Hey guys, i have been playing Breaking Bad: Criminal Elements, and was wondering if there are any systems where the player characters suffer from cancer!? I know DnD5e exists, but I wanted to not suffer cancer myself. Finding as system with a good cancer lore would be great, i was just going for the chemo-therapy vibe.

so I just want to know if I’m overreacting here. I’m about to leave this group because of how much they’re making me hate the game of dnd so I don’t need advice like “if you don’t like the group that much stop playing with them” because that’s already the plan lol.

So I’m in this group as the only girl with five boys (I say boys because they never actually act like adults) they’re all older than me.

We’re playing Curse of Strahd with me the forever DM finally getting to play a PC. I was really excited and didn’t want to stress out the dm by coming up with some crazy build so I made a totally original PC and made a gnome barbarian that was a bear totem barbarian, because what’s funnier than the smallest one in the party being able smack people with giant axes. I’m also very proud of my totally original and complex chatacter, I feel like George RR Martin!

This is where the problem started. When I told the table about my character the DM called me “a dumb bitch”. One of the other players said they’ve seen 8 year old mentally disabled children create better characters. The other player had terrible hygiene and burped and farted a lot.

After the session, I started getting weird texts from an unknown number. Started saying “I can c u doing your laundry” or “I can c u drinking Clamato”. Which kinda freaked me out because they were right. I’m pretty sure it was somebody that I played dnd with because they also said “ur gnome barbarian is uninspired and moronic”.

Later on in the week, I found a note on my car that said “your gnome barbarian sux”. It looked like it was written in blood. It was kinda weird.

And then later on my boyfriend told me that some stranger reached out to him on IG and told him that they have some embarrassing dirt on me. They said that I made a gnome barbarian and that they just wanted to let him know what kind of person they are dating. He broke up with me immediately, and said he couldn’t believe that he could date somebody like me.

Right after that somebody got into my bank accounts and wire transferred all of my money into an unknown account. All of my money has been stolen. The memo on the wire transfer said “gnome barbarians are stupid”. So now I have no money and no boyfriend.

It could just be a coincidence, but I’m pretty sure that somebody from my dnd table is doing all of this, but I don’t have any proof. I’m upset because I feel like everyone at the table is out to get me.

Am I overreacting here or is this whole table out to get me?

Title’s self explanatory. Basically every time I try to create to create interesting worlds with dynamic and flawed characters, my players stop trying to save the world and determine humanity is hopeless and they might as well wait for evil to consume the world. I tried to include a plot hook of an old woman having her basket stolen in broad daylight and they determined evil was too far ahead of good.

Usually the discussion takes place for a couple sessions and then they spend the next several describing how they sleep the next several weeks in game until the world is no longer. The only time they took action was forcing me to watch an entire anime and a movie and then turn to me to say “Ok so thats the Human Instrumentality Project, our characters do that.”

Anyway, are there any DM tricks or tips I can implement for us to do more combat and roleplaying instead of waiting for the rapture? My players have been requesting to play newborns as that is “the only time a living being has committed to evils,” which sucks because babies have awful stats.

I apologize if this gets asked often and there’s answers in other threads, but I believe the reddit search function is irredeemable at its core and needs a cataclysmic rework to change it before I’d consider using it.

Hello Everyone!

I've DM'd around 15 or so one-shots online, as well as a few in-person campaigns with friends that lasted a couple months and ended around end Tier 1 / mid Tier 2

Never before have I had to deal with silvery barbs, until tomorrow's one-shot (I've never thought to ban it for whatever reason, and players just never picked it)

So I’ve been preparing my mind, body, and soul to deal with having to re-roll the dice and risk the humiliation of disadvantage. I start my day at 3am, do a plunge in a frozen lake, climb a mountain barefoot where I can feel most connected to God. I consume nothing but raw eggs, Red Bull, and rusty nails, which I gnash my teeth on and swallow them down to strengthen my body from the inside…

But at night, I am haunted by the specter of my certain failure.

So I’ve come to you. Wise ones, guide me in my hour of need.

