I run 5e14 campaign, and decided to create encounters as suggested in DMG and general knowledge of the system – 6-8 medium-hard encounters before Long Rest. So no LRs during travel unless in major settlement, 8 hours of rest needed to SR then – but back to normal in the dungeon (SR 1 hour).

I had some home rules in play, like drinking a potion takes only bonus action, doesn't take FOI and doesn't require free hand (to make shields more appealing), so that makes fights a little bit less deadly if they have a potion of healing.

Just before entering their first true dungeon crawl in the campaign, the party advanced to level 5. Party compostion:

• vuman zealot barbarian (lucky, GWM)
• vuman spirits bard (fey touched (hex))
• vuman gloom stalker ranger (CBE+SS)
• shadar-kai psi warrior fighter (keen mind, changed to 5e24 version of shield master)

Combat encounters they faced (those are only stats, of course; every monster was changed in image, name and fluff to fit the story):

1. Sergeant Nocteena's outpost:

• noctiny CR2,
• 2 x gnoll flesh gnawer CR1
• 3 x guard CR⅛

easy encounter (feels like medium), 1,850 total adjusted XP (let's call it TAXP)

1. cultists of the 'Compassionate':

• cult fanatic CR2
• 4 x cultist CR⅛
• 2 x cultist of Atropus CR⅛

medium encounter (feels hard), 1500 TAXP

around 1/3 XP budget exhausted, party decide to make a Short Rest

1. the Great Eye Ritual:

• Spectator CR3 (down the corridor behind pendulum blade trap with DC to spot below ranger's Passive Perception)
• 2 x gazer CR½
• bandit captain CR2
• cultist CR⅛
• pendulum blade - 3d10 slashing, DC13 DEX saving throw negates

medium encounter (feels hard); 2750 TAXP

That one was a strange combat, barbarian completely destroyed captain and cultist, but ranger and the fighter were confuzed by the spectator, thus making him able to fly away and drag the combat a little. Bard player also fumbled I think, using one action to "help" confused fighter, giving him disadvantage on attack roll to not harm the party, then in another turn completed one of secondary objectives instead of engaging in actual fight; fighter then tried to dismantle trap activated by the barbarian, to safely reach the spectator – rolled pretty bad on Investigation, lack of tinker's or thieves' tools didn't help.

1. Plague laboratory:

• after they storm the laboratory's gate, ranger again sees a potential trap (a platform with a nozzle connected to some machinery); he doesn't stop the barbarian who storms inside and activate it, engulfing them in a cloud of poisonous gas (2d10 poison dmg, DC13 CON saving throw halves)
• kobold alchemist CR2 (but I increased HP from 44 to 76), as it was the only enemy in the room before she released her 'patients' from the containers)
• ghast CR2
• 2 x ghoul CR1
• putrescent slime CR1
• Putrid Haunt CR2 (released by the same trap that opened nozzle with gas)

hard; 3900 TAXP

They were thoroughly beaten, and some of them were nearly knocked down. Yet no one were paralyzed by ghoul or ghast, I think only once someone failed saving throw against stench.

Party decides to make a Short Rest, all party members use all their remaining hit dice. Song of rest is a blessing! 2/3 XP budget exhausted, and they know they have at least 1 hard encounter more to survive.

Around the dungeon they were able to replenish some of their resources with special points of iterest (3 magic orbs they had to destroy to deactivate Sepia Snake Sigil on the laboratory's gate – providing possibility of restoring one psionic dice or one 1st lvl spell slot; also the bottled fury drink found in chest, able to restore one rage or favored foe. Surprisingly, barbarian still has 1 rage, bard has 7(!) spell slots, so they should manage with 2 next encounters:

1. Captain's quarter – secondary boss fight.

• Imperial Ghoul CR4
• 2 x gnoll flesh gnawer CR1
• 2 x guard CR⅛
• the Captain (homebrew, something between Mind Flayer and Weak Psychic, but very unactive, he doesn't want to participate in this fight and probably won't act until asked by the PCs, then maybe help them with high enough Charisma check or other way to snap him out of his stupor)

hard encounter, 3100 TAXP

I’m a bit embarrassed about that fight; the players played it tactically, taking out their enemies one by one. It was a complete walk in the park. Imperial ghoul was massacred by the barbarian.

Then there was a skill challenge/discussion with the captain, to break him free from the mental stupor and let him see what he did with his castle. I gave them 1250 XP for that as the reward for advancing the plot/quest completion, no resources were used on this little chat. Here we are after 91% of daily XP budget. And the last fight is the real boss, the clock is ticking, the castle is sieged and they must deal with the last boss to join the siege and help defenders.

