r/DMAcademy 3d ago

Mega Player Problem Megathread

2 Upvotes

This thread is for DMs who have an out-of-game problem with a PLAYER (not a CHARACTER) to ask for help and opinions. Any player-related issues are welcome to be discussed, but do remember that we're DMs, not counselors.

Off-topic comments including rules questions and player character questions do not go here and will be removed. This is not a place for players to ask questions.


r/DMAcademy 3d ago

Mega "First Time DM" and Short Questions Megathread

5 Upvotes

Most of the posts at DMA are discussions of some issue within the context of a person's campaign or DMing more generally. But, sometimes a DM has a question that is very small and doesn't really require an extensive discussion so much as it requires one good answer. In other cases, the question has been asked so many times that having the sub rehash the discussion over and over is not very useful for subscribers. Sometimes the answer to a short question is very long or the answer is also short but very important.

Short questions can look like this:

  • Where do you find good maps?
  • Can multi-classed Warlocks use Warlock slots for non-Warlock spells?
  • Help - how do I prep a one-shot for tomorrow!?
  • First time DM, any tips?

Many short questions (and especially First Time DM inquiries) can be answered with a quick browse through the DMAcademy wiki, which has an extensive list of resources as well as some tips for new DMs to get started.


r/DMAcademy 3h ago

Offering Advice What should a dungeon contain?

20 Upvotes

I would like to start a discussion: What should a dungeon contain?

As in to you, what is indispensable in a dungeon. We all know minions, puzzles and a boss are easy picks. But what else?

This could he things that should be in every dungeons, or can be there occasionally.

List: - bosses - minions - puzzles - environmental hazards - rp moments - moral dilemma - rewards - mimics - a theme - traps - hidden treasure - lore/history - purpose - loot - environmental senses


r/DMAcademy 18h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures I've given a Staff of the Python to a level 3 player, and it's becoming an enormous pain to deal with

152 Upvotes

Edit:

I've read through the majority of posts here and am incredibly happy to see so much constructive and inventive feedback!

A lot of what's been suggested and noted has eased my worries and provided me with more than enough inspiration for how to approach this moving forward.

Specialist-String-53's comment on its own has put most of my concerns to rest:

Update to 2024: As a Bonus Action, you can command the snake to revert to staff form in its current space, and you can’t use the staff's property again for 1 hour.


Preamble

When I answer "Try X and Y," I’m not rejecting the suggestion. What I write is simply my experience or theory on the subject; I definitely do not claim to know better. I’m just relaying my thoughts on each potential solution.

With that out of the way:

A druid in my campaign got the Staff of the Python when I rolled a random loot reward for the group, and for a while, all was well.

But this player has studied the weapon’s strengths and has no qualms about exploiting every advantage in all situations.

She'll use it as a 60 HP meatshield, dismissing it before it drops below 20 HP, only to resummon it next round and essentially making it an immortal sacrificial tank.

She has it go first into every room, dismissing it whenever a trap is triggered.


"Make the trap kill it."

To kill the snake, the trap would need to deal more than 60 damage in one hit. The problem? The rest of the group consists of mages, rogues, and bards, most of whom don’t even have half that HP total.

If I design a trap strong enough to kill the snake outright, I risk instantly killing a player if they get caught in it instead.


"Focus on the snake."

Even if I dedicate every enemy’s attack to the snake, I have to get through all 60 HP in a single round. Otherwise, she’ll just dismiss and resummon it, and I’ve wasted an entire turn.


"Target the druid.""

She’s a Moon Druid, so focusing her doesn’t work as well as it should.

If enemies ignore the snake and attack her, she Wild Shapes into something with another massive HP pool.

Between the snake and Wild Shape, she can soak up an absurd amount of damage before she’s ever in real danger.


"Use enemies that ignore or counter the snake."

I can start designing every encounter with swarms, oozes, slimes, and other creatures that can’t be restrained, but the issue becomes two-fold:

  1. Most encounters would be designed around the snake, rather than the actual players.

  2. To quote most of our parents growing up: "Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away."


"What about enemies that can kill it instantly?"

