The D&D thread

Hoss said:

I'm trying to move my bard to DnD Beyond to give it a shot. But it wont' let me select college of creation or the telekenisis feat. I'm guessing I have to pay to get those options, but I can't figure out what the fuck to buy in the marketplace. Can anyone help?

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I silently chuckle whenever my players have problems accessing their character sheet with the app. What's more, they can't figure out how to add custom items, and custom magic items are pretty much all I give out.

The halfling ranger had a special wand of wonder in her backpack for the last 3 months.

Urlithani said:

I silently chuckle whenever my players have problems accessing their character sheet with the app. What's more, they can't figure out how to add custom items, and custom magic items are pretty much all I give out.

The halfling ranger had a special wand of wonder in her backpack for the last 3 months.

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I was never a fan of the digital char sheets. I still do the old school thing of printing them put for each session.

I had one of the line paper printed books for a charecter. Did the sheet on like page 3, then notes for that toon after. Wasnt a huge book, maybe 120 pages and 6x8 inch paper maybe?

Of course it was also like 1986 or so...

Hoss said:

If you're printing them, I think you need to put "old school" in quotes.

That's what I do too, but back in the real old school hardly anyone had printers. My wife puts her sheets in to plastic and writes on them with dry erase markers so they don't have to be reprinted every time. That's probably closer to old school than what we do.

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Yeh I only started with late 2nd edition lol. But whatever =p

I'm going to try to DM Curse of Strahd for a bunch of new players. I'm pretty new myself. I have played about 6 sessions total of D&D my entire life, all 5e.

Do you experienced DMs do a session 0? I was planning to just follow this guy's guide.


Not using any software or anything like that, except maybe some sound effects from this website.


Any advice for a new DM? What rules should I focus on memorizing so I don't slow things down looking stuff up?

Talos said:

I'm going to try to DM Curse of Strahd for a bunch of new players. I'm pretty new myself. I have played about 6 sessions total of D&D my entire life, all 5e.

Do you experienced DMs do a session 0? I was planning to just follow this guy's guide.


Not using any software or anything like that, except maybe some sound effects from this website.

Tabletop Audio - Premium Ambient Audio

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Any advice for a new DM? What rules should I focus on memorizing so I don't slow things down looking stuff up?

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curse of strahd is good stuff. session 0's are great for new parties and new players so it's a good idea to do it. it's a great time to go over everyone's expectations, including yours. ask the group if they are looking for more rp opportunities, more tactical combat focus? are they looking for a difficult experience where character death is a very real possibility or are they looking for just a fun romp through transylvania? as the dm, what are the players looking for from you? a hands off approach where you just tell them what they see and let them figure it all out or do they want you to hold their hands and keep things on rails? more or less interparty conflict? and if less, at what point do they want you to step in and redirect things?

if you know the players fairly well, some of that you may already know and have a good feel for, but session 0 is the perfect time to make sure everyone's on the same page.

as far as rules go, i'd make sure you were familiar with combat and spellcasting rules. there are certain classes that supercede the game rules, but it's good to know the basics first and then if something doesn't sound right, you can always just have the player read the spell or ability they are trying to use.

for example, with spellcasting you can only cast 1 leveled spell on your turn. if you cast a leveled spell as an action, you can only cast a cantrip as a bonus action. where this gets messy is with sorcerers and the quicken spell metamagic ability. this lets you turn a spell that has a casting time of an action to instead be cast as a bonus action. but you can still only cast 1 leveled spell per turn. so they can, say, cast magic missile at lvl 2, quickened into a bonus action, and then can use their action to cast a cantrip like firebolt. it is EXTREMELY common for new sorcerers to not understand that, and try to do something like, quicken a fireball, then use their action to cast another fireball. those are both lvl 3 spells, which isn't possible.

also, knowing the rules is obviously good, but what is better is knowing WHY the rules are there in the first place. drinking a potion is an action, rules as written. a LOT of dm's just make it so that drinking a potion is a bonus action, because it never feels good when you FINALLY get to take your turn in combat and all you do is drink a potion and then you have to wait another 20 minutes for it to be your turn again. that makes perfect sense. HOWEVER, the reason why drinking a potion is an action is because in 5e there is a significant reduction in a need for a healer in your party and potions are meant to be very easy to obtain and/or make. so think about how that might impact your party dynamic. but, this is also curse of strahd we're talking about and barovia is... pretty barren...

we have a rule at our table where if we get caught up in a ruling, if we can't find an official answer in less than 5 minutes, the dm just makes one. if you ever get stuck on a rule, google is your friend. and there's a twitter feed called "sage advice" that is run by the guys who made the rules. so just google "sage advice" followed by the spell or ability or whatever and you should get an answer real quick. that's also something to explain at session 0, that in order to keep things moving along, it's best that everyone knows their own abilities and spells PRIOR to gametime, and that you are setting a time limit for debating a rule to 5 minutes (or whatever you feel works) and that in the interest of keeping things moving if there's no resolution, you'll be making one. if there's an issue, make a note and talk about it AFTER THE GAME, NOT DURING.

that's something that has worked remarkably well for our table, but obviously you're free to follow that or not.

