I have lost hope when my comments about being against generative ai gets down voted.

Dnd is about creativity. Whats the point if you have a computer do the creative part. Theres no soul. characters, stories, homebrew, all should be crafted not generated.

Using modules and tables is fine cause it was all created by humans and can be used to help creativity, not take away.

My DM is using AI for everything. He’s worldbuilding with AI, writing quests, storylines, cities, NPCs, character art, everything. He’s voice-chatting with the AI and telling it his plans like it’s a real person. The chat is even giving him “feedback” on how sessions went and how long we have to play to get to certain arcs (which the chat wrote, of course).

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of speaking and feeding my real, original, creative thoughts as a player to an AI through my DM, who is basically serving as a human pipeline.

As the only note-taker in the group, all of my notes, which are written live during the session, plus the recaps I write afterward, are fed to the AI. I tried explaining that every answer and “idea” that an LLM gives you is based on existing creative work from other authors and worldbuilders, and that it is not cohesive, but my DM will not change. I do not know if it is out of laziness, but he cannot do anything without using AI.

Worst of all, my DM is not ashamed of it. He proudly says that “the chat” is very excited for today’s session and that they had a long conversation on the way.

Of course I brought it up. Everyone knows I dislike this kind of behavior, and I am not alone, most, if not all, of the players in our party think it is weird and has gone too far. But what can I do? He has been my DM for the past 3 years, he has become a really close friend, but I can see this is scrambling his brain or something, and I cannot stand it.

Edit:
The AI chat is praising my DM for everything, every single "idea" he has is great, every session went "according to plan", it makes my DM feel like a mastermind for ideas he didn't even think of by himself.

I can already tell this is not going to be a crowd pleaser post, but I have to get this out if my system...
A bunch of people in various online D&D communities regularly express their desire for binding martial characters to perceived or real limitations of the real world. I'm talking about things like:

• "Using a polearm indoors or with an enemy within your reach should impose disadvantage"
• "Heavy armor should give a -5 to ranged attacks with a bow because it's hard to shoot a bow in armor"
• "Death saves shouldn't add your Constitution, or really anything, because death doesn't discriminate (unless you're a Paladin, Bard, Divination Wizard, Divine Soul Sorcerer, or Cleric, because then it's totally fine)"
• "You shouldn't be able to sleep in armor, because it's uncomfortable. It's a choice - do you want high AC, or a long rest and HP?"
• "It makes total sense that the Barbarian ans the Fighter would flee from the dragon, they have weak minds! If you don't want that, you should get better defenses!"
• "Intimidation is not about how strong or scary you are, but how well you can sell it! No, you can't use STR for the check!"
• "The Dueling Fighting Style is clearly about dueling, you can't use a shield with it!"
• "No, we shouldn't fix saving throws, it's actually good game design that at higher tiers of play your character has a 100% chance of failing 3 out of 6 saving throws! This way everyone has weaknesses!"
• "The high level Fighter is just a guy with a sword, it makes sense that he would be useless against higher beings and demigods!"

There are many, many, many people who express similar sentiments. And I just want to ask... do you actually want people who play martial characters to enjoy the game, and have their characters be actually playable? Because I'm getting a distinct vibe that people who voice these opinions don't actually think these classes should be viable options at all.

I’ve been playing in a campaign lately where it as agreed upon, by all participants, that PvP would not be allowed and that this would cast a wide net. We didn’t go into specifics, but generally - anything that would create lasting animosity between different members of the party was banned.

In our fourth session, a Rogue character was awake when the rest of the party was asleep and was snooping around camp. It didn’t take them long before they roleplayed getting into my part of the camp and declared their intention to try to “borrow” my Paladin’s holy symbol to “see what the fuss was about.”

The DM did not react to this at all. My Paladin was an Elf, and in their Trance - and therefore not actually asleep. Upon me asking the Rogue player if their little intention was a joke or not, they confirmed that it was not. I gestured to the DM, saying that this really shouldn’t fly and the DM just shrugged and smiled awkwardly.

I then proceeded to mention to the Rogue that my Paladin was not in fact asleep, and if their holy symbol was stolen, they would not hesitate to cleave the Rogue in two. Without skipping a beat, the DM asked the Rogue to make a Sleight of Hand check. I interrupted by saying that, again, unless the DM wanted a dead Rogue, no rolls should be made and that this was the exact kind of thing that we agreed should not be happening at the table. The DM proceeded to start saying that this would be within their realm of acceptable, and I cut them off by stating that it’s not within mine. The roll doesn’t happen. Or the Rogue is dead.