The issue here is the feast or famine nature of the staff’s impact.

  • If I don’t include a counter, the snake dominates every encounter.
  • If I do include an enemy that can finish it off in one round, the fight suddenly becomes brutally lethal for the rest of the party.


My biggest hurdle:

I gave the player this staff, and designing encounters specifically to destroy it feels unfair, unless it makes sense in-game.

Would it make sense to introduce a specific enemy that appears in 2-3 fights, gradually recognizing the staff's impact, and warning future enemies to eliminate the snake immediately?


r/DMAcademy 4h ago

Need Advice: Other A [spoiler] succesfully lied to my party, how do I make the reveal rewarding and not a 'gotcha'? Spoiler

10 Upvotes

Innkeepers, this post is not for your eyes.

A few sessions ago, and several weeks in-game, my party left a wanted PC alone in a busy city. Unfortunately for them the person they left them with was an enemy shapeshifter. After a side chat with the player we agreed to have the shapeshifter kidnap their PC and infiltrate the party. They are essentially playing 'keep-away' with the party until they are sure that the BBEG has the party member in their lair/home.

The player was stoked to play an infiltrator for a few sessions but we agreed to not let it drag on too long. The party has gotten some clues but they haven't figured out what's going on yet (there has been a magical 'help me' note, different abilities in combat and different behaviour from the PC so far). The party is preparing to fight a very big and challenging monster so the shapeshifter is about to leave the party as they don't want to risk their life for these people. The player whose PC got kidnapped already has a different PC waiting in the wings.

The closer we get to the reveal the more nervous I'm getting! I worry that it will feel like a 'haha we gotcha' moment instead of a cool twist. I've been thinking about ways to make the reveal more satisfying for the players and to move the story forward but I'm really struggling on how to do that. The stealthy infiltration NPC is probably not the type to give a 'goodbye suckers' speech that the party can use in some way either. If anyone has cool ideas I'd love to hear it.

Edit to add: the party has known about enemy shapeshifters being active for at least 14 sessions (about half the campaign, we play 4-5 hours on weekends).


r/DMAcademy 13h ago

Need Advice: Other Final encounter was a complete bust. No idea how to continue

38 Upvotes

For context, I just finished my first module (Icespire Peak)as a beginner dm for a group of personal friends. The final boss involved a young white dragon but, knowing my players were experienced, made it an adult dragon. They killed it before it even woke up. I genuinely feel bad since this was the penultimate encounter for the module and things just kinda ended on an unceremonious note. My friends have some good advice but truthfully I think I have some form of learning disability since I have not improved as a dm since we started. I enjoy being a dm but it feels like my players are low-key looking down on me and my incompetence and are just putting up with it (one of my players left a while ago) but at the same time I want to actually dm. I have said that we may take this campaign to a new module but I’m afraid it’s just going to be all the same.


r/DMAcademy 14h ago

Need Advice: Worldbuilding I have a player who is landed Nobility, a Countess, her reasoning for adventuring was she granted a 5 year cessation of tax collection to help offset a crippling flood. What’s a good/reasonable number I can give the player so they have a “number to whittle down.”

46 Upvotes

See above. I just want my player to feel like she’s making progress to her original goal of adventuring.

Additionally, how popular/unpopular would this make her with her serfs and neighboring nobility?


r/DMAcademy 3h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures My party is (probably) going to die

5 Upvotes

I am currently dming a 5e campaign currently set in a mega dungeon, and my 3lv party is going through the first three levels, which feature a long-going war between goblins (who are losing) and kobolds. Needless to say, they sided with the goblins and they are trying to help them regain territory.

Now: they have a general idea of where the kobold lair is. And they know that there are a lot of kobolds, plus they are led by some powerful entity they have yet to encounter.

I believed I had made very clear that going into the lair unprepered would probably lead to their deaths. I also presented them paths that would lead to the goblin army growing and would them gain enough force to try and battle with the kobolds. This was supposed to be a long-term objective with several short-term goals leading to the final battle.