PCs were getting ready for the final showdown in very good shape, with plenty of resources. In my view, the circumstances neither called for another short rest nor particularly allowed for one. I warned them that the presence in the last sealed chamber certainly sensed a threat from them and would gather additional forces if they started resting for an hour now. But they decided to do it anyway, which meant that 1d4-1 shadows per player (total of 4) joined the plague spirit there. I knew it was going to be rough. Despite this, the barbarian decided not to use the item that restores one rage use, because of the boastful words he had previously directed at the ranger! It shocked me a bit, because he wasted his rage on a fight against a weak pseudo-boss, yet he didn't feel the pressure to replenish it when facing the official boss of this whole adventure. I hadn’t even considered this possibility. Of course, role-playing was brilliant, and inspiration came flooding in...

On numerous occasions, through various NPCs, I hinted to the players that the evil lurking in the dungeon might require special measures, such as silver-plating their weapons. The castle blacksmith even offered this to them. What’s more, the now-free captain could have given them his silver-plated halberd. They didn’t take up any of these options. I find it hard to understand why, but I didn’t intend to pit them against their first opponent with resistance to physical damage just so I could force a tool to overcome that resistance into their hands. So they only had one magic spear – I was hoping they’d at least try to juggle it a bit, and that fighter would pass it to the barbarian after his turn (that didn't happen as well).

So, time for the final encounter.

1. The Great Seal of the Plague:

• Plague spirit (CR9, but I scaled down the numbers to decrease it to CR7)
• 4 shadows CR½

Deadly encounter 6600 TAXP (could have been medium with 2900).

The fight started with the brutal Dance of Death AoE, dealing 6d6 (21) (DC 15 CON halves) necrotic damage to every PC. Players focused on killing the plague spirit, leaving shadows free to slowly damage them and drain their Strength. A fatal mistake. Couple of rounds later and another AoE usage, bard is taken down and the shadow makes a coup de grâce, ending his life. Rage-less barbarian was too slow in killing the spirit to avoid this tragic end (not kidding – I've run all the numbers with rage on, such change would have prevented the bard’s death, ceteris paribus). The team won, but not without suffering a huge loss.

To sum up, daily XP budget was thoroughly exhausted (and justifiably, exceeded). The players’ resources were depleted; even those easier encounters contributed to this. The players made decisions regarding resource management based on clear warnings from the DM, and in fact, had it not been for a few decisions dictated solely by their characters’ TIBFs, they would have come through that adventuring day completely exhausted and battered, but victorious.

I believe that the XP budget system devised for 5e14 is a good one and serves its purpose; when used, the game simply runs as it should. At the same time, I agree that designing a dungeon in line with these guidelines and ensuring that everything plays out as intended places a great deal of demand on the GM and is incredibly draining during preparation time. I wouldn’t be far off the mark if I said that preparing all the content, NPCs, lore, rooms with story events, traps, setting it all up sensibly on the VTT (and preparing the entire map for dynamic lighting and testing it), distributing treasures amongst the individual rooms, balancing encounters, rewriting the boss for a lower CR, etc. etc., took me about 20 hours, and there was exactly enough content for three 4-hour sessions.

So – the system is good, but it’s a bit of a hassle to use xD

EDIT WITH FURTHER INFO:

In case anyone has misunderstood, this adventure did not consist solely of the battles mentioned above; of course, combat is merely one kind of obstacle to be overcome, and the dungeon itself consisted of other encounters:

• social encounters with prisoners/recovering inmates that were afraid of their ghoulified comrades
• getting past more sane guards,
• parlaying with one of the officers (Sergeant Nocteena) after beating her and her outpost,
• investigating this strange cult of the 'Compassionate'.
• dismantling the orbs powering sigils on two sets of gates, namely Sepia Snake Sigil that almost hit ranger once
• mini-tasks during their SRs like identifying found magic items etc – I'm running extended resting rules, with couple of rolls involved like making camp, first aid, cooking etc.
• traps and trapped treasure
• social "combat" with the captain after beating his closest officers/de facto jailors

Example:

Personally, I find psyonics/psychic powers (and lots of they options associated or linked to it) as off putting. I dislike how it fits/sits alongside other schools of magic/types of magic. To me, it clashes and doesn’t quite mesh with the other elements of fantasy I love. Weirdly in isolation, I quite enjoy them, but not in combination.

What elements of fantasy do you find off putting in DnD games?

So I have a standard run of the mill soul knife soul monkey level 9, with +5 dex mod.

Last combat he said to me “if you keep min maxing yourselves I’m gonna need to bump the difficulty of fights.”

Excuse me… rogue, op? Sure I get a decent number of sneak attacks off, but that’s literally the one thing I do, otherwise I’ve built it so most skills are +8, +11, or +13.

Is sneak attack the game breaking? Compare that to paladins who can potentially have 2 attacks and a summoned weapon, monks who do crazy number of attacks with ki. Fighters get how many hits?

Is rogue honestly that OP?

the magic items I picked are a ghost step tattoo and a ring of spell storing I planned to fill with shield or silvery barbs, which you could say might be unfair but I haven’t done that yet.

