"I got a 3 on my Insight check" "You are convinced the Dwarf is telling the truth." "Hey guys, I believe this dwarf is lying, I rolled super bad on my insight and am convinced he's telling the truth."
Yeah, this is why I have considered buffing up the difficulty of the insight checks on successive rolls by other players and making it clear that a nat 20 is not an auto-success on a check. A lot of players metagame the shit out of it otherwise because making these checks costs nothing.
That's why Insight rolls are behind the screen. Players have to take my words at face value and if they chose to ignore them, they aren't doing purely based off roll result, but as an explicit decision based off of what they already know.
@@U.Inferno If the player is demanding the Insight roll, then is O P E N (as a DM you can make characters Insight rolls if you want but that's a different story). The point is, Insight is not lie detection, it works to know what type of character you are talking to (their ideals, their alignment, flaws, etc) to make informed choices.
I really dislike it when DMs think failed insight = you believe them 100%, no. It just means you can't confirm their lies. I can still think they're sus whilst not bring able to confirm it smh.
"You're about to die" "INSIGHT" "Upon closer examination, using your unmatched skills of perception and deduction you figure out that... yeah, you really are about to die"
Gonna be real with you, if a fire elemental was next to 935 gallons of water in the presence of a spellcaster, it was kinda asking to die in a single round.
To be honest you can remove the "in the presence of a spellcaster" bit. Knockback them into that shit, or break whatever barrier is holding it in place, or any number of things. A smart fire elemental ain't gonna be caught *dead* around any noticeable quantity of water.
@@realdragon If i'm was the dm, probably I agree with the mathematical player. It´s so fuck funny and crative some giga power elemental just insta kill because he take a shower.
@@heltonsouza7142 From physical perspective how hot really is fire elemental? It can be so hot water makes it even worse like you won't extinguish napalm with water
"I cast magic miss-" "Counter spell" "That spells so broken" Me internally: "counterspell on a magic missle? What about the whole 2nd half of Shield 😭"
@@muskdeer it is viable I suppose yeah. I end up playing martials a lot or if not that usually a high con gish with warcaster so I suppose I hadn't thought about that
@@Creature8087 also technically if you go by mister Crawford, improved invocation on the invocation wizard technically applies to magic missile, so you can do quite a bit of damage with it for guys that get hurt by it.
@@blue-eyeswhitekirbo2543 are you referring to the evocation wizard's "empowered evocation"? +int to 1 damage roll of a wizard evocation spell. Correct at first level its 3d4+3+6 force at a 10th level evocation wizard. My argument was mostly about using a 1st level spell to defend yourself rather than a 3rd level counterspell without thinking of the possibility of hitting multiple targets with it because usually the damage is paltry and few people in my playgroup take or use magic missile. I know it can be good
@@Creature8087 fair, I’ve been trying to find ways to make magic missile better so that’s my bad. Though as a side shield would just be a better idea purely because not only does it block magic missile as you said, but five more ac for the rest of the round is probably just objectively better than blocking a single spell.
"You can't use Dimension Door to save your friends." "Why?!?" "Because you still have that guard you kidnapped at the start of the game in your burlap sack." "Damn. Sorry guys." "..you COULD just let the guard finally-" "No no, we understand. We'll fight the Balor, you go through the door." "..." "Also, Counter Spell."
"Wait. The start of the game? That was about a month ago in-game by now, right?" "Um...yes?" "So the guard would teeechnically be an object by now, right?" "..." "Because of the lack of air. Inside the sack." "..." "Which means we're good to go on the dimension door." "I hate you all."
DM: "As you descend deeper into the dungeon, you are soon covered in complete darkness. The hollow echo of your footsteps..." Players: "Darkvision!" - "I have darkvision, what do I see?" - "I wanna activate my darkvision!"
_The world around you is a mess of gray shapes which, devoid of clear shadings, seems eerie and almost two-dimensional, as the shapes around you blur into a dark void beyond your range of vision.._
Your vision is not that much better, as the dim lighting you see offers little comfort from the growling sounds you hear from just beyond where your darkvision ends. "I cast daylight"
@@nobody5333 Its kind of amuzing to play DnD with what would normaly be a completly generic medieval fantasy story and wait to see how many ways the players use their ingenuity to completly break the campaign
@@superwarriorcool "A legendary creature can take a certain number of special actions --called legendary actions-- outside its turn. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature's turn." Its outside its own turn, at the end of another turn, be in minion or pc. It still cannot interrupt a turn like a reaction does, since it has to take place after the effects of a creautres turn.
My favorite conversation as a DM so far, Me: You vanquish the party of bandits and take their last pouch of gold Player: Can I check if they dropped any cool loot Me: You have already taken everything of value from them [3 minutes pass] Player: Can I check if maybe they dropped like a sword or something Me: They have nothing Player: Armor Me: Nope Player: can I at least roll perception Me: *Sigh* sure Player: NAT 20!!! Me: It is made astonishingly obviously to you that the party carried nothing of value that you hadn't already taken Player: But I rolled a nat 20 Me: If you stand in a field with a clear sky and you roll nat 20 perception, it just means that you are now absolutely sure there are no clouds in the sky Player: Maybe a cloud could appear in the sky at that exact moment Me: *SIgh* no no no Player: Can I check if they dropped any gold?
@@legendgames128Many new-ish players (or immature ones) get the feeling that, because they're helping to create the story, rolling well means the thing they want to happen always happens.
prime example of when to give players breadcrumbs. just give em something shitty to satifsy them or else they might de-rail the plot out of pure spite lmao
@@memes4life990 When I run my games I typically make "Combat" and "Roleplay" logic different. In combat a dagger may only deal 1d4 damage, but in a roleplay scene where someone is holding it to your neck that is going to be a lot more deadly. Same thing goes for if the players want to knock someone out-- if they sneak up on someone outside of combat and whack them over the head, I'm not going to go off of getting them to 0 HP to knock them out, that hit is putting the enemy on the ground. But, an unarmed attack in combat is obviously going to be not as effective.
@@CamoCraft109 if anything it sounds like you've made the game worse by makeing the rules inconsistent. If it's fun for you and your players go for it cause that's what's dnd is about but I much rather have the rules be more consistent and fair.
"Okay folks, you have just discovered the secret meaning to those ancient oracle visions you have been trying to solve for twenty sessions thanks to your friend's great intelligence roll-" Player: UH ACTUALLY, I want to keep it secret... "Why?" Player: I'm being mysterious.
Oh God, I hate that so much. Like I have nothing wrong with players keeping in game info secret to a certain degree, like Maybe they found a npc that used to he thier ex lover but now they fight for the bbeg, so they hide it away from the rest of the party. But no, it's always the main thing to droves the story those type of players keep secret
I've been playing with the same group for 2 years, and one of my Players met an NPC during the events of the game, secretly married her and she's pregnant. I don't get what fun he gets out of asking me every week via DM mid-game if anything happened to his wife, and me going, "No man, what would you do otherwise? Have your character leave the Party to help her and not ask for help? Then what would happen? You just wouldn't play?"
3:37 has two possible interpretations: 1) "I can't believe my players are so paranoid that they can't just follow simple instructions!" 2) "I can't believe my players are so paranoid that they figured out my adventure immediately!!"
That fire elemental one physically hurt. Not only was the DM correct that IN REAL LIFE 5 cubic feet of water is 37 gallons, the player commented at the end saying the DM was wrong and snarkily saying the water was “lighter”……. A GALLON IS A MEASURE OF VOLUME NOT WEIGHT!!!! I’m an engineer and the DM for my group so I’ve absolutely had this argument before. It just was too real to see it here. 😂
Okay, but if the player had been _correct_ that it's 935 gallons, which the DM was assuming he was, then the DM should have honoured that at least once.
It's the difference between 5 cubic feet and a 5 foot cube. Shape Water/Control Water specifically call out that they use a cube with a side of 5 and 100 feet respectively. The DM was correct about 5 cubic feet being 37 gallons but the player was correct that it should be moving much more water, assuming the water is available.
Sorry I'm completely lost here, what's the difference between 5 cubic feet and 5x5x5 cube of water? a 5x5x5 cube of water should weigh 935 gallons right, where is the 37 coming from?
@@phalamy9180 The tale of 'Shit-in-a-bucket Johnson', a Warforged character I made on a dare for a campaign who is one of the most compelling characters in our campaign. One of my favorite characters I've made, if not my actual favorite, to date.
What I thought was going to happen with the dagger scene: "He holds the dagger against your throat, ready to cut you open." "HAH! Go ahead! I have, like, 90 hit points! How much damage is that rinky-dinky dagger gonna do? 4? 6? 10, tops? Heh heh, I'm gonna kick his ass."
@@LtFoeHammer I was thinking the same, just recently found a copy of ADnD moldvay (think that's the name) wanting to role up a classic character for a classic adventure
Could always run your campaign as if HP is the amount of damage something can take before being dealt a lethal blow, which I believe XPtoLevel3 has suggested before on this channel Having more HP doesn't mean you'd survive getting your throat slit, but also a frail wizard could die from getting hurt less than a raging Barbarian. It makes the HP system actually make sense if you don't think of HP as the videogame version of HP. I also only have HP really be "relevant" during combat, when people are actually fighting. Doesn't matter how beefy you are, you get stabbed in the gut walking down the street and you probably bleed out and die like anyone else would. I mean yeah, there's some videogame-logic throughout tabletop combat systems, but you don't *have* to make HP a constant "I can get stabbed by a knife 15 times before dying" outside of combat. Knife to the throat is gonna bypass your armor and kill you whether you have 30hp or 300, assuming you're a humanoid player race. If a knife could never kill anyone with more than like 5hp, assassins kinda wouldn't exist in most DnD universes.
@@LtFoeHammer Yep. My group I’m in now is playing pathfinder and I’m glad that we have coup de grace. I partially think it is a bit to powerful, mostly because of the players can do it then so can the bad guys, and logically at least one bad guy would eventually get a coup de grace against a player, and it’s kind of boring to say “ hey, Tim, your dead now, sorry.” I don’t know the happy medium between not having it at all(5e) and having something that is effectively an instant kill(like pathfinder).
@@stravask9835 "assassins kinda wouldn't exist on most dnd universes" aren't assassin rogues literally a thing?? and aren't they incredible single target damage dealers in the game when it comes to ambushing?? can't they literally one shot most low-mid level PCs?? or like just make the enemy a high level swashbuckler rogue, easy peasy :)
One time I off-hand said that two different barrels seemed to have different kinds of ale. The party proceeded to spend 30 minutes investigating these barrels, proclaiming "THE ALE IS DIFFERENT!".
"Well. We've spent four in universe hours exhaustively studying and analyzing every detail about the ales." "And?" "It turns out one is strawberry and the other is blueberry." "Which the BARTENDER would have TOLD YOU if you ASKED HIM!"
Law of Conservation of Detail. If a detail is stated, it will be assumed that it's important, so you should only state details that really are important. If it's not important that the ale is different, then there's no reason to tell the players it is. Also, it's okay to let the players know that the thing you told them wasn't supposed to be a clue. 30 minutes is too long to let them waste their time on something that doesn't matter at all.