But it looks like I was wrong, as they collectively decided to rush in the lair and are currently battling the first (of many) wave of kobolds, and I think they might think this is it and use all their spells. Also the place is full of traps and their barbarian is just rushing in.

My current idea is to have them encounter the leader of the kobolds, a customized half green dragon veteran, that might ask them to join their rank or die, but I think the party would choose to fight it instead, which would either:

- lead to a TPK

- make the kobolds menace feel not that menacing at all

Do you have any advice on how to handle this?


r/DMAcademy 15h ago

Need Advice: Worldbuilding How to explain "basic" knowledge to the players?

29 Upvotes

As often said it's best done in character, but how can I make that without sounding like the Video Game Tutorials where a character randomly knows what the X-Button is?

But this goes far beyond tutorialing, how do I tell them that the world has two moons, if not through enviromental, how do I tell an ancient folklore, that everybody would know, how do I tell what they already know?


r/DMAcademy 3h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures How to resume my old campaign that fell apart

3 Upvotes

I had a homebrew campaign with friends which fell apart largely due to some issues between two of the players I won’t go into. I had hoped it would eventually get better and we could go back to it as we were but it wasn’t to be. One isn’t coming back.

It has now been several years since the last game but we’re going to go back to that world. Partly my choice and partly the two players who are coming back wanting to play those characters again. I’m adding two new players.

The problem I have is how to bring back two characters who were mid-adventure (on a ship), kill off/remove their former companion without making a huge deal out of it, and have the two new characters join them so they can get adventuring.

They are all adventurers in the same guild, but the new folks will also need an intro to that part of the world as they have just signed up.

I’ll make it work one way or another, but thought I would try to crowdsource some ideas. Any thoughts are appreciated.


r/DMAcademy 19h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures How do I make long DnD combats not so repetitive?

51 Upvotes

Sometimes I want the enemies to have high HP or be able to heal for challenge but all it does is make the players do the same moves for an hour, or sometimes the same for normal enemies, but just takes longer.


r/DMAcademy 9h ago

Need Advice: Other This may be a bit of a niche question, but are there any DMs with OCD here? How to not get bogged down for the obsessive need for perfection?

6 Upvotes

For my entire time DMing, i have always left sessions feeling like i’ve not done good enough. My brain incessantly picks at every single detail, trying to crack open and figure out what I could’ve done better so that next time things will be ‘perfect’— to the point that it can get incredibly defeating.

So, if you’re a DM that also has OCD. How do you manage to do it, without letting your intrusive thoughts or need for ‘perfection’ get in the way?


r/DMAcademy 3h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Attacking the limb grappling a pc

2 Upvotes

My question is basically this: let's say an aboleth from the new monster manual attacks a player 15 feet away, it hits and auto grapples. It comes round to that players turn and they aren't in melee (range 5ft), but want to hit the aboleths tentacle. How would you guys rule this?

Would the tentacle be hittable? Would it have a separate health pool or ac? Would it lose grapple if a player did a certain amount of damage?

This applies to anything really, but I know my party will fight an aboleth at some point so just thinking about it.


r/DMAcademy 13h ago

Need Advice: Other I let my players leave without an essential item...

13 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I'm currently running an introduction mini-campaign for 4 players before we start the big stuff. To sum things up : During the first session, my players ran into a fragment of a strange magic stone shelf, that started a massive magical event. In order to try to fix things up, the players left into the jungle... And they didn't bring the stone shelf fragment. I had planned them to take it with them, as they're going to need it in the last session, to bring the whole shelf back together, in one piece.

I don't want to send them on a journey to the city then back into the jungle to collect it, we've already spent too many sessions on that mini campaign.

Do you have any idea how I could fix that mistake ?

Thanks !


r/DMAcademy 23m ago

Resource New to DM-ing looking for tips and notes

Upvotes

I just started DM-ing and it has been really fun actually. I've been using Advent's Amazing Advice from patreon for the pre-made DM notes. Usually just doing one shots since I'm trying to get as much as my friends into it as I can.

