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Ah, travelers! We don't get many such as you in these parts, not since the Marquis' men took control of the pass. I suppose you're wondering why you can't post images or links on this Fifthday?

Thursdays are Text-post Only Days on /r/DnD. We're disabling picture and link posts for 24 hours to encourage discussion posts.

We originally began this trial about six months ago and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I've personally enjoyed a lot of the conversations that have sprung up on these days (and a smarter mod would have bookmarked some of them to use as examples* in this post).

As of now we're planning on keeping the experiment running indefinitely. We're always looking for feedback, so please let us know of your experience. Have you been enamored with a discussion post that arose one Thursday? Have you mourned having to wait one more day to see your comic update? We welcome all takes.

The switch is still happening manually, so it will happen around about midnight Eastern US time. If anyone is aware of a way to automate the process, please message the mods.

Perhaps you could discuss this...we've heard tale of a path through the eastern ridge. If such a trail exists we could circumvent the Marquis' blockade and supply this rebellion. Won't you help us, strangers!?

* The first Thursday after making this post, someone posts the most classic question imaginable. This is what it's all about.

In the campaign that I am wrapping up next week, for the past two years, the players have been having a running gag about which cleric gets to be the one to cast Guidance on other party members. Eventually, I casually told them, why not have both of you cast Guidance, and then the player rolling can roll two d4 and take whichever outcome they prefer.

Everyone thought this was a hilarious and great solution, and everyone started joking about how one cleric's diety favored players on this day or disliked that player, etc. Little do they know, I have been keeping a tally of whose die rolls they have been taking, who has been making fun of which god(s) etc.

They are meeting the whole pantheon next week before their fight with the BBEG. I cannot wait.

I just had a thought while looking at the new Sallowlands map for CR Age of Umbra. It reminded me of how much wonder and possibility a map could hold, and then I thought "Did GPS kill the the Exploration Pillar of D&D?"

As a child I remember the wonder and magic that maps held for me, even before I was introduced to D&D. I remember drawing treasure maps for toys I had buried in the backyard. If a book had a map in it, I would spend as much time with the map as the text. I would pour over AAA maps, World Atlases, and Hagstrom maps, track routes, imagining journeys of exploration, or imagining military tactics. When I played AD&D I was the party mapper.

And then came GPS, and we all have seemed to get away from thinking about anything other than entering point A to point B. We just listen for it to tell us where to turn.

And we do it now in D&D too. We hand-wave travel and exploration to points of light. We almost never bother with maps unless they are battlemaps for combat. We don't explore anymore, and players don't even expect it, but worst of all they don't seem to miss it or even realize that it should be there in the first place.

It feels like GPS has conditioned us out of the desire to explore. "Tell me the fastest way to get to the place to do the thing." In our games it is "something, something, next combat," or "we go from here to there to consult someone." It feels like we resolve an encounter and enter the next destination into DM GPS, and we end up there. To me, I am starting to realize that it is taking a lot of the wonder and amazement out of the game that I used to have when maps held sway over our lives.

What are some of yall's dm horror stories? i've been interested in dming and looking for either any tips or examples on what not to do as a dm. thanks :)

Marking this as 5e, but it applies to 5.5e as well.

One of the common refrains in the community is how martials are "resourceless", and that this gives them staying power throughout the adventuring day. In fact a common rebuttal to this is that they're not, because they have HP... but that's not what this post is about.

"Resourcelessness" in these arguments is coupled with being "reliably powerful", so to speak.

And I just wanted to point out - that's not true in the vast majority of cases.

Let me rephrase this issue in the form of an argument for "resourcelessness" to demonstrate my point.

"Spellcasters have a wide variety of powers a few times per day, while martials have a more narrow lost of powers that aren't limited by number of uses."

How many actual features and powers can we name that fit this description? Features or powers that are either always on, or can be used indefinitely?

Rogue has plenty, sure.

