D&D 5E Your Biggest Gaming Pet Peeve

[jasper]

better, have a necromancer bring the parents back to fight the PCs. Hell, get dead love ones for all of the PCs, and have the BBEG populate his tower with them, in Zombie form.

From out of the darkness. A shoe flying toward the party rogue Lanliss. Lanliss takes 8hp damage. "JUNIOR! WHAT ARE YOU UP TO NOW! HOW MANY TIMES DID I TELL YOU NOT TO STEAL! THAT IS IT. I TELLING YOUR FATHER AND HE BRINGING OUT THE BELT". "AND WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO BRING HOME A NICE GIRL! I WANT GRAND KIDS SOME TIME THIS CENTURY!".

 

[guachi]

Raise them from the dead just so they can get killed again!

Truly, your DM evil knows no bounds. Must include in my current campaign.

 

[Queer Venger]

B.O.
nuff said.

 

[RotGrub]

Without question it's the kind of player authoring (metagaming) that IMO is best left in the hands of the DM.

Magic shops and players who think it's their right to buy certain items for the purpose of character "buildz" is another.

 

[HawaiiSteveO]

talking about previous games / characters while brand new game is happening right now!

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Arial Black]

If my players all have backgrounds where their parents tragically died (quite common, alas) how can I tragically kill their parents during play?

Our current DM has a rule that whenever we even mention a family member who is not present, he rolls d%; if it comes up 1-5%, your family member just died.

Although, conceptually, it was just coincidence, it felt like cause and effect. It meant that we quickly learned not to mention our backstories at all, and it's sucked a lot of the role-playing from our RPG.

 

[Guest 6801718]

Two points-

First, while I realize that D&D for many people is super serious, and that comedy can take them out of the moment, it didn't always used to be that way. There used to be an idea that it was ... well ... more of a game, and that levity was fine. If you look through a lot of the "classic" modules (roughly 1977-85), you'll see quite a few "nudge nudge, wink wink" examples.

Second, humor can be sanctified by time. Have you cast Melf's Acid Arrow recently?

Our group wasn't super serious, but you can only hear that joke so many times. Especially when it only sparked a groan to begin with. We certainly appreciate some humor being worked in. A bad play on words only goes so far though. Especially if it happens with every character a player makes. Though I did appreciate his barbarian character a bit more, Mork the Orc.

Sadly, I've had no experiences with Melf's Acid Arrow recently? What have I missed?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Arial Black]

Still thinking about my biggest peeve, but came across one I hadn't seen mentioned. When a new player to an existing group makes a character that stomps all over the niche of an existing character. And if the DM doesn't try to prevent it.

As a player I consciously avoid doing this when joining an existing game.

A friend once took my to his university RPG club, and we asked if we could join a game of Basic D&D. Although I'd played AD&D for years I'd never played Basic but I'd heard about it.

I wanted to play an elf, and I knew that in this game they were not just a race but also a character class; fighter/mages, basically.

Since the party already had an elf, I wanted to avoid treading on her toes. So I asked her what weapon she used, with the idea that whatever fighting style she was using I'd choose something different.

Me: What weapon does your elf use?
Her: ...I'm not sure....but it does 1d8 damage.

Another pet peeve reared its ugly head later that session: the DM's bestest friend was playing the party wizard. His PC at all times kept himself one room behind the rest of us, so as to avoid danger and not contribute to the party efforts at all, and yet somehow he got full XPs and share of any treasure.

I realise that any DM worth his screen can easily punish this OoC by refusing XPs, or in-game by having monsters sneak up behind us and eating the unguarded wizard. But, no, he's the DM's besest mate and he would never do anything to upset him.

We never went back.