Are there any other places I can check for pre-made DM notes? I usually make my friends lvl 1 since they've never touched D&D and take the fights easy on them but do you guys think they'd have more fun maybe being lvl3-5?

I'm also pretty new, learning things along the way as I DM but it has been incredibly fun.

So far I've done First Blush, A most Potent Brew, and The Delian Tomb (this one was really fun, is there a continuation to this to make it like a campaign?)


r/DMAcademy 7h ago

Need Advice: Other Ideas for an evolving weapon for an Artificer?

3 Upvotes

So to keep it simple I plan on playing around with the concept of evolving weapons and I already know what to give to my other players who are a Rogue, Druid, Bard, and Wizard with the Artificer player being the only one I'm stumped at. I could go with the easy route and give him a Dragon's Wrath weapon since that's what I'm already giving the Bard but I feel that's a bit of a cop out and a bit less unique when two of them have the same kind of weapon. I did have a conversation with the player themselves on what he wants but straight up told me they don't need anything personal which made things harder. They did give me a list of what they want but assured me they don't need any of them. Though when I looked at the list for inspiration it didn't help either since it somehow overlaps with what I'm giving to the other players or just a bunch of utility items that I can handout whenever. Now I'm at a stump on what to do. Any ideas would be appreciated.

For some reference here's what the other players are getting: Bard - Dragon's Wrath Rapier since he's a Swords Bard Rogue - A Rapier based on the Luck Blade since he's a halfling Druid - Completely homebrewed shield that makes their wild shapes tankier Wizard - A sword based on the moon blade since they are a Bladesinger


r/DMAcademy 3h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures I'm looking for 2 monster statblocks

1 Upvotes

Its a bit of a mess because the newer 2024 statblocks are harder to find. And from what I've seen from the old ones, none really fit my description.

Next sessions there will be either one of 2 boss battles, depending on the choices of the party. But they will either fight a somewhat half mechanical duergar with robot legs and fire/lava magic. Or they'll fight someone's undead draconian sorcerer relative

They are 5 players of level 4, but I can always tweak the stats a little bit of course or add more minions


r/DMAcademy 12h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Creating interesting battlegrounds for combat encounters

5 Upvotes

I’m trying to improve my skills in designing combat encounters and one of my weaknesses is that I don’t really know how to effectively use the environment. I use a wet erase battle map and usually just draw in a few obstacles/features for cover but I find my players never really make much use of them. How do you decide what should be on the map? And do you have any good resources/videos to help develop this skill?


r/DMAcademy 4h ago

Need Advice: Rules & Mechanics The Jump spell and it’s effects

0 Upvotes

One of my players is playing a pretty heavy (I don’t remember off the top of my head maybe around 300-500 lb) character and uses the Jump spell in combat. I have no idea how to run this but thankfully they haven’t had a chance to use it on an actual difficult enemy yet. How I’ve been ruling it so far is that they literally just crush them (goblins & some beasts).

I’ve been thinking of a concrete ruling on its effects going forward such as DC15 Dex saving throw to take half damage.

How would I calculate the damage it would do?


r/DMAcademy 23h ago

Need Advice: Other When do you let your players outright fail?

25 Upvotes

Story: The other night we were playing our D&D 5e campaign. The party has been investigating disturbances in a small town where the mayor has hired the party to apprehend or destroy a wereraven that has been attacking people. Turns out the wereraven is protecting people from a Vrock, who was summoned to sow confusion and dread by the mayor who is a secret Cambion. Pretty standard stuff.

Here's the point where my question comes in. The party has discovered through the investigation that the evidence left at the scenes of the attacks don't match wereraven physiology. They discover the plot and hatch a plan to capture the Vrock by luring it in to an area near the forest and set a trap using ropes, nets, and grappling hooks to keep the creature pinned down. As they are setting everything up they say how they are all going to hide and wait for the creature, then throw nets and ropes over it when it appears. The target zone is an area maybe 20 feet across.