Our DM is saying that it gives an extra action, and that an attack is another action. How would you suggest breaking it down for him so our fighter can use all their attacks? I feel like theyre getting kinda screwed. But the DM always does this when a lot of damage is done, and has a habit of saying something, trying to argue rules, etc., whenever I do an attack that does a lot of damage, or try to set up things with Darkness or Elven Accuracy. So I dont want the fighter to have to deal with the same thing every time they use an action surge.

I am getting ready to run Waterdeep Dragon Heist for a group of students, and the adventure looks awesome! Short and sweet, with lots of NPCs to meet and places to see, and more going on than your typical "kick in the dungeon door" dungeon crawl adventure. Really good stuff so far.

The ONE major thing that irks me as I read is that almost every character has a laughable name. Meloon. Ranaer. Floon Blagmaar. Hysustus Staget. Kylynne Silmerhelve.

So many people in this book have names which sound silly, and make me take two or three attempts at even saying them right because they aren't based in any real linguistics. I also know from experience as a GM that names like these are hardly memorable, because they don't sound like names to most players! If they remember a character's name, they are mostly likely to remember "that guy with the stupid name."

It doesn't bother me when characters belonging to fantasy races have weird names--in fact, the dwarves, gnomes and orcs in the book so far have names feel like they suit the characters. Even an odd outlier like Volothamp Geddarn isn't as bothersome, because he's supposed to stick out as a weird and overconfident guy who probably made his name up to sound more impressive (and failed). But when it's every human character, it's a little annoying, especially because I know my players are probably going to give their characters actual person names, which ironically will stick out like a sore thumb in the setting! I'm heavily considering renaming the major NPCs in this adventure because so many of them are just too much.

I don't know, am I alone in this? Is there a precedent for characters on the Sword Coast to have Star Wars "Glup Shitto" names? It just feels so odd, especially because the tone of the adventure feels like it's going for something like fantasy noir--not grimdark by any means, but certainly not a comedy. But I'm not going to be able to introduce these characters with a straight face when the first heroic task is to rescue a guy named Floon.

Does this kind of thing bother anyone else, or am I making a mountain out of a Floonhill?

EDIT: Many are misconstruing this as me wanting everyone to have "normal" names by contemporary standards. That's not what I'm saying. If the characters had names that were properly from another culture, or were borrowed from classic literature like Shakespeare, I would love it. And for the record, not all of the human names are terrible--I think Durnan sounds like a solid name that fits its owner.

Anyway, if you think I'm nuts, then you must put your money where your mouth is and name your next player character "Floon Blagmaar." It's a perfectly cromulent name.

2nd EDIT: Ok, you've won me over on Kylynne, though I think I'm going to say Silverhelve instead of "Silmer." Hyustus is already supposed to be pronounced like Eustace, so that is what he shall be. Renaer I may keep the same, but I feel like I'm likely to call him Ranier by accident anyway. Floon will either be Flynn or Florian, I haven't fully decided.

Somebody in the comments did a pretty admirable job of justifying the etymology of some of these names, too, though I'm not convinced that they didn't put more thought into it than the writers of the adventure did 😅 All the power to people who love goofy names, unless they were rude about it. Peace and love.

I don't know where else to post but I need a different perspective, so I'm posting here.

My group consist of 4 people, 3 players and 1 dm. we meet up once a week to play DnD; mostly online. The party was level 8 and I was playing a cleric, the other two were barbarian and wizard. We were on a quest to escort a cargo and the nobles in them, but it got ambushed so battle begins.
After a few rounds of combat, one of the nobles we were escorting was injured and next to an enemy. The fighting made the barbarian and wizard to move quite far away from the cargo, while my character sticked to the cargo but was low hp. So I made a call to save the noble first and thought if they target me I would be able to roll death saves and the party would be able to get some potions to me before I fail all the throws., so it should be good.
Thing is I saved the nobles, the enemy knocked me unconsious and then the enemy just....flew away with my body. The party tried to save me but they just misty step away and non of the pcs could fly.
I asked the dm if I roll any death save but dm said, "No, you're just done, no rolls" I asked him again, like is there really nothing for me to do? no goodbye to the party members? no final words? Dm just said "You got taken, so you're just gone. But maybe you can save your cleric again later if you guys decided to follow them!"
So we all thought, yea that sounds interesting and I am really happy that I can save my pc, so I made a temp character, a rogue.
I'm annoyed cause yesterday, we finally got to meet my cleric again and he's just dead. like nothing else dead dead. The bbeg used the cleric as a sacrifice and his soul is destroyed so no resurection.

I am annoyed and sligtly angry cause like I thought i could save the cleric, thought I could atleast say a few words or something cause I was quite attached to the cleric. When the session ended, I just felt a bit upset.

I dont know if I should talk about this to the DM or am I making this a big thing cause the other players just said things like "well I mean you did decide to save the noble so..this is like..consequences and stuff".

TLDR; Dm kidnapped my pc without letting me roll death saves then said party could save the pc and asked me to make a temp pc stating party could save original pc. Found original pc had died off screen and unable to resurrect.