What advice do fellow DMs have for me assuming I don't want to retroactively ban it, because I'm not sure that'd be quite fair since I didn't put a restriction on it from the beginning

Note: Characters will be level 6 in a combat-heavy one-shot

One of my players really wants to homebrew weed into their game, and I want to make it more grimdark ultra realistic. Can you guys help me come up with mechanics for:

• the munchies and the inevitable blood sugar crash after?
• getting overstimulateed and going mute?
• panic attacks?
• greening out?

I keep trying to make NPCs who aren't hot, but it never works! Every town blacksmith is buff and smoldering, every barkeeper is suave and charming, and even the old recluse mages are some variety of ElderILF!

I tried using orcs and dragons and elves for NPCs, but it turns out that all of those are even more attractive than humans!

How do I not make every last NPC extremely hot, single or polyamorous, and very romanceable?

Edit: My world doesn't have any children. Why would it?

Edit 2: My players don't seem to have noticed yet. They think the NPCs are all awkward (like me) and just have weirdly specific physical descriptions.

Because you fucking stink.

I've been playing DnD for a whole year now so I think I'm qualified to speak about these things. The imbalance between martials and casters is obviously real, but it also doesn't bother me. Why? Because there's nothing stopping everyone from just playing caster.

Seriously if people make the sub-optimal choice to play martial, and then they feel like their turns are boring, or that they have nothing to do outside of combat, or that past a certain level the casters in the party can just cast spells to make them superfluous, that's their fault. I mean, they should have just played caster. It's not that hard, guys.

Some people have suggested that everyone at the table should get to have a good time, even if they're dumb enough to make sub-optimal choices. I reject that idea. Or rather, I reject that it has anything to do with me. Worrying about what other players want to do or how they feel just limits my creativity. Creativity and expressing myself and getting to come up with cool stuff to do is the main reason I play RPGs. To me the rest of the people around the table are mainly there to be an audience for all the cool shit I'm going to do.

That's why I don't like playing single-player video games, because there's nobody else to see all my cool shit. I tried streaming on Twitch so there would be an audience for my cool shit but it seems like people on Twitch don't want to see cool shit, they pick streamers to watch based on dumb stuff like being "funny" and "having an engaging personality" and "showing cleavage."

Anyway I'm really feeling more and more like just being a player is too restrictive for all the cool shit I want to do so I'm thinking about trying DMing, that way I have total freedom for my creative powers and I know the whole table will be there because they want to be entertained by my creativity. Opinions?

Idk. Are they like invisible? How do they fight?

This is obviously not a flame-bait, troll-ish post.

I'm one of thee top DM's according to the international DM accreditation institute based somewhere in Herezocovia

Sure I enjoyed all those delicious tears reaped from my unsuspecting players as I tortured their souls with my DMPCs and incurable diseases all the while pretending that their struggles would pay off next session, and it NEVER DOES!

Ahahaha!

Now, at last, it has all payed off! *Twirls mustache* All that's left now is to grab one of my player's children and tie them to a railroad track to force them to split the party at a crucial moment, letting me TPK the group while shifting the blame onto them for splitting up!

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But, when I'm not gaming I enjoy the simple pleasures of life like stealing bikes, butting in line at the store, watering my lawn on even days (with the neighbor's hose), and at night I drive around in a pickup looking for people on vacation so I can swipe all the copper wire from their houses.

basically the title. i gave my players an awesome script and characters to play, but they refuse to stick to it. they just keep using the same lines of “go write a book” or “youre railroading” or “plAyReA geAncY” without any REAL argument or defense for their actions. is it possible to make then stop being problem players and fix them?

My friends have forced me to play a different system with them. Now I can finally go back to 5e, but I liked how the other game was using 3d6 for making rolls. I think the benefits are huge because it's not 5e and thus way better, and it's much easier to trivialize the need for dice entirely. Have any of you GMs of Reddit tried this? Not looking for anything complicated just a lil' ol' houserule thanks

Recently a fellow player of mine decided he wanted to play a wizard. The only problem, he's a total jock (plays sports, donates blood, bathes, ect.) I asked why he would [dare to] play a wizard and he claimed that he was inspired by "The Solomonars" (idk, some (c)rapper?) At first I thought a low/average intelligence wizard could be a fun gimmick but to my horror his INT was set to 16!