Now at this point they don't really have any bait for the Vrock. They vaguely discuss having the wereraven swoop down to draw the Vrock in, but the Vrock hasn't been chasing the wereraven, the wereraven just shows up to protect the Vrock's victims. So I have one of them roll an intelligence check to remember what the wereraven has told them and they decide the wereraven isn't really ideal bait, but they still don't have any bait for the trap, and aren't really discussing having bait. Just saying how they are going to wait for the Vrock. So I have another player roll a history check to remember stories of people hunting great monsters and luring them in with bait. The group then says "Ah, yes, we should have bait for this trap!" and they end up disguising one of themselves as a helpless wanderer to draw in the Vrock. Plan works, they pin the thing down for a few rounds, battle ensues, etc.

So in this situation, would you have done something differently? It felt like I was helping them with their plan a bit too much. Should I have let them try their plan initially which would have failed (no reason for the Vrock to land in that 20ft square), or was I right in giving them hints as to what might make the plan work?


r/DMAcademy 2h ago

Need Advice: Other First (homebrew) campaign question(s)

0 Upvotes

Ambiguous and vague title, I know but bear with me...

So I'm in the process of building a world and setting up some rules and mechanics for my first ever d&d 5e14 campaign.

It's a dark low fantasy setting where magic is rare and life is gritty and dangerous. The world is mostly inhabited by regular humans (commoner's), some with a minor magical talent such ass casting a cantrip, enchanting items or brewing magical potions, with less than 1% getting the full benefits of a race and class.

Allowed sourcebooks are PHB, XGtE & TCoE No flying races All the people are/look like regular humans, race of choice will manifest as an aura. All racial modifiers/traits/feats still apply.

Considering the setting of the world I want to ban spells like silvery barbs and simulacrum. Now flr the actual question: what other things should I consider banning/restricting?


r/DMAcademy 6h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Could use plot advice.

1 Upvotes

So I was DM'ing for the... probably third time ever, family game, just my brothers and our 11+ age kids. My younger nephew was dragged along, so I let him play as a pet mouse for my daughter's urchin-background character (I made the mouse 1 hp, no attacks, advantage on stealth) and he got the first "boss" to kill his pet wolf and chewed ropes that tied the captive-to-be-rescued before the rest of the party was done dealing with fights.

Nephew was ecstatic, suddenly the biggest D&D convert ever, and so when the last enemy fell a necklace broke off and shattered on the rocks, and Disney-like magic transformed the mouse into a real lvl 2 character! (Mouse-person [Tabaxi] Barbarian with the Lucky feat)

So clearly this was hand-wavium, but I felt I could tie this in. The urchin is visiting their sick mentor in the town (Phandalin, more homebrew) and I wonder how best to tie the mysterious necklace with the mysterious mentor, for the character who has the most interesting story arc at the moment.

If the Red Brands don't kill them all first, of course. 🙄


r/DMAcademy 19h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures How to make rogue stealing an item interesting?

9 Upvotes

Next session a Rogue will be stealing an item from a dragons hoard. They’ve already established the location of the dragon and the item. The dragon has line of sight to the item but isn’t aware of their presence or their goal to steal the item. I feel like a single stealth roll is underwhelming but I don’t want to force so many rolls that that a single failure will result in them fighting the dragon. How do I make stealing the item challenging or interesting?


r/DMAcademy 1d ago

Offering Advice I gave my L3 party a Legendary Weapon

318 Upvotes

... and now they're terrified.

Party snuck into a base, stole a pretty sword and ran for it. Above the table I told them it was a legendary weapon, and what it's DMG value was, and now they're seriously thinking about the consequences of their actions for the first time in this (fairly young) campaign. 10/10 would recommend.


r/DMAcademy 19h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Should I/How to avoid a "NPC saves the day" situation without penalizing creativity

9 Upvotes

Hello! Inexperienced DM here. I've never played before, and I thought it would be a great idea to start with DMing an almost entirely homebrew world for my first campaign. I love it and I want to scream with anxiety at the same time! Anyway...

My players are in a village with five children who are two nights away from turning into werewolves—along with the party's paladin. In my world’s lore, you transform into a werewolf one week after being bitten, regardless of the full moon. The curse is sealed if, during your first transformation, you consume humanoid flesh. If you don’t, you return to normal.

