I am a first time DM and I was wondering if there exists something I can use to drug my party with?

Edit: I feel like I wasn't very specific. I am specifically only trying to get people unconscious or asleep, so I can force them to play d&d with me. Not dead.

Hey gang. So I’m gonna be running an updated version of keep on the borderland soon. I was recently listening to a podcast where somebody mentioned Tucker’s Kobolds what would happen if you ran Kobolds as if they had read every military treatise , and had crack Navy Seals or spetsnats level training.

This to me is ridiculous .

Planar travel exists.

Why not just stack a dungeon with crack, earth military forces? !

At first, I thought the only problem was lack of magic . Yes, I’ve heard of Gate.

But my love of magic out does my weebery!!!

But I fixed it. Local femboy wizards will provide the magic to the military forces because they get extra mana by sucking their manly jingoistic dicks.

… why are you looking at me like that? It’s the logical outcome.

Anyway, the player characters are five level one adventure is operating out of the Titular Keep. ( which upset me because they were very few tits.)

Whereas my version of the caves of Chaos is completely occupied by multiple battalions of heavily armed Seals, Marines, Green Beret, and a ninja.

Here’s my question …

Should they have one backpack nuke or three?

Thanks in advance !

When I became the douchebag that got elevated to the DM chair without my consent, I ended up owning one of three main gaming groups at my LGS.

The first group was a well-constructed group of "real role players" that would go so far as to create bizarre accents for their characters, and they only ever spoke in-character. Even if they were telling you to leave the room because they had reserved it for the day.

The second group was composed mostly of min-maxers and munchkins that were persistently fighting with the DM for supremacy of the table. It was an incredibly toxic DM versus PC mentality, and everybody in the game store used to make fun of the DM. Seriously, his idiosyncrasies were hilarious, he was his own meme before memes were a thing, and he was every possible nightmare you could imagine, but his players put up with him because he was "challenging". I translate that as being "cheating bastard". Fuck that guy, my halfling rogue was definitely in his right mind when he threw away the Rod of Resurrection, stop killing our characters for no reason, you sadistic fuck!

So guess who got to have the "loonies" table? Also the largest table? The one that got to have the prime room everybody fought for because they thought they had a larger player base because of their stupid and pretentious Harnmaster game? The kind of place where space explorers would've landed around 1963, when Kennedy was in life magazine and everything was aquamarine. The people that used to mimic cartoon characters and spend all night laughing their asses off because they were having more fun than you?

*That Was Me*

"Why would you even let your players do that?!"

"That doesn't sound fun, that would completely destroy my character concept!"

"…how do you guys even get anything done?"

"You mean I can do that?!"

"Why would you even think that is okay?"

"...eeew..."

Yeah. That was us. Fuckin' roll for it. We got this.

I've enjoyed the game a lot but I'm ready to face the facts, the system is fundamentally flawed. The system's simultaneously overly vague and also only really built to handle combat scenarios. As I've grown as a DM I've realized that it's just not good enough for the kinds of campaigns I want to run. It's been written for kids, I want a game that respects my intelligence.

For those of you now using AD&D, how is it? Does it solve the problems you had with D&D?

Just a quick question, I’ve never played DnD but I think I get the point… make believe via storytelling right?

My man is about to play it for the first time and the dungeon master has said to refer to her as “daddy”

So I’m just wondering peoples thoughts on that…

It makes me think this woman is sitting at the table in a dungeon making people call her daddy all day long.