Monk has Diamond Soul at level 14 and unarmed bonus strikes.

Barbarian and Monk both have unarmored defense, but so do many spellcasters.

Fighter has... a fighting style.

...and all except Rogue get extra attack.

And this is really the only truly powerful "resourceless" power - extra attack. Anything else is really a drop in the ocean, not to mention spellcasters and half castera also getting similar features.

Meanwhile when it comes to powers that consume resources:

- Monks have Ki/Focus, which is basically their entire class.

- Barbarians have Rage, which is basically their entire class.

- Fighters have Action Surge, Second Wind, Indomitable, and most of their subclasses give limited resource powers.

The resource-based features far outweigh the resourceless ones.

If we want to pretend that martials are resourceless, they need to have stronger and more defining resourceless powers than "extra attack".

Conversely, if that's not supposed to be their identity, then their resources should be drastically expanded. Monk 2024 did that, and it made the class infinitely better.

Now, wanna see what a class with actually resourceless powers looks like? Look at Warlock. They literally do get infinite uses of a less varied subset of powers than spellcasters. And guess what? It works. And it's not overpowered.

So I don't see why "infinitely usable" powers are such a taboo when it comes to martials, or why we're supposed to be OK with their only claim to fame being "attacks twice".

For some background, my DM introduced me to D&D about five years ago. He’s friends with my cousin, whom I’m very close to. She introduced us, and over time, through D&D, the DM and I became friends.

As we played through Tomb of Annihilation, a custom campaign DM created, and now Rime of the Frostmaiden, I started noticing a pattern: my characters always seemed to suffer unusually bad luck. At first, I assumed that was just part of D&D, but eventually I realized the same things weren’t happening to the other players.

It wasn’t always major events. Sometimes it felt like the rules were bent so my character would lose important items, be forced to take the fall for the group, or bear the consequences of situations that others didn’t. I don’t mind playing a character who sacrifices for the party—in fact, I enjoy it—but when it happens over and over, it starts to feel like you’re being singled out.
In Rime of the Frostmaiden, my first character was a halfling warlock. There were six people in our party. During one encounter, a stampeding mammoth targeted only me, even though I was the farthest away. It willingly took multiple opportunity attacks from the party members surrounding it—who had already injured it because they rolled higher on initiative—just to reach my character. We were only around level 3, and the result was my warlock being trampled to death.

I rolled up a new character: my deceased warlock’s sister, who served the same patron. Not long afterward, she was petrified by a basilisk and then shattered into pieces by an evil NPC.

My third character was a gnome druid. To be fair, his first death was entirely my fault. He was a healer who tried to keep everyone’s spirits high, but beneath his cheerful personality he secretly believed the party would fail to end the eternal winter.

At one point, we encountered the BBEG much earlier than expected. We lost the fight and barely escaped. Afterward, she subjected us to a series of psychological trials designed to break our resolve. My druid handled them poorly. In the final trial, she offered him preservation and power if he would join her. Out of desperation and fear, he accepted.

He didn’t survive what happened next.

I was incredibly attached to that character and asked my DM if there was any possible way to bring him back. We ran a short private session where Auril revived him as one of her disciples. I agreed to those consequences. That death was on me, and I have no issue with it.

What bothered me happened later.

My druid had a snowy owl familiar that he was deeply attached to. He sent her to scout an unknown portal, but suddenly lost his connection to her. The party followed through the portal to investigate and discovered several hags had captured her in a cage. Combat broke out after they refused to release her.
During the fight, the wizard cast Fireball. My familiar was caught in the blast. Normally, a familiar simply disappears when reduced to 0 hit points and can be resummoned later. Instead, the DM described her as a burned, feathered corpse. It was honestly horrifying.
After the fight, I attempted to resummon her. The DM ruled that my familiar had permanently died and that the spell summoned an entirely different owl.