@@NoriMori1992 In fact, I'd say if your players start spending a lot of time investigating something that won't yield anything, just make it yield something. Improvise. Doesn't need to be something big, just let them get a little reward and have them move on with their day. In moderation, try to make every action have an effect. *Oh no, I didn't think they were gonna care about the ale being different. Whatever, let's improvise.* "After investigating the ale, you find that the ale in one of the barrels isn't really... Drinkable anymore." "We tell the bartender." "The bartender checks the ale and sees you are correct. He thanks you and gives each of you 5 gold pieces before heading off with the barrel." ":)" ":)"
@@hydrusalphy4654 So, party does nothing of importance and is essentially wasting their time, and because of that DM have to somehow twist reality so the party can still gets rewarded for it... that just sounds like a participation trophy ^^
god the insight check one is so relatable. My players found a ring that one of the NPCs had been looking for, and after giving it back to her I simply described that she goes to sit with her friends at a table and that they all seem "happy that she got her ring back". Cue multiple players insight checking whether or not her friends are actually happy for her and don't just "seem" to be.
Man, that bit where the player just rolled a dice for persuasion even after the DM says "I'm not gonna let you roll for that." really made me twitch. If there's one thing you shouldn't do..it's decide to roll dice after the dm tells you no you can't, and expect something (good) to come out of it.
A lot of it comes from the nat 20 house rule on skill checks. A lot of people expect to be able to do stupid things just because of it. I actively have to let people know that nat 20 skill checks mean nothing for checks at my table.
"It's a natural 20." "Okay, so that's not an automatic success, the pit fiends laugh, and decide make a spit roast out of you." "Uhhhh..." "Fortunately for you, your death is quick as they hoist you over the fire." "But..." "Here's a new character sheet."
I take nat 20s as "if it's possible to succeed, then you succeed" at skill checks. So if a player says they're going to hit on the bartender and they roll a nat 20, the result is going to be a slap in the face, because she had absolutely zero interest in the player character, so they literally couldn't succeed if they tried. I won't ask my players to roll if something is impossible, I'll just tell them after they say what they want to try. If they go ahead and try something I already told them was impossible, though, the result is always failure.
@@politenonparticipant4859 I'm a big proponent of 20 on skills checks is just a great roll. If a barbarian tries to pick a master level lock with a DC 30 if it ain't a 30 it ain't opening.
Reasons I find roleplaying games annoying, I can tell something's up but my character doesn't. My brain be like how to avoid this problem without my character getting fked over.
Because of that I make the results of insight in my tables be extremely general and vague, as a DM I have to gave my characters a right insight about the character not an answer like: "he's lying, and you are sure about that", I prefer to say like: "The ways that the man talks, and profuse his words are unclear, you can't tell that he's lying but, he is definitely out of his normal being, something is clearly worrying him."
@@gamerdweebentertainment1616 I mean wether your character believes them or not is entirely up to you. You could decide you simply don't trust him, that's a roleplay choice, unless your DM is really strict about that. Insight checks are more of a "get a read on him" like noticing something being off.
@@gamerdweebentertainment1616 Not to sound gatekeep-y, but you aren't in the right mindset. Getting "fked over" is an _intended_ and _integral_ part of roleplaying. Failure is equally as compelling as success in a good roleplaying game, because the point of the game is to _tell a story,_ not _win a game._ (part of this is also contingent on having a DM that understands this too, and can work in a PK or TPK into the story)
@@gamerdweebentertainment1616 Well, just let your character get fked over. There's generally no issue with that, it can make for an interesting story. And that's just how the game works in the end. Roll bad on your dex check, get fked by falling off of something, roll bad on your insight check, get fked by a lying NPC
As soon as I heard that this campaign revolved around a murder and the sole suspect wasn't talking I was like "alright in about 10 seconds the cleric is going to cast Zone of Truth" and sure enough lol
If I was running that, he still wouldn't talk. Zone of truth doesn't force you to talk. Neither does charm person. No one would incriminate themselves when talking to a "friendly acquaintance".
@@otsokarhu9695 The problem is that the party could simply ask Yes-or-No questions with one good and one bad option. Like "Did you commit the murder?" Any innocent person would immediately say "No!", while the guilty person only has the option to shut up. The spell makes most interrogations completely obsolete
@@MayHugger and that's why mysteries that include suspects aren't a good fit for games like that. The word "suspect" doesn't really mean anything when a king executes anyone. If the setting destroys the premise, the game has been planned badly.
Recently ran a campaign where the party decided to sneak into a shady village leader's study room. Which was perfect as I had a bunch of clues inside for them to find. Then when I gave them the opportunity by making the leader leave the room and go out, they spent the entire night following him instead
Sometimes I allow players to make an intelligence or wisdom check as an excuse to tell them their plan is dumb and they're missing the important clue. "Each of you make a wisdom check", any that rolls say 15 or higher gets "it occurs to you that the leader's house is empty and you can search it undisturbed".
@@Mastikator That sounds horrible tbh. I never wanna play my PC's that is their character they get to choose without a voice telling them its wrong or right. I just play the consequences of their actions.
The bit with the water reminds me of an interaction I had with one of my players. He sometimes works with small quantities of explosive chemicals and is majoring in chemical engineering. I think you see where this is going. Me, the DM: You open one of the crates on the factory floor and find that it is loaded with gunpowder. Player: I keep opening the crates. How many have gunpowder? Me: Five crates I guess. Player: And how large are these crates? Me: Each one is... 2ft on each side. Sure. Player: Is it black powder or the newer synthetic stuff? Me: *Squints Suspiciously* Me: Black powder. Player: Aww... so it's gonna have a bit less yield. Player: *Does some calculations* Player: That would be equal to about 200 tons of TNT, which should be enough to level this entire dungeon! Those warforged that are following us are gonna be toast! >:D Me: No, you may not one-shot the villain of this arc with the gunpowder. (I did let them do a lot of damage in a large radius though)
I think he is a bad chemical engineer 😅 or tried to take advantage of you not knowing the stuff. If you ignite black powder without storing it in a suitable container to build up pressure (like the barrel of a gun) it will just burn and stink. The container needs to be airtight - or tight enought that the gases produced by burning the powder build up faster than they can escape through any gaps. While the amount of black powder you gave him was significant, it does not necessarily mean it can make a big boom without additional preparations
@@Yarradras Depending on the materials of the crates, the size of the area, and the materials of the building, also if he spread some of the powder in a line connecting them as well as depending on how ventilated the area is it actually makes sense that it could demolish the area potentially one-shoting the enemies. Take Flour for example, if you packed 200 pounds of flour in a structure made of wood or lower quality stones or other lower quality materials that was 25 ft by 25 ft by 10 ft or smaller then lit the flour it could seriously weaken or possibly even fully destroy the structure. Gunpowder is even more destructive in the same situation.
This hit home! Especially the shape water part. Players only argue for realism when it benefits them. Guilty of this too sadly. Edit: didn't think this would get so much attention. When I said realism I ment the RAW vs realism argument. Dm vs player or player vs dm or player vs player. Players of dnd, dm included. I hate rule arguments and just try to play the game with my friends but this happens alot. Edit 2: both sides should be having fun is all I'm saying. Fun first.
@@zstrebler1234 5 cubic feet is different than a 5ft cube. 5 cubic feet would be a cube 1.7ft on each side. So a 5ft cube is 125 cubic feet. Shape water says you can move a 5ft cube of water 5ft. Is it insanely powerful for a cantrip? Yes, however it only works against fire elementals and they must be within 5ft. But think how awesome it is to cast a lv 4 spell and do 7.4 million damage. Control water.
4:20 "Uhm, ok, well Shape Water moves the water up to 5 ft to one direction so you either "splash it" from afar for 36 damage or if you want to get 935 damage you have to set it up perfectly and literally drown the elemental inside the water cube. All happy?"
@@jaimeruiz7837 I feel like your party doing 500 perception checks trying to pick up some clue of what they are suppose to do, is a clear sign that the dm has not given proper visibility to what the parties should be paying attention to.
@@captiantoastytm6436 hahah no dude, the DM describes the fckng writing on trimmings, etc. They just spend hours trying to look through it all to make sure they dont miss anything haha
If players are insighting too often, they probably feel like they get betrayed by most NPCs. So they're not checking to see if the person will betray them, but if they can catch the person before the betrayal happens
Character: I wish we could fly to the Dwarf city on a dragon, it'd be way faster NPC: Yeah, but they can be inconsistent. It'd be a longer journey. Player: INSIGHT!!! Nat 8, no mod DM: (dying inside) You think he's joking....
I've found this behavior from the players turns into a self fulfilling prophecy, their actions inevitably turn NPCs against them. Reputation flags do help remind them that their choices have consequences
Yeah imo usually players doing checks too often is actually a DM issue, with the players having suffered a few too many gotcha traps because they didn't do the check before.
My friend, as a player in my game, made an entire family tree for her bard that spanned HUNDREDS OF YEARS and wrote short stories for each character in the family tree because "there were a few things I needed to explain for this one small insignificant detail to make sense"
It's good to know the experience is the same, even from diferent countries. Players doing insight all the time, using math, getting mad at the DM for using the same kind spells they use. Boy, it hit's hard, exactly like my players from Brazil. Cheers!
My players: So the monster gets disadvantage on its saving throw against the trap because it didn't know it was there, right? *high fives all around* Me: Yeah! And when you find a trap you'll get disadvantage too! Players: Um, actually... it's fine if the monster doesn't get disadvantage
@@VeryProfessionalGamer I know. My players wanted monsters to have disadvantage for unknown traps, until I told them the same would apply to them if I ruled that way
Reminds me when I had a magical cat made of soot and smoke to be my players “info dump/ask all” NPC and they literally didn’t trust her… because she talked. Not because she was a cat made of soot and smoke. Because she talked. They’d ask her a question then roll insight for every single one of her answers, just baffling!
"Magically lighter water?" ... If I don't say yes, then I get to use the water against the players, if I do say yes then I can abuse this back when they get the item of fire elemental summoning I will give them. This is a win win!
Wait… what does the weight have to do with how many gallons of water are in 5 cubic feet. It’s 37.4 gallons. That’s 299.2 lbs. where is this guy getting 935 from? That’s 150 cubic feet of water.
@@Indian0Lore I thought that too since gallons are a unit of volume. There exists no world where 5 cubic feet of water is not anything other than 37 gallons. The density can change, the atomic weight can change, anything else changes but if it's still the same volume then it will always be... The same volume even after a dimensional analysis.
