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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.

We just had our first session in a homebrew starting at level 3. I am playing a barbarian with the totem warrior path (I'm fairly new and it's my first time playing a barbarian.) The rest of the party is an assassin rogue, a monster hunter ranger, and a draconic sorcerer.

We were investigating sitings of suspicious cloaked figures in the starting town, and we traced them back to a hideout in an abandoned building. We fought a few low level wizards there and were handling it OK. We tried to interrogate them, but none of them would tell us anything.

Then the DM described a mage emerging from the shadows in a red and gold cloak and saying we would pay for what we did to his men. So we thought obviously this will be a little boss battle with the leader, right?

Well he went first in initiative and he cast a spell that made us all make an Intelligence saving throw. Everyone failed their saves except me, even the rogue got a 17 and that still failed. I don't even have a bonus on my intelligence, just by pure luck I got a 19 which passed.

Well then the DM said the spell did 42 points of damage. I have the most HP of the group with 29, and even with half damage I almost went down. So the other 3 all went down, and I thought oh shit I have to talk my way out of this. Well then the DM starting narrating graphically the other 3 characters' heads exploding, to which we were all like what the hell? Just instant death? He said that's what the spell does and we would've seen it coming if we'd explored more for clues.

So then I say I'm going to beg for my life, and the DM says I can barely speak after this spell. So all my friends just died, I'm low on HP and I can't even speak. Then he just said we're ending the session there.

Am I crazy for thinking that this was not a fair encounter? I get that not every encounter should be perfectly at our level but this feels way above and beyond, even if we missed some clues.

This player's character, a warlock, has had issues with running off ahead, I warned them many times that this could lead to their death, but they did not listen.

The first time the character nearly died, they ran ahead and was downed by an undead wolf, luckily the other players got to him saving him.

The second time the character rushed into a cave and was again downed by more undead creatures.

The third time was rushing into spiders.

Etc.

But the last time the character turned invisible, crept in alone, into a cave full of tribal warriors finding out they were doing some sort of ritual... Well they interrupted the ritual and awake a beast the tribal people were trying to tame and it all went to hell.

He was killed trying to escape but was surrounded by over 10 warriors....

I feel really awful as I always want my players to succeed and I have never had a player character die.

Any advice to get over this?

This is a small dispute at our table. When it comes to any skill check, our DM will ask which player will be making the check and only take that players role, instead of having all the players roll and allowing multiple people to succeed.

For example, an NPC mentions some lore that hasn't been brought up yet, the DM asks someone to make a history check to see if they have insight on the topic. The one player who volunteered to roll fails, so now no one knows any of the history on this subject.

Or during the rare instance we all roll, like perception, he will only let the person who rolled the highest succeed and he will use modifier bonus as a tie breaker if two players rolled the same.

This was brought up because myself and another player both got 17 for a perception roll and he asked about our modifier bonuses and because my teammate had a +3 and I had a +2, he perceived something and I didn't.

This annoyed me and I asked why our characters couldn't just both see the thing?? What's the value of always having a winner? I've played for 17 years and I've never seen the game played this way at any other table, and these guys were acting like I was the crazy one lol.

Am I crazy? Is this actually how everyone is playing? This isn't THAT big of a thing, I just wanted some validation lol.

Edit: I just want to quickly clarify that I'm fully aware that many checks should only have one player rolling, but my issue is pretty specific to perception, investigation, or history type checks that have little consequence to the progression of the story. I still think my DM is doing a great job and I wouldn't push this issue.

I think the main hurdle for me was the lack of a Monster Manual. And a lot of systems assuming the GM makes their own monsters.

Hey everyone, looking for some quick opinions on an encounter that nearly wiped our Level 6 party last session (3 out of 5 players died). This is Arc #2 for the rest of the party, but only session #4 for me (we have all played together for years).

We are playing a campaign using the 2014 rules for our characters. However, our DM has started using monster stat blocks from the new 2024 rules. During travel, we were ambushed in a bottleneck environment with zero cover by an Adult Blue Dragon.

Here is how the mechanics played out:

The monster's passive senses were so high that respectable Tier-2 stealth rolls (like a 14~18) were failures. Hiding was mechanically off the table.

It used a new 2024 legendary action to turn invisible at will at the end of most player turns, doing it constantly throughout the fight. Opportunity attacks and spells requiring seeing the creature were off the table.

Battlefield control spells like hypnotic pattern with a spell save DC 14 was easily defeated by the dragon’s +7 wisdom save.

