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

[tetrasodium]

Gotcha. You've decided that teleport can't avoid wandering encounters, and that even being told that it was an illustration you aren't addressign the main point but picking an argument about the example.

As far as I can tell, you don't want to try to contribute meaningfully, just win an argument. So, you are completely right in all ways, as well as quite a dashing figure. No need to continue this conversation.

I run my games in eberron, airships, magic trains, & absurdly expensive teleport networks you can get the boss to pay for if your on good terms are the norm but none of them eliminate encounters. They actually increase the risk of encounters by putting them in public spaces & such or bringing up questions like "are we really going to push what's basically the company card to shave off a $time again?". Showing up in an Orien teleport network teleport room without a mark of passage is still going to be pricey & getting the sequence might be a whole ordeal of gaining favor. Don't put unmanaged teleport circles in places you don't want the players easily teleporting to & the problem largely goes away because the nearest circle is days away from their goal & using it can be a hassle.

your example itself doesn't align with experience or the spells themselves though

Gotcha. You've decided that teleport can't avoid wandering encounters, and that even being told that it was an illustration you aren't addressign the main point but picking an argument about the example.

As far as I can tell, you don't want to try to contribute meaningfully, just win an argument. So, you are completely right in all ways, as well as quite a dashing figure. No need to continue this conversation.

I run my games in eberron, airships, magic trains, & absurdly expensive teleport networks you can get the boss to pay for if your on good terms are the norm but none of them eliminate encounters. They actually increase the risk of encounters by putting them in public spaces & such or bringing up questions like "are we really going to push what's basically the company card to shave off a $time again?". Showing up in an Orien teleport network teleport room without a mark of passage is still going to be pricey & getting the sequence might be a whole ordeal of gaining favor.

The party might be able to pull favors & talk their way out of consequences if they killed the bbeg's goons on a lightning rail, but if they cast fireball or something that hurts passengers or notably damages the car while in that fight even the boss is probably going to say they don't know the party any more.

I kind feel that people are missing the design point of spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut. Let me illustrate with another spell.

Back in the days of yore (okay, AD&D), traveling from point A to point B took a long time. Out of game. Because if you weren't travelling on well patrolled roads, there were wandering monsters. Bags of risk and XP. Which, as you got to be higher level became either improbably powerful for wanderers, or unbelievably trivial for high level characters.

But the teleport spell was all that. It could zip the characters from point A to known point B (so as not to negate discovery and exploration), but it avoided all of the boring parts of travel to allow DM and players to focus their session time on more interesting things.

Leomund's Tiny Hut fills a similar niche. At the opportunity of cost one less spell known / prepared (except wizards, who don't need to prepare to cast Rituals), it makes that you no longer need to worry about the whole making a campsight for the night issue.

It could zip them somewhere if they used a ninth level spell or a fifth level spell for the caster+2 others... getting back to anyone else was very dangerous if you wanted to make a second trip & were willing to burn lots of 5th level slots. Yes if the GM gave the PCs teleport patterns & such (who' fault is that) it could be done kinda safely There's also the fact that the 5th level non-ritual teleport spell doesn't unlock until level 10 while the ritual 3rd level tiny hut unlocks five levels earlier at level 5 when nothing the PCs are capable of doing more than getting TPK'd by can really deal with it

 

[Charlaquin]

I feel like I’m the only DM who doesn’t have a problem with Counterspell. I get why a lot of DMs do, but it’s just never really bothered me. It makes the players feel cool when they thwart an enemy’s spell, and it still eats a spell slot, so I’m good with it.

There are two categories of spell I dislike: spells that trivialize survival at low levels, and spells that are trap options. Of the two, I think I dislike the latter category more, so I would say my top 3 hated spells are probably Spare the Dying, Color Spray, and True Strike.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

I feel like I’m the only DM who doesn’t have a problem with Counterspell. I get why a lot of DMs, but it’s just never really bothered me. It makes the players feel cool when they thwart an enemy’s spell, and it still eats a spell slot, so I’m good with it.