"That seems overpowered!" "It's not. It's math. It's realistic!" Oh boy, do I have a story along these lines in our Curse of Strahd game. During a particularly hard fight, my Artificer Artillerist asked if she could find a rock on the ground that weighed 120 lbs. The DM let me roll an investigation check and find one. I cast Reduce on it, dropping it down to 15 lbs. A few turns later, I used a 3rd level spell slot to Catapult it at the miniboss. As soon as the rock was flying, I dropped concentration on Reduce, bringing the rock back up to 120 lbs. Now, one of the ways you can interpret the Catapult spell is that for every five pounds the object weighs, it does an extra 1d8 damage. With the initial 2d8 from casting, I argued that the (now originally sized) rock would do 26d8 damage if it hit. The target rolled a 19 on its dex save so he avoided it, but the rock went on to completely demolish and collapse the back of the cave we were fighting in. The attack may have whiffed, but the DM gave me an auto success on my next intimidation check! I promised I would use that move sparingly and check with him first before I did it, and it's a huge risk/reward payoff due to needing to use both a 2nd and a 3rd level slot - something Artificers don't get many of. (I know that RAW this shouldn't work as it states that the damage depends on what level you cast Catapult, but the DM thought it was awesome so let me get away with it.)
It would be interesting to see the math on how physics affects the velocity of an object that suddenly increases 8x in weight. My gut reaction is that, depending on the direction of travel (ie, not down/with gravity), the object would essentially grind to a halt VERY quickly...
To be honest, In this scenario I could've ruled out that the moment the rock turned back to its normal size, the velocity also should also dropped since it became a much heavier object. Maybe giving some other bonus to the party for the creativity (an advantage on the next attack due to the target being surprised or something).
@@Aidan8et It's very simple, just basic conservation of momentum. Mass increases by a factor of eight? Velocity decreases by the same factor. It wouldn't stop, but it'd be moving at one eighth the speed. (In an ideal situation, of course. Drag and such make it more complicated, but it's still roughly about the same.)
I've only played for a short while, and I really do prefer role-playing out situations, and describing things. The part where everyone said "Insight!" reminded me of my current group. I know it's a game and it's not necessarily unlikely their characters would do that, but I since the start of my current campaign, been really trying to justify all my actions, and not spam anything. Everyone plays they way they want, but I find role-playing, esp in D&D, way more fun than just playing it like a turn-based video game w/ little-to-no communication.
Technically, according to the math, a Hill Giant could spike a human sized person into the ground at around 60 mph because of their rock throw attack. Which would be the same force as falling from 120 ft, aka the damage for it would be 12d6. Math and D&D just doesn't really work together... though it is really fun to figure out all the math and physics
Had/have a player who took the Dust of Dryness item and ran with it. He reasoned that using the item to make a bunch of water pellets would give him essentially what was a water based fireball because the amount of water shooting out of such a tiny space should, realistically, explode with a bunch of force. At first I allowed it when he sprang it on me without clearing it with me to see if it actually worked like that and we were in the middle of a session. I eventually ruled that it did a bit of damage, forced a Dex save, and any failures caused enemies to be move backwards a bit. Near the end of the campaign, he wanted to use the pellets as improvised weapons. Since I already ruled that they did essentially fireball damage and provided a knock back, I chose to treat them like the Necklace of Fireballs item. Sure, maybe you can throw the pellet and get a d4 of damage out of it on top of exploding like a fireball, but he wanted it to be a full attack so that he could throw one pellet per attack, essentially trying to get multiple water based fireballs as a monk in a single turn. I told him they wouldn't work like that, even with him having proficiency with improvised weapons, and he then asked if he could just dump all of his pellets on one group of enemies, effectively using up the rest of the item. I said yes, we moved on, and have now decided that no, math really does not belong in DnD, at least not when trying to make crazy calculations and turning simple magic items into powerful ones because it's "realistic."
@@bloodyhell8201 Ok, Pulp Cthulhu is an addition/alteration to 7e Call of Cthulhu where you get double the hit points, some unique uses of luck like healing, reducing sanity loss and coming back to life/avoiding death in some cool Indiana Jones Fridge moment sort of way. as well as getting Pulp Talents, which are unique abilities like being lucky to gain luck back faster, resiliant to spend luck on a 1 to 1 basis to stop sanity loss or having a psychic power or something. beyond this and the existance of mythos stuff it is the real world and you can use real maths and science consistantly. if you want to make poison, mustard gas or a bomb, you can, if you want to run the big bad over with your car or inject a guy with air, you can. alternatively you could use the BRP system, which it is based off of to do your own fantassy adventures, but the general ruleset is great.
I mean, if a Giant gets a hold of you and manages to lift you up and spike you...that sounds like a lot of damage, for sure. I have a character who is a Goliath Bearbarian 6 / Kensei 5, with the (now defunct, I know) Brawny feat, for a whopping 2400 carrying capacity at 11th level and 20 Str. He has Improvised Weapons as his Kensei weapons specifically so he can get the maximum possible damage when whacking someone with a tree, wheelbarrow, or whatever else he can get his hands on, including other people, or just yeeting people into other enemies/surfaces. Also +13 to Athletics. It's kind of ridiculous, and requires the DM to be lenient in allowing extra damage with improvised weapons, which is a possibility provided in the books, but it's ultimately pretty silly, and only used for our downtime Fight Club sessions, mostly. Still, heaps and heaps of fun.
The best part about the elemental scene is you _know_ the player making the "it's realistic" argument for a one-shot against the fire elemental would simultaneously be the first to complain about Variant Encumbrance or something happening to _them_ because "it's realistic".
The funniest part about Counter Spelling Magic Missile, is that the level 1 shield spell every Wizard should know just negates all Magic Missile damage. That being said, the players will still call it overpowered, or anything if it causes the mildest inconvenience to them.
2:22 takes the cake. So often are players risk-averse and/or unwilling to "lose" in any regard. It's maddening to deal with a player that wants to make all the correct decisions all the time
(BTW, I'm using "you" as a reference to my players a few years ago. Thankfully, they've grown out of this.) For real. If you want to do both, figure it out for yourself, don't ask me, "is ThEre A WaY I caN DO bOTh?" Drives me insane. If you're suspicious of something, do something that you think is going to solve the problem. Don't ask me "CAN i Do THIS?" The only thing you're gonna succeed for asking me that is succeeding in making me angry
Oh yeah definitely. I like really getting in character and making all the dumb choices my character would (but I try to keep it reasonable to not totally ruin things)
I would have him try to take a nonexistent middle road, get killed, and have the Pit Fiends release everyone else because that guy's dickery spoiled the mood, and these people will know better than to return again.
First, the idea of having multiple offscreen voice lines for the "other players" is a really smart idea and it works well! xD second, the insights just have me dying xD
@@EsquilaxM object interaction to turn sack inside out. but you have to factor in bag of holding has a size limit AND a weight limit, 500 lbs = 59.9 gallons of fresh water. or 60 gallons of mayonnaise.
I actually had my players use the dust of dryness to suck up part of a water elemental to then use later to douse a fire elemental. I’m not gonna lie it was pretty cool and clever.
What our current AL DM has to currently worry about: Eladrin Ranger: "I cast _spike growth_ on the area around the enemies." Dragonborn Druid: "I cast _spike growth_ on the area around the enemies." Fairy Barbarian: "Bonus action: rage. Action: grapple with advantage. Movement: 40 FEET FLY SPEED, BABY!"
a character can only be affected by 1 version of an effect, so 2 spike growths would not stack. also, i the flying would be problematic for multiple reasons, but yea, while it would probably be allowed the first time, just as part of the rule of cool, after that there would be a discussion of, this is not how it works.
@@JW-452 I assumed there were more than one group of enemies. I’ve never just given my players four dudes standing together as a fight. I’m not sure how flying speed is problematic it’s written into the game.
Not exactly the same thing, but I did manage cheese grater an already very injured enemy on an ally's Spike Growth with Telekinesis. It was way overkill, but god was it worth it.
You are the members of a traveling circus, and there has been a murder. The guards won’t let anyone leave until they know how the victim was killed, and by whom.
The "Oops, All Bards!" One-Shot on Polygon's youtube channel, featuring Joey Batey [Jaskier from The Witcher TV series] does it and it's very fun to watch
The ongoing theme of insight checks is forever haunting me. I had a party where they got a letter from a unnamed guy and one of them not even as a joke asked to roll an insight check. :I
Me and my friends just finished a 67 session long campaign I DMed. It took almost 2 years. And, literally, almost killed me. I needed medical attention a few times. This video is completely accurate.
Friggin...insight... "The bartender heard mentions of rumors in the swamp, strange cultists chanting unintelligible curses into a dark and ominous flame. He suggests you ask one of the Hunters in the bar if they've heard anything more specific" The players: "I WanNa RoLl InSiGhT To cHeCk iF hE's LyInG!" Me: "THAT'S NOT HOW INSIGHT WORKS!"
The wizard should have used "Shield" against the player's magic missile. Will make it look even more unfair, because it's a lower level spellslot. (I know he was going for the duality of counterspell. Still wanted to point it out ^^)
I think the point of both counterspell clips is 1. Ray of Sickness isn't even very powerful, counterspelling it is a pretty dumb move. 2. Magic missile (presumably a 1st level one) is pretty trivial too, having the DM waste their counterspell on it is also a dumb move but the DM is doing it deliberately, but the players still complain even though this basically works in their favour!
@@Elijah-eg1xt Shield has a specific note about nullifying Magic Missiles that target you. It's been this way in every edition of the game since AD&D but it's usually not relevant.
When my group first started playing in 09, we had one guy that always insighted and one that always diplomacy checked. We, the players, mocked them relentlessly until they stopped. To be fair we were 15, but hey, they stopped! We got the rolling habit out too, as our second dm was an old greybeard. He had a rule that if you rolled without asking, he would decide what you just rolled for. If you decided to ignore him saying you couldn't roll with "but I got a 20!" He'd say "Yes, for the next check, which is now ___." Early on it'd just embarrass you, repeat offenses would get harmful.
4:00 The real question is: from where did he got these 900+ gallons of water? If they are fighting right near a river then I'd allow it, as it's creative + my oversight for fighting a fire elemental near a big water source... If they're not there's almost no way anyone from the party was just casually carrying 900 gallons (over 7500 pounds) of water just in case. And even if they did now the water evaporated after contact with the fire elemental, so yeah, they destroyed one mob and have no water left to delete exhaustion levels at the next long rest
When the player uses Counterspell: "Hey if you didn't want us to use it, Then you should have banned it." When the DM uses counterspell: "Dude! Rules for thee but not for me!"
That's fair, if the DM makes things too difficult or realistic or dangerous that ruins it for the players and the players are what makes the game important/work.
@morrigankasa570 it should go with reason that anything the players can do is a tool the dm can use. What kind of overpowered god like wizard is able to use this mythical spells that no one else can use at level 5?
You forgot a couple: 1. DM: "In the field, you see a gazebo" Paladin: "I roll initiative! I rolled a 19!" DM: "Are you serious? _It's a gazebo!_ " Paladin: "You never know, it could be the great and terrible Dread Gazebo." 2. DM: "You enter the tavern. The bartender, a half-orc..." Rogue: "I roll for a sneak attack! Nat 20!" DM: "...wha... why?!" Rogue: "It's what my character would do. lol" Paladin: "Can I join in? He's a half-orc, right? So he must be evil! And my character opposes all evil!" DM: _angry groan_ 3. DM: "Under the trap door is a hidden chest." Wizard: "It's a mimic! Kill it! I cast fireball!" DM: *sigh* "You destroy the chest, the loot inside, and everyone within 5ft of the chest gets hit."
