he can do whatever he wants.

Am I just being a baby? I really try to respect my players decisions but franky moments like this make me not want to play the game.

We were fighting an archmage and a band of cultists and it was turning out to be a difficult fight. The cleric went down and I turned on my rage, focusing attacks on the archmage. When the cleric was at 2 failed death saves, everyone else said, "save him! He has a healing potion in his backpack!"

I ignored that and continued to attack the archmage, killing him, but the cleric failed his next death save and died. The players were all frustrated that I didn't save him but I kept saying, "if you want to patch him up, do it yourself! I'll make the archmage pay for what he did!"

I felt that my barbarian, while raging, only cares about dealing death and destruction. Plus, I have an INT of 8 so it wouldn't make sense for me to retreat and heal.

Was I the a**hole?

Update: wow, didn't expect this post to get so popular. There's a lot of strong opinions both ways here. So to clarify, the cleric went down and got hit twice with ranged attacks/spells over the course of the same round until his own rolled fail on #3. Every other party member had the chance to do something before the cleric, but on most of those turns the cleric had only 1 death save from damage. The cleric player was frustrated after the session, but has cooled down and doesn't blame anyone. We are now more cautious when someone goes down, and other ppl are not going to rely on edging 2 failed death saves before absolutely going to heal someone.

I need some help/advice to deal with this issue. So for context, I'm in a campaign where we start out at level two (we haven't leveled up yet), and I'm playing a sorcerer and the other PC in motion is playing a Wizard/Warlock, we both have familiars through different features (I believe he has pact of the chain), and I have find familiar through the Magic Initiate (Wizard) feat from the sage background.

Two sessions now he has killed my familiar (making me have to use up my resources for the ritual to re-summon him again) with the reasoning, "it's what my character would do" not only is this going to set my character back in materials and in uses if he had to use it that day which would suck if he gets killed before or during combat because I won't long range tough spells like shocking grasp (my familiar is an owl) but also this could cause some discourse between the party members because, that's his friend, he learned the spell and has had good times with him since, kind of like a pet, and not only is that hurting his pet but also wasting resources.

How do I go about fixing this issue?

Edit: The context of him killing my familiar: The first time he had his familiar (sphinx of wonder) act on it's own to attack mine (this was before I got a home rule allowed that my owl could 10hp) and one shot my owl because "He's a cat, they hate birds." to which Tuous (my character) went to bed early that night due to his anger, the second time was after a big encounter that had immediately followed two other encounters and he fired an eldritch blast at my owl because "that's what Sigmund would do!", neither me or my character has done anything that would logically provoke either of these

Edit 2. We were able to talk it out and resolve the issue, no more pvp happening, no more familiar killing and everything was resolved peacefully. Thank you guys for the abundance of suggestions and advice, genuinely.

What did you think was overpowered but have since realised was actually fine either through carefully reading the rules or just playing it out.

For me it was sneak attack, first attack rule of first 5e campaign, and the rogue got a crit and dealt 21 damage. I have since learned that the class sacrifices a lot, like a huge amount, for it.

Like wow do rogues loose a lot that one feature.

I’m recruiting for a 5e game online but I’m running it similar to old school dnd in tone and I’m noticing some push back from 5e players that join. Particularly when it comes to backgrounds. I’m running it open table with an adventurers guild so players can form expeditions, so each group has the potential to be different from the last. This means multi part narratives surrounding individual characters just wouldn’t work. Plus it’s not the tone I’m going for. This is about forming expeditions to find treasures, rob tombs and strive for glory, not avenge your fathers death or find your long lost sister. No matter how much I describe that in the recruitment posts I still get players debating me on this then leaving. I don’t have this problem at all when I run OsR games. Just to clarify, this doesn’t mean I don’t want detailed backgrounds that anchor their characters into the campaign world, or affect how the character is played.

So recently I’ve been running a campaign, and one of my players (involved in a handful of games I play in) has been being incredibly problematic. He fights and argues with other players, won’t take the DMs rulings, constantly changes the subject to something completely off topic, and I’ve received complaints after every session. I’ve done my best to avoid causing drama and infighting, probably being too passive myself. However, last night one of our players ran a one shot. Inexperienced DM, didn’t think everything through very well. And this player berated him, yelled at him, shit on his session and brought him to tears/the point of wanting to be done with D&D in general. Understandably I’m furious, and I think this is the last straw. What would be a polite and professional way of expressing to this player that he is no longer welcome at my table, due to being an absolute cunt towards myself, and everyone else present for an extended period of time?

