New DM Quest Rewards available on DM's Guild

Personally, I like the idea of being able to drop a high level character straight into the campaign. I have some build ideas that don't really work the way they're intended for quite a few levels, that I might be able to try out with a big pool of XP.

As for the magic items, it's still pretty limited (no magic items can come from the books unless specified), so it's a pretty small list. And what happens to the poor DMs who most build with DMXP and then lose roll offs for magic items when they do get to play? Or better yet, what about the players who lose out on a great item because the regular DM is finally getting to play for once, and doesn't have any magic items and is able to snap up what was found? This can help mitigate both those scenarios.

The obvious fix for playtesting is to award full player benefits for DMs who playtest. Additionally, I agree that a playtesting quest might have been good. "Complete and report on 7 playtests as a DM and get your choice of item from the playtests and add a potion of healing (or something) to each module you playtested when you run it for real."

As for previous contributions, that's going to be the same argument the League usually uses - if the rewards were good enough before for you to feel that you benefited, being retroactively rewarded is unnecessary. If the rewards were previously not good enough, you wouldn't've done it.

True. But it also adds items to DMs' characters, and those items are ones the DMs choose from prior adventures. Frankly, there are already a great number of people gaming the system who, as a result, have characters that are very, very powerful for their level. It is quite difficult to challenge those players, particularly when they game with others who are not so thoroughly optimized. The ones I know tend to DM, too. Their characters will be even more powerful.

I am sure the world will not come to an end due to this development. I just think it serves to exacerbate problems that the game and the League were designed to avoid, so I think the rewards the program doles out are a step in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, they will be (and already are) wildly popular.

I guess I don't understand the problem with someone having a "powerful" character. I'm not much of a min-maxer personally, but I DM for a mix of players, some of whom get most of their enjoyment out of being useful and successful in combat. Since I ultimately want my players to be successful in combat (I don't want them to die or fail the adventure, after all), it's no skin off my back if some of the players demolish monsters. In my experience, the players who don't optimize for combat appreciate their companions being good at combat. The players that don't optimize for combat get their chance to shine elsewhere in the adventure.

There's nothing wrong with having a powerful character. However, a lot of players do not find it fun to play with someone who, through magic item optimization, is the star of every single encounter. As a DM, it's hard to balance encounters so that both sets of players have fun. If you make them hard enough to challenge them, you wipe the floor with people who have not super-over-optimized their characters.

By all means, people can and should build effective characters. I just don't feel like running adventures for characters I cannot touch as a DM. I already see enough tables with characters who have half a dozen magic items by level 6, all of which are completely optimized for their build. I expect I'll be seeing even more of those characters now.

Aaron Berkowitz said:

I guess I don't understand the problem with someone having a "powerful" character. I'm not much of a min-maxer personally, but I DM for a mix of players, some of whom get most of their enjoyment out of being useful and successful in combat. Since I ultimately want my players to be successful in combat (I don't want them to die or fail the adventure, after all), it's no skin off my back if some of the players demolish monsters. In my experience, the players who don't optimize for combat appreciate their companions being good at combat. The players that don't optimize for combat get their chance to shine elsewhere in the adventure.

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I feel like you've not actually played with a true min-maxer at your table. For those who aren't min-maxers, few things are as demoralizing and un-fun than simply not being able to contribute in a significant manner because the min-maxer simply overloads the adventure. And as min-maxers become more and more common in Organized Play (due to things like unfortunate magic items being introduced, system combinations, or the like), there is often a natural tendency for module writers to -- consciously or unconsciously -- start to write modules around them, as they are the 'forward line' of the players, power-wise.

And honestly, with very few exceptions, almost all mods can be simply and effectively (if not cleanly) completed by violence and combat -- which, if you have min-maxed characters at the table, is going to be the case more often than not, since combat is going to be their preferred method of resolution. While there may be some non-combat bits here and there in mods that allow the non-combat characters to shine, it's seldom the final solution to a mod, or even a significant element of it.

A very good example of simple min-maxing cutting down on enjoyment for other players: Having 1 or more wizards with Simulacrums of themself at the table in high level play, and not being one of those wizards. A simulacrum is basically a spell designed to let a high level wizard hog the table play for themselves - multiple full spells in a turn, multiple concentration spells at the same time, etc. It reduces other characters entirely to meat shields.

There is a simple fix in respect to simulacrum. A DM does not have to honor simulacrum created at another DMs table (or any other pre-cast spells such as animate dead).

With a 12hr casting time, and a hefty price tag - having players recast the spell each time they want to use it can become costly if not used sparingly. The casting time alone means that it will not come into play in many adventures (especially those on time constraints, which includes most DDEX and DDAL adventures).

I know if I saw twin wizards walk into a room and one is taking orders from the other, that one is getting a dispel magic.

Steve_MND said:

I feel like you've not actually played with a true min-maxer at your table. For those who aren't min-maxers, few things are as demoralizing and un-fun than simply not being able to contribute in a significant manner because the min-maxer simply overloads the adventure.

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I suppose you must be right - I've never played with someone who was intentionally trying to break the game or make it unfun for other players. But that seems like a problem with the player, rather than the system. It's unfortunate, but you can't legislate jerkiness away. I'm sorry if you're stuck DMing for fun suckers.

I hadn't really considered the angle of 'hey, I'll DM now so that I can launch a new character who's already min-maxed with magic items and feats, just the way I want it, and I won't even have to deal with the horribly inefficient low levels where I might decide the effort isn't worth it".

Heck, it's already obvious that people who have zero interest in DMing can simply do the social media quests and gain a significant amount of free XP without really doing anything to improve the campaign.

Add mine to the voices who are convinced that the new DM awards have likely erred on the side of being too generous, and should probably be dialed back for future seasons.

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Pauper