I am making a Celtic for my character Thornton the Small for my friend's Viking campaign. Thornton the Small always has been misjudged for his height ever since he was a wee lad, the only work he found was being a bodyguard for a Lord to protect his farm from thieves and bandits, his size and weight allowed him to go unnoticed making for deadly surprises and brawls Thorton knew fighting a taller man would be the end of him so which inspired him to use his height to his advantage, after that fateful night Thorton the Small was sung aloud and achieved his dream of being noticed by his clan's leader to go raiding. It was also during his raid he realized the world was so much bigger than him and after his first night, he quit to become an adventurer. He is a simple man, he loves mead, swords, and axes, as much as he loves women.
0:50 this one hit lol. I'm finally running waterdeep dragonheist with a big group of friends and (so far) the party consists of 3 harengon and a tired college student trying to pay off student loans. its gonna be great though.
You should have them go against some giant sized enemies and kill one of your players. Next time they go face to face with the giant sized enemies, they should have harengon feet necklace for luck haha.
Technically *pushes up glasses* Control Water is a 4th level spell that affects 7480519.48 gallons of water, although it's up to the DM how much of that gets on the fire elemental when using the "Flood" action
Players do the wackiest stuff. One time, the Gunslinger ran out of ammo for his musket. So the Wizard used Reduce on our Battlerager dwarf and loaded him into the gun. They developed that idea until the damage potential was high enough to one-shot Tiamat... They were level 5. Think on that one for a minute... Edit: If memory serves - the BR dwarf would survive the endeavor in most cases, btw.
"You're really gonna do this to me right now. Really." "Absolutely. I'm a very honest man, can't lie to your widow." **20** "f- alright there was this girl in college and-"
Every time I see a video like this I always can count on most comments saying "Well in my experience" I shall call it 'DND syndrome' as it ONLY appears for ONLY dungeons and dragons, absolutely no other tabletop game has this happen at least to dnd's extent
"Well in my experience..." this happens in Chess normally in the comments of video content sometimes even streams. It'll be like, "Well in my experience, I've seen plenty of players play that computer engine move at my low rating. It is quite logical and easy to see you when you really think about it you dumb International Master." It is incredibly annoying.
That's always the worst. It's almost condenscending; like saying 'in my experience' should mean it's just that, but the people who talk in this fashion always seem to be as entitled as possible assuming 'their experience' must be the physical law of the game. Worst kinda shit to hear outta some kook's mouth.
I had the opposite problem, my players were new and kept forgetting insight was an option, so they pretty much just took everything they were told at face value. Now one of their companions is secretly the BBEG's right hand man XD
I like playing with new people for this reason, most the stuff they ask is for direction on how to fight or how they can solve puzzles. And I don't have to work as hard for a beilevable event to happen
*DM:* The guardsman lay on the ground in a puddle of his own blood, his body in ruins. *Player:* Don't worry I can help you! *Dm:* The guardsman sputters blood from his mouth *"No, save the prince, save...t-the p-prin..."* *Player:* Wait no, hold on! *DM:* You hear the last breath leave him as his life comes to an en... *Player:* I cast cure wounds. *DM:* What, his wounds are too deep for that spell to... *Player:* I CAST CURE WOUNDS. *DM:* No, you don't understand, not every injury can be solved with that spe... *Player: I. CAST. CURE. WOUNDS!*
I'm trying to figure out how 5 cubic feet of water is technically 135 gallons. Also, both gallons and cubic feet are measures of volume, not mass, why would the player respond with "magically lighter water"? Edit: People have answered the first question. Even though Jacob described it as "5 cubic feet" he was talking about the spell "Shape Water" which uses a 5 foot cube, something that's completely different. Still don't know why the player suddenly brought up how much the water weighed.
5 cubic feet of water is ~37 gallons and the DM math is correct, the player math assumes it's a 5x5x5 cube of water instead, which works out to 935 gallons
@@ThelVadamee1 well, it's not a player's assumption, the PHB states "N-foot cube" is a "cube with side lengths N", so Shape Water's description of "5-foot cube" is actually 5x5x5 cubic feet, since (5ft)^3
@@kori228 My bad, I had the details on the spell wrong. The rationale behind the math is the same, but in this case it's the player that's technically correct
Yes the player is correct that it is 5x5x5 but they are multiplying and using the result (125) as the cubic feet thus rendering the answer 935 gallons of water. This is the player's error.
The whole player saying "counterspell is broken" when the DM uses it in an encounter thing happened to me. The player who said that then tried to counterspell the enemy the next round. I said, "For some reason, your counterspell failed. In fact, you feel your memory of how to cast it slipping away from you."
Only thing missing is "players who don't know how their own class mechanics work but say that they work a certain way with complete confidence without checking and argue that they're right for way too long until someone finally looks it up" Or maybe that's just my party
Playing Star Wars 5e and being the literal only player in the party who could tell the dm with confidence what their stuff did before trying to do it was pretty exhausting
Игры
"I got a 3 on my Insight check"
"You are convinced the Dwarf is telling the truth."
"Hey guys, I believe this dwarf is lying, I rolled super bad on my insight and am convinced he's telling the truth."
Yeah, this is why I have considered buffing up the difficulty of the insight checks on successive rolls by other players and making it clear that a nat 20 is not an auto-success on a check. A lot of players metagame the shit out of it otherwise because making these checks costs nothing.
That's why Insight rolls are behind the screen. Players have to take my words at face value and if they chose to ignore them, they aren't doing purely based off roll result, but as an explicit decision based off of what they already know.
🥲
@@U.Inferno If the player is demanding the Insight roll, then is O P E N (as a DM you can make characters Insight rolls if you want but that's a different story). The point is, Insight is not lie detection, it works to know what type of character you are talking to (their ideals, their alignment, flaws, etc) to make informed choices.
I really dislike it when DMs think failed insight = you believe them 100%, no. It just means you can't confirm their lies. I can still think they're sus whilst not bring able to confirm it smh.
"You're about to die"
"INSIGHT"
"Upon closer examination, using your unmatched skills of perception and deduction you figure out that... yeah, you really are about to die"
and that was your turn, you're dead now :)
Is he really though? I have high medicine.. insight check!
I got this! Counterspell!
"I roll to disbelieve!", 5e version.
isn't that perception though?
Gonna be real with you, if a fire elemental was next to 935 gallons of water in the presence of a spellcaster, it was kinda asking to die in a single round.
trueeee
To be honest you can remove the "in the presence of a spellcaster" bit. Knockback them into that shit, or break whatever barrier is holding it in place, or any number of things.
A smart fire elemental ain't gonna be caught *dead* around any noticeable quantity of water.
But 935 dmg for cantrip isn't balanced. And it comes from plane where you instantly burn to ash as soon as you step in, literally. So it's hot monster
@@realdragon If i'm was the dm, probably I agree with the mathematical player. It´s so fuck funny and crative some giga power elemental just insta kill because he take a shower.
@@heltonsouza7142 From physical perspective how hot really is fire elemental? It can be so hot water makes it even worse like you won't extinguish napalm with water
"I cast magic miss-"
"Counter spell"
"That spells so broken"
Me internally: "counterspell on a magic missle? What about the whole 2nd half of Shield 😭"
It is viable, if player planned to attack 3 different targets with concentration
@@muskdeer it is viable I suppose yeah. I end up playing martials a lot or if not that usually a high con gish with warcaster so I suppose I hadn't thought about that
@@Creature8087 also technically if you go by mister Crawford, improved invocation on the invocation wizard technically applies to magic missile, so you can do quite a bit of damage with it for guys that get hurt by it.
@@blue-eyeswhitekirbo2543 are you referring to the evocation wizard's "empowered evocation"? +int to 1 damage roll of a wizard evocation spell. Correct at first level its 3d4+3+6 force at a 10th level evocation wizard. My argument was mostly about using a 1st level spell to defend yourself rather than a 3rd level counterspell without thinking of the possibility of hitting multiple targets with it because usually the damage is paltry and few people in my playgroup take or use magic missile. I know it can be good
@@Creature8087 fair, I’ve been trying to find ways to make magic missile better so that’s my bad. Though as a side shield would just be a better idea purely because not only does it block magic missile as you said, but five more ac for the rest of the round is probably just objectively better than blocking a single spell.
"You can't use Dimension Door to save your friends."
"Why?!?"
"Because you still have that guard you kidnapped at the start of the game in your burlap sack."
"Damn. Sorry guys."
"..you COULD just let the guard finally-"
"No no, we understand. We'll fight the Balor, you go through the door."
"..."
"Also, Counter Spell."
LOL
Understandable.
At that point he has a commitment to the guard. Can't just leave the guard to wander all on his lonesome.
"Wait. The start of the game? That was about a month ago in-game by now, right?"
"Um...yes?"
"So the guard would teeechnically be an object by now, right?"
"..."
"Because of the lack of air. Inside the sack."
"..."
"Which means we're good to go on the dimension door."
"I hate you all."
That's why you cast Mass D-Door instead! Thanks, 3.5!
DM: "As you descend deeper into the dungeon, you are soon covered in complete darkness. The hollow echo of your footsteps..."
Players: "Darkvision!" - "I have darkvision, what do I see?" - "I wanna activate my darkvision!"
_The world around you is a mess of gray shapes which, devoid of clear shadings, seems eerie and almost two-dimensional, as the shapes around you blur into a dark void beyond your range of vision.._
Take a shot every time you have to say "That's not how darkvision works"
Your vision is not that much better, as the dim lighting you see offers little comfort from the growling sounds you hear from just beyond where your darkvision ends.
"I cast daylight"
@@nobody5333 Its kind of amuzing to play DnD with what would normaly be a completly generic medieval fantasy story and wait to see how many ways the players use their ingenuity to completly break the campaign
I so want an enemy that stuns the players using darkvision on the first turn. Like a flash bang but a creature.
DM: The evil wizard casts counterspell
The bard who been just playing on bongos the entire fight: I cast counterspell on his counterspell
The evil wizard uses his legendary action to counterspell your counterspell
@@realdragon Legendary actions happen at the end of a turn, so you cannot use it to cast counterspell as a reaction
@@Thywolfthespian legendary actions take place outside of a creatures turn, not "at the end of a turn"
@@superwarriorcool "A legendary creature can take a certain number of special actions --called legendary actions-- outside its turn. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature's turn."
Its outside its own turn, at the end of another turn, be in minion or pc. It still cannot interrupt a turn like a reaction does, since it has to take place after the effects of a creautres turn.
@@Thywolfthespian ah makes sense
My favorite conversation as a DM so far,
Me: You vanquish the party of bandits and take their last pouch of gold
Player: Can I check if they dropped any cool loot
Me: You have already taken everything of value from them
[3 minutes pass]
Player: Can I check if maybe they dropped like a sword or something
Me: They have nothing
Player: Armor
Me: Nope
Player: can I at least roll perception
Me: *Sigh* sure
Player: NAT 20!!!