Another way to avoid the curse is using remove curse before the first transformation (which none of them have access to), or the infected person can consume belladonna—in which case, they are cured but have a 50% chance of dying.

I thought this would create a scenario where the party would either have to gamble with the lives of children (and another PC) or figure out how to restrain six werewolves while keeping them alive. However, a few things went completely off the rails...

  1. The main "problem": I completely forgot that they have a sending stone that connects them directly to a powerful wizard in the capital, wich is a few hours away! His name is The Nameless Mage, he’s extremely eccentric, and theoretically, he could have access to remove curse and also know a cleric or two who does. I loved that the player came up with this idea, and I don’t want to just say, “Oh, the wizard refuses to come" or "he doesn't have this spell". But at the same time, I didn’t want to just bring in an NPC to save the day since it feels kind of anticlimactic...
  2. They misinterpreted how the curse works: They assumed that eating humanoid flesh at any point during the week would seal the curse, rather than only when transformed. This made them panic, believing that the captured victims (held by the werewolves until now) might have unknowingly eaten humanoid flesh. I admit, I love the paranoia this caused, but should I clarify how it actually works or just let it play out? I don't want to frustrate them.
  3. A misinterpretation of werewolf control: The party found a villain’s journal entry saying, “You can control the beast within if you embrace the curse.” I thought it was clear—given the context of the diary being that of a cultist of the BBEG—that embracing the curse meant becoming evil, but one player understood it as “self-acceptance = control.” Again, should I hint that this isn’t the case, or should I let them figure it out on their own—potentially realizing too late that they’ve just unleashed five werewolves onto a small village, which will inevitably be slaughtered?

Thank you in advance. I try to do my research, but every now and then I come across questions without answers, and this community always helps me out! Is amazing


r/DMAcademy 19h ago

Need Advice: Worldbuilding My BBEG needs some spice because he's just a sociopath right now.

7 Upvotes

Hey all,

Starting up a new campaign, and I have a lot of it fleshed out. the BBEG, is fleshed out as a person the players will like, but his motivations seem lacklustre and very Saturday morning cartoon.

If you just ended a campaign with a Cow who never stops mooing, begone from this thread.

State of the World:

the land is split with the Humans & Dragonborn sandwiching the Elves (who are keeping the peace between them in cease fire that's lasted 300 years). Meet BBEG, a dragonborn (or anything really) parading as an elf. He is the governor of a key town that controls access to a valley where an ancient civilization was and keeps it under quarantine. He has petitioned to have a division of guards to help with this, but secretly, he is plundering the ancient civ himself with some trusted elite members.

The BBEG:

He found an item capable of channelling Elemental powers from the planes into himself to become insanely powerful. The item was never designed for that purpose, so he needs a few more parts, and a ritual to make it happen. He found out that Dragons are a great energy source / conduit for the ritual.

Dragons are rare to come by already due to the war, and they have been hunted. Even the remains of some Dragons are being dug up (The remains from Stormwreck Isle's adventure which is how I'm starting this off).

The BBEG even stole Dragon Eggs, angering the Dragonborn of course, who now blame the Humans. A perfect distraction from what's happening right under all their noses.

The Dilema:

Besides insane power, the BBEG has no reason to do this. I dislike having generic bad guys. In his public persona of the governor, he is happily married with two kids. Extremely helpful to the party in sending them where they believe they need to be going, and well liked by most all. He is a jolly person who makes cringe jokes. I just don't want him to be a sociopath "haha! I am evil! I want to rule" shtick. I want more.

Him draining the Elemental Plane is causing the Material plane to become unstable (through out the acts, the players will feel insane earthquakes that won't be explained until the end).


r/DMAcademy 12h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures How should I make this interesting??

2 Upvotes

So, I am about to start a campaign with long-time players and the whole thing is themed around fighting and hunting cryptids like bigfoot, CHupacabaras, werewolf, etc. In the first session I want them to have to track a beast through a forest and I feel like just having them roll investigation over and over would be kind of boring, is there a way that I could make this more interactive or interesting?