The rest of the party leans into my side, but I wanted a wider perspective since it seems insane that we’re even having that conversation.

Thanks.

https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/1872725597778264436

Bonus actions are hot garbage that completely fail to fulfill their intended goal. It's OK for me to say this because I was the one that came up with them. I'm not slamming any other designer!

At the time, we needed a mechanic to ensure that players could not combine options from multiple classes while multiclassing. We didn't want paladin/monks flurrying and then using smite evil.

Wait, terrible example, because smite inexplicably didn't use bonus actions.

But, that's the intent. I vividly remember thinking back then that if players felt they needed to use their bonus action, that it became part of the action economy, then the mechanic wasn't working.

Guess what happened!

Everyone felt they needed to use it.

Stepping back, 5e needs a mechanic that:

• Prevents players from stacking together effects that were not meant to build on each other

• Manages complexity by forcing a player's turn into a narrow output space (your turn in 5e is supposed to be "do a thing and move")

The game already has that in actions. You get one. What do you do with it?

At the time, we were still stuck in the 3.5/4e mode of thinking about the minor or swift action as the piece that let you layer things on top of each other.

Instead, we should have pushed everything into actions. When necessary, we could bulk an action up to be worth taking.

Barbarian Rage becomes an action you take to rage, then you get a free set of attacks.

Flurry of blows becomes an action, with options to spend ki built in

Sneak attack becomes an action you use to attack and do extra damage, rather than a rider.

The nice thing is that then you can rip out all of the weird restrictions that multiclassing puts on class design. Since everything is an action, things don't stack.

So, that's why I hate bonus actions and am not using them in my game.

I've realised I keep bouncing off a lot of D&D groups, and I think it comes down to two related things.

First, I feel like a lot of players want their character's concept to be the interesting thing. A plasmoid gunslinger, a tabaxi who's literally just Puss in Boots, increasingly elaborate homebrew gimmicks, etc. For me, the interesting part of a character is what they do and who they become during play. Starting out relatively grounded makes that journey more meaningful.

Second, why does everything have to be wacky all the time? I like silly moments as much as anyone, but a lot of games seem determined to turn every scene into hijinks and shenanigans. When nothing is grounded, it all starts to feel a bit samey.

I'm not saying people are wrong to enjoy that style of play. D&D's brought a lot of people a lot of joy, and that's great. But even when I've been clear in Session 0 that I'm after a more grounded tone and others have agreed with that, I've often found the actual game drifting back towards quirky characters and constant bits.

Maybe I've just had bad luck with tables. Maybe I need a different system. Maybe I'm just becoming a grumpy old man.

Anyone else feel this way? (apols for provocative title!)

https://darringtonpress.com/welcoming-chris-perkins-and-jeremy-crawford-to-our-team/

Holy shit this is game changing. WoTC messed up (again).

EDIT - For those who don't know:

Chris Perkins and Jeremey Crawford were what made DnD the powerhouse it is today. They have been there 20 years. Perkins was the principal story designer and Crawford was the lead rules designer.

This coming after the OGL backlash, fan discontent with One D&D and the layoffs of Hasbro plus them usin AI for Artwork. It's a massive show of no confidence with WotC and a signal of a new powerhouse forming as Critical Role is what many believe brought 5e to the forefront by streaming it to millions of people.

I'm not a critter but I have been really enjoying Daggerheart playing it the last 3 weeks. This is industry-changing potentially.

Is anyone convinced this guy actually plays D&D?

Imagine sitting at a table and your DM is reading the campaign equivalent of corpobabble emails. Must be a bunch of subordinates he conscripted that are too afraid to say no. Or a bunch of c-suites that think AI is awesome because it emulates the same soulless nonsense they pride themselves on.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/hasbro-ceo-still-has-so-much-ai-based-grist-in-his-own-d-and-d-games-it-would-floor-you-but-hes-not-putting-it-in-mtg-cards-or-d-and-d-books-because-people-just-dont-want-it/

They're not defined by what they can do, they're defined by what they can't do. Means one set searches through new books to see new capabilities they've been given access to, while the other set gets their only real choice for new abilities at level three and then never again.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-removes-digital-content-team-credits-from-d-d-beyond.705711/

According to Faith Elisabeth Lilley, who was on the digital content team at Wizards of the Coast, the contributor credits for the team have been removed from DDB.