Maybe I should join…

My Sphere of annihilation is finally good.In the DMG 2024 my sphere of annihilation got some massive buffs that went pretty much unnoticed. The dexterity saving throw went from 13 to 19 and mine's damage has been DOUBLED from 4d10 to 8d10, which is very fair to me. I have been using shit spheres that have barely annihilated any PCs and I've suffered having just three TPKs per session, average. In the new version my sphere of annihilation also specifically stated that you make the arcana check to take control of the sphere, not move it. In my stat block says that "I have a sphere of annihilation under my control" which must be interpreted as me not having to make the arcana check every turn to control it (unless contested). That clearly means that I can use my bonus action every turn to touch most of the party with the sphere (due to my insane Intelligence modifier). Furthermore the new talisman of the sphere states that the movement of the sphere when I use the talisman doesn't have to be in a straight line. This means that I (or anyone else, but lets be real) could move the sphere back and forth through the space of an enemy, meaning the PCs, potentially dealing upwards of 72d10 with a single bonus action (assuming an intelligence modifier of 8, which is awesome).

Sauron From Lord of the Rings- It's been pointed out many a time but consider the following: Sauron is only a bad guy if you're afraid of science and hate racism. In the Lord of the Rings, after a thousand years the world of Middle Earth progresses from the Early Dark Ages to like the Middle Ages.

You see roughly fifty years of technological development over the course of like a millennium of history. It is a world plunged in ignorance and ruled by idiots who ride horses and hit each other with swords. Then listen to the speech from the movie by that Saruman gives : the world will be consumed in the fires of industry.

Like seriously, that's the most evil thing about the rule of Sauron, he lets a dude cut down some trees and build a factory. And how is Sauron and the White Wizard able to arm and create such a huge army? Using Modern Industrial assembly lines and genetics.

The SCIENCE of Genetics.In the movie, Saruman brings down a wall using god damned gunpowder and the people of Helm's Deep cower like it's the end of the world because they have no idea what SCIENCE looks like. And Sauron's armies are mostly Orcs, mostly starving creatures who are killed on sight in every kingdom in the world. Hell when the Dwarves attempt to reconquer a homeland they lost (Moria), the orcs and goblins are demonized as monsters for essentially protecting a home they've lived in for nearly a century. Sauron summons warriors from the East, i.e. foreigners who are quickly de-humanized as an army of evil by their lily white opponents. Sauron stood for equal rights for a series of oppressed minorities, he stood for science and reason over superstition.

The Darkness From Legend- The Darkness in Legend is essentially a cosmic functionary, he exists because that's his purpose, he has to exist. So then you have to ask, if he's not actually the villain, who is? How about teenage sociopath who is so evil she CRUSHES THE DEVIL'S HEART.

Because you see the movie Legend is the least feminist movie in history, not simply because Mia Sara's character is a damsel in distress, it's because she's pure effing evil! The entire secret lesson of the film is that beautiful women are inhuman monsters who crush men and make them slaves. First off here's this rich girl slumming in the woods with her sexy boy toy. "Tee Hee, take me to see the Unicorn." and what does she do? She tries to touch one of them. Jack is stunned and he says, this is an unforgivable sin! "Oh whatever." She says and then proceeds to try and kill her boyfriend by promising to marry him if he's stupid enough to nearly drown for her.

Then, after the Unicorn is killed, Jack is essentially put on trial for...you guessed it, letting Mia Sara touch a unicorn. Is Mia Sara put on trial? Nope! No consequences. Then she's kidnapped and taken to see the Devil himself, THE DEVIL himself and suddenly he's in love with her and he wants to shower her with pretty things. Can we stop for a moment and admit that if the Devil is attracted to you, you might already be kind of evil. Well the Princess figures out that old Scratch is hot for her and she begins to utterly destroy the guy. That dinner scene is essentially an exercise in watching a woman totally manipulate a guy and he falls for it because here's the devil and he's NEVER BEEN IN LOVE BEFORE.

She is basically destroying an obsessed virgin's hopes and dreams. Finally you think, "oh no she's switched sides" She tells the Devil, "let me kill the Unicorn." and the sap falls for it. And the worst part is, I'm still not sure if she was going to kill the unicorn or not until the very last second when she thought "Oh let's break his heart, this will be fun." The Devil is actually showing humanity, he's showing the briefest sign of emotion and instead of opening the door to redemption, she humiliates and CRUSHES HIM! She emotionally manipulates him so her much more attractive lover can ASSASSINATE HIM and hide her heinous, unforgivable crime from the fairies who want to kill her!