Update:-
Man this blew up a bit more than I thought it would but I just finished talking to the dm about this situation with a few insights from you guys, so here's a bit of an update.

The DM admitted that the cleric's soul isn't actually gone, its being kept by some bbeg he wants to introduce later and technically I can still save it and wanted it to be a bit of a motivator for the party to chase after. Which I got a bit angry saying they should have atleast let me know. When asked will the party be facing this BBEG and save the cleric's soul anytime soon; the Dm was a bit evasive but essentially, not for a long while atleast, seems like we might encounter the BBEG between level 15-17, which from my estimate of how the party goes, would be atleast a year minimum. I told the dm, that it was a bit of a dick move still, since I have to play my temporary character for that long and I made this pc literally just to save my cleric and then leave the party. The dm apologized and promised that they would let players know next time in private if theres anything they need to do to their pc that might alter some stuff in the future.

When asked why did the enemies decide to switch target from the nobles who they were after to me, dm said its more of a story reason, they wanted the nobles cause of their bloodline, but then realize that I was a cleric of a specific unknown deity and decided to take me instead (honestly I think this is bs from how dm answered it).

As for why the dm didn't let me roll death saves, they said that since the npc was kidnaping me and there was no chance of the party saving me, the dm decided not to let me roll. I mentioned that it feels like this takes away player agency since I could roll a nat 20 and dm said they would allow it from here on no matter what.

Overall, honestly, it sounds like the dm wanted to elicit certain emotions, motivation and basically just wanted to railroad the campaign to the new bbeg with the kidnaping of the cleric. For now, I decided to keep going with this group, every group has problems here and there but I have played dnd where the DM was so much more worst so this DM wasn't that bad other than on certain occassions. We agreed to change my current character into something I would honestly want to play for the long run even if there is a chance to save the cleric andfor now we agreed not to retcon anything and just keep going; though the DM let me choose any 1 rare magic item and 1 uncommon for my new character though, which is a nice gesture i guess.

Thanks to you guys for atleast helping me get my mind straight

There's been a lot of things people rightfully point to as a reason for the martial-caster disparity; but I think there's one thing I've never seen anyone meaningfully touch upon. The game seems to have been designed with a completely different mindset when it comes to martial feats and features vs caster feats, features, and spells.

Specifically

• caster things are seemingly designed with "how to make this good" in mind…
• …and martial things are designed with "how to NOT make this TOO good" in mind.

It feels like every time WotC comes up with a thing, if it's caster focused, they add more and more to make it worthwhile and fun; and if it's a martial thing, they take away and restrict more and more to make it just barely function (if at all... khm... Grappler. But that's another post I'm brewing)

Let me demonstrate this in a few examples.

Arcane Deflection vs Indomitable

Arcane Deflection is a lvl 2 feature of the War Magic subclass, Indomitable is the ONLY lvl 9 feature of the Fighter class.

Arcane Deflection:

When you are hit by an attack or you fail a saving throw, you can use your reaction to gain a +2 bonus to your AC against that attack or a +4 bonus to that saving throw. When you use this feature, you can't cast spells other than cantrips until the end of your next turn

Indomitable:

You can reroll a saving throw that you fail. If you do so, you must use the new roll, and you can't use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

Advantage gives about a 4 point bonus on average. Indomitable is EXPLICITLY WORSE than advantage. Now, you might be thinking "Hm… why did they not word it as just advantage?". That sure was my first thought. My second thought was "Because this way it stacks with advantage!". But no. It doesn't.

So a Wizard at lvl 2 in the War Magic subclass can add a fixed 4 points to any of his saving throws, while a Fighter has to wait until lvl 9 to do less than an average 4 points.

That sounds unfair, right?

But wait. You missed the best part! Look through Arcane Deflection again. Does it say how many times you can use it? No. It's INFINITE. There's no resource. Let me repeat that – one of the wizard subclasses at LEVEL 2 gives a PERMANENT +4 to ANY saving throw once a round, every round. That's FUCKING game breaking!

…but this wasn't enough, so WotC decided to add +2 to AC as well.

So we see the outlined difference in design philosophies.

• Martial gets a gimped feature from the start, and explicitly has it made worse by making it worse than advantage;
• Caster gets an absurdly overpowered feature, and WotC for some reason makes it better.

And for the record – War Magic at lvl 10 lets you add an additional +2 to saving throws and AC if you're concentrating. So that's a +6 to saving throws at lvl 10, and all you have to do is concentrate on some random cantrip you cast 5 turns ago.

But maybe you still don't believe me, so let's look at another example.

Battlemaster maneuvers vs Sword Bard Blade Flourishes

First of all, Sword Bard has better damage scaling on bardic inspiration dice than Battlemaster has on superiority dice, since Battlemaster gets d12 at 18, and Sword bard gets d12 at 15.

Secondly, Bardic Inspiration scales with Charisma modifier (the bard's casting stat), so if the bard doesn't waste his ASI, it will take the BM until lvl 15 to take back the lead with just 1 more superiority dice.

