D&D General worst (real) advice for DMs

[Blue]

True. Considering what the characters can do is good design, just as considering what they want is. The ability to consider the characters you're running for is one of the primary advantages of running homebrew adventures over published ones.

On the other hand, I care far, far more about what the PCs want than what they can do. Keeping track of their characters is the players' job, and I am happy to be surprised if they pull some ability out that I've forgotten about. In my experience, building a situation around something the character/s can do is a surefire way to ensure they'll either go in a different direction or forget they can do that thing you're expecting them to do.

I'm not saying I ignore the characters' abilities. I'm just saying I don't much bother to track them, and I build situations and adventures from other directions.

It doesn't sound like you build them from the other direction - I too start with player wants. It's just another tool in the toolbox for filling those in.

 

[dave2008]

It's trivial to jot down what new features characters get every month or two when they level up.

I agree, and that is not what I was responding to. What you agreed with was much more inclusive and exhaustive.

Remember, the reason I liked it was as a session creation tool, not something they need to keep in their head.

That was not clear in response to post you quoted. Perhaps you clarified that later.

And it's just the "Favored Terrain: Coastal", no need to delve into the details.

The original comment you quoted as precisely about delving into the details. Not a just noting what features. You have, IMO, moved the goal posts.

But "know generally" doesn't fit the bill, since the idea is to notice what abilities aren't getting used often. "Know generally" would much more likely pinpoint the ones that are frequently used.

The definition of "know generally" is subjective. From my point of view it includes know what features a PC has as you stated in the first line of this response I am replying to.

 

[dave2008]

Month or two? How slowly do you play. We level up in 5e about every other session. Three sessions at the outside. IOW, as a DM, I'm dealing with probably 5 level ups in two months.

We reached lvl 15 after 6 years of playing 5e. So that equals a level about every 5 sessions of average.

Heh. One of my players, busted out an ability last session that grants major bonuses on a save (I forget the name) that she can do 4 times per long rest, that not only did I not know about, but, she had forgotten she had for a couple of levels.

It happens, and can be quite exciting when it does!

 

[Hussar]

In my current campaign we just hit 8th level after session 33. We play every other week, but often will miss a bunch of sessions around the holidays and also in the summer when people are traveling. (Running for multiple couples means that you're usually down two if you are down any, and down 2 of 5 is too few to run.) So it's been 7 level-ups over a year and a half, or about 1 level every 7 weeks real time.

We're pretty regularly playing every week. Say 45 sessions (3 hour) per year. I just looked it up and we started Candlekeep Mysteries in June. So, it's been seven (going on 8) months and the group is just a hair off 8th level. So, yeah, we've been pretty regular at leveling every month and Candlekeep is pretty xp light. Our Storm King's Thunder hit these levels in about half that time.

My point being, lots of groups level up a lot faster than once every two months.

Which does roll back into the nature of advice. Advice that is perfectly good in some contexts might actually be bad in others. Kinda like the shot clock thing.

 

[Weiley31]

-If you have Cutscenes, Bosses, and your ENTIRE tenure in the hobby, especially if you're a DM, isn't completely emergent play, then you are doing a terrible job as a DM/or is the bad wrong fun way to play DND. Go play a video game you railroading sad sack.

-If you're a DM and you get butt hurt over a PC/and its features somehow ruining your encounter or something, it is your obligation to either neuter/completely hobble said PC. Such as making sure that the Sorcerer/Fire Focused PC learns the error of their ways if they decide to partake Descent into Avernus and that as a DM, your duty is to make sure they pretty much toss rocks without any sort of "something" to ensure that a PC isn't completely useless whatsoever unless you toss them a bone by forcing them to reroll an entirely new character. Don't even let that PC, or other PCs in the party, ever have *one or two moments where their class/features/whatnot can no-sell something because you don't want them to have said moments to shine in.

-Having an Animal Companion is capable of overshadowing the party and having it fight alongside you in battle, ala He-Man/Battle Cat, The Beast Master/his animals, Timmy/Lassie beating up Mountain Lions, Abysswalker Artorias(or Chosen Undead)/Great Wolf Sif, and various other examples of the trope, is another form of bad/wrong/fun. Said Animal Companion should also be a useless sad sack. Why you sending em into battle noob alongside your PC? It's not like you are playing a Beast Master type character because that's the image you like/want for your character/class that has an Animal Companion.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ha! I had to comment on this because we actually use a version* of this in our game and it works great. But I can totally understand it doesn't work for everyone!

*We only allow 30 seconds per turn. It was rough at first (really just the first session or two), but now it is not only faster, but more chaotically fun as well!

Yeah, there's people that'd make have decision paralysis even worse than they already have.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's called cutting your losses as a party.

And its about as non-heroic as you could want, and I'll repeat that if people think the majority of people in the D&D part of the hobby--even in the beginning--were there not to be heroic, then perhaps giving so damn many heroes in examples of the kind of stories they were supposed to represent was a big mistake.

If you retreat and thus only lose two characters out of six, that's a vastly better outcome over standing in and losing six out of six.

Only for people who consider abandoning allies acceptable.

If, however, you're suggesting that parties should never be put (or be able to put themselves!) into positions where choices like this have to be made, then I have no sympathy.

Noted. Disdained, but noted. No, I don't think expecting people to be forced into a situation where they have to throw their allies under the bus to survive is a virtue.

 

[dave2008]

Yeah, there's people that'd make have decision paralysis even worse than they already have.

It probably helps that only one of our group is a caster.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, having an idea of what the PCs can do is helpful, but I think it's probably more important to know what the PCs want. If you're paying attention it leads to similar places--as @hawkeyefan said, the build choices are implicit (sometimes explicit) messages to the GM about the types of adventures (or adventure elements) the players want to see.

There's a bit of business in 13th Age that bears on this. One of the thing you do in 13th Age is pick some points of relationship with various Icons (big movers and shakers in the setting--the Emperor, the chief Druid and so on, along with major villains). They suggest looking at the choices here as an indicator of what kind of things the players want to deal with--if they put points toward antipathy with the Lich King, it suggests they might want to bump up against various of his machinations and other things to do with undead.

 

[Thomas Shey]

-Having an Animal Companion is capable of overshadowing the party and having it fight alongside you in battle, ala He-Man/Battle Cat, The Beast Master/his animals, Timmy/Lassie beating up Mountain Lions, Abysswalker Artorias(or Chosen Undead)/Great Wolf Sif, and various other examples of the trope, is another form of bad/wrong/fun. Said Animal Companion should also be a useless sad sack. Why you sending em into battle noob alongside your PC? It's not like you are playing a Beast Master type character because that's the image you like/want for your character/class that has an Animal Companion.

I think there's something to this one, but only because of your first sentence. Taking, effectively, a second combat character as an aspect of your character design shouldn't make the two of you consistently better than everyone else in the group, even in combat. Its admittedly a fine line to make the companion useful and not too good, but if you want it to be as good as any PC and the actual PC to be worth a damn too, I think you expect too much.