From my ever-informative advisors of dndmemes I know "you can roleplay as someone dumber than you but not someone smarter." I've endured the former when I rolled up a 9 INT barbarian. Thankfully my education from playing a low intelligence fallout 3 playthough payed off. I completely nailed my roleplaying just by throwing in some "hurrs" a few "durrs" and just generally drooling all over the place. Honestly I found the experience to be quite humbling, it was a great chance to put myself in the shoes of the less gifted.

Though I fear the latter will not play out so well for my poor jock friend. His attempts to roleplay a high intelligence character will most likely result in a shallow, offensive, bastardized depiction of how someone at that intelligence would actually act.

I thought I might be able to inspire him on how a true high intelligence specimen acts by talking at him about the Roman Empire military structure for a few hours. Or by listing all the tanks in WW2. Though sadly it may just not be possible to roleplay as someone smarter than you.

Can I salvage this or should I just tell the DM to tell him to make a new character?

Hey there I'm Tony and Italian but never been. I love DnD, quiche, and smoking Che cigarettes by crushing them into an old corn cob pipe. Below are my 10 best advices for mastering your PCs as the better PC.

1. Whoever doesn't have their character ready by session 1 automatically becomes Zomart the Bard who has 20 charisma and 6 for the rest. Followed by John Icetrain the Bard for second pc with no character. Kick any others out of your home.

2. Always kill off a PC first session to establish your dominance.

3. Hide the playing board. It's easier to fix things.

4. Only allow players to use your dice and never set the rental price higher than $5 because then they start complaining.

5. No bathroom breaks. Bed pans at your discretion.

6. Plan your sessions alongside family gatherings, roommate events, child bday etc so you can have more snacks available.

7. Be the smartest person at the table and get louder when you aren't.

8. Wear sunglasses so PCs can't see the hate in your eyes.

9. Always remember to ask of each PCs amount of gyatt.

10. You get the most pizza slices and DMs never pay nor share the wings that yeah Steven wanted and bought but fuck you Steven I'll kill your stupid lil Gnome Fighter "Quintal the Faint" if you want these fucking wings so bad.

11. Always add more than you promised and let them know how great you are for it.

I've seen this take in a few places. People tend to not like games where the GM punches the players in the face until they're lying in a pool of blood. While I understand the sentiment (interacting with people is scary), I really think this way of thinking is ridiculous, and would love to hear other people's opinions on it. Anyway, here are my reasons:

1. Basically Every TTRPG Has Punching Players in the Face. You Just Don't See it. Punching players in the face is when you interact with people. But every TTRPG I've played has punching people in the face like that. Roleplaying. Laughing with friends. in-game banter. These are all instances of punching players in the face.
2. Punching Players Feeds the Heroic Narrative. I think when people mean "Punching Players" they're referring to talking with people. That's what roleplaying and banter do. But these are all meant to feed into the idea that the characters are the heroes. In films there are many situations that any normal person wouldn't succeed, such as presenting a case before a judge or giving a presidential address. All of this is taken as normal in the world of the film, but this is the same thing as what you as the player are doing by punching the person beside you. It's what separates you from goons. And if that's not your type of game, then it's not that you don't like punching people, it's that you don't want to play a game with social interaction.
3. The Term "Punching Players". I think part of the problem is the fact that it's called that. There is such a negative connotation with punching puppies that just hearing "punching" might make people think punching playersisn't a good thing. I will say this pont will vary a lot from person to peron, but it is a possibility.

Anyways, that's my reasoning why not liking punching players for immersion reasons is stupid. Feel free to disagree. I'm curious how well or poorly people will resonate with this logic.

We all know Dnd 5e is a broken unplayable mess of a game which frankly nobody should play ever (ever).
So I have a banlist of all the OP stuff which I always ban with no exceptions.

Races; Halfling, Satyr, Yuan-Ti, Anything with a damage resistance (this is too strong), Anything with a fly speed, Spelljammer races (they're totally op guys believe me they're not overrated or anything), Ravenloft ancestries, Variant Human, Custom Lineage, Ect

Feats; ALL FEATS ARE BANNED THEY ARE TOO STRONG

Classes/Subclasses; Artificer (too strong), Eloquence Bards, Clerics in general, Moon & Shepard Druids, Echo Knight Fighter, Sorcerers, Hexblade Warlock

Spells; Any spell that has a saving throw instead of an attack roll

So what do you guys have on your regular ban list?

