D&D 5E As a DM - Your Top 3 Most Hated Spells

[Tony Vargas]

The fact that a GM even needs to say such an absurdly obvious thing testifies at just how munchkiny the spell itself is.

IDK, why did you go there, then?

[/quote]
Compare it to some of the older editions & the munchkin design goals become blindingly obvious[/quote]
The prior editions got longer duration (to a point) as they came forward, from 1 hr/level, to 2/level, to 8 hrs (a shorter duration after 8th level).
You've always been able to see out in spite of it being opaque from the outside.
It's always been dispelled by the caster leaving, while allies could enter or leave.
It's never provided protection beyond blocking line of sight.
The 1e version was more detailed in how it interacted with temperature, and the winds it could withstand went from 50mph, to 75, to 'normal weather...'

5e?... free to cast... no slot cost... anyone but the caster can go in & out if the caster lets them, you can see out but not in, you don't need to care about breathable air, wall & area spells now get blocked from extending through it.

The key change is blocking objects, creatures, spells & effects. That's Wall of Force level protection, that allies can pass through freely. That's nuts.

Of course, there was also Rope Trick back in the day (once the duration got long enough), and for Short Rests in 5e, at only 2nd level. So maybe they figured The Hut was OK as an upgrade of that, also often cited as problematic, spell?

 

[Todd Roybark]

Tiny Hut
Rope Trick
Magnificent Mansion

Basically anything that lets the party ignore or auto-reset their resources without fear of consequence.

Nothing personal, but I despise this train of thought, and so many of you seem to share it.


A key component of survival ( not the skill but continuing to live) is finding a safe place to sleep.
Fail to find it and you die.

Why penalize or ban the player's for prioritizing their resources to ensure survival? Just because you find it easier to DM?

Do you ban campfires, tents, s'mores and the Alarm spells?

I dislike the Smite line of spells, primarily for the poor wording. If the spell duration is 1 minute & it activates on your " Next attack" then every attack one makes during that 1 minute of duration is your "Next Attack". Right?

 

[CleverNickName]

Nothing personal, but I despise this train of thought, and so many of you seem to share it.


A key component of survival ( not the skill but continuing to live) is finding a safe place to sleep.
Fail to find it and you die.

Why penalize or ban the player's for prioritizing their resources to ensure survival? Just because you find it easier to DM?

Do you ban campfires, tents, s'mores and the Alarm spells?

I dislike the Smite line of spells, primarily for the poor wording. If the spell duration is 1 minute & it activates on your " Next attack" then every attack one makes during that 1 minute of duration is your "Next Attack". Right?

The biggest issue I have with these spells doesn't come from players wanting "to ensure survival." That is not, nor will it ever be, an issue at my table.

I can't speak for everyone else, but the issue I have comes from players wanting to completely reset their resources to maximum after every encounter, so that they can "go nova" every battle. (They actually use the phrase "go nova," which is why I put it in quotes.) For whatever reason, the players feel they must always have 100% of their resources every time initiative is rolled, or else they are doing it wrong.

I'm not exaggerating: they have used Tiny Hut to get a long rest after every monster encounter in a dungeon, cleverly placing their Huts (yes Huts, plural, sometimes two and three at a time) to block exits.

This spell and its ilk may or may not be a problem at your table, depending on how you run your game world. But I gotta say, it's driving me up the wall.

EDIT: I mixed up my verb tense in this post. The issues I was having with this spell were with a different gaming group, years ago. But my hate for these spells continues to this day.

 

[Lanefan]

• Non-living matter and creatures can pass through the hut.

The problem with simply allowing non-living matter to pass through is that it means rain and-or snow can get in, which defeats most of the intended point of the spell. Hence my somewhat more convoluted wording earlier.

 

[CleverNickName]

The problem with simply allowing non-living matter to pass through is that it means rain and-or snow can get in, which defeats most of the intended point of the spell. Hence my somewhat more convoluted wording earlier.

Yep. I think for this house-rule, the "hut" was intended to be cast on a tent to "improve" it, or make it more comfortable or something. It's interesting, but I didn't end up going with it.

 

[Lanefan]

I dislike the Smite line of spells, primarily for the poor wording. If the spell duration is 1 minute & it activates on your " Next attack" then every attack one makes during that 1 minute of duration is your "Next Attack". Right?

Not at all.

Your next attack is your next attack, period; and if you don't make said next attack within a minute the spell wears off to no effect.

That said, a better wording for the duration would obviously be "up to one minute".

 

[Oofta]

The biggest issue I have with these spells doesn't come from players "wanting to prioritize their resources to ensure survival." That is not, nor will it ever be, an issue at my table.

