D&D General "It's not fun when..."

[Reynard]

A player in my game the other night hit one time in 3 hours of play, and not for lack of combat challenges. I don't think he succeeded on any ability checks either. Even though the game itself was fun and produced a memorable story, part of that story was that character wasn't very effective. No doubt it would have been more fun to have contributed more to the group's progress.

I think this is somewhat on par with being stunned or paralyzed - you're just not contributing much compared to other characters in that moment. Damage or condition immunities (a category in which legendary resistance kind of falls) are also not fun to find out about after wasting a spell or other resources on it. You might as well have been stunned or paralyzed that turn for as much as it contributed (outside of establishing the immunity as fact), plus you conserve the resource!

As far as solutions to the above, I think moving combat along quickly to get more turns in the smallest amount of time helps (in hopes things turn around), as does "progress combined with a setback" on a failed ability check so that things move forward. Damage and condition immunities can be telegraphed up front so that the players know something like legendary resistance is a thing they will face, and they can then strategize on how to get around it.

Knowing what you are potentially up against is already built into the system. Maybe a more robust inspiration/metagame mechanic that can allow a character to overcome a resistance or immunity on this one particular Attack?

I actually prefer the old 3.x system for this reason. DR could be overcome with bigger damage, and there are tools for getting bigger damage. There aren't many tools for just suddenly making your sword damage necrotic.

 

[iserith]

4) All the NPCs are hostile wankers.

This is a classic "I saw a DM do it like this so I thought it was a good idea" piece of idiocy that even infects some professionals or semi-professionals, and videogame designers at the lower end of the design skill scale.

The PCs visit a town and just everyone there is nasty to them. Or like everyone in the entire world is. I cannot believe how many DMs I've seen try to operate like this. It's a huge mistake and very damaging to fun levels unless the PCs are total murderhobos and the DM is 100% okay with that.

Man, I'm kicking myself for not mentioning this one. I've even flat out asked if a merchant wanted to make money because they were so hostile to just selling their damn wares. "You're a merchant! You're supposed to sell things!"

 

[iserith]

Knowing what you are potentially up against is already built into the system. Maybe a more robust inspiration/metagame mechanic that can allow a character to overcome a resistance or immunity on this one particular Attack?

I actually prefer the old 3.x system for this reason. DR could be overcome with bigger damage, and there are tools for getting bigger damage. There aren't many tools for just suddenly making your sword damage necrotic.

A lot of DMs keep damage and condition immunities or certain traits hidden which then makes it a guessing game. I'd rather take the guessing out of it and let the players try to figure out the problem. That can even spawn new goals/quests.

 

[Reynard]

A lot of DMs keep damage and condition immunities or certain traits hidden which then makes it a guessing game. I'd rather take the guessing out of it and let the players try to figure out the problem. That can even spawn new goals/quests.

I meant there is an actual skill chek mechanic meant to be used here. It won't always work, but nothing does. GMs shouldn't disallow those checks without very good reason.

But without some method to capitalize on them in the moment, it can be wasted effort.

 

[pukunui]

I meant there is an actual skill chek mechanic meant to be used here. It won't always work, but nothing does. GMs shouldn't disallow those checks without very good reason.

I'm very much in favor of allowing players to use their PCs' knowledge skills to better understand what they are up against. I just wish 5e gave better guidance on how to use knowledge skills. I liked the knowledge DC tables that 4e included for many monsters, for instance. Most of the time I just end up winging it.

I suppose you could say that that is something I find somewhat unfun as a DM.

 

[the Jester]

Knowing that this isn't what you are asking about, I still wind up with an aside - The stated complaint is that "the BBEG shrugs it off with no effect." The stated complaint is NOT, "I didn't win the fight with this one spell."

But that's not what LR does- it just means the bad guy makes a save. If the effect or spell has a "half damage on a failure" or whatever, then it's not no effect. And yet the complaint typically doesn't arise when LR is used against, e.g. chain lightning, but only (or nigh-only) when it's used against encounter winning effects.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Man, I'm kicking myself for not mentioning this one. I've even flat out asked if a merchant wanted to make money because they were so hostile to just selling their damn wares. "You're a merchant! You're supposed to sell things!"

Yeah and what makes me totally crazy is how relatively common it is, despite making absolutely no sense!

Most PCs are, relative to the general population:

1) Rich.

2) Powerful, often in special ways that would be really helpful to people.

3) Good-looking (for some value of good-looking).

4) Just passing through, so you don't have to worry about them in the longer-term.

Taken all together, this should make most people, whilst perhaps a little wary of the PCs, certainly basically positively disposed to them, outside particularly insular communities. And there'd always be people trying to get in with the PCs, even if most of them were idiots or desperate.

Even if we look at local lords and the like who are potentially threatened by the PCs, the general rule of thumb is, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Not "act like an utter jerk to these potential frenemies and see what happens"!

And yes it's always extra-funny when a merchant is being a massive jerk to PCs with tons of gold burning holes in their pockets. Bizarre. They're never even negging them, because that might make sense, it's always just outright hostility.

But that's not what LR does- it just means the bad guy makes a save. If the effect or spell has a "half damage on a failure" or whatever, then it's not no effect. And yet the complaint typically doesn't arise when LR is used against, e.g. chain lightning, but only (or nigh-only) when it's used against encounter winning effects.

This is valid but I think we can take a lesson from videogames on this.

A lot of videogame CRPGs or MMORPGs have sort of similar mechanism (at least with some enemies) that works in a similar way to Legendary Resistance. But they it reasonable by having it be predictable. The enemy will automatically eat the first 3 "encounter-winning" effects on them, say. With LR you can sort of approach that way with a cooperative DM, who uses it every time until it's all go (against such effects), but it's not quite as straightforwardly designed. I think 5E would have been better with a keyword for all these effects maybe, and have LR just work (and fire automatically) on stuff with that keyword.

 

[Krachek]

It’s not fun when you focus on result rather than play your role.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A lot of DMs keep damage and condition immunities or certain traits hidden which then makes it a guessing game. I'd rather take the guessing out of it and let the players try to figure out the problem. That can even spawn new goals/quests.

Yes.

And TV/movies show how that can actually be really fun. Like, okay Supernatural might not be the best show, but it ran for 15 years, and an awful lot of Supernatural is just "How do we figure out the weakness of this supernatural being" or "We know the weakness of this being, how do we create a situation to exploit it?". Buffy had a fair bit of that too. Witcher too, though Geralt usually just straight-up knows.

I watched Supernatural recently (yeah all of it, yeah pandemic) and it really struck me that D&D does a very poor job with something could be a fascinating part of it, working out how to deal with these monsters. I actually think older editions maybe did a better job? Like maybe it's fine to have a spell land that ends the combat in favour of the PCs, pretty much, if they had to find the right magic amulet and attack at the right time of day and so on?

DMs can design their own monsters to do all this of course and if I run D&D again I will, but it's kind of sad it's not just y'know, "in the game".

 

[Minigiant]

I remember a table where some of the players and the DM thought it was not fun that "nonwarriors" could brute force their weapons skill and AC via outside sources. The swordmaster being outfought by some wizard in armor and self buffs. Table was upset about it.

2 sessions later we had a small chart of "Fighting styles" that gave +5 to opposing styles. And which monsters tended to use which styles. All named ridiculous things. The next few sessions were crazy and the dungeon crawl shifted on how to optimize counters in each others fencing.