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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8936679" data-attributes="member: 6877472">Sorry about the Superman rant; I'm a fan of the Big Blue Boy Scout, and I'm used to defending him to people who don't get what makes him tick.When I look at a high-level 5e character, I don't see someone who is invulnerable.  I've got, by design, 4 (3 with a Feat) useless saves, and, at least until D&D ONE (not a .5, not a new edition, we promise!) comes out, you can't even succeed on a 20.So there's tons of effects that can completely render a character helpless.  The problem of course is that there are tons of effects that can completely render a character helpless.  As a DM, I've realized that punting players out of being able to actually play the game isn't fun or challenging, and someone who has been exiled to another dimension for 10 rounds, turned to stone, or feebleminded into being unable to properly play their character is going to start reaching for social media and disengage from the proceedings.To me, the real issue is, that's the entirety of D&D's game play loop.  You're either playing or not playing (or at the very least, not playing effectively, if you're buried under a hefty debuff).  You can be reduced to the "not playing" state by things you have no control over, like rolling low on a save, or an enemy rolling well on attacks.Effects that allow you to make choices and engage with your defenses are fairly limited (you have one reaction, Shield takes a slot, Defensive Duelist takes a feat and requires you to build around it), and at the same time, tend to be reviled by some DM's ("He turned a hit into a miss!  How dare he manipulate my sacred die rolls! /hyperbole).DM's are perfectly able to bring the hammer down on any party; they have access to all the enemies, all the spells.  Of course, a DM who doesn't use these tools with responsibility might find themselves without players, so many of us have realized that there are tactics technically available to us, but that need to be employed sparingly.And that's a rough position to be in.  You want to feel like your players are challenged, but the game's settings are finicky.  Too little, the players joke about your encounters being a snore fest. Too much, and suddenly there's a real risk of the adventure being over.An example of this is Healing Word.  In most encounters, there's multiple enemies.  Legendary creatures can have out of turn actions.  The whole "knocked him down and they bring him up with 1 hit point" loop would be absolutely laughable if another enemy just knocks you down again before anyone has a chance to throw another heal at you, or the dragon responds to the Healing Word with a tail swipe or something.DM's could totally do this, but we know what happens if we don't.  Not just dead characters, but players rightly irate because their options to prevent this sort of thing are limited.  You can't even say "haha, you should have used a good heal" because most of the time, there isn't a good heal!I know, when I DM, I can stop any smack talking optimizer in his tracks, but I know if I do that often, I won't have players and people will call me a "killer DM" (hell, I've had people say that when I'm not even going out of my way to challenge people!).Half the time, players in my games get their butts kicked because they actually seem to think they are invincible, and it's their own stupid play decisions that has them hoping to make their death saves.  The other half of the time, they have some "I win" card that I would have to literally go out of my way to negate, which annoys me because if I go to that effort, then everyone knows I did it!</blockquote>

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