It's really, really racist

It was first session and our level 1 party had to fight a lich we where winning the fight thanks to my awesome homebrew class (combination of a wizard/bard/warlock/paladin that gets most features of the entire class at level one because I think it’s more balanced than fighter) when the dm said the lich cast power word kill on my internet and then DDOS attacked my router AITA?

Ok so. I recently started a new campaign as a player and I'm playing a bard.

Today we had the second session and during a fight with five goblins the DM described a goblin's action "the goblin attacks you with it's sword and breaks your lute" justifying he's actions saying "i rolled an 18 and your lutes AC is 15 and only has 3 HP".

This left me, already the weakest member of the party, a poor bard that is the weakest class of 5e, without the main weapon I have against the (quite powerful) bosses the DM makes us fight (for context: in the first session half of the party had to roll death saving throws. Ignore all spells that dont require material components pls)

I think such things so early on in the campaign are only justified by lore or character development (neither of those are the case here). Its so unbalanced that an enemy could BREAK my lute. Like, next youre telling me a Fighter can actually die?! Its called Fighter ot Dier!

I spoke about it with some friends of mine and the first answer they gave me is that the DM decides everything that appens in the game.

I really think that's also really important to remind that everyone should try to make the game better for everyone else, including the DM.. and this "incident" with the lute was just annoying...

So, what are your thoughts about it?

P.s. sorry for the typo in the title, I meant to say internet instead of instrument

/uj Yeah its kinda unfair that the DM didnt say "The goblin attacks you and damages your lute because your AC is bad" versus "The goblin attacks your lute" but its not like it isnt in the PHB that you can attack equipment.

u/Due-Answer-3213 over at r/DnD made a good point that I should probably cross post to get as much help as I can!! 😉

I need some advice. So, I have to opportunity to introduce my dads amateur adult city league baseball team and a few of their spouses how to play D&D.

We are going to the Golden Corral now that the game is over and I want to give them all a good introduction and maybe even start a regular recurring game from this.

I have a world I have been working on for the last 30 years and hope I can impress them all!

None of them have ever played before and I also have never DM'ed before. I played for a half hour one time behind a Wendy's and I really love Rritical Cole. I don't have pen and paper. Also I am 9 and cant read.

I want to hook them all and show them how awesome DnD is! Any help you guys could give would be awesome. 2 minutes till we get to the restaurant!

Hay, so a friend of mine is gonna be running a Pathfinder 1e campaign soon, and I'm not familiar with the system. I have no idea for what I want, and not super clear on how to get there.

The idea is for a caster that uses magic and uses the spells to turn into my character sheet That way I can turn sideways and be invisible and if there is a slight breeze I can fly for free!

My DM says this breaks the fourth wall, whatever that means

Does anyone have any recommendations for builds that match the idea? Or am I better off taking what I've got, and try and make it work?

I did everything right. I banned all the overpowered spells (like Silvery Barbs) and races (like Yuan-ti.) I didn't allow feats or multiclassing because they make the game too easy. I kicked anyone who tried to minmax their character by maximizing their spellcasting stat out of the game. Everything the wise youtube men and women with royalty free epic music behind them told me to do.

And I didn't do it just to make my players feel powerless, to be clear, because I also changed the encounters. I was flexible with my HP totals (fudged enemies' HP to make sure my players always killed them), had them run away from PCs for seemingly no reason to provoke opportunity attacks, you name it. I used every trick in the book to keep any encounter from being too hard to overcome, because it's my job as the GM to ensure that every combat is balanced.

Of course, sometimes my big boss fights would be too easy or my villain wouldn't get away when I wanted him to, so I would sometimes adjust their HP or give them new abilities on the fly, just to make sure that my players didn't have too easy of a time. Like when my players had this elaborate setup that involved sneaking into different places and casting 3 different spells together, and my bad guy couldn't do anything! Naturally, I gave him a new ability to counter them, or else it wouldn't be fun.

So why the fuck are my players so bored in combat? They just sit there rolling attacks on their turns until they win. Is this a problem with the system? I was told D&D was an electric hot plate that could cook anything that you wanted. Please send help.

Hello GUYS!