Are there certain turns of phrase, technological advancements, or other features that would be inconsistent with the setting you are running that you just can't keep out?

My NPCs always seem to cry out, "Jesus Christ!" when surprised or frustrated, sailing technology is always cutting edge, and, unless the culture is specifically supposed to seem oppressive, gender equality is common place.

I don't care how morally correct you think this is, im not even planning to do this, I just want the answer. In my opinion, as you learn to channel divine powers, you could still cast the basic spells as normal, but subclass spells and subclass channel divinities would be revoked until you attune to your divinity or other divinity again.

Hey all, I’ve been thinking lately about how often most D&D groups actually meet up to play. Like I know a bunch of us aim for weekly or monthly games, but real life tends to say otherwise - scheduling, burnout, etc

So I’m genuinely curious:

1. How often does your group actually play?
2. How long does your session usually run?
3. Online or irl?

I know this probably varies a ton, but I’m just curious of the general frequency across the community

What are some Monsters that have crazy scary and intimidating lore, but when you look at their Stat Blocks they are total pushovers?
Vice Versa, crazy tough Monsters that based on their lore you could think they were just mooks?

I started playing D&D in 1982 and played steadily until 1990. I recently started up again and have experienced a bit of culture shock. New races. New classes. Cantrips!

I am loving 5e and am having a blast playing a Gnome Arcane Trickster but I definitely have my biases.

Tieflings? Hate 'em. No valid reason. They just don't fit in my time warped concept of D&D. Same goes for Aasimir and Genasi.......and don't even get me started on Warforged and Artificers. Robots and dudes with guns.....UGH.

So yeah, I'm a grumpy old D&D dude. Anyone else out there like me? What "new" (and I use the term relatively) thing makes you want to tell the youngsters "Back in my day, Wizards started with d4 hit dice and 1 first level spell and no cantrips and WE LIKED IT?"

What is the spell that most disappoints you in this game? Maybe it's not a "bad" spell, per se, just doesn't do what you think it should or does it's job poorly.

I'm always looking for ways to utilize under-used spells, but sometimes you read the effects and think "That's it?!" What are the spells in the game that make you do that?

I know there aren't any specific rules about decapitation and dismemberment when it comes to wildshape forms, especially self inflicted ones, but I'd like to have some more interesting outcome than either "does nothing and you revert forms" or "instant death".

This isn't the first time that cutting off body parts of wildshape or polymorph forms has come up, any good ideas how to play it?

5e has some awesome classes and subclasses, though there are still some blindspots that I'd love to see filled. For me, I'd love:

- Monster Shifter Class/Druid Subclass

- Giant Barbarian Subclass

- Warlord/Battlefield Commander Class

What are the classes or subclasses you most want to see brought to 5e?

I was reading the post about allowing strangers online to roll real die instead of online rolling, along with all of the admonitions about the temptation to cheat. That reminded me of this story.

The setting: the final boss fight against Acererak in the Tomb of Annihilation

My character: a tabaxi rogue with a Ring of Jumping and 23 Strength (one of the abilities provided by the module)

The fight started with my character well out of range. I dashed toward the lich and then ended my turn hidden around a corner so I could not be targeted by spells.

On the lich's turn, he created a wall of force that effectively put me and half of the group out of reach of the lich. The DM intended to divide and conquer.

While each player did their turn trying to either attack the lich or get around the wall, I was faced with a different dilemma... my character was around a corner and would have no way of knowing about the wall of force. I knew this could not end well.

So on my turn, my rogue leapt out at the lich with the intent of delivering a devastating bonus action attack. Of course, he predictably splatted against the Wall of Force and fell into the lava, taking a shit ton of damage before scrambling out.

On Discord, the silence of the group was pretty loudly asking me, "wtf did you do that for?"

"It's what my character would do" was really all I could say.

So if you had a player who tried to have a melee weapon in 1 hand and then use a long bow with the other, saying that he uses his foot to hold on to the bow while pulling on the bow string with one hand.

Now usually 99 out of 100 DMs would say fuck no that is not possible, but this player can do that IRL with great accuracy never missing the target..... For the most part our D&D characters should be far above and beyond what we can do IRL especially with 16-20dex.

So what would you do in this situation?

I think of spells like mordenkainen's sword. in my opinion it is borderline useless at the level when you can get it.