D&D 5E As a DM what spell / ability do you find most annoying?

Bitbrain said:

The following spells from the PHB simply do not exist in my setting:

Create Food and Water
Create or Destroy Water
Darkvision
Feeblemind
Goodberry
Heat Metal
Leomund's Tiny Hut
Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound
Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion
Otto's Irresistable Dance
Wall of Force
...

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I can understand some of these - the ones that involve making the environment more challenging from a lighting, supplies and resting perspective. Heat Metal, I suppose based on common complaints. But the others are a bit mystifying. Why are these spells not allowed in your games? In my opinion you should be very careful in limiting options for players. They come to your game wanting to play D&D and the more you restrict the less it's actually D&D.

fil512 said:

Want a villain to run away? Too bad, the Moon Druid Dire Wolf will always outrun him.

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After the first couple times "just running away" doesn't work for his rivals, a smart villain might plan his escape route.

Let's see that Dire Wolf follow you through a manhole cover (needs hands) and down a narrow ladder (squeeze, jump vs fall) into the sewers (overpowers Scent).
He might try it anyway - your minions waiting in ambush at a cross-tunnel with orders to wait for him to pass and strike from behind ought to be a thought-provoker. ("Don't Split The Party!")

Bitbrain said:

The following spells from the PHB simply do not exist in my setting:

Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion

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Pathfinder did something neat with their version of this: a high-level cleric can be granted this spell as a special favor from their deity. The "mansion" looks an awful lot like a little corner of Heaven. That cleric (and any guests) is always sent to the same place.
Re-fluff the description of the interior to suit.

Eltab said:

That cleric (and any guests) is always sent to the same place.

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Then it's a nicer Demiplane, so that doesn't work.

Needs to be a new instance of the mansion / slice of heaven each time.

Only thing that I've been really bugged with so far was a guy with the Alert feat who took that "you cannot be surprised while conscious" thing to ridiculous levels. Because "surprised" wasn't listed as an official condition, he argued that it meant the same thing it does in a dictionary, i.e. nothing could ever surprise his character. I had to explain to him that automatically passively perceiving everything ever was basically really destructive to the game, and he would not get that much benefit from it. It was a great feat for him anyway as an assassin/shadow monk MC, so he shouldn't have tried to push it that far.

Other things I can see as potentially really annoying that I fortunately haven't had to deal with are the divination sorts of things that you might not have answers to, and which might result in bypassing huge amounts of prepared content to skip ahead to things you haven't worked on at all. If a big part of a campaign is "find the thing" and there are millions of avenues for the players to go about doing that involving tons of locations, factions and potential side quests, suddenly just knowing where the thing is would be a huge buzzkill to me. I'd probably just roll with it, but yeah, it'd be annoying for sure.

The only combo that is annoying is the great save or suck spell and the divination wizard forcing a low roll.

Banishment and the save roll is a 3. DC17
Force cage and the save roll is a 5. DC17
This the players cannot do all the time but it is the one ability that is hard to plan around without legendary saves.


I don't mind that the Divination wizard is a halfling with the ability to share his luck so anyone in 30 feet can re-roll a 1. That doesn't bother me at all.

I even don't mind the trickster cleric with the illusionary body who then starts using inflict wounds with it after the enemy has determined it is an illusion and leaves it alone.

practicalm said:

The only combo that is annoying is the great save or suck spell and the divination wizard forcing a low roll.

Banishment and the save roll is a 3. DC17
Force cage and the save roll is a 5. DC17
This the players cannot do all the time but it is the one ability that is hard to plan around without legendary saves.


I don't mind that the Divination wizard is a halfling with the ability to share his luck so anyone in 30 feet can re-roll a 1. That doesn't bother me at all.

I even don't mind the trickster cleric with the illusionary body who then starts using inflict wounds with it after the enemy has determined it is an illusion and leaves it alone.

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I had forgotten about Force Cage. If the creature in the cage can't teleport they're SOL even if they do have legendary saves. A melee based creature that can't teleport? It's another "the PCs automatically win" spell. Just put them in a cage and acid splash (or some other ranged cantrip) them to death. Unless of course you rule that a half-inch gap is too small to effectively cast through. Then they just put Baby in the corner and leave.

fil512 said:

I think for me it’s a tossup between Moon Circle wild-shape which not only is super OP but can also get players around many obstacles. The other one is Locate Object which makes it hard to steal from the players or have them quest for a unique object.

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Locate Object seems easy enough to circumvent. Wildshape is indeed powerful for a couple levels... then Conjure Animals takes over... then Polymorph. My solution for the latter two is to target the caster to break concentration.

Conjure animals can certainly slow down the game, so I come prepared and have the stats and miniatures ready ahead of time. Also:
- For x8 Wolves: roll eight d20's, then reroll any misses (to represent Pactics advantage... rerolling all the dice to check for crits isn't really worth the time).
- For x8 Giant Poisonous Snakes: just average out to 12 damage per hit (half is poison... rolling all those saves isn't worth the time).

fil512 said:

The other one is Locate Object which makes it hard to steal from the players or have them quest for a unique object.

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It's funny, my group came to the conclusion that locate object is one of the most useless spells in the game. 1000 ft is an incredibly short range, so it doesn't obviate the need for research. Anything worth casting it to find is likely going to be (a) something you aren't already intimately familiar with, and (b) in a place where you can't walk in a straight line to it.

So you've somehow found yourself within 1000 ft of the mcguffin (using means other than the spell), which happens to be unique enough for the location so the spell shows you the way to the Holy Avenger (which you happen to already have seen) instead of the rusty POS carried by orc #34. Since it only provides straight-line direction instead of telling you which direction to turn, and doesn't also tell you distance, you need to be a trig expert to know whether the mcguffin being "that way" is on the other side of the dungeon, or the other side of the wall. Since its duration is Concentration, the spell is vulnerable to all the encounters between you and the mcguffin, either due to damage or being forced to cast another Concentration spell to resolve the battle.

Finding your own stuff is probably the only use for the spell, so if you're really fond of that tactic, I suppose this spell is problematic for you, but for virtually any other use (would you really cast a spell to find any old <object of a particular type>?), I think you're perceiving the spell to be better than it actually is.

iamntbatman said:

Only thing that I've been really bugged with so far was a guy with the Alert feat who took that "you cannot be surprised while conscious" thing to ridiculous levels.

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This reminded me of a mistake I made in awarding a Weapon of Warning in a treasure trove. What a buzzkill. Yeah, had to come up with a story-appropriate way to reclaim that one from the party before it got out of hand.