Me: It is made astonishingly obviously to you that the party carried nothing of value that you hadn't already taken
Player: But I rolled a nat 20
Me: If you stand in a field with a clear sky and you roll nat 20 perception, it just means that you are now absolutely sure there are no clouds in the sky
Player: Maybe a cloud could appear in the sky at that exact moment
Me: *SIgh* no no no
Player: Can I check if they dropped any gold?
That player really overestimated the value of nat 20.
@@legendgames128Many new-ish players (or immature ones) get the feeling that, because they're helping to create the story, rolling well means the thing they want to happen always happens.
They have bodies, sell those to your local friendly necromancer:)
"Oh, I guess they did."
"Really?!"
"NO"
prime example of when to give players breadcrumbs. just give em something shitty to satifsy them or else they might de-rail the plot out of pure spite lmao
The meta of picturing Jacob by the mic yelling "insight" as many different ways as he can 😂
What's the insight for? he can act and clearly can tell what's up
Nicenicehahanicenice
Jacob, please release the behind the scenes!
I actually love when my players want insight, makes me feel like they are actually questioning things
_I N S I G H T C E P T I O N_
The DM camera glance at "Counterspell is so overpowered..." Ugh right in the feels man. You complete me.
This is why you give the evil wizards access to Metamagic. Subtle Spell that ish.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
@@BigDickWizard6969 he returns
@@jamesklem4861 I never left
based
With the vampire's dagger part, I was waiting for one of the players to go, "Oh, well it's just a dagger, 1d4 damage? No biggy."
That's exactly what I was waiting for too
That's when you make the dagger do more damage.
@@memes4life990 When I run my games I typically make "Combat" and "Roleplay" logic different. In combat a dagger may only deal 1d4 damage, but in a roleplay scene where someone is holding it to your neck that is going to be a lot more deadly.
Same thing goes for if the players want to knock someone out-- if they sneak up on someone outside of combat and whack them over the head, I'm not going to go off of getting them to 0 HP to knock them out, that hit is putting the enemy on the ground. But, an unarmed attack in combat is obviously going to be not as effective.
@@CamoCraft109 That's not a bad idea actually
@@CamoCraft109 if anything it sounds like you've made the game worse by makeing the rules inconsistent. If it's fun for you and your players go for it cause that's what's dnd is about but I much rather have the rules be more consistent and fair.
"Okay folks, you have just discovered the secret meaning to those ancient oracle visions you have been trying to solve for twenty sessions thanks to your friend's great intelligence roll-"
Player: UH ACTUALLY, I want to keep it secret...
"Why?"
Player: I'm being mysterious.
Oh God, I hate that so much. Like I have nothing wrong with players keeping in game info secret to a certain degree, like Maybe they found a npc that used to he thier ex lover but now they fight for the bbeg, so they hide it away from the rest of the party. But no, it's always the main thing to droves the story those type of players keep secret
I've been playing with the same group for 2 years, and one of my Players met an NPC during the events of the game, secretly married her and she's pregnant. I don't get what fun he gets out of asking me every week via DM mid-game if anything happened to his wife, and me going, "No man, what would you do otherwise? Have your character leave the Party to help her and not ask for help? Then what would happen? You just wouldn't play?"
@@ultrabigfella "Yes"
"I'm Grunkle the Funkle and this is my troupe of gnomes"
"We are all bards!"
that put me on the floor cuz I may have made that character once
username checks out, angry bardengnome
@@tunasub8097 LMAO
@@tunasub8097 you passed your insight check.
I’m thinking of the doorngeon
@@tunasub8097 le reddit
Key reason I always ask them "What are you looking for with that Insight check" it trips them up, but it makes them think.
I do the same thing with perception and investigation.
3:37 has two possible interpretations:
1) "I can't believe my players are so paranoid that they can't just follow simple instructions!"
2) "I can't believe my players are so paranoid that they figured out my adventure immediately!!"
That fire elemental one physically hurt.
Not only was the DM correct that IN REAL LIFE 5 cubic feet of water is 37 gallons, the player commented at the end saying the DM was wrong and snarkily saying the water was “lighter”……. A GALLON IS A MEASURE OF VOLUME NOT WEIGHT!!!!
I’m an engineer and the DM for my group so I’ve absolutely had this argument before. It just was too real to see it here. 😂
but control water is 100 cubic feet, shape water is 5 cubic feet. which is 748 gallons and a 4th lvl spell
Okay, but if the player had been _correct_ that it's 935 gallons, which the DM was assuming he was, then the DM should have honoured that at least once.
It's the difference between 5 cubic feet and a 5 foot cube. Shape Water/Control Water specifically call out that they use a cube with a side of 5 and 100 feet respectively. The DM was correct about 5 cubic feet being 37 gallons but the player was correct that it should be moving much more water, assuming the water is available.
Sorry I'm completely lost here, what's the difference between 5 cubic feet and 5x5x5 cube of water?
a 5x5x5 cube of water should weigh 935 gallons right, where is the 37 coming from?
@@chroprs No. A 5x5x5 cube is 125 cubic feet not 5 cubic feet. 1 cubic foot is 7.481 gallons. 7.481*5 = 37.402 gallons.
Grunkle the Funkle and his troupe of gnomes sounds like a great story.
I'd watch that show
For a one-shot, maybe.
Maybe even a small adventure
They then somehow evolved into the most serious and well developed characters the group ever made
@@phalamy9180 The tale of 'Shit-in-a-bucket Johnson', a Warforged character I made on a dare for a campaign who is one of the most compelling characters in our campaign. One of my favorite characters I've made, if not my actual favorite, to date.
I imagine one of the gnomes in the party is his nephew and he got his name by being such a funky uncle.
What I thought was going to happen with the dagger scene:
"He holds the dagger against your throat, ready to cut you open."
"HAH! Go ahead! I have, like, 90 hit points! How much damage is that rinky-dinky dagger gonna do? 4? 6? 10, tops? Heh heh, I'm gonna kick his ass."
RIP the coup-de-grace, but one of many casualties of streamlining.
@@LtFoeHammer I was thinking the same, just recently found a copy of ADnD moldvay (think that's the name) wanting to role up a classic character for a classic adventure
Could always run your campaign as if HP is the amount of damage something can take before being dealt a lethal blow, which I believe XPtoLevel3 has suggested before on this channel
Having more HP doesn't mean you'd survive getting your throat slit, but also a frail wizard could die from getting hurt less than a raging Barbarian. It makes the HP system actually make sense if you don't think of HP as the videogame version of HP.
I also only have HP really be "relevant" during combat, when people are actually fighting. Doesn't matter how beefy you are, you get stabbed in the gut walking down the street and you probably bleed out and die like anyone else would.
I mean yeah, there's some videogame-logic throughout tabletop combat systems, but you don't *have* to make HP a constant "I can get stabbed by a knife 15 times before dying" outside of combat. Knife to the throat is gonna bypass your armor and kill you whether you have 30hp or 300, assuming you're a humanoid player race. If a knife could never kill anyone with more than like 5hp, assassins kinda wouldn't exist in most DnD universes.
@@LtFoeHammer Yep. My group I’m in now is playing pathfinder and I’m glad that we have coup de grace.
I partially think it is a bit to powerful, mostly because of the players can do it then so can the bad guys, and logically at least one bad guy would eventually get a coup de grace against a player, and it’s kind of boring to say “ hey, Tim, your dead now, sorry.”
I don’t know the happy medium between not having it at all(5e) and having something that is effectively an instant kill(like pathfinder).
@@stravask9835 "assassins kinda wouldn't exist on most dnd universes" aren't assassin rogues literally a thing?? and aren't they incredible single target damage dealers in the game when it comes to ambushing?? can't they literally one shot most low-mid level PCs?? or like just make the enemy a high level swashbuckler rogue, easy peasy :)
One time I off-hand said that two different barrels seemed to have different kinds of ale. The party proceeded to spend 30 minutes investigating these barrels, proclaiming "THE ALE IS DIFFERENT!".
"Well. We've spent four in universe hours exhaustively studying and analyzing every detail about the ales."
"And?"
"It turns out one is strawberry and the other is blueberry."
"Which the BARTENDER would have TOLD YOU if you ASKED HIM!"
Law of Conservation of Detail. If a detail is stated, it will be assumed that it's important, so you should only state details that really are important. If it's not important that the ale is different, then there's no reason to tell the players it is.
Also, it's okay to let the players know that the thing you told them wasn't supposed to be a clue. 30 minutes is too long to let them waste their time on something that doesn't matter at all.
@@NoriMori1992 In fact, I'd say if your players start spending a lot of time investigating something that won't yield anything, just make it yield something. Improvise. Doesn't need to be something big, just let them get a little reward and have them move on with their day. In moderation, try to make every action have an effect.
*Oh no, I didn't think they were gonna care about the ale being different. Whatever, let's improvise.*
"After investigating the ale, you find that the ale in one of the barrels isn't really... Drinkable anymore."
"We tell the bartender."
"The bartender checks the ale and sees you are correct. He thanks you and gives each of you 5 gold pieces before heading off with the barrel."
":)"
":)"
@@hydrusalphy4654 So, party does nothing of importance and is essentially wasting their time, and because of that DM have to somehow twist reality so the party can still gets rewarded for it... that just sounds like a participation trophy ^^
@@Sephiroth517 It will not feel like one if you do not let them know it was changed.
god the insight check one is so relatable.
My players found a ring that one of the NPCs had been looking for, and after giving it back to her I simply described that she goes to sit with her friends at a table and that they all seem "happy that she got her ring back". Cue multiple players insight checking whether or not her friends are actually happy for her and don't just "seem" to be.
Man, that bit where the player just rolled a dice for persuasion even after the DM says "I'm not gonna let you roll for that." really made me twitch. If there's one thing you shouldn't do..it's decide to roll dice after the dm tells you no you can't, and expect something (good) to come out of it.
A lot of it comes from the nat 20 house rule on skill checks. A lot of people expect to be able to do stupid things just because of it. I actively have to let people know that nat 20 skill checks mean nothing for checks at my table.
@@piranhaplantX nat 20 is a guarantee hit not a guaranteed success and more people need to know it
"It's a natural 20."
"Okay, so that's not an automatic success, the pit fiends laugh, and decide make a spit roast out of you."
"Uhhhh..."
"Fortunately for you, your death is quick as they hoist you over the fire."
"But..."
"Here's a new character sheet."
I take nat 20s as "if it's possible to succeed, then you succeed" at skill checks. So if a player says they're going to hit on the bartender and they roll a nat 20, the result is going to be a slap in the face, because she had absolutely zero interest in the player character, so they literally couldn't succeed if they tried. I won't ask my players to roll if something is impossible, I'll just tell them after they say what they want to try. If they go ahead and try something I already told them was impossible, though, the result is always failure.
@@politenonparticipant4859 I'm a big proponent of 20 on skills checks is just a great roll. If a barbarian tries to pick a master level lock with a DC 30 if it ain't a 30 it ain't opening.
DM: I am going to have this evil character pretend to be nice and helpful.
Also DM: Why do they always roll for insight?
Reasons I find roleplaying games annoying, I can tell something's up but my character doesn't. My brain be like how to avoid this problem without my character getting fked over.