There are two categories of spell I dislike: spells that trivialize survival at low levels, and spells that are trap options. Of the two, I think I dislike the latter category more, so I would say my top 3 hated spells are probably Spare the Dying, Color Spray, and True Strike.

I love counterspell. You are not alone.

Ironically this was a counter (post).

 

[CleverNickName]

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

• (list)

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...

Yeah, I know. The spell ends, battle ensures, they take another long rest. Then more huts, another battle, another long rest. And so on. The least-contentious way I could get them to move forward was to replace most encounters with beholders and spellcasters with access to dispel magic.

Clearly, the bigger problem wasn't the spells; it was also some highly-problematic players who thought they were clever for finding rules exploits (and had a DM they could push around.) So I stopped playing with them, and found other players. But I still hate these spells, years later. I think they were created for a different type of game than I enjoy playing, and I found they bring out the worst habits in players.

I used to ban them outright, but as others have pointed out in this thread, there is a need for something like these spells in the game. It should be possible to take a long rest when you are on your quest to Do The Thing. It just shouldn't be easy (or worse, completely inconsequential.) So I'm tinkering with it. I'm still not 100% satisfied with my latest work-around.

 

[billd91]

any form of shape changing/polymorph. What numpty came up with a spell that gave the subject a sh!t tonne of free hit points? What was wrong with the the way previous editions did it. ie: your hp are your hp, don't matter what shape you are.

Honestly? It’s miles better than the morass that 3.5e polymorphing was.

 

[Stalker0]

I think people are getting off topic on the Tiny Hut discussion. The point of this thread is not to debate how people are running certain spells, its just a simple "hey blow off some steam and tell us about the spells you dislike as a DM". That';s it, no need to get into nuts and bolts discussions here.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Basically all of the healing spells. I dont like that they tend not to damage undead anymore.

But this is also an aspect of a much larger problem. I think 5e has done a horrible job thus far on undead in general.

Still, i dislike the healing spells for a lot of reasons actually. This is just a very big one among many.

 

[Harzel]

I kind feel that people are missing the design point of spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut. Let me illustrate with another spell.

Back in the days of yore (okay, AD&D), traveling from point A to point B took a long time. Out of game. Because if you weren't travelling on well patrolled roads, there were wandering monsters. Bags of risk and XP. Which, as you got to be higher level became either improbably powerful for wanderers, or unbelievably trivial for high level characters.

But the teleport spell was all that. It could zip the characters from point A to known point B (so as not to negate discovery and exploration), but it avoided all of the boring parts of travel to allow DM and players to focus their session time on more interesting things.

Leomund's Tiny Hut fills a similar niche. At the opportunity of cost one less spell known / prepared (except wizards, who don't need to prepare to cast Rituals), it makes that you no longer need to worry about the whole making a campsight for the night issue.

So if the point of these spells is to skip 'boring' parts of an adventure, isn't it easier and just as effective to handwave those parts? Of course, the details of the difference between the handwave and the spell vary by spell, but I don't see the handwave coming out at a disadvantage in the case of either Hut or Teleport. For Teleport, the handwave does precisely what you want - skip the (presumed) boring parts, whereas Teleport in addition injects an alteration to the timeline by making the travel instantaneous. In the case of Hut, just allowing the PCs to find convenient, secure resting spots when desired avoids the need for the pro-forma ritual (in both senses) of casting Hut; I don't see that anything is lost by avoiding that. Hut in particular is a very obvious piece of metagame artifice; better in my view to just be straightforward about what is going on and handwave it.

 

[Coroc]

Wish
Wish
Wish

Now cmon, did you never have the player wishing for the largest gem or 50000 gp or so and having that appear right over his head? This is so unbeatable in fun for the DM.

Or if they do unplanned plane shifts due to some badly worded wish, the discussion amongst them afterwards are gold.

 

[Coroc]

A spell slot?... for tiny hut?... that's quaint.
View attachment 116772

Yea, that last aspect got short´, it is also the perfect spell for peeping Tom