D&D 5E Adorable players overestimating themselves

[Dausuul]

Most of the characters in my party have ACs near or above 20. They are nearly impossible for rank-and-file monsters to hit.

My solution: Throw lots of rank-and-file monsters at them, and moan ostentatiously about their stupidly high ACs when the monsters can't lay a finger on them. They get to enjoy feeling like they're beating the DM, and I get to enjoy the sudden terror on their faces when they encounter a spellcaster or a monster with a high attack bonus and lots of DPR... which happens fairly frequently.

 

[Matt Vincent]

My friend made a Dream Druid and now thinks that with magic and transformations they can out-heal or flee anything.

Thoughts on how I should approach this?

Be your players' biggest cheerleader. D&D is is all about fantasy and wish fulfillment. Commend him. If nothing else he evidently put a lot of time and effort crafting his character, which is the sort of engagement to strive for in players. Let him have that win. Then marvel at something the other players did as well.

Don't hold back on the challenge though (but let players know that they've earned tougher opponents).

 

[cmad1977]

Play on! No foul! Play on!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Anyone else find it adorable when a player taunts the DM by saying that their character "can't be killed" because they have countermeasures for everything?

My friend made a Dream Druid and now thinks that with magic and transformations they can out-heal or flee anything.

Thoughts on how I should approach this? I feel like simply proving them wrong by destroying their character would be too easy...

Player: We all rest by the camp fire and I pray a bit, then go to sleep.
DM: You don't wake up. You're dead.
Player: What?!? How??!!
DM: Uh, how would you know? You're dead. Make a new guy.

;P

Seriously though, don't sweat it. At some point (probably sooner rather than later), he will find himself rolling a 1...and unless he's a Halfling, that 1 could easily be his death.

Also...what the frika-frack is a "Dream Druid"? If you guys are using lots of "non-official" stuff, I'm positive you can find something to counter it. Positive.

If his attitude is annoying you, take a page from Hackmaster 4e and use a "Grudge Monster". It's basically a monster specifically used/created to counter an uppity player like this. Works wonders if used correctly...if used incorrectly, it can lead to a PO'ed player, which may not be what you want. Or you could always focus on stuff that has nothing to do with his characters stats/capabilities. Things like role-playing and player-ideas (please tell me you aren't one of those new-age DM's that let players roll for their character to come up with an 'idea that works' when the player can't figure it out...).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Sunseeker]

As most people have said, play normally and don't let him get to you. If you really want to get to him, hit him in the feels. Kill his family. Kill his friends. Blackmail his character into doing something horrible or the bad guy will kill his friends/family/whole town. Throw an elder horror against the party, watch the rest of them go insane and attack the druid, have them snap out of it if he looks willing to kill them.

Killing him is easy. Grinding him down is fun.

 

[Shiroiken]

If you are a good, fair, impartial judge, they may be right. Send them into the Tomb of Horrors to find out. It was originally designed to punish (and hopefully kill) Robliar who had gotten a bit arrogant. Unfortunately for Gary, Rob was in fact that good, and successfully navigated the death dungeon. However most players (probably including your players) aren't really as good as they think they are, and would die horribly (complaining the entire time about how "unfair" it was).

 

[Dorian_Grey]

People think they're tough till they're not. I find that the best way to avoid this is to keep a number of encounters going that high light the strengths and weaknesses of all PCs. In other words, don't just have dungeon crawls with combat. If half of your encounters require social skills - such as deception or persuasion - then that allows another member of the group to shine. For example, I wanted to play a charming swashbuckler type fighter. So my fighter has a high dex and a high charisma. Sure, I can stand on the line during a fight, but my perception and investigation sucks. Each game, our DM has my fighter get an opportunity to kick ass and take names, and interact with others (I used deception to get advantage on an ambush actually) - but he also throws traps and hidden puzzles at us. For that, our other characters step up. By keeping a mix, no one player - even a spell caster - should be able to do it all. The best part is for something like a social/puzzle encounter you can throw a ton of them at the party between short rests. How is he going to run from "Talking to the guild caravan" or how is he going to heal from "Infiltrate the gambling den and play cards. Learn as much as you can by overhearing conversations at the Red Dragon table." Sure, he rolls a 1 on picking up his cards to keep them hidden and gets a papercut. I guess he can heal that.

 

[MarkB]

Often when players come up with specific builds like this, it's a case of fixing the lair door after the dragon has bolted - they're building their character to withstand the thing that hurt them last time.

If you really feel like you need to do something, then rather than trying to out-muscle the character concept, simply out-maneuver it. He's a druid who's hard to nail down in combat? That's fine - the next stage of the adventure is an urban murder-mystery, heavy on problem-solving and social challenges, light on combat.

 

[Horwath]

Don't go out of your way to assault the elusive PC.

Mooks lose DPS if trying to catch slippery target.

Same as the topic of rogue and bonus action. IF you run 6-8 encounters a day with 2-3 short rest, your party will find out that HDs are not common healing pool and that a player of the end of the day with full HP and all HDs left maybe doing harm to the party for not sharing the pain.

He will be left alone if all others are down or taking the Dodge action to prevent damage and not dealing any.

And as mentioned, if the players are cleaving through the encounters that is not because of one players features, it's about a party working together very well or CRs are very low.

Ramp it up.

 

[Li Shenron]

Anyone else find it adorable when a player taunts the DM by saying that their character "can't be killed" because they have countermeasures for everything?

My friend made a Dream Druid and now thinks that with magic and transformations they can out-heal or flee anything.

Thoughts on how I should approach this? I feel like simply proving them wrong by destroying their character would be too easy...

If it was a player in one of my games, I'd tone him down by just saying that in fact, no player character can be killed unless its player wants to. But that's just how things work in my games nowadays, and I don't expect your games to work the same way.

So next best thing, is to tell the player that even being invincible or immortal means nothing if he can't complete the quests. Then have quests that can't be completed by combat.