The legend of the 5 rings card game had an excellent rule.
The Emperor's Favor. - Whoever has this token rules on disputes as the will of the Emperor, then passes the token to their right.

It kept the game moving, in card games and dnd and even warhammer fantasy battles.

My players nearly had a TPK tonight and it completely caught me by surprise.


In exchange for some valuable information the group is working with the leader of a thieves guild to eliminate a competing faction. Anyway, they decided to use the Wind Walk spell to scout an area. For context - Wind Walk turns up to 10 creatures into basically a wisp of smoke/cloud, but it takes a full minute to enter or exit the form and exiting the form incapacitates the creature until the transition is complete.

Anyway, the players were in Wind Walk form and started scouting. Less than 5 minutes into it they set off a trap that I had placed weeks ago. Under normal circumstances the trap wouldn't have been more than an annoyance and I had only planned for it to slow them down and alert the bad guys, but it was a lot more dangerous due to the form they were in.

The trap was a 20' diameter cyclone over a debris-filled pool of water. On failed save, the cyclone itself reduced their speed to 0 and the flying debris (stones, lumber, etc.) did 4d6 bludgeoning damage. Even if they failed the save they were only taking half damage because of the damage resistance provided by Wind Walk. I did give them disadvantage on the save because a puff of smoke is going to have a hell of a time breaking away from 100+mph winds.

Long story short, the party was basically stun-locked and getting beaten to death by 2x4s and fist-sized rocks. 2 of the 5 players (mage and druid) died before the Barbarian managed to save and get out. However, he couldn't do anything to help those still standing because of the 10 rounds to leave Wind Walk form. The the Paladin finally managed to escape the round before he would have died. It didn't help that 3 of the 5 had used STR as their dump stat.

It was ridiculous. They were this <-> close to a TPK from a trap that did what was effectively 2d6 damage a turn and my players are level 12.......

The session ran long by about 20 minutes because we all wanted to resolve the situation tonight and when the smoke cleared I asked them if they felt like I had handled it fairly. Everyone said said yes. One person even said I was probably a bit too lenient. However, we all agreed that the wording of the spell is wonky and a cloud/smoke shouldn't be able to get beaten to death by a stick, but /game balance.

I don't feel like I did anything wrong, but situations like that always make you feel like a terrible DM.

Hoss said:

I had no idea drinking a potion wasn't a bonus action. Our DM said passing a potion to someone or administering it is a full action, but drinking it is only a bonus. I'm pretty sure that's how it's been for all the DMs I've had. Now I want to ask him about that; maybe he only did it that way because we don't have a healer. On the other hand, I don't want it to change ..... maybe I'll go play a one shot and ask that DM.

We don't really have any disputes with our DM. It's more like a court case. We present our evidence, if the others want to be witnesses they can be, then he makes a decision and that's how it is. It's his world after all. Most of the time it's more like I'm asking him what something I just read means.

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yeah it's a VERY common house rule. most every dm i've talked to about it has said they use it, and use it for the exact reason i said. that getting all the way to your turn and using it just to drink a potion doesn't feel very fun

Seananigans said:

Out of curiosity, how did their cloud the trap? Was it magical? I'm not familiar with the spell, but I'm having a hard time imagining how a wisp of smoke would trigger a mechanical trap.

If it was magical, how was it set up such that they would trigger it in that form?

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curious about this too. also i suppose i'd look at the intent of the trap. is it MEANT to be deadly, in which case are there ample warnings for the players? if it's meant to just be a drain on resources, forcing them to heal, or use spell slots to get through it, at what point do you rule that the tornado does a few rounds of damage and then dies down?

Seananigans said:

Out of curiosity, how did their cloud the trap? Was it magical? I'm not familiar with the spell, but I'm having a hard time imagining how a wisp of smoke would trigger a mechanical trap.

If it was magical, how was it set up such that they would trigger it in that form?

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Yes, magical. It wasn't a tripwire, pressure-plate, or anything mechanical. However, when the party crossed the threshold of the trap I had them stop and I thought about exactly that for a minute, but I went with it being set off for two reasons:

1. The players were scouting inside high-level thieves guild lair and the guild is very aware of the methods that enemies can use to infiltrate. So, it's reasonable that guild casters would set up traps that are extremely sensitive to any movement. Players using Wind Walk can (and they were) fly 300' a turn. In my mind, that generates a bit of force. Certainly enough to see off a sensitive, proximity-based magical trap.

2. I genuinely did not think it was going to be the problem it was, but I quickly realized it might actually kill them.

I still don't think the trap going off was wrong, but I concede the decision could go either way. Fortunately, none of my players had any issue with it and if they had they would have told me.

j00t said:

curious about this too. also i suppose i'd look at the intent of the trap. is it MEANT to be deadly, in which case are there ample warnings for the players? if it's meant to just be a drain on resources, forcing them to heal, or use spell slots to get through it, at what point do you rule that the tornado does a few rounds of damage and then dies down?

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I mentioned the intent in the original post, but it was simply to make the player's presence known and slow them down long enough for the nearby NPCs to respond.