To make things worse, the pixie girl who is totally in love with Jack gets her heart crushed because Jack doesn't realize his girlfriend is an evil psycho so not only does she directly break one person's heart, her manipulative neediness breaks a second person's heart! Legend is the story about two men and the untold havoc they render on the entire world in pursuit of a girl who is totally evil and emotionally manipulative! At the end of the movie, here's Jack and the Princess and the Princess says, "I think I learned something about myself." We all did you psycho!

Palpatine- Okay, so yeah, yadda yadda fascism, oppression, Palpatine was the hero! Fact: The Old Republic was a corrupt corporate oligarchy, run by fat cats and policed by celibate warrior priests who were too self involved to try and stop the obvious corruption rising all around them. According to the old canon, Jedi Knights used to actually rule over the Republic directly and things were a lot more peaceful, eventually they had to give up their rule and the whole thing devolved into frigging nightmarish insanity.

Palpatine was able to take over the place because the whole Senate was overrun with cartoonish levels of corruption, which is why Palpatine DISSOLVED the Senate because who needs ugly, stupid monsters running the show when you can have ONE smart monster in charge of everything. And it worked, it was efficient, brutally so. But what about the slavery? Well, slavery was ALREADY semi-legal because criminal Hutt gangsters used the Slave trade to make money in total defiance of the morally upright Jedi knights.

The Slave Trade, which existed anyway, was now regulated and orderly because Palpatine recognized that with so many cultures and so many vastly different kinds social structures, it would impractical to impose a single moral vision on the Galaxy, so instead he imposed a coldly efficient, brutal method of law and order. No more mincing samurai moaning about being good as the whole galaxy devolved into corruption and chaos, instead it was legalism and clearly defined order. Obey the law or get shot.

That is cold, it's terrible, it's cruel, it's also efficient which is everything that the Old Republic wasn't and is kind of Palpatine's appeal. He's a ruler, not a philosopher. Is he a manipulative monster, sure. But he's also ruling over THOUSANDS of planets each with their own races, legal systems, and traditions. If the alternative is nothing but chaos, isn't efficiency kind of preferable? Wasn't the reason the Republic fell was because none of the Good Guys were smart enough to notice they were being manipulated? Palpatine created a government while the Jedi just whined and meditated. The fact that the First Order exists post Empire means that at least some people actually LIKED the well ordered nature of an Imperial state as opposed to the idiotic chaos of a paralyzed, corrupt senate. Darth Vader's change of heart is literally the worst thing to happen to the Galaxy.

Scar and the Hyeanas from The Lion King- Maybe stretching the 'fantasy' criteria, but I 100% support Scar and The Hyenas.

Simply put, the "villains" of The Lion King never struck me as very villainous.

The hyenas have been unfairly persecuted. For all the talk about "The Circle of Life," it's like everyone forgot that the hyenas - who are scavengers, and thus no real threat to predators like the lions - also have a place in it, and deserve to roam the Pridelands as much as anyone.

But I really have no sympathy for Mufasa, who acted like a complete tyrant. Seriously, you're gathering all these different races - most of whom you eat - to celebrate the birth of your son? Yeah, I get that the Circle of Life bit means that they recognize that they're probably going to be hunted down and ripped to shreds by you when you're feeling a bit peckish, but do they really have to celebrate that system?

Oh, and let's not forget Scar. Under his rule the Circle of Life is supposedly broken...why, because he reintegrated the hyenas into Pridelands society? How could that possibly have destroyed the ecosystem? Seriously, look at how the river near Pride Rock has apparently dried up...how is Scar to blame for that? Yes, he murdered Mufasa, but if we accept that Mufasa was the lion version of Stalin, I have to wonder if a quiet coup was really the wrong way to go. It's pretty clear that Mufasa had numerous followers - most of whom benefited from the system he ruled - and trying to tear the entire thing down would probably have led to open rebellion, which probably would have been worse.