I posted a few days ago about my issue with balance in my game. I got a lot of really good suggestions and I took a few of them to heart, and my last combat was a BANGER!!!!!

First off, I removed all feats from their sheets. Instead, I gave them all 3,000 gold to spend. But to make it fair, I increased all of the discerning merchants guide prices by 3. Some people say that’s steep, but it was a very good idea. It makes them really think about their money!!!!!!

Second, I kicked three players out of the group. The party now don’t have any peace clerics though, so I had to have a big moment where three other people were approached by the god of peace and made into peace clerics. Peace clerics are VERY important to the lore and the setting and the worldbuild I have for my Waterdeep Dragon Heist game. I need to have a few in the party for the plot to progress.

ANYHOODLES! I then sicked the new boss on them. He was homebrew and about cr 20 with 13 cr12 additional enemies and a big environmental effect that made concentration spells impossible. Three players died and another two were down but not dead and the last two managed to beat it once the new npc member of the party, a human Peace Cleric named Nathanial Scar appeared to save them.

Everyone was really excited and having fun I could tell because they were all really focused and there wasn’t the same lighthearted conversation at the table. They just have been on their calculator apps a lot to figure out the numbers!

Anyways, after that session I can’t wait to run the next one! Nathaniel is gonna hit on the one girl character because he’s very attractive and the romance they spark will totally surprise the player and be a big plot point moving forward.

Thanks for your tips guys!

Guys what do I do? I told one of my players they could roll stats if they wanted instead of using the standard array, but now their stats are way higher than everyone else's who did use the standard array.

If only I knew of some sort of method to keep people's stats fair, some sort of commonly agreed upon set of numbers so that everyone had an equal baseline to start off at so that no one felt left out or weaker than anyone else.

But now there is a real problem, currently all of my players but one have: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8

And the guy who rolled his stats has: 16, 15, 14, 13, 11 and 9

Like, I was okay with him just rolling 3d6 to see what his stats are and whatnot but I didn't expect them to be higher/lower than everyone else's and now I don't know what to do. Any feedback is appreciated, currently I am considering simply packing the problem player into a UPS box and mailing him to Argentina with my Amazon Prime 2 day shipping and then committing ritualistic sudoku with a katana but I am open to any suggestions.

I was recently watching reruns of My 600 Pound Life, and it occurred to me that it would be really fun and give lots of great opportunities for Roleplaying to play a character that's 600 pounds or so. I quickly wrote up my new Rogue (I love to play kleptos tee hee, I'm chaotic) and proudly presented him to the group at our next session.

To my astonishment, my DM told me "absolutely not" and, when I asked him why, he said the idea was "mind-numbingly stupid." I promptly responded that he was fatphobic and ableist, but he just waved it off and insisted that I would not be allowed to play this character.

I was obviously crestfallen, but I'm currently working on a new character (another Rogue tee hee) that is a baby. Hopefully the DM will let me play this one next session. Wish me luck!

So there's this bit of info without further context that the one auto pick feat suddenly got errata'd to be more in line with other options at the level instead of being the obvious choice. Now in gameplay I need to think and plan around what I'm going to do NEXT TURN. Thanks Paizo, you fucked me over, you shitty fetishistic fucktwats. No I am not overreacting. No I will not look how other actions got buffed. Yes, I need a new nappy

My table was in the midst of a nighttime jaunt through enemy territory because bandits had stolen a single sandal from the party so they wanted to commit bandit genocide. The bandits were actually led by a druid eco-terrorist, who was wildshaped as a cat so he could stalk them unnoticed. One of my players saw the cat and later on were ambushed by the druid and the bandits. They kept arguing "cats do not have darkvision" and he just kept saying "nope, this ambush doesn't happen. He didn't see us."

I looked on the statblock and lo and behold it was true. I had to close my books, apologize profusely as we all know this is the world's greatest role playing game and playing 100% RAW is the only way to do it. I don't want to play Calvinball, so I retconned the ambush instead of making an in the moment house rule. I cried in front of my players for ruining the story. I'm also totally lost on what to do next, my prep really relied on them being seen by the cat.

Basically, my question is should Jeremy Crawford be drawn and quartered because of this totally-not-oversight? Does Pathfinder fix this? This is pretty egregious.