D&D 5E Common mistakes I keep making

[overgeeked]

Any small things that seem to keep tripping you up?

I keep forgetting that the "rules" in the books are only guidelines.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I often think I can change people’s minds about orcs and racism if I post just one more comment.

 

[MarkB]

If I have to run a monster off-the-cuff I'll invariably miss some vital ability for it. If I have time to prepare I'll scour their stat block carefully, but if it shows up as a random encounter or the PCs get to someplace before I thought they would, I'll always miss something on my first scan. If it's not a special attack or ability, it'll be an immunity or vulnerability - and inevitably I'll wind up spotting it immediately after it would have been relevant.

 

[pukunui]

I know we shouldn't "sweat the small stuff" but I'm a details kinda guy, and so it irks me whenever I do forget the details. There are just so many in published adventures, though, that it's easy to forget some of them - like the fact that there were four dead bodies around the altar in the room the PCs were fighting in last session. I forgot to mention that until one of the PCs approached the altar and I checked the text again.

I also occasionally skip someone's turn in combat by accident. Easy to do when there are a lot of monsters and the players aren't necessarily paying attention to the initiative order themselves.

 

[JEB]

Forgetting to give out inspiration, then overcompensating by giving out inspiration on the thinnest pretense later in the game.

 

[MarkB]

Forgetting to give out inspiration, then overcompensating by giving out inspiration on the thinnest pretense later in the game.

I only do the first part. I am conceptually aware of inspiration, have no problem with it intellectually, and haven't consciously removed it from my games. But I also 100% forget that it exists when I'm actually DMing.

 

[pukunui]

Forgetting to give out inspiration, then overcompensating by giving out inspiration on the thinnest pretense later in the game.

I only do the first part. I am conceptually aware of inspiration, have no problem with it intellectually, and haven't consciously removed it from my games. But I also 100% forget that it exists when I'm actually DMing.

I was in the same boat, so instead I've been having everyone start each session with inspiration, represented by a gold d20. When a player uses their inspiration, they hand the d20 back to me. They can potentially regain inspiration during the session, but it's on them to point out when they've played to a particular character trait well enough to deserve it.

Most of the time, even with the gold d20 as a reminder, they don't think/bother to use inspiration. And if they do, most of the time they don't think/bother to try and regain it.

 

[Mort]

Forgetting to give out inspiration, then overcompensating by giving out inspiration on the thinnest pretense later in the game.

I like @iserith's solution. Worked pretty well at my table.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I like @iserith's solution. Worked pretty well at my table.

Hear hear!

 

[Dausuul]

I realized after my last game session that I keep taking zombies off the combat tracker in fantasy grounds immediately after they go down. I do this with most monsters when they die to keep things less cluttered and distracting and to make things more manageable, but with zombies this means one of their 5e signature features, saving to pop back up the round after dying, does not come into play. I kept forgetting this zombie power in the moment in face to face games as well.

For the record, I really hate that particular zombie trait in 5E. I get what they were going for, but... if you're going to put zombies in a combat, you're usually going to put in a whole lot of zombies. They should be designed for the absolute minimum of bookkeeping and cognitive overhead. A saving throw with variable DC, possibly multiple times, is way too much mental effort to expend on the fate of a single zombie.