Because of that I make the results of insight in my tables be extremely general and vague, as a DM I have to gave my characters a right insight about the character not an answer like: "he's lying, and you are sure about that", I prefer to say like: "The ways that the man talks, and profuse his words are unclear, you can't tell that he's lying but, he is definitely out of his normal being, something is clearly worrying him."
@@gamerdweebentertainment1616 I mean wether your character believes them or not is entirely up to you. You could decide you simply don't trust him, that's a roleplay choice, unless your DM is really strict about that. Insight checks are more of a "get a read on him" like noticing something being off.
@@gamerdweebentertainment1616 Not to sound gatekeep-y, but you aren't in the right mindset. Getting "fked over" is an _intended_ and _integral_ part of roleplaying. Failure is equally as compelling as success in a good roleplaying game, because the point of the game is to _tell a story,_ not _win a game._
(part of this is also contingent on having a DM that understands this too, and can work in a PK or TPK into the story)
@@gamerdweebentertainment1616 Well, just let your character get fked over. There's generally no issue with that, it can make for an interesting story. And that's just how the game works in the end. Roll bad on your dex check, get fked by falling off of something, roll bad on your insight check, get fked by a lying NPC
It continues to impress me at how well Jacob recites his lines and edits it all together to feel like genuine and responsive conversations.
As soon as I heard that this campaign revolved around a murder and the sole suspect wasn't talking I was like "alright in about 10 seconds the cleric is going to cast Zone of Truth" and sure enough lol
If I was running that, he still wouldn't talk. Zone of truth doesn't force you to talk. Neither does charm person. No one would incriminate themselves when talking to a "friendly acquaintance".
@@otsokarhu9695 The problem is that the party could simply ask Yes-or-No questions with one good and one bad option. Like "Did you commit the murder?" Any innocent person would immediately say "No!", while the guilty person only has the option to shut up. The spell makes most interrogations completely obsolete
@@old_sparky1365 And now the question of will it hold up in court? I wouldn't allow someone to be convicted with that as the only evidence in my game.
@@otsokarhu9695Most games are set in medieval times, so yes it would hold up in court, people were imprisoned and executed on mere word of mouth.
@@MayHugger and that's why mysteries that include suspects aren't a good fit for games like that. The word "suspect" doesn't really mean anything when a king executes anyone.
If the setting destroys the premise, the game has been planned badly.
Grunkle the Funkle is the person who first taught me the spell known as Fireball. True story.
DUUUUUUDE, REALY?
and was it grunkle the funkle who also gave you such a big dick, mr bigdickwizard6969?
Rolls Insight...
Damn, he's truly a legend. He taught me Awaken. I got a bush friend. : )
Recently ran a campaign where the party decided to sneak into a shady village leader's study room. Which was perfect as I had a bunch of clues inside for them to find. Then when I gave them the opportunity by making the leader leave the room and go out, they spent the entire night following him instead
Sometimes I allow players to make an intelligence or wisdom check as an excuse to tell them their plan is dumb and they're missing the important clue.
"Each of you make a wisdom check", any that rolls say 15 or higher gets "it occurs to you that the leader's house is empty and you can search it undisturbed".
@@Mastikator That sounds horrible tbh. I never wanna play my PC's that is their character they get to choose without a voice telling them its wrong or right. I just play the consequences of their actions.
The bit with the water reminds me of an interaction I had with one of my players. He sometimes works with small quantities of explosive chemicals and is majoring in chemical engineering. I think you see where this is going.
Me, the DM: You open one of the crates on the factory floor and find that it is loaded with gunpowder.
Player: I keep opening the crates. How many have gunpowder?
Me: Five crates I guess.
Player: And how large are these crates?
Me: Each one is... 2ft on each side. Sure.
Player: Is it black powder or the newer synthetic stuff?
Me: *Squints Suspiciously*
Me: Black powder.
Player: Aww... so it's gonna have a bit less yield.
Player: *Does some calculations*
Player: That would be equal to about 200 tons of TNT, which should be enough to level this entire dungeon! Those warforged that are following us are gonna be toast! >:D
Me: No, you may not one-shot the villain of this arc with the gunpowder.
(I did let them do a lot of damage in a large radius though)
I think he is a bad chemical engineer 😅 or tried to take advantage of you not knowing the stuff.
If you ignite black powder without storing it in a suitable container to build up pressure (like the barrel of a gun) it will just burn and stink. The container needs to be airtight - or tight enought that the gases produced by burning the powder build up faster than they can escape through any gaps.
While the amount of black powder you gave him was significant, it does not necessarily mean it can make a big boom without additional preparations
@@Yarradras I've been had!
@@Yarradras Depending on the materials of the crates, the size of the area, and the materials of the building, also if he spread some of the powder in a line connecting them as well as depending on how ventilated the area is it actually makes sense that it could demolish the area potentially one-shoting the enemies.
Take Flour for example, if you packed 200 pounds of flour in a structure made of wood or lower quality stones or other lower quality materials that was 25 ft by 25 ft by 10 ft or smaller then lit the flour it could seriously weaken or possibly even fully destroy the structure. Gunpowder is even more destructive in the same situation.
this just sounds like metagaming to me unless his character is an artificer or smthn along those lines
@@mikeesteves8427 It totally was metagaming, but it was fun so I let it fly.
I feel this video in my soul. Especially that face the DM made when the players complained that Counterspell was too broken.
Zone of Truth and Charm Person are a wicked combo. I love it.
"he passes both of his saves"
Players: "wait thats illegal"
@@IseeDeadLlamas CHRONAL SHIFT!!!! PORTENT!!!! SILVERY BARBS!!!! All at once lol
@@crunchevo8974 you forgot command, just command confess
@@IseeDeadLlamas You know hes lying still because of how zone of truth works tho.
@@milkman4407 If he succeeds he could be saying the truth or a lie, his choice. Zone of truth only compels the truth
This hit home! Especially the shape water part. Players only argue for realism when it benefits them. Guilty of this too sadly. Edit: didn't think this would get so much attention. When I said realism I ment the RAW vs realism argument. Dm vs player or player vs dm or player vs player. Players of dnd, dm included. I hate rule arguments and just try to play the game with my friends but this happens alot. Edit 2: both sides should be having fun is all I'm saying. Fun first.
The Fire Elemental casts Counterspell.
I don't get it, isn't it only 37 gallons?
@@zstrebler1234 No, a 5 ft cube is 5x5x5 so it's 125 cubic feet at ~7 gal. per cubic ft.
@@Mobax13 but google says it's 37 gallons :/
@@zstrebler1234 5 cubic feet is different than a 5ft cube. 5 cubic feet would be a cube 1.7ft on each side. So a 5ft cube is 125 cubic feet. Shape water says you can move a 5ft cube of water 5ft. Is it insanely powerful for a cantrip? Yes, however it only works against fire elementals and they must be within 5ft. But think how awesome it is to cast a lv 4 spell and do 7.4 million damage. Control water.
4:20 "Uhm, ok, well Shape Water moves the water up to 5 ft to one direction so you either "splash it" from afar for 36 damage or if you want to get 935 damage you have to set it up perfectly and literally drown the elemental inside the water cube. All happy?"
I laughed really loud at 1:08.
"We're all bards" 😂😂😂😂😂
Players doing 500 checks in rooms that clearly have nothing in them is the absolute worst. Glad you properly portrayed that sequence of events.
Players don't know that, shits all made up in the DMs head. So of course they're gonna wanna Perception check everything haha.
@@jaimeruiz7837 I feel like your party doing 500 perception checks trying to pick up some clue of what they are suppose to do, is a clear sign that the dm has not given proper visibility to what the parties should be paying attention to.
@@captiantoastytm6436 hahah no dude, the DM describes the fckng writing on trimmings, etc. They just spend hours trying to look through it all to make sure they dont miss anything haha
@@captiantoastytm6436 Perception checks are terrible in general. They add nothing to the game.
If players are insighting too often, they probably feel like they get betrayed by most NPCs. So they're not checking to see if the person will betray them, but if they can catch the person before the betrayal happens
Character: I wish we could fly to the Dwarf city on a dragon, it'd be way faster
NPC: Yeah, but they can be inconsistent. It'd be a longer journey.
Player: INSIGHT!!!
Nat 8, no mod
DM: (dying inside) You think he's joking....
Give them a reputation for being shifty, suspicious fuckos and have everyone avoid them.
I've found this behavior from the players turns into a self fulfilling prophecy, their actions inevitably turn NPCs against them.
Reputation flags do help remind them that their choices have consequences
Yeah imo usually players doing checks too often is actually a DM issue, with the players having suffered a few too many gotcha traps because they didn't do the check before.
@@Steven_Olson ^ Insight and spam perception checks are when the DM doesn't have the players' trust.
My friend, as a player in my game, made an entire family tree for her bard that spanned HUNDREDS OF YEARS and wrote short stories for each character in the family tree because "there were a few things I needed to explain for this one small insignificant detail to make sense"
0:36 "thanks everybody for showing up" Imma stop you right there, those aren't d&d players
It's good to know the experience is the same, even from diferent countries. Players doing insight all the time, using math, getting mad at the DM for using the same kind spells they use. Boy, it hit's hard, exactly like my players from Brazil. Cheers!
Opa outro brasileiro aqui
eh noix
math>>
Tem jogadores no Brazil?
@@dagothcharles2044 claro uai
My players: So the monster gets disadvantage on its saving throw against the trap because it didn't know it was there, right? *high fives all around*
Me: Yeah! And when you find a trap you'll get disadvantage too!
Players: Um, actually... it's fine if the monster doesn't get disadvantage
Normal rolls if they don’t know the trap is there, advantage on saves if they know it’s there and what it does but they activate it anyways
@@VeryProfessionalGamer I know. My players wanted monsters to have disadvantage for unknown traps, until I told them the same would apply to them if I ruled that way
Reminds me when I had a magical cat made of soot and smoke to be my players “info dump/ask all” NPC and they literally didn’t trust her… because she talked. Not because she was a cat made of soot and smoke. Because she talked. They’d ask her a question then roll insight for every single one of her answers, just baffling!
I mean, would you trust a talking _cat?_
A talking elemental of soot and smoke ? yeah, no biggies... but come on, why would you trust a cat at all ?
4:38 Gallons are a measure of volume, not weight!
"Magically lighter water?"
...
If I don't say yes, then I get to use the water against the players, if I do say yes then I can abuse this back when they get the item of fire elemental summoning I will give them. This is a win win!
This righ here have gives me this vibe: "don't give me ideas and we'll both have agood time, so whic one will it be hmm?"
@@ayf449 i always ask my players "do you want the enemies to be able to do this to you?"
Wait… what does the weight have to do with how many gallons of water are in 5 cubic feet. It’s 37.4 gallons. That’s 299.2 lbs. where is this guy getting 935 from? That’s 150 cubic feet of water.
@@Indian0Lore im confused too
@@Indian0Lore I thought that too since gallons are a unit of volume. There exists no world where 5 cubic feet of water is not anything other than 37 gallons. The density can change, the atomic weight can change, anything else changes but if it's still the same volume then it will always be... The same volume even after a dimensional analysis.
"That seems overpowered!"