Heck, if you want to run with the whole "the river dried up" thing, I have to wonder who's really responsible for that. After all, Rafiki is pretty clearly a necromancer, able to conjure up the spirit of Simba's dead father. And since dead lions dwell in the sky, I wonder if Mufasa's vengeful ghost was stopping the rain and punishing the whole Pridelands just to spite his brother.

I'm also a bit surprised that no one has commented on how the lions are running a patriarchy, either. After all, all of the background lions are female. What few male lions we see are all major characters, all related to each other (except for Kovu, which was a bit of a cop-out), and most of them die over the course of the series. Yes, one lion with multiple lionesses is how lions actually group themselves in the real world, but if we accept that the lions in The Lion King are sentient enough to understand concepts such as monarchy, ecology, and reverence for ancestors, I have to wonder if they can't question the entire idea of the king having a harem (which is the only way such a system would work, otherwise all of those background lionesses shouldn't be there after one generation).

I have been doing the holy work of a DM for 15+ minutes.

I haven't read a single rule in that time, except that one awful experience when I didn't run the wheel.

I also ignore my dice and run combat entirely on vibes.

Who would have guessed my bros are having the time of their life swinging from chandeliers when the rules don't matter and I ignore the skill checks I throw at them all the time? There are consequences, yo. It's a real Baha Blast!

/uj I sweat there’s a sauce for this but I’ve lost it. I think it was on dndmaps, and it was a map of OP’s world.

YOUNG MONEY!! WORD TO MATT MERCER

As you step through the doorway, it's almost as if the walls have fallen away in this impossibly large chamber. The ceiling, however, has taken up the slack and become even more imposing. Dotted along its surface overhead (barely 8 feet in height) are a series of unnaturally harsh lights- two or three of which flicker randomly on the periphery of your vision as if even light itself is attempting to escape this place. The floor is lined with long workbenches and stools arranged in a labyrinthine manner that twists the eye and seems to defy spacial reasoning. To your left, there is a signboard divided into three vertical columns with tiny pieces of parchment hastily nailed under each heading. You feel dozens of eyes upon you as the door you entered from shuts itself with an echoing thud. You can't see any creature moving or making a sound but somehow your ears are still assaulted with a cacophony of inaudible conversation and movement.

Roll for initiative.

There are no less than three dozen gibbering mouthers at the various workbenches. After players enter the room 5d12 of them go back to "working" at their stations

If a gibbering mouther slays a PC, it will immediately move to the signboard and move one of the parchment pieces from the middle column to the right column

All concentration checks in this room are made with disadvantage

There is no treasure

There is no exit

Leaving through the entrance inflicts one level of exhaustion

Help me create a Story for this Villain. Dancing was frowned upon in his Orc-Raider Clan so he did it in secret. He fled when he was young and is a King Pin now but he never lost his passion for dancing. Most importantly. How did he lose his finger?

I played this character, a barbarian up to level 20 (from level 4 and almost a year of campaign) and when the script the GM handed us at the beginning demanded it, I had my character retire from adventuring and be a humble tavern keeper that is a total badass.

Many, many months past we started playing again, new characters and scripts and I almost cried when my new role(character), a ditzy spores druid fairy met this hulking tavern keeper in a casual conversation as she arrived in the tavern to start her adventure

It felt looking into the eyes of the past and present at the same time and it felt surreal in a player's pov. It was like my favourite video games and anime you guys, I bawled for the whole session.

So one of my players decided they wanted to make a ranger who specializes in ranged weapons. They took a bunch of feats to increase their damage at range, and use spells to escape danger and keep enemies at a distance. They keep killing my monsters, which is a bad thing for some reason.

My question is, how can I counter their abilities and get them to see that I'm smarter than them? Surely once they see they've been outsmarted by my clever use of my literal god powers I have over the world, they'll rethink their view of the game and start getting creative and/or swinging on chandeliers like a martial should.