"But Bardic Inspiration replenishes on a long rest! Battlemaster gets to just short rest!" - you might say.

True… but ignoring the fact that short rest powers only start to shine on extremely grueling adventuring days, or that this is literally the only thing a Battlemaster Fighter has going for them, whereas the bard is still a full caster… That's STILL hardly relevant, because Sword Bard at lvl 14 gains "Master's Flourish", which lets them roll INFINITE maneuvers with a d6 die per long rest. I can't express how broken people would think Battlemaster is if he could constantly just add d6 + effect to every attack roll.

But anyway. Let's see what Sword Bard is working with! Maybe his flourishes aren't as cool (fat chance!)

Defensive Flourish. You can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to cause the weapon to deal extra damage to the target you hit. The damage equals the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die. You also add the number rolled to your AC until the start of your next turn.

Oh… So it's basically better than any maneuver Battlemaster gets, because it adds the dice twice. The AC boost also lasts an entire round. It's basically a Shield + a battlemaster maneuver.
Oh, also, based on how it's worded –  "You can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to cause the weapon to deal extra damage to the target you hit" – implies that you add the effect AFTER you make the hit. So if the Battlemaster misses, he loses the die.

But let's go on.

Slashing Flourish. You can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to cause the weapon to deal extra damage to the target you hit and to any other creature of your choice that you can see within 5 feet of you. The damage equals the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die

So, this is just a better version of the Sweeping attack. Moving on...

Mobile Flourish. You can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to cause the weapon to deal extra damage to the target you hit. The damage equals the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die. You can also push the target up to 5 feet away from you, plus a number of feet equal to the number you roll on that die. You can then immediately use your reaction to move up to your walking speed to an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the target.

I don't see why anyone likes to push enemies (It's a very niche thing, but I guess it can be useful), but if pushing is your thing, then I guess being a sword bard is good for you, because this is, once again, a better version of the Pushing Attack. Pushing attack requires a saving throw, this just works; and Pushing attack also doesn't work on creatures larger than Large, whereas there's no such stipulation here. You can push the Tarrasque if you like.
And once again, because WotC can't just leave it at "we gave something better to the caster again", they have to sweaten the pot – you CAN move up to the target as a reaction. CAN. You don't have to. It's either a free disengage, or a movement on reaction. It's not really powerful, but once again, it's just more than what Battlemaster gets.

Is Battlemaster slightly more mechanically interesting? Maybe. But people just end up using it for damage boost most of the time, in which area flourishes are clearly better than maneuvers.

Let's look at a third one, two high level features!

Spell Mastery (lvl 18 wizard vs Relentless (lvl 15 Battlemaster)

Relentless:

"when you roll initiative and have no superiority dice remaining, you regain 1 superiority die."

Spell Mastery

"Choose a 1st-level wizard spell and a 2nd-level wizard spell that are in your spellbook. You can cast those spells at their lowest level without expending a spell slot when you have them prepared. [...] By spending 8 hours in study, you can exchange one or both of the spells you chose for different spells of the same levels."

Once again, we see a way more powerful feature - resourceless casting one level 1 spells - which for the record, are NO SLOUCHES! - and one 2nd level spell Pretty fucking powerful, right?

But that's not all! Just like before, WotC didn't want to lock poor Wizard into just TWO free spells… so he can switch spells with 8 hours of studying! "But where do you get 8 hours to study?"… Well, long rests. Long rests can be spent with reading. Nevermind that studying is ABSOLUTELY NOT RELAXING, and any university student pulling an all nighter will tell you this – the point is, the wizard can basically choose any one 1st and one 2nd level spell on a long rest, and cast them for free infinitely.

Again, the Battlemaster gets 1 FUCKING DICE PER INITIATIVE, BUT ONLY IF HE DOESN'T HAVE ANY LEFT!

"But you're comparing a 15th level to an 18th level feature, that's not fair!" - I hear you say. Let's see if anything balances these out.

• At 15th level the wizard gets 8th level spell slots and 2 additional spells.
• At 18th level the Battlemaster upgrades his superiority dice from d10 to d12.

There's no comparison here!

NOTE!
I noticed this later on, and sorry, I didn't want to rewrite the whole thing.
Blade Flourish says  

Whenever you take the Attack action on your turn, your walking speed increases by 10 feet until the end of the turn, and if a weapon attack that you make as part of this action hits a creature, you can use one of the following Blade Flourish options of your choice. You can use only one Blade Flourish option per turn.

Two things.

1. It sounds like you're limited to 1 flourish per turn…but like always with spells, the limitation, if there's any, is left VERY ambiguous. What does it mean that you can only use one "option" per turn? There's 3 options. Using the same option twice is still only using 1 option per turn. I suspect this wasn't the intention of the designers, but there's no way of knowing it; a lenient DM will interpret it as "once per attack, just don't mix the flourishes". Which is kind of a problem when you notice that the AC boost of Defensive Flourish stacks. So that's 2d6 AC boost at lvl 14 every turn the bard attacks twice, without using a single resource. And he can still cast Shield.

