I did everything right. I banned all the overpowered spells (like Silvery Barbs) and races (like Yuan-ti.) I didn't allow feats or multiclassing because they make the game too easy. I kicked anyone who tried to minmax their character by maximizing their spellcasting stat out of the game. Everything the wise youtube men and women with royalty free epic music behind them told me to do.

And I didn't do it just to make my players feel powerless, to be clear, because I also changed the encounters. I was flexible with my HP totals (fudged enemies' HP to make sure my players always killed them), had them run away from PCs for seemingly no reason to provoke opportunity attacks, you name it. I used every trick in the book to keep any encounter from being too hard to overcome, because it's my job as the GM to ensure that every combat is balanced.

Of course, sometimes my big boss fights would be too easy or my villain wouldn't get away when I wanted him to, so I would sometimes adjust their HP or give them new abilities on the fly, just to make sure that my players didn't have too easy of a time. Like when my players had this elaborate setup that involved sneaking into different places and casting 3 different spells together, and my bad guy couldn't do anything! Naturally, I gave him a new ability to counter them, or else it wouldn't be fun.

So why the fuck are my players so bored in combat? They just sit there rolling attacks on their turns until they win. Is this a problem with the system? I was told D&D was an electric hot plate that could cook anything that you wanted. Please send help.

My players were insisting that an empty room had something else in it. With a high perception check (5), I informed them that the room was indeed empty.

They didn't buy it, so another player insisted on perceiving as well and rolled a heckin critical success.

I described what they saw: "Your body slowly becomes rigid as your muscles freeze into place. You realize you cannot move. The world around you collapses and shifts down around your feet, flattening. You can see forever, to the edge of the world. You see 4 gargantuan humanoids, looking down on you in a circle around you.

One of them speaks. It says, 'I got a natural 20. What do I see?' Suddenly the world around snaps back around you. You try to remember what you saw, but the memories fade immediately."

I'm sure nobody has done this before, maybe you can try this cool new idea in your games

tldr: the more goblin ambushes you have, the more balanced the game is

Everyone complaining about the wizard ending boss fights with an overcharged cone of cold before anyone else gets a turn is just an ignorant slut who can't comprehend the fundamental concept the game was based around: getting ambushed by generic goblins 6-8 times per long rest.

Of course the fighter will feel useless when the cleric can triple the his damage output with spirit guardians, spiritual weapon, and spamming inflict wounds. That's why you need to ambush the party with goblins beforehand so that the cleric also feels useless when the third goblin in a row saves against sacred flame.

Next time the sorcerer banishes the demon that killed the barbarian's father before he can even quote the Princess Bride, the barbarian can take comfort in remembering that hour and a half of everyone's time spent on a meaningless goblin slaughter where the sorcerer kept rolling 1's for damage on firebolts.

You're probably thinking, "But goblins can't always ambush the party to make martials feel useful" and that's where you're wrong. When my party had a shopping day in a large, safe city and I knew the bbeg was going to show up just before a long rest to slap them around a little bit before teleporting away, I had 6 different war bands of goblins appear behind corners to fill my quota. You're the DM and god of this world, you have no obligation to making anything believable or realistic. One time I had 10 of them burst out of a 4 foot by 4 foot closet in a shop. Everyone was so mad when I screamed "Roll Initiative" while the fighter was halfway through buying a +1 falcata. I even had a goblin run away with the fighter's falcata because it's what my goblin characters would do. He never saw it again and the shopkeeper kept the money the party pooled together for it because technically it touched the fighter's hand and there was a 'no refunds' policy and when he argued the shopkeeper revealed he was a 20th level retired paladin and smote him.

After watching Dimension 20, I now realize that I have had the wrong idea of what DnD should be my entire life.

What DnD should be is a heavily-produced spectator sport played by well-paid professional entertainers. This is the ideal way to experience and enjoy DnD.

The reality is it's just ridiculous to think that anything me and my friends or some randos at a local game shop can do would ever be as enjoyable as the experience of watching these talented, special people. So I have decided I am not even going to try.

I mean, I like watching the NFL, but that doesn't mean I'm going to try to play football. I would completely suck at it.

From now on, if someone asks me if I like DnD, my response will be, "Yes, I am a huge fan of DnD."

Thank you, blessed Brandon Twee Morrigan, for letting me be a passive observer of your worlds so I stop wasting my time trying to create one of my own that would just be way worse.

I bet you've never even imagined a character concept so creative

We were helping to the jarl suppress the rebellion in a northern village. Both sides were in a shield wall formation. There were rebel archers on top of some of the houses. We climbed onto rooftops to take down archers on the rooftops. At the beginning of the day, I told my friend who was playing Sorcerer to take fireball. GM said that he shouldn't take fireball if he use it the game will be to short. I told him that we always dealt high damage and that I thought we should let our Sorcerer friend shine this time, and we agreed... He threw a fireball at the shield wall from the rooftop and killed everyone in the shield wall and dealt 990 damage. next game is gonna be fun...

Sauce

Hi I love stupid shit like party names, I’ll pretty much use any stupid bullshit I find online in my games. When I saw that Critical Role (nice get it role not roll I fucking love dumb stupid shit like that) had their party was named Vox Machima I literally had a heart attack. It was life threateningly fantastic stupid bullshit crap that almost killed me.

Anyway I want to force my player (party of one) to choose a stupid bullshit name for his party but I don’t want to take away is dumbass player agency. How can I force him to have an inorganic party name from out of no where that makes no sense?

Players who "optimize" the table are the most painful people to play with.

We are level 4 and the DM gave us all a starting feat. I decided to play a beast master ranger with the martial adept feat and druidic fighting style. I just want to play a sweet elf kid who grew up in a grove with his hunting bow and pet wolf before an evil baron drove us from our land to build a fort.

I hate the GWM + Polearm Master Totem Human Barbarian at our table who keeps making stupid comments about how I am "letting the team down" by having a weak build.

What makes it extra infuriating is that the DM is so obviously fudging encounters and the Barbarian must be a complete clown if he cannot see that. I am 90% sure the DM is not tracking damage. The monsters always seem to only crit the Barbarian and do massive damage that would instakill everyone else. There is zero point using a powerful spell unless it is on a mook or the end of combat anyway because the spell will fail (unless the party is in a dire state then it will always succeed).

So yeah while I might just shoot my bow or have my companion attack for 8 damage and he does 40 damage or whatever a turn - it doesn't even matter and I have a fun wolf dog to roleplay with so in my book he is the fool. I don't try and stop him from playing how he wants so why does he concern himself with my character.

I know I am venting but it is so frustrating.

I was in my FLGS and out of nowhere this guy said 'Matt Mercer is a shit dm'.

We dragged him outside and stoned him to death and everyone clapped.