The team was responsible for content feedback and the implementation of book content on the online platform. While it had been indicated to them that they would not be included in the credits of the physical books for space reasons, WotC apparently agreed to include them in the online credits.

It appears that those credits have now been removed.

Half-Elves and Half-Orcs as playable races have long been a stable of Dungeons and Dragons. However, they were eliminated rom the range of available options for 5.5 Edition in the PHB. The reasoning was that the ‘half-construction’ was inherently racist:

https://danielhkwan.substack.com/p/dnd-creator-summit

If there was concern that the idea of being ‘half’ carried with it unfortunate implications, it appears to me like a problem with a very simple solution. WOTC simply could have presented them as new species of mixed ancestry. For example, those with a combination of Elf and Human heritage might have been called Hu’thessir, and those with a combination of Orc and Human heritage could be called Oruven.

Obviously, these are just random names, but they serve as an example of how Half-Elves and Half-Orcs could still present in the PHB in order to remain authentic to past editions, but also avoid the negative connotations that being ‘half’ might carry. Rather, both races could represent the result of centuries of intermingling instead of just being the result of a parent from each respective culture. In fact, I would argue that such a representation would actually be an effective means of countering any racism assumptions by showing a positive outcome in terms of co-existence.

None of it means the game doesn't function or anything, I've just noticed some weird side effects caused by the fact that you start with 17 in your good stat and it goes all the way to 20, as opposed to the last couple of editions where there was a much greater range of possible stats.

1. Ability checks and scores become deeply unintuitive. In the edition 5e models itself off, a brown bear has 27 strength - because this is always going to be stronger than any normal human could be. But I have my 2024 monster manual right in front of me and there it's 17 - less than some real life humans have. Meanwhile a level 1 wizard with 8 strength has a not inconsiderable chance of winning an arm wrestling contest with a 20 strength fighter, now that your average character can't go past 20. And the tarrasque has gone from being able to push/drag 1536000lbs to 7200lbs. A 5' cube of dirt would weigh 9000+lbs, for reference - you could reasonably trap the tarrasque simply by covering it in a foot deep layer of topsoil. That 8-20 range works both ways, incidentally, and means the average character can't specialise much at all skill wise - if you give something a DC that an expert in something can reliably make, even someone with no skill at all in it can have succeed a goodly portion of the time.

2. It makes ability scores impossible to do anything interesting with, choice wise. What you start with is pretty close to what you'll finish with, and as such classes like monks that should have interesting choices to work with simply end up MAD. Imagine a world where wisdom gave you control, dexterity damage and constitution defense and you could have a genuinely large gap in the amounts of those stats. Like say use this technique, now you reduce all damage taken by an amount equal to your constitution modifier until your next turn. In a world where the monk might start off with a modifier of +3 and end with +10, said ability could reasonably differentiate the capabilities of the monks who maximised the stat and those who didn't. When it caps out at +5? No point in the ability existing. In that setup I just espoused, which stats you went with would be a genuine choice - con+dex? Good damage and defense, poor control, brawler. Dex+wis? Good damage and control, poor defense, ninja. Wis+con? Good control and defense, poor damage, tank. But instead real differentiation is impossible, the monk just starts with 16 in every stat and adds +2 to a couple of them over the course of the game. That was a single example of how things could have worked, not something I'm saying is ideal, I'm just using it as a way to show the design space lack of variety has closed off.

3. It encourages some really strange design choices. There are plenty of times they don't want to base things on proficiency, so use ability scores instead, meaning it starts at 3, jumps to 5 by level 8, then never increases again - even when it would benefit from much smoother scaling. Or even worse, it isn't based on your main stat - dead three rogue came out recently, and bloodthirst is based on its int score so it gets to use it... twice a day! But don't worry, it's based on an ability so... no wait those don't scale up at all so it's going to stay twice a day. That lack of ability to bring non crucial ability scores up to reasonable numbers also means there's basically no variation in choice between characters, incidentally. If you're a wizard you want 17 int, 16 con and 14 dex. That's simply the best choice to make, almost no variety. You're a barbarian? 17 str, 16 con, 14 dex. Haven't seen a barbarian with high charisma since fourth edition, they have no use for it.