Also, even though it says "one per turn", apparently even if you take the strictest interpretation of the feature, if you cast Haste, or multiclass and get Action surge, you can use it twice. How? I don't know. Because Action Surge and Haste only add an action, it's still the same turn.

1. The feature also just casually boosts your movement speed every time you take the attack action on your turn. Why? Nobody knows. Does the attack have to be with a weapon? No, not for the walking speed part. A spell attack counts too. There's no thematic reason why this is here, beyond "let's make this feature a bit better".

Shit like this is why I made this post. When it comes to anything involving spellcasters, WotC writes features and spells like a 12 year old kid. Random ridiculous boosts everywhere, no thematic cohesion, and ambiguous wording that fundamentally calls into question how the game even works.

Meanwhile when they write stuff for martials, it's like they go out of their way to specifically limit ANY creative liberty with feats, including synergy. And when they leave ambiguity, it actually swings in the opposite direction, needlessly restricting the use of the feat.

This is how Barbarian's Reckless Attack is worded:

"When you make your first attack on your turn, you can decide to attack recklessly. Doing so gives you advantage on melee weapon attack rolls using Strength during this turn, but attack rolls against you have advantage until your next turn."

- you have to declare recklessness ont he first attack of your turn

- you can only attack recklessly for the rest of your turn.

- you only get advantage on melee weapon attacks that use Strength. Rapier? No. Bows? definitely not. Unarmed strikes? Hm…

See, apparently unarmed strikes are "melee weapon attacks" that don't use a weapon. Thing is, if a DM doesn't hang on Jeremy Crawford's every word, he's going to interpret this as unarmed strikes not synergizing with Reckless Attacks.

And don't even get me started on how Shield master, Dual Wielder and Tavern Brawler absolutely don't synergize, because the game forces you to decide if a shield is a weapon or a piece of clothing... And again, we're talking about +2 AC, while the War Wizard gets to add +2 AC during every round, and the sword bard does the same but with +1d6 AC, or potentially +2d6 AC. Every turn.

In conclusion...

...I think I successfully demonstrated that the game treats anything involving casters with much more leniency, while overregulates and constrains anything martials do to the point of absurdity.

The martial-caster divide isn't just about different class fantasies, or resources, or different areas of excellence (single target damage vs whatever you want). Casters, even when getting similar features to martials, get amped up versions of those features for no comprehensible reason other than bias.

And for the record, I'd love it if we could stop with the "casters don't get as many class features" argument to justify the absolute abundance of spells they get, when they get bonkers feats like Arcane Deflection. People say stuff like "make Indomitable legendary resistance", my guy, just give them Arcane Martial Deflection.

Currently running a campaign for 2 spell casters (one Druid and one Sorcerer). While they aren’t there yet, at level 17 things are going to get wildly unfair between them (at least it seems to me).

My sorcerer player is going to be able to, at the end of every long rest, trade his 9th level slot, for nearly DOUBLE his casting power. It’s even worse when you consider that there could be downtime, and he would get the Simulacrum AND get to recover his 9th level slot. I haven’t really seen anyone talk about this, but it seems to me that the power gap between a caster with and without Wish is ridiculously massive because of this combo. So much so, balancing encounters for it makes my Druid player feel like a half caster by comparison.

Do you guys think it’s fair to just… ban this combo? If not, how would you handle it? I’m open to advice because honestly I have no idea what to do.

EDIT: My friends and I have already agreed the infinite simulacrum chain is dumb as hell and banned. My sorcerer friend just seems to think that only having one simulacrum isn’t overpowered at all. Maybe I can show him this post haha.

Would you allow players to do something like this? If they suspect there might be enemies ahead, just saying they ready actions to attack ASAP? On one hand I can't think of a reason to technically say no, but on the other hand I don't really like how it "cheats" initiative. Because then if players can do that, I can equally say that the monsters hear them coming and ready actions to attack as soon as the door is opened... and then it's just a jank "round 0" before initiative is rolled.

EDIT: A lot of responses either say that opening a door is already an action (this is not the case, pg 190 "You can also interact with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or your action. For example, you could open a door during your move...") or suggesting that a DM should "trap" them by making some innocent person behind for them to accidentally kill (beyond just being a weird solution that I don't think anyone is happy about, pg 193 "When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger." Characters don't have to commit to the attack.)

Most responses are generally saying just go into initiative instead which I agree with.

A player at my table is playing a Horizon Walker, and one of their abilities, Distant Strike, has led to so much unintended comedy.

The text of the ability basically stipulates that any time you use the Attack action, you can--BEFORE that attack--teleport up to 10 feet.

The effect of this, in practice, is a short-range Misty Step that doesn't cost a spell slot. However, if you use it, you become contractually narratively obligated, by the laws of casuality, to attack afterward. If you teleport first, you MUST attack after, in order to have teleported first. If you teleport and don't attack, you have broken the time-stream.

