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

[Gadget]

I think certain feats are...ill-considered, or rather ill-designed. There is a certain class of Divination spells that fall into a "The DM will now accurately predict the future" type of ability that I've always found troublesome.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I hate the Sharpshooter feat. I see a certain type of cheesy player drawn to SS, smugly doing massive damage from the safety of the back, but acting like you have it in for them when some high AC monsters teleport right next to them and they have to actually fight in melee, or when your NPC archers have SS and target them for return fire. GWM players at least know they are giving up a shield and are going to take their fair share of damage.

I've got one of those cheesy SS characters and I love it when a DM sends something scary after them. I remember this one time, my archer got stuck fighting three bodaks on a ceiling in magical darkness. Took a little finesse to get free of that mess, I tells ya!

 

[Unwise]

I can't say I find anything particularly annoying, but as a DM, I do live in constant fear that my super-villains will be polymorphed into something embarrassing.

If you worry about Polymorph being embarrassing, consider yourself lucky, my players use Command "Masterbate" with reckless abandon.

As for the main topic, Darkness for sure. I simply don't DM for builds based around Darkness and Devil's Sight. It makes every combat almost exactly the same. Second worst is the cantrip Guidance, it just changes the baseline difficulty of the game and interrupts the flow of play, lastly I have to agree with Moon Druid's wildshapes. The fact that the damage of the form does not pass to the druid just leads to stupid risk taking that sucks some strategy out of encounters. It also trivialises scouting, leading to the rogue sitting back while the rat/bird druid scouts ahead.

 

[StormbringerAUS]

Mostly things that make a story hard to tell, some of the divination type abilities have caused this problem, but I have never banned any just have to think through them. Sometimes to me it does spoil the story but the players enjoy what they see as foiling my/bbg plans so it is all good.

I currently run a political based campaigned where assassin and over throw of rulers and lords is a big part - all resurrection/raise dead spells make these sort of things harder to plan for - but I just look at it as more of a challenge for me as DM and in some cases I can push that challenge onto the players with the narrative, which I find fulfilling and the players enjoy as well.

 

[Unwise]

...
I currently run a political based campaigned where assassin and over throw of rulers and lords is a big part - all resurrection/raise dead spells make these sort of things harder to plan for...

FYI I was running a similar campaign and I found a really neat way to work resurrections etc into the plots. All clerics are banned from casting resurrection except by express permission of the pope-figure. As such, the church holds massive sway over the lives of nobles as if they bring you back you can guarantee that the asking price will be hefty. In fact, leaving money to the church in your will is a very important thing. As once you die, if you have left enough money, the church takes it, then resurrects you. The church, unlike other parties, is allowed to take from your will and keep it, even if you are resurrected.

The reason this worked so well in my campaign is that it was set in near-France and it reflected the powerful role that the churches held in the era. It really matters which church nobles follow, as that is the church that decides to resurrect or not. So when a guy like King Henry adopts a different religion, the powerbase of the church erodes and that new church gets heaps of incoming power/money. It also meant that the PCs had to erode the churches support of any noble that they wanted to assassinate, or organise a nastier religion to intercede and disrupt the resurrection efforts. It was not enough to merely kill somebody, you had to get involved in politics and destroy their reputation first. This meant they could not just have a sledgehammer approach to a political campaign.

 

[Elon Tusk]

I usually home-brew, but I'm currently running CoS. The paladin started using Divine Sense in Death House; man, that's complicated telling him where every undead is in a house I didn't fill with undead.

 

[Leatherhead]

Any of the conjure 112 pixie, squirrel, mephit, or manes spells (I am exaggerating the number, it only feels that high). I think it would have been more elegant to give them a swarm and have the size of the swarm increase with the level of spell cast (or summon a what amounts to a wall of angry mephitis/sprites/manes, and since the wall is pretty short, the party can range attack over it).

The Circle of the Shepard remains the only official subclass I have banned. Precisely because I don't want to deal with all those critters, their new and improved stats that have to be recalculated because of the subclass features, and a totem with an AoE buffing aura on top of it.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

If I had to pick anything, it would be critical hits.

Players insist they enjoy them, but the rules heavily favor the monsters and a critical hit from the right sort of creature (one with a lot of dice in it's attack's damage) at the wrong moment can put a player out of participation for a while - and I see them not having fun at that moment, cursing the dice... and everything else short of agreeing with me that critical hits should have stayed as they were in the '90s; optional.

But my level of irritation with even that is so low as to barely be worth mentioning (I brought it up when my group discussed house rules, the players voted to keep crits, and so that's how it is until such a time as they should change their minds - I don't keep harping on them about it).

 

[Bawylie]

Spellcasting

 

[CM]

Counterspell.

That's the only thing my groups have agreed to nerf so far. Eliminated in one group, requires a readied action in another.