"It's not. It's math. It's realistic!"
Oh boy, do I have a story along these lines in our Curse of Strahd game.
During a particularly hard fight, my Artificer Artillerist asked if she could find a rock on the ground that weighed 120 lbs. The DM let me roll an investigation check and find one. I cast Reduce on it, dropping it down to 15 lbs.
A few turns later, I used a 3rd level spell slot to Catapult it at the miniboss. As soon as the rock was flying, I dropped concentration on Reduce, bringing the rock back up to 120 lbs.
Now, one of the ways you can interpret the Catapult spell is that for every five pounds the object weighs, it does an extra 1d8 damage. With the initial 2d8 from casting, I argued that the (now originally sized) rock would do 26d8 damage if it hit. The target rolled a 19 on its dex save so he avoided it, but the rock went on to completely demolish and collapse the back of the cave we were fighting in.
The attack may have whiffed, but the DM gave me an auto success on my next intimidation check! I promised I would use that move sparingly and check with him first before I did it, and it's a huge risk/reward payoff due to needing to use both a 2nd and a 3rd level slot - something Artificers don't get many of.
(I know that RAW this shouldn't work as it states that the damage depends on what level you cast Catapult, but the DM thought it was awesome so let me get away with it.)
That is actually really awesome.
It would be interesting to see the math on how physics affects the velocity of an object that suddenly increases 8x in weight. My gut reaction is that, depending on the direction of travel (ie, not down/with gravity), the object would essentially grind to a halt VERY quickly...
To be honest, In this scenario I could've ruled out that the moment the rock turned back to its normal size, the velocity also should also dropped since it became a much heavier object. Maybe giving some other bonus to the party for the creativity (an advantage on the next attack due to the target being surprised or something).
The momentum would need to be distributed over the extra mass so I would say no. But it would still be a giant rock.
@@Aidan8et It's very simple, just basic conservation of momentum. Mass increases by a factor of eight? Velocity decreases by the same factor. It wouldn't stop, but it'd be moving at one eighth the speed. (In an ideal situation, of course. Drag and such make it more complicated, but it's still roughly about the same.)
The one guy perpetually on his phone is the most accurate part
I've only played for a short while, and I really do prefer role-playing out situations, and describing things.
The part where everyone said "Insight!" reminded me of my current group.
I know it's a game and it's not necessarily unlikely their characters would do that, but I since the start of my current campaign, been really trying to justify all my actions, and not spam anything.
Everyone plays they way they want, but I find role-playing, esp in D&D, way more fun than just playing it like a turn-based video game w/ little-to-no communication.
Technically, according to the math, a Hill Giant could spike a human sized person into the ground at around 60 mph because of their rock throw attack. Which would be the same force as falling from 120 ft, aka the damage for it would be 12d6. Math and D&D just doesn't really work together... though it is really fun to figure out all the math and physics
Had/have a player who took the Dust of Dryness item and ran with it. He reasoned that using the item to make a bunch of water pellets would give him essentially what was a water based fireball because the amount of water shooting out of such a tiny space should, realistically, explode with a bunch of force.
At first I allowed it when he sprang it on me without clearing it with me to see if it actually worked like that and we were in the middle of a session. I eventually ruled that it did a bit of damage, forced a Dex save, and any failures caused enemies to be move backwards a bit.
Near the end of the campaign, he wanted to use the pellets as improvised weapons. Since I already ruled that they did essentially fireball damage and provided a knock back, I chose to treat them like the Necklace of Fireballs item. Sure, maybe you can throw the pellet and get a d4 of damage out of it on top of exploding like a fireball, but he wanted it to be a full attack so that he could throw one pellet per attack, essentially trying to get multiple water based fireballs as a monk in a single turn. I told him they wouldn't work like that, even with him having proficiency with improvised weapons, and he then asked if he could just dump all of his pellets on one group of enemies, effectively using up the rest of the item.
I said yes, we moved on, and have now decided that no, math really does not belong in DnD, at least not when trying to make crazy calculations and turning simple magic items into powerful ones because it's "realistic."
that's why Pulp Cthulhu is infinitely better.
@@stm7810 tell me more
@@bloodyhell8201 Ok, Pulp Cthulhu is an addition/alteration to 7e Call of Cthulhu where you get double the hit points, some unique uses of luck like healing, reducing sanity loss and coming back to life/avoiding death in some cool Indiana Jones Fridge moment sort of way. as well as getting Pulp Talents, which are unique abilities like being lucky to gain luck back faster, resiliant to spend luck on a 1 to 1 basis to stop sanity loss or having a psychic power or something. beyond this and the existance of mythos stuff it is the real world and you can use real maths and science consistantly. if you want to make poison, mustard gas or a bomb, you can, if you want to run the big bad over with your car or inject a guy with air, you can. alternatively you could use the BRP system, which it is based off of to do your own fantassy adventures, but the general ruleset is great.
I mean, if a Giant gets a hold of you and manages to lift you up and spike you...that sounds like a lot of damage, for sure. I have a character who is a Goliath Bearbarian 6 / Kensei 5, with the (now defunct, I know) Brawny feat, for a whopping 2400 carrying capacity at 11th level and 20 Str. He has Improvised Weapons as his Kensei weapons specifically so he can get the maximum possible damage when whacking someone with a tree, wheelbarrow, or whatever else he can get his hands on, including other people, or just yeeting people into other enemies/surfaces. Also +13 to Athletics. It's kind of ridiculous, and requires the DM to be lenient in allowing extra damage with improvised weapons, which is a possibility provided in the books, but it's ultimately pretty silly, and only used for our downtime Fight Club sessions, mostly. Still, heaps and heaps of fun.
I still like the classic "player accidentally reveals the whole mystery just through deduction, imagination, and/or dumb guesses"
this would be me in a mystery only after a bit cuz i gotta have SOME clues lol. I just think to damned much
This makes me wanna do essentially a Scooby-Doo episode in the form of a D&D one-shot lol
@@Buzzkilljoy1248 dibs on the stoner weirdo! lol
@@updfdrakkell143 Ah, I see you wanna play a Wood Elf Druid XD
@@Buzzkilljoy1248 OH HECKLES NAW! lol I'll go with the racing werewolf thank you. Its actually from one of the old red shirt shaggy movies
The best part about the elemental scene is you _know_ the player making the "it's realistic" argument for a one-shot against the fire elemental would simultaneously be the first to complain about Variant Encumbrance or something happening to _them_ because "it's realistic".
The funniest part about Counter Spelling Magic Missile, is that the level 1 shield spell every Wizard should know just negates all Magic Missile damage.
That being said, the players will still call it overpowered, or anything if it causes the mildest inconvenience to them.
2:22 takes the cake. So often are players risk-averse and/or unwilling to "lose" in any regard. It's maddening to deal with a player that wants to make all the correct decisions all the time
(BTW, I'm using "you" as a reference to my players a few years ago. Thankfully, they've grown out of this.)
For real. If you want to do both, figure it out for yourself, don't ask me, "is ThEre A WaY I caN DO bOTh?" Drives me insane. If you're suspicious of something, do something that you think is going to solve the problem. Don't ask me "CAN i Do THIS?" The only thing you're gonna succeed for asking me that is succeeding in making me angry
Oh yeah definitely. I like really getting in character and making all the dumb choices my character would (but I try to keep it reasonable to not totally ruin things)
I would have him try to take a nonexistent middle road, get killed, and have the Pit Fiends release everyone else because that guy's dickery spoiled the mood, and these people will know better than to return again.
harsh dms make it so that making even the slightest mistake means getting killed. I've been conditioned as a player to metagame out of necessity
@@detectivefatweedington5665 that sounds like you've had some bad DMs. Sorry, my human.
This is way too accurate. My party is literally this.
Insight
INSIGHT CHECK
@@mikaelste-marie1275 yes, insight. Aka instant lie detector.
I normally don't do that many insights but one person in our party does.
@@fatbean2000 I don’t think I’ve ever made an insight check, but as you said there is that one guy that does.
First, the idea of having multiple offscreen voice lines for the "other players" is a really smart idea and it works well! xD second, the insights just have me dying xD
Player: "this is my back story!"
DM: "your player has amnesia, and now thinks he's a stone, go lie there and think like a stone"
“I’ve spent hours upon hours preparing for this game”
Ah, so it’s going to immediately going to be ruined!
I think the better question regarding the fire elemental is...
Why was the fire elemental standing near that much water in the first place?
Could be water from a bag of holding or something
@@Skylark3087 An interesting use of the bag of holding, I'll give them that~
Bag of holding, alchemy jug, decanter of endless water... _"create or destroy water"_ is a first-level spell for clerics and druids
@@Skylark3087 I don't think you can pull water from a bag of holding with a spell, it's in another dimension so is infinite distance away
@@EsquilaxM object interaction to turn sack inside out.
but you have to factor in bag of holding has a size limit AND a weight limit, 500 lbs = 59.9 gallons of fresh water. or 60 gallons of mayonnaise.
"This is my backstory." (shows novel-length pile of printed pages)
I feel personally called out.
I actually had my players use the dust of dryness to suck up part of a water elemental to then use later to douse a fire elemental. I’m not gonna lie it was pretty cool and clever.
Not that clever since using the Dust of Dryness against an elemental is literraly part of the item's rules ^^
What our current AL DM has to currently worry about:
Eladrin Ranger: "I cast _spike growth_ on the area around the enemies."
Dragonborn Druid: "I cast _spike growth_ on the area around the enemies."
Fairy Barbarian: "Bonus action: rage. Action: grapple with advantage. Movement: 40 FEET FLY SPEED, BABY!"
I thought my spike growth plan was good, your group is brutal.
a character can only be affected by 1 version of an effect, so 2 spike growths would not stack. also, i the flying would be problematic for multiple reasons, but yea, while it would probably be allowed the first time, just as part of the rule of cool, after that there would be a discussion of, this is not how it works.
@@JW-452 I assumed there were more than one group of enemies. I’ve never just given my players four dudes standing together as a fight. I’m not sure how flying speed is problematic it’s written into the game.
ANOTHER FAIRY BARB playerc:
Not exactly the same thing, but I did manage cheese grater an already very injured enemy on an ally's Spike Growth with Telekinesis.
It was way overkill, but god was it worth it.
Having a whole party be a troupe of bards sounds like a great time
You are the members of a traveling circus, and there has been a murder. The guards won’t let anyone leave until they know how the victim was killed, and by whom.
@@dashiellgillingham4579 Insight check
The "Oops, All Bards!" One-Shot on Polygon's youtube channel, featuring Joey Batey [Jaskier from The Witcher TV series] does it and it's very fun to watch
There is a podcast of this, Bombarded, they are a band and create original music every episode.
No fucking way lol it would blow my brains out. One bard is already a challenge but a full party? Nah
The ongoing theme of insight checks is forever haunting me. I had a party where they got a letter from a unnamed guy and one of them not even as a joke asked to roll an insight check. :I
... That's it, I'll make a wine obsessed Elf Wizard who HAS to roll History or Insight on every wine he encounters.
“thanks everyone for showing up”, man I wish I could say those words
Me and my friends just finished a 67 session long campaign I DMed.