I can't speak for everyone else, but the issue I have comes from players wanting to reset their resources to maximum after every encounter, so that they can "go nova" every battle. (They actually use the phrase "go nova," which is why I put it in quotes.) For whatever reason, the players feel they must always have 100% of their resources every time initiative is rolled, or else they are doing it wrong.

I'm not exaggerating: they have used Tiny Hut to get a long rest after every monster encounter in a dungeon, cleverly placing their Huts (yes Huts, plural, sometimes two and three at a time) to block exits.

This spell and its ilk may or may not be a problem at your table, depending on how you run your game world. But I gotta say, it's driving me up the wall.

I solve that by having intelligent monsters. They know the party is in the hut, so there are several ways of dealing with it.

• Set up ambushes
• Ready everyone in a 10 mile radius to attack
• Get reinforcements
• Traps
• Tunnel underneath or around
• Set up cave ins
• Take all the goodies and leave
• Block off the entrance and exit after starting smoldering fires so that when the spell ends all the oxygen has been used up.
• DM adds in time constraints
• Use the optional rule and increase the length of short and long rests.

I'm sure there are others.

 

[Lanefan]

I solve that by having intelligent monsters. They know the party is in the hut, so there are several ways of dealing with it.

• Set up ambushes
• Ready everyone in a 10 mile radius to attack
• Get reinforcements
• Traps
• Tunnel underneath or around
• Set up cave ins
• Take all the goodies and leave
• Block off the entrance and exit after starting smoldering fires so that when the spell ends all the oxygen has been used up.
• DM adds in time constraints
• Use the optional rule and increase the length of short and long rests.

I'm sure there are others.

Many of these seem to assume the party aren't keeping watch while in the hut; remember that in all versions those inside can see out and thus might be alerted to some of this stuff.

That said, if the party don't bother keeping watch...

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I'm not exaggerating: they have used Tiny Hut to get a long rest after every monster encounter in a dungeon, cleverly placing their Huts (yes Huts, plural, sometimes two and three at a time) to block exits.

This spell and its ilk may or may not be a problem at your table, depending on how you run your game world. But I gotta say, it's driving me up the wall.

I can see it being irritating. If it happened to me... my best (and, knowing me, last resort solution even if it should probably be the first: "hey guys and gals, I am not having fun DMing this way, can we talk about it?"

I'd try to ensure PCs are on a time constraint when adventuring. "So you just spent 30 days clearing the dungeon and recovering the Blessed Bone of Xartvik that can cure the plague? Nice. Too bad in 30 days the village that sent you was reduced to a tenth of its population.... and the plague spread to other settlement, btw." It can be quite organic.

On the other hand, if the players are having a blast "going nova" each time, and you know it beforehand and you don't mind, you could design encounters assuming they'll spend all their resources in the fight and not the assumed pace of the game. Reduce XPs as well, since they are not facing the same challenge as a regular party...

 

[tetrasodium]

The biggest issue I have with these spells doesn't come from players wanting "to ensure survival." That is not, nor will it ever be, an issue at my table.

I can't speak for everyone else, but the issue I have comes from players wanting to completely reset their resources to maximum after every encounter, so that they can "go nova" every battle. (They actually use the phrase "go nova," which is why I put it in quotes.) For whatever reason, the players feel they must always have 100% of their resources every time initiative is rolled, or else they are doing it wrong.

I'm not exaggerating: they have used Tiny Hut to get a long rest after every monster encounter in a dungeon, cleverly placing their Huts (yes Huts, plural, sometimes two and three at a time) to block exits.

This spell and its ilk may or may not be a problem at your table, depending on how you run your game world. But I gotta say, it's driving me up the wall.

That has pretty much been my experience with it as well, especially AL tables. I sent my party to Ravenloft* & cranked the madness to eleven because of it. Sure you can rest here... good luck keeping sane. Even when they were being stalked by the mist with a goal they thought that would get them away from it we had this exchange "and I start ritually casting tiny hut" > "You don't think you can do that safely & the mist is definitely doing something with that pile of bodies out there but you cant see it & have been told that going into the mist is a bad idea" > "I set my familiar to watch this room & we go back to the last room, close the door, & start casting tiny hut"

* Not the safe cuddly Barovia of 5e, "Ravenloft Campaign setting" Ravenloft. I don't know when or if they will leave. but it certainly won't be before the Dark Powers are done with them.

[@Oofta
Someone else said it, many of these assume nobody is keeping watch. The ones that dont leap at high speeds into pure adversarial GM Vrs Players warfare with the world & PCs the abused innocents that get caught in the middle. If the GM needs to redesign the world, limit baddie motivations that much, & use a constant doom clock because of one spell's completely predictable effects on gameplay then the spell is just deliberately broken & unnecessarily so.