Dragon was dealing 35~50+ damage in a single shot, which is enough to instantly drop our characters from full health.

One single escape route across a river and in a cave. Two players made it. The other remaining 2 were at 0 and 1 HP, the 1 HP pulled the other under the ice in the river to hide.

Failed stealth roll (15) and the lightning breath weapon acted as an AOE because they were under water. 50 points of damage, both died instantly, dragon ate the remains.

During a private chat with the DM, he completely defends the encounter. His argument is that because we had the "Action Economy" advantage (5 players vs. 1 monster), the fight was totally winnable and we just made tactical mistakes.

From my perspective, action economy means nothing when your actions have a near-0% success rate due to invisibility, high AC, high saves, and impossible stealth DCs. It felt less like a game and more like a mathematical prison where we were railroaded into a cutscene.

Worse, it completely stifled roleplay. My character is explicitly written as noble and selfless, loyal to a fault. Because the math was so overtuned, the only way to mechanically survive was to abandon the rest of the party and run. The game forced me to choose between playing my character authentically or meta-gaming to survive.

I put an immense amount of effort into this character's story and lore, and losing them after only four sessions to an un-winnable math equation has left me incredibly frustrated. Am I overreacting here, or is the DM completely miscalculating the math of his own encounter?

TL;DR: DM threw a 2024 Adult Blue Dragon (CR 16) at our 2014 Level 6 party, killing 3 out of 5 players in an open bottleneck. The dragon had a 22 Passive Perception, at-will invisibility, and a 50+ damage breath weapon. The DM claims our 5-v-1 "action economy" made it winnable and blames our tactical mistakes. I feel it was a rigged mathematical prison that forced me to choose between meta-gaming to survive or dying to stay in character. Thoughts?

I’ve never played a character that had a central romance plotline, but I’m not against it either.

So far our Most Iconic CR1/4 monster seems to be goblins! Want to have your vote heard? There's still time! https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1twmf3i/monsters_by_cr_cr14_most_iconic/

Due to activity dying down on that thread, I'm starting up the next one. ALL voting is cut off after 24 hours.

Now we'll continue to the deadliest CR 1/4 monster!

5e and 5.5e opinions welcome! I will not be distinguishing the editions unless there is a meaningful split in deadliness or unless a monster has changed CR between editions.

I'm trying to figure out what patron to have for my warlock but I feel like I'm getting a lot of different (and sometimes conflicting) info about the patrons and I'm also just a bit overwhelmed, I've never played a warlock before.

I'm trying to find a patron who is chaotic neutral, willing to be/can be spiteful and petty at times, doesn't obsess over worship specific all/is willing to take more uncommon pacts, and more on the powerful side, the more powerful, serious, and well known the better since it will make everything funnier.

I would like it if they're a bit darker themed color wise, but that's 100% not necessary.

I would really appreciate any input or ideas, thank you!

I previously was planning to go with the Raven Queen but I keep getting conflicting info about her so I'm looking for other options

Edit: I can't invent a patron, our DM is having us go with pre-existing ones for this campaign

I have a quick question in regards to what can and can't be said in a Zone of Truth spell.

I'm setting up a future event for my players where they will be asked to step into a Zone of Truth spell willingly. There will be consequences if they don't, but nothing major or hindering. It is being presented by someone who is their boss within the guild they work for and he needs them to answer honestly - for the record.

The guild master will start off by creating a "base-line" and ask everyone in the circle to give their name. Everyone in the spell will not have a problem with giving this answer...except potentially two players.

This is where my question comes in. The two players learned what their actual birth names are - both were adopted into different families for different reasons - they aren't related in any fashion. They didn't know their birth names until very recently, and I'm wondering if this could affect a Zone of Truth spell.

My question is: can the players give the names that they have been living with most of their lives, or will the Zone of Truth compel them to give their actual birth names? Can the players state their given names, but the paladin who cast the spell notices that there is a "half-truth" or something like that? I haven't dealt with Zone of Truth all that much in my time playing D&D.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

EDIT: Thank you all so much for the insight and info. This really helped me out and I understand ZoT a lot better now.

This was my contribution to a set of Tarot inspired cards that a regular of mine is having made. Each one is meant to depict one of the player characters from their campaign as a card relating to the character. I got the death card featuring Vincent, a soldier and blacksmith inspired by Roman styles and themes. There are a lot of little easter eggs incorperated in the card based on things from the character backstory and campaign lore. I tried to tie the theme of death into it quite heavily with the background/foreground elements. I really enjoyed making this!

Hope you all like it!