It took almost 2 years. And, literally, almost killed me. I needed medical attention a few times.
This video is completely accurate.
Damn. Get some long long rest !
@@Noctaru Oh I did. And now I'm hungry for more. The hospital can't stop me any more!
Why did you need medical attention 😰
@@NoriMori1992 I previously had a broken shoulder joint. And it used to dislocate randomly before I had it surgically corrected.
@@HeckaLives But how did DMing exacerbate that? Because of rolling dice?
The delivery of “…magically lighter water?” Kills me every time. 💀
Grunkle and his funkles the all gnome bardic troupe actually sounds like a pretty based years spanning campaign.
Siunds very hanna barberra
Player about to get his throat slit
Player:"....INSIGHT!"
"We're *all* Bards."
Oh. Oh *no.*
A cube of water 5 feet wide is 935 gallons, 5 cubic feet of water is 37 gallons.
DM: Rock falls, everybody dies.
Player: Insight for the rock!
Friggin...insight...
"The bartender heard mentions of rumors in the swamp, strange cultists chanting unintelligible curses into a dark and ominous flame. He suggests you ask one of the Hunters in the bar if they've heard anything more specific"
The players: "I WanNa RoLl InSiGhT To cHeCk iF hE's LyInG!"
Me: "THAT'S NOT HOW INSIGHT WORKS!"
The wizard should have used "Shield" against the player's magic missile. Will make it look even more unfair, because it's a lower level spellslot. (I know he was going for the duality of counterspell. Still wanted to point it out ^^)
maybe they didn't know shield
I think the point of both counterspell clips is 1. Ray of Sickness isn't even very powerful, counterspelling it is a pretty dumb move. 2. Magic missile (presumably a 1st level one) is pretty trivial too, having the DM waste their counterspell on it is also a dumb move but the DM is doing it deliberately, but the players still complain even though this basically works in their favour!
You don't roll to hit with magic missile so I believe shield would do nothing because shield increases your AC
@@Elijah-eg1xt Shield has a specific note about nullifying Magic Missiles that target you. It's been this way in every edition of the game since AD&D but it's usually not relevant.
@@LukeLavablade Actually, something tells me that in 4E it wasn't this way. Since in 4E magic missile didn't auto-hit.
When my group first started playing in 09, we had one guy that always insighted and one that always diplomacy checked. We, the players, mocked them relentlessly until they stopped. To be fair we were 15, but hey, they stopped! We got the rolling habit out too, as our second dm was an old greybeard. He had a rule that if you rolled without asking, he would decide what you just rolled for. If you decided to ignore him saying you couldn't roll with "but I got a 20!" He'd say "Yes, for the next check, which is now ___." Early on it'd just embarrass you, repeat offenses would get harmful.
Man, Use Ropes checks are already shameful by themselves. Just imagine in an unfitting situation.
4:00 The real question is: from where did he got these 900+ gallons of water? If they are fighting right near a river then I'd allow it, as it's creative + my oversight for fighting a fire elemental near a big water source... If they're not there's almost no way anyone from the party was just casually carrying 900 gallons (over 7500 pounds) of water just in case. And even if they did now the water evaporated after contact with the fire elemental, so yeah, they destroyed one mob and have no water left to delete exhaustion levels at the next long rest
When the player uses Counterspell: "Hey if you didn't want us to use it, Then you should have banned it."
When the DM uses counterspell: "Dude! Rules for thee but not for me!"
for players counterspell is a necessity, for the DM it's just a luxury
That's fair, if the DM makes things too difficult or realistic or dangerous that ruins it for the players and the players are what makes the game important/work.
@morrigankasa570 it should go with reason that anything the players can do is a tool the dm can use. What kind of overpowered god like wizard is able to use this mythical spells that no one else can use at level 5?
“Counterspell😏” you either love hearing it or hate hearing it
You forgot a couple:
1.
DM: "In the field, you see a gazebo"
Paladin: "I roll initiative! I rolled a 19!"
DM: "Are you serious? _It's a gazebo!_ "
Paladin: "You never know, it could be the great and terrible Dread Gazebo."
2.
DM: "You enter the tavern. The bartender, a half-orc..."
Rogue: "I roll for a sneak attack! Nat 20!"
DM: "...wha... why?!"
Rogue: "It's what my character would do. lol"
Paladin: "Can I join in? He's a half-orc, right? So he must be evil! And my character opposes all evil!"
DM: _angry groan_
3.
DM: "Under the trap door is a hidden chest."
Wizard: "It's a mimic! Kill it! I cast fireball!"
DM: *sigh* "You destroy the chest, the loot inside, and everyone within 5ft of the chest gets hit."
I am making a Celtic for my character Thornton the Small for my friend's Viking campaign.
Thornton the Small always has been misjudged for his height ever since he was a wee lad, the only work he found was being a bodyguard for a Lord to protect his farm from thieves and bandits, his size and weight allowed him to go unnoticed making for deadly surprises and brawls Thorton knew fighting a taller man would be the end of him so which inspired him to use his height to his advantage, after that fateful night Thorton the Small was sung aloud and achieved his dream of being noticed by his clan's leader to go raiding. It was also during his raid he realized the world was so much bigger than him and after his first night, he quit to become an adventurer. He is a simple man, he loves mead, swords, and axes, as much as he loves women.
I hate how accurate this is… especially the INSIGHT part…
Okay that ending was absolutely amazing well done 5/5 stars.
“Character dying”: Can I have some final words?
Me: I cast silence
That 37 damage felt inspired by a certain strixhaven
0:50 this one hit lol. I'm finally running waterdeep dragonheist with a big group of friends and (so far) the party consists of 3 harengon and a tired college student trying to pay off student loans. its gonna be great though.
You should have them go against some giant sized enemies and kill one of your players. Next time they go face to face with the giant sized enemies, they should have harengon feet necklace for luck haha.
Lol, that sounds absolutely awful. Glad you're having fun though.
Technically *pushes up glasses* Control Water is a 4th level spell that affects 7480519.48 gallons of water, although it's up to the DM how much of that gets on the fire elemental when using the "Flood" action
Good thing he was using the cantrip version.
"Counterspell is so overpowered". So strong, one might consider counterspelling the counterspell.
My average backstory:
“I give up my soul to the devil and I survive”
The most relatable thing by far was "Is there a way I can do both" lmao
Players do the wackiest stuff.
One time, the Gunslinger ran out of ammo for his musket. So the Wizard used Reduce on our Battlerager dwarf and loaded him into the gun.
They developed that idea until the damage potential was high enough to one-shot Tiamat... They were level 5.
Think on that one for a minute...
Edit: If memory serves - the BR dwarf would survive the endeavor in most cases, btw.
I love how playing Divinity original sin 2 tracks during d&d happens everywhere in my experience lol. Nice soundtrack choice!
"You're really gonna do this to me right now. Really."
"Absolutely. I'm a very honest man, can't lie to your widow."
**20**
"f- alright there was this girl in college and-"
Every time I see a video like this I always can count on most comments saying "Well in my experience"
I shall call it 'DND syndrome' as it ONLY appears for ONLY dungeons and dragons, absolutely no other tabletop game has this happen
at least to dnd's extent
inside check
Insite cheque
"Well in my experience..." this happens in Chess normally in the comments of video content sometimes even streams. It'll be like, "Well in my experience, I've seen plenty of players play that computer engine move at my low rating. It is quite logical and easy to see you when you really think about it you dumb International Master." It is incredibly annoying.
That's always the worst. It's almost condenscending; like saying 'in my experience' should mean it's just that, but the people who talk in this fashion always seem to be as entitled as possible assuming 'their experience' must be the physical law of the game. Worst kinda shit to hear outta some kook's mouth.
Would you say that, in your experience, DnD players tend to extrapolate too much from their own experiences?
Just replace all of this with “do I have advantage” and “I rolled a 37 for stealth” for a rogue.
I love this group. Breath of fresh air in the D&D community. I wish all of you the best of luck in your adventures! May your insight checks be strong!
I had the opposite problem, my players were new and kept forgetting insight was an option, so they pretty much just took everything they were told at face value. Now one of their companions is secretly the BBEG's right hand man XD
I like playing with new people for this reason, most the stuff they ask is for direction on how to fight or how they can solve puzzles. And I don't have to work as hard for a beilevable event to happen
*DM:* The guardsman lay on the ground in a puddle of his own blood, his body in ruins.
*Player:* Don't worry I can help you!
*Dm:* The guardsman sputters blood from his mouth *"No, save the prince, save...t-the p-prin..."*
*Player:* Wait no, hold on!
*DM:* You hear the last breath leave him as his life comes to an en...
*Player:* I cast cure wounds.
*DM:* What, his wounds are too deep for that spell to...
*Player:* I CAST CURE WOUNDS.
*DM:* No, you don't understand, not every injury can be solved with that spe...
*Player: I. CAST. CURE. WOUNDS!*
DM: Cool. You spend a spell slot... And nothing happens, because he's already dead.
@@justincane4274 *Cleric:* Oh..... Then I cast revivify.
*DM:* For the love of...
Random Dwarf: Hello!
Everyone: *I N S I G H T*
Holy shit is this accurate. This is also like the funniest thing I've seen from this channel, Jacob's acting is getting damn good too
I'm trying to figure out how 5 cubic feet of water is technically 135 gallons. Also, both gallons and cubic feet are measures of volume, not mass, why would the player respond with "magically lighter water"?
Edit: People have answered the first question. Even though Jacob described it as "5 cubic feet" he was talking about the spell "Shape Water" which uses a 5 foot cube, something that's completely different. Still don't know why the player suddenly brought up how much the water weighed.
5 cubic feet of water is ~37 gallons and the DM math is correct, the player math assumes it's a 5x5x5 cube of water instead, which works out to 935 gallons
@@ThelVadamee1 well, it's not a player's assumption, the PHB states "N-foot cube" is a "cube with side lengths N", so Shape Water's description of "5-foot cube" is actually 5x5x5 cubic feet, since (5ft)^3
@@kori228 right because a 5ft cube of water would actually be 125 cubic feet of water hence 935 gallons
@@kori228 My bad, I had the details on the spell wrong. The rationale behind the math is the same, but in this case it's the player that's technically correct
Yes the player is correct that it is 5x5x5 but they are multiplying and using the result (125) as the cubic feet thus rendering the answer 935 gallons of water. This is the player's error.
The whole player saying "counterspell is broken" when the DM uses it in an encounter thing happened to me. The player who said that then tried to counterspell the enemy the next round. I said, "For some reason, your counterspell failed. In fact, you feel your memory of how to cast it slipping away from you."
"Somehow, Palpatine has returned"
🤷♀️ dick move on your part still.
When I DM, I only allow insight if player can describe what is the action. So they can't insight randomly if it is not specific
Only thing missing is "players who don't know how their own class mechanics work but say that they work a certain way with complete confidence without checking and argue that they're right for way too long until someone finally looks it up"
Or maybe that's just my party
Playing Star Wars 5e and being the literal only player in the party who could tell the dm with confidence what their stuff did before trying to do it was pretty exhausting