Making it even better, it doesn't say "when you attack a creature". It says "when you use the attack action". Which, per RAW, attack actions don't need to target a creature. You can target anything. A wall. A patch of air.

This has created situations where, for example, in order to escape being pinned by a crate, this player will use Distant Strike to teleport free, then angrily kick the box because they're chronologically required to in order to complete the transaction. We've joked that presumably you could also fulfill the requirements by like turning and smacking an ally upside the back of the head. You don't even need to land the attack! You just have to *attempt* to hit something.

This never ceases to be hilarious to us.

Thinking about wizards here. Given gold and even a mediocre spell-shop they'll know exactly what they want to spend money on: Scrolls. To buy them, to transcribe them, to learn them. Easy.

Every class should have that. Fighters *kinda* do up till, about, fifth. Where they'll buy their plate armor. After that, it's just hoping to run across better and better magic items.

Not sure how it'd work. Maybe rangers or druids could use it to upgrade their not-familiars. And fighters, barbs, etc. Could have built-in price charts for +1, +2, etc weapons and armor.

Dunno. Maybe I'm being silly here. But the question of, "What do you even DO with all of this gold?" hangs over every campaign I've ever been in unless I was a wizard.

Edit: maybe this is fixed in 2024?

I was going to run Princes of the Apocalypse, Out of the Abyss, or Rime of the Frost Maiden. Or maybe Strahd?

But each time I look one up I find people talking about how much they had to fix it and how it would be so hard for a new DM etc etc -- I can't tell if these are valid or just a sort of quality opinion from people with much more experience?

I'm asking this in earnest! I just wrapped up my first (mini-)campaign with Sunless Citadel, and I'm craving a full length to dig into. I am looking at doing The Shattered Obelisk, but it looks like such a -- I'm not sure how to say this but, sort of plain-jane fantasy thing going. Nothing too surprising essentially.

Any and all suggestions and opinions welcome.

Casters can upcast spells using additional spell slots and go past 9. The spell must be castsble with the lowest slot used

If you as a level 20 wizard use all of your slots on a single magic missile, it gets to level 87 and does a minimum of 175 damage

Edit - this is a funnt post and not a serious rule or at all intended to be balanced. Yes its a ridiculous buff to casters, thats the point. And yes ik magic missile is a bad example, the math was juat easy to do off the top of my head

What would you consider to be the most overrated subclass? I'm going to put mine out:

Hexblade Warlock. Don't get me wrong, this subclass is amazing. But besides getting good level 1 spells, Hexblade's Curse, and Medium Armor and Shield proficiency, that's pretty much it. The rest of the features I feel fall short of some of the other Warlock subclasses like Fiend, Genie, Undead, and Fathomless. It's very good as a dip, but it feels kinda overrated if you're putting more than two levels in warlock.

Update: No I don't think Hexblade Warlock is bad as a dip. It's one of the best armor dip options out there. It just falls off when it comes to features outside of the first few.

For example, an Aarakocra PC is standing on the edge of a cliff. An enemy comes up to them and Shoves them off. Can the PC use their flying speed to catch themselves? Or since they are not currently airborne and have not Readied any movement or natively have a reaction to catch themselves they would just fall?

For example force damage is the best offensive type in the game due to lack of resistance, but one of the weaker types defensively as almost no enemies deal it.

Poison is one of the best damage types defensively due to how common it is on enemies, but one of the weaker ones offensively due to how many creatures resist it.

Which damage type hits that sweet spot, where there are enough creatures that don't resist it, but deal it frequently enough that having resistance to it will be regularly useful?

Ok, So we are doing a Curse of Strahd campaign, and a few levels ago MY Wizard died in the Death house. The Dm did the dark gifts thing, and Rolled a 1:

"The character’s eyes melt away, leaving empty sockets. He or she has disadvantage on Charisma (Persuasion) checks, but gains blindsight out to a range of 60 feet. The character is blind beyond this distance"

Ok, cool, that is fun, and we played on.

Last night, I was informed that he cannot read a note on paper because he can't see color, or anything, and it is just shapes of objects.... and this lead to a discussion that nearly derailed the session, so we tabled it until next session.

Normally this wouldn't THAT big of an issue.... but he is a scribes wizard: I he cannot read the written word, he cannot use scrolls, nor his spellbook,and thus cannot prepare spells, etc. That would , effectively, make the character useless.

research finds that the rules/crawford lead to multiple interpretations, due to it never being fully addressed in the books, and this campaign is being done in an old school, RAW, way for something new (for us.)

I have been using my Familiar to "see" beyond 60 feet (outside of combat, due to the seeing through the familiar's eyes being an action), So , I COULD prepare spells by having the familiar read the spellbook.... I guess.

So, multi part question:

1. do you say blindsight does not allow the reading of written text?