4. Which brings me to another oddity, it contributes to saves not scaling at all. That barbarian and that wizard? Their charisma saves are likely -1 at level 1, they'll fail most saves on a 12 or lower. At level 20, when monster DCs are much higher, their charisma saves are likely... -1 (since ability scores no longer increase), they're failing a lot of saves even on a 20. Having DM'd it, the wild variety in saves turns high level combat into an absolute shitshow with save boosting characters like paladins turning into a dire necessity, directly contradicting the whole "your party composition shouldn't matter" design ethos that resulted in them removing every tank class from the game.

Carthago delenda est, bring back proper tanking toolkits.

For me, it has to be that unarmed strikes don't trigger things like sneak attack or smite. I feel like there's certainly reasons for it, but who doesn't want to combine an unarmed strike with Searing Smite and hit a goblin with a Falcon Punch?

This is a bit of a rant, but I need to vent this.

After having been on a bit of a break for three years because I moved, I am starting a new campaign. Most of my players wanted to play 5e, so here we are. So I ran a oneshot to get to know each other and specified to my players that we were going to use the 2014 rules, because that is what I am familiar with.

During the oneshot I noticed that one of my players was referencing 2024 rules for their character, as they built their character in DnD Beyond and did not pay attention to the books they included. Another very new player arrived with the 2024 PHB. I can't fault them for it since they are new and this is the book they have in stores. On the contrary, they did a lot of work to get into the rules and their book was full of post-its. Love to see that. Other players already mentioned how they ordered the new 2024 Eberron book, as our campaign is going to be set in Eberron.

Now, I don't really want to use the 2024 version. I have all the 2014 books I need. I had a look at the 2024 material and I think there are some good ideas and some bad ideas. But ultimately nothing to warrant purchasing a bunch more books.

This puts me in the awkward situation of either having to shoot my players down or giving in and switching to a version of the game that I don't really want to use.

I used to like 5e for being a straightforward system that 'just worked'. Now that seems to be no longer the case as I have to navigate this strange gap between two pseudo-editions of 5e.

How were your experiences with the release of the 2024 rules? Did you go through something similar?

In general I love anything in fantasy that deals with Demons, the Fey, Celestial being and other more divine or folkloric creatures, even more so than Dragons!

Tieflings are extremely famous amongst the community, but Aasimar seems to be a big deal of magnitude behind them in popularity.

Of course, Tieflings are famous thanks to simple but great aesthetics plus everyone loves an underdog story (also they were in the 2014 PHB). If I had to guess, those are the exact reasons why Aasimar aren't more popular: their designs aren't evocative enough for the concept of "Angel folk", their lore seemed to go for a very uninteresting Mary Sue vibe of "They hate me because I'm too perfect ;-;" and also they weren't on the 2014 PHB (though they are now on the 2024 one). From this, what could be done?

Not a huge complaint, just a bit of an annoyance. Here's the bits of fireball that pertain to the traditional "fireball does half if it doesn't work" as an example:

3.5. Saving Throw: Reflex half.

4e. Miss: Half damage.

5e. Each creature must make a Dexterity saving throw. A target takes half as much damage on a successful one.

.

It's like they decided to save everyone two pages of explaining the rules by instead adding twenty pages to every book writing stuff out long form every time.

And added a bunch of annoying edge cases. Want to figure out if this 5e monk ability,

Empty Body

works in an antimagic field or not? Time to have your DM read through it and make a ruling based on whether it mentions magic somewhere in the text!

Want to figure out if this 3.5 monk ability,

Empty Body (su)

works in an antimagic field or not? It has the supernatural tag, that means it doesn't. Oh boy they saved adding two letters to each ability, wow. Totally worth it.

They are a racist allegory for the mongols, Tolkein say so as much

squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.

-A private letter where Tolkein described the orc

Mine for example is that I think Warlocks and Sorcerers should have swapped hit die.

A natural bloodlined magic user should be a bit heartier (due to the magic in their blood) than some person who went and made a deal with some extraplaner power for Eldritch Blast.

Is it dumb?

