That's something I'll have to keep in mind. My groups are large, though (6 players in one, 8 in another), so combat in small rooms causes other headaches.
For your group, maybe! For mine, it sounds like an invitation to nothing but doorway fights, where the ranged PCs stand in the doorway and fill the room with arrows/fireballs/magic missiles and never even get touched by whatever enemies are in those rooms. The downside to a small room is that there isn't much room for enemies to stand in them either, meaning that there is just one or two per room and they can be picked off with smaller spells.
As far as I can tell, yes. But I believe they'd have more fun if situations were more varied. And I know I'd have more fun if I didn't have to run the classic hypnotic pattern fight over and over.Are your players having fun?
As far as I can tell, yes. But I believe they'd have more fun if situations were more varied. And I know I'd have more fun if I didn't have to run the classic hypnotic pattern fight over and over.
And I know I'd have more fun if I didn't have to run the classic hypnotic pattern fight over and over.
No, policing the adventuring day is ANY action taken by the DM to deal with the 5MWD.
It includes tweaking the resting rules or using rest variants. Rulings. Random monsters. Not-so-random monsters. Doom clocks. Failing forward. Taking to the players and reaching social consensus not to try and game the rest system. Even heavy handed 'you rest and nothing happens' or 'nope'.
I strongly recommend against arbitrarily informing your players that their long rest had no effect. That way leads to madness and the lamentations of your women.
What does your group want?I just want a bigger range of tricks to deal with it when it's appropriate, and I as a DM am frankly uncomfortable with the inevitable part at the end of the combat where the entire party are beating up helpless enthralled enemies. I feel like that is damaging to a heroic-toned campaign, and it's also boring as heck to run. To be honest, that's my biggest complaint with the spell.
I'm also frustrated because every combat in every campaign has to be built around this one spell. There's a limit to how much "celebrating" should be allowed to dominate every session you ever run, or so it seems to me.
I dont have to luckily.
Part of session zero is a discussion about the 5MWD, and rest/ resource expectations in the campaign, and how I dont really brook anyone trying to game the system. I inform the players that they should expect 6-ish ecounters per long rest as a median, and can expect around 2 short rests in that time (also as a median).
From there (in game) I make liberal use of doom clocks and surprise encounters, enough to make the system largely self regulating in actual play.
What does your group want?
A DM is not building the DM's world. The DM build's the group's world. You're not creating the story of your NPCs - it is the story of the PCs exploring your world.
It is all about the heroes of the tale, not the DM's world.
Does that mean you're expected to suffer through and be at the whim of the players? Absolutely not. You're there to build an interesting world for them to explore and in which to thrive and adventure. The game works best when the players walk into a world that is interesting to them, but does not feel like it was built just for them. A DM can have the fun a parent has when they build a town of blocks and then watches their 11 month old child play Godzilla and crush it. (Would you think of gluing it all together to stop the kid from using their body to break it apart?)
However, you're absolutely not there to invalidate their choices. If you don't like the illusion rules, but you have a player that really wants to play an illusionist and loves the illusion rules, talk with them to understand what it is they like, explore options, try to encourage understandings that you think are improvements - but in the end you need to take what they love about their PC idea and celebrate it, regardless of what it is they love about it (within socially acceptable limits, of course).