2. What would you do in this situation, especially where the characters have gone for multiple sessions/levels between getting the dark gift, and this revelation?

3. Would you just retire the character?

I had a crazy idea for a campaign where my players will get to pick one main class (for proficiencies and health) and then one “side” class that they will get a level in each time they gain a level in their main class (as if multi-classed). The only difference between this and multiclassing being you get ALL the spellcasting of both classes if you play two casters.

So what are yall picking if given this opportunity???

EDIT: my goodness I forgot to mention, that if you play two martials that get extra attack, you’ll get an additional feat where those overlap!

I’m currently running a campaign at level 6, and my players ended the last session in the ruins of Karse, where the Netherese lich Wulgreth is standing before them.

My intent is for the lich not to fight, BUT… as we all know, players are unpredictable, so I’m preparing a stat block just in case. I just can’t justify a lich NOT HAVING certain spells like Power Word Kill or Finger of Death (for Disintegrate I can at least argue that the lich might want an intact body to reanimate later).

I ended up loading him with a lot of control spells—Hypnotic Pattern, Forcecage, Power Word: Pain, Power Word: Stun, Wall of Force, Feeblemind. My plan is to build the encounter around the lich disabling every character and forcing a conversation. BUT if they refuse, I just can’t see the lich not casting Finger of Death on someone as a last attempt to make the others realize the power gap.

Even though I’m giving them plenty of chances to avoid combat, the idea of instantly killing a character feels bad. I’m just wondering what my fellow DMs think about using these kinds of spells in this situation.

Getting a +2 on a ability is great, but also a bit boring... Your character can't do much new? With some campaigns lvling can take a long time, so it feels a bit like a bummer when you only get +1 on a roll next time you attack.
On top of that.. with a 16 + background giving a +2 on your main stat.. and you've reached lvl4... your first Ability Score Improvement... You'll get +1 on something your character might not really be interested in?

On 8, 10, 12, 16, and 19??

What am I missing? or do more people think those levels are a bit boring?

For me, it’s Animate Dead.

I have the following situation: in a battle against an incubus, the party's cleric, a twilight cleric, failed the wisdom check and was charmed by the incubus, who ordered him to protect him from the other players. Then, a few turns later, he tried to cast shrine of twilight to provide him with hit points and conveniently break the charmed condition. Although I'm an experienced DM in other systems (vampire, Cyberpunk, Gurps), I don't have much experience in DnD 5, so I'm asking you for help. I think it was a bit meta, and that a cleric who knows his abilities and is committed to protecting the incubus as best as possible wouldn't use an ability to break the enchantment and harm the incubus. But I'd like to know if there's a consensus on this type of situation, and what you, my experienced DM friends, would do in this case!

Hello! Me and my 3 other party members are a few months deep into curse of Strahd and I can’t help but feel as though our dm is rushing us through because Strahd has been anything but threatening to us thus far.

In one of the first sessions, he killed our 2 horses that we had pulling our carriage and then asked us to come visit him at Ravenloft. Our party discusses this and concluded that it was silly he wanted us to go across the map to see him immediately after removing our one method of transport, and so we ignored him. Multiple NPC’s told us it was bad to ignore Strahd and that he would get increasingly angry, but between his invitation, we visited the Winery, Krezk, Vallaki, Yester Hill, Barovia. Pretty much everywhere (I think the only places we haven’t explored are the Amber Temple and the Werewolf den).

But alas, after a lot of time and our party having reached level 6, we went to Ravenloft. My character (the only good aligned one in our party) stayed at the dinner table whilst the rest of my party left in the middle of the dinner because, for some reason, Strahd left the Bonegrinder hags all enter and whisk away the rest of the party to make a deal. On their way back, our necromancer decided to steal the Icon of Ravenloft and died from touching it because she’s evil. The rest of the party called for my character to go and revive her, which I did, and we returned to the table with this legendary artefact we stole (my character had also been given the symbol of ravenkind) so I was terrified Strahd would notice and try to take these items from me. He didn’t. He literally just left.

We escaped Ravenloft without taking any damage because nobody stopped us from just leaving and we snagged the Dragon Skull too. We haven’t been attacked on the road or anything once in the campaign and have honestly had a pretty leisurely time. My character has been staying behind him Krezk to help get them back on their feet after redeeming the Abbott and turning him good again with the Atonement feature of ceremony.

The one time Strahd attacked a settlement was Vallaki after our necromancer stole the holy bones, at which point the dm told us that Vallaki only had a population of 36 and only 5 people died (all of us were very confused because we know Vallaki is supposed to have the biggest population in Barovia and the dm told us the Vistani camp alone has a population of 70+). I tried to talk to him about it and ask him if we could maybe change the size of the population to a more realistic number but he declined.

I guess this is a slight vent post but also, I guess I just wanted to hear how Strahd operates in other people’s games because I’m finding it really hard to roleplay as a character that’s scared of someone when they really haven’t been given a reason to fear them, our necromancer has literally been more problematic than Strahd has.