The reason this felt especially frustrating is because the DM already knew our plan before combat began. While my familiar was trapped in the cage, I tried dismissing her, but the DM ruled it didn’t work. The ranger then suggested that, if necessary, someone could kill the owl to free her from the cage, and I could simply resummon her afterward. My druid hated the idea, but it seemed like our only option. Before I had a chance to act, the wizard won initiative and cast Fireball. That’s why no one at the table thought it would permanently kill her.

As far as I know, there isn’t a rule stating that a familiar can permanently die this way. I still don’t understand why my character was treated differently.

At one point, another player at the table actually spoke up and said, “Please stop picking on him,” referring to me and my druid.

The DM just laughed it off as if it wasn’t a big deal.
For a little more context, my druid’s relationship with his snowy owl was a huge part of his character. She was with him constantly, and I role-played that bond whenever I could. Losing her permanently because of what felt like an arbitrary ruling genuinely sucked. I left that session feeling worse than when I sat down to play.

So I guess my question is:

Am I being singled out or am I just overreacting?

Running a homebrew campaign where my players have just intercepted the current baddie carrying a Time Shard, a homebrew magic item that allows some wild magic-style time travel mechanics. Last session ended with them sneaking up on her camp and trying to steal the Time Shard, setting off a glyph of warding and rolling initiative. My plan for the baddie in combat is that she's going to try to get to the Time Shard at any cost and activate it, sending her back in time to the beginning of combat. If she's able to do this, I'll tell the players to reset their spell slots, HP, and other resources and combat will start over from the beginning, this time with two copies of the baddie: the original and the one who went back in time.

My goal is for it to feel like a two-phase combat, but having never run one I don't know if this will work. Also it will help increase the difficulty, since they survived a previous encounter with this baddie and have leveled up a couple times since then.

As a player, would you find this a fun and interesting encounter, or would restarting combat from the beginning just be annoying/frustrating/demoralizing? Is there anything that would make it swing one way or the other?

Having no friends is an exaggeration and even then not something I'm especially "self conscious" about or anything.

I'm 23, working nonstop, and helping my fam out with some issues.

I do have old friends scattered all across my half of the country, but it's not like I can consistently contact them, or get them interested in DnD- I was always the only "fantasy nerd" of the group.

Anyway, I have played DnD before- a looooong time ago when I finally caved and joined a paid campaign from StartPlaying.com or whatever that site is. And for several months i got SUPER invested in that campaign.

So while I'd ~technically~ still consider myself a beginner, that's not totally accurate. I know the mechanics and rules very well, even if I'm not an experienced player.

Alrighty, with all that in mind. Any advice?

From what I can tell, it is EXCEPTIONALLY hard to find a spot as a player online. Of course everyone's looking for a DM, but I already know that'd be a mess to start off as (even though I am definitely interested in DMing in the future).

I'm going out on the assumption that other people here have been in the same boat before, so, how'd ya find your groups?

We're playing Tomb of Annihilation (my first time, no spoilers please) so we're keeping careful track of things usually hand-waved: rations, water, ammunition. Our barbarian threw a trident at maximum range (60') and, after the battle, the question was raised as to whether a trident used in such fashion is considered Ammunition and therefore subject to the "you can spend 1 minute to recover half the ammunition" rule. What is your position, and is that based on either RAW or RAI (please indicate which)?

Thanks so much!

Hello everyone!

First of all, English isn't my first language, so this post may contain a few mistakes. (^_^)

I've recently started learning how to draw, using Tamlin123's guide as my main reference.

My first drawing was a kobold, and after following the same guide, I decided to try drawing a dragonborn.

This time it was a bit easier to get the body proportions right, but I'm still struggling with lighting and shadows. I did my best, though! (^_^)

Since the Sorcerer is my favorite class, I created Thimiel, a Psionic Sorcerer.

Hopefully I'll get the chance to play him someday and explore his personality a bit more.

I'd love to hear any feedback or advice.
Thanks for taking a look!