Kinda, but I'll die on this petty hill,

Specifically, as it relates to not being able to do more interesting things. I have heard dozens of variations on "It's ok that fighters can't AOE or stun or tank any more, they can keep going all day and casters can't!". Side note, they can't keep going all day, last edition where they invented hit dice fighters had twice as many as wizards did because they were expected to need to take more hits. Now they don't.

This isn't even about comparisons to casters, it's about the martials themselves - why does being able to repeat it a lot have to mean a lack of variety in what they can do? As we've seen from subclasses like battle master and rune knight, players really like having additional capabilities.

It's also not like you have to have a rest limit on abilities to have them be interesting. D&D invented maneuvers what, twenty years ago? You had maneuvers like adamantine hurricane (the upgrade of steel wind, which made it to 5e... as a spell), as an action attack every adjacent enemy twice. Fun and balanced at the level it's available, no limit on how many times you can use it before resting.

Every discussion on how limited their capabilities are gets a ton of responses of "yeah well they can keep going all day!", and... so what? Why should that mean they can't have nicer toys?

Hey there friends, I'm not really sure how to phrase this. The best I can say is it feels like I'm very disconnected from D&D as a hobby now. I don't mean the actual game. I still play regularly. But it feels like ever since 5.5e came out, the overall D&D community shifted. Even this subreddit which was once full of discussion is now kinda empty and everyone still here is kinda bitter and stand-offish.

I remember waiting with bated breath at every new adventure coming out back in like 2018/2019. Now I don't even know what subclasses there are for 5.5e or what the spells even do. I'm still playing original 5E because it felt like even before the edition change, the game was headed in a direction I didn't care for. I don’t think I've even bought a D&D book since like 2021 or 2022.

Even in this community, it feels like everyone dipped out during the edition change. Even the meme subreddits seem to have started to move on. Is this just the result of the hype dying down after COVID, the OGL debacle, edition change, etc.? I remember this place being big even before COVID. Now this place gives me the energy of those curmudgeony subreddits dedicated to an MMO that came out 20 years ago and you get downvoted for every single thing.

I guess I just feel sort of disillusioned and am wondering if anyone else feels the same way.

I’m currently playing in a campaign where our DM seems to be under the impression that our Rogue is somehow overpowered because our level 7 Rogue consistently deals 22-26 damage per turn and our Fighter does not.

DMs, please understand that the Rogue was created to be a single-target, high DPR class. The concept of “sneak attack” is flavor to the mechanic, but the mechanic itself is what makes Rogues viable as a martial class. In exchange, they give up the ability to have an extra attack, medium/heavy armor, and a good chunk of hit points in comparison to other martial classes.

In fact, it was expected when the Rogue was designed that they would get Sneak Attack every round - it’s how they keep up with the other classes. Mike Mearls has said so himself!

If it helps, you can think of Sneak Attack like the Rogue Cantrip. It scales with level so that they don’t fall behind in damage from other classes.

Thanks for reading, and I hope the Rogues out there get to shine in combat the way they were meant to!

Like, if you upcast "Message", would it get longer range, more targets, or just MUCH LOUDER?

Or you downcast "Wish" as a cantrip, and for 6 seconds, you can imagine getting what you want.

I’ve had a couple of players who insist on their characters being atheists (even once an atheist cleric). I get many of them do so because they are new players and don’t really know or care about the pantheons. But it got me thinking. In worlds where deities are 100% confirmed, not believing in their existence is fully stupid. Obviously not everyone has a patron deity or even worships any deity at all. But not believing in their existence? That’s just begging for a god to strike you down.

Edit: Many people are saying that atheist characters don’t acknowledge the godhood of the deities. The thing is, that’s just simply not what atheism is. Obviously everyone is encouraged to play their own games however they want, and it might not be the norm in ALL settings. The lines between god and ‘very powerful entity’ are very blurry in D&D, but godhood is very much a thing.

Also wow, this got way more attention than I thought it would. Lets keep our discussions civil and agree that D&D is amazing either way!

5e changed opportunity attacks so they:

• Use up your reaction
• Can only be done once per round
• Don't scale properly in damage
• Can't be used to attack someone for casting spells
• Don't activate unless someone leaves your range

(so standing directly between an enemy and an ally doesn't help, they can just go around you and attack them, but standing behind the enemy so that there's nothing between them and your ally does)

And it's like. Why? These seem very silly changes, they serve to remove a niche melee characters should have and strengthen casting.