Web DM I like the Monty python thumbnail

Where did you get your DM screen and what info do you keep on it?

That is actually the Helm's Deep mini from the Games Workshop LOTR wargame! Wish someone would make a dm screen like it though....I'd stash everything in there, tables, PC info, last 5 years of taxes, whatever.

Can you do a video on the 9 hells? Why are there 9 of them? How do you make each level distinct? Thanks, you guys rock!

Web DM fat dragon games makes one similar. Check this out. Watch "My Ultimate GM Screen II by Fat Dragon Games" on KZfaq kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ap2UgMV9lt2nln0.html

Ah, I see you have been trained in the use of guns, I mean, disintegrate^^

OMG I love this! We had a level 20 PvP session where my friend (sorcerer) and I (bard) did a cowboy stand off with disintegrate, since we were the only ones left on the field. It was a contest of who could pull out their components faster xD I lost, but hey~

im a little late, but thats pretty fucking epic

Purple worms are usually gargantuan, I'd rule because it only disintegrates a 10 ft. cube of a creature Huge or larger there would be a chance the spell doesn't effect the area of the worm the players are in. Then determine if they were affected by either randomly rolling to see if any of the players were in that cube or if the caster specified a target point that logically couldn't have contained them, a creature has to move 20 ft. to exit its stomach after the worm dies so the players aren't by it's head for example. If after all that one or more of them still ended up in the area of effect I'd give the players one last chance at a Dexterity save with disadvantage because they were grappled/restrained while in the worm. If they failed the save and were reduced to 0 hit points by the spell, they as well as all of their nonmagical equipment would be disintegrated. RIP Mikey the Unfortunate.

I suddenly wanna see a Charles Bronson movie where he learns to cast disintegrate to get revenge.

Ruminations before disintegrations

Feats might make characters more powerful at low levels, but by the time PCs reach levels 10+ (at least in 5e) they are POWER HOUSES. Feats or no feats, they clean up. So, a DM disallowing feats based on being too OP is just delaying the inevitable.

Just started a campaign, one of my players has been playing for a long time. He got mad because I allowed every one to be "op" right off the bat. He refused to play because of it. First session almost killed every one and they had to run away from the starting dungeon because of me using dirty tricks and cultists with feats lol

Bailey Moyers Did he refuse to play anymore because you allowed the players' PCs to be OP off the bat or because the cultist enemies were too OP due to feats?

My dm took that to heart. My polrarm master variant human fighter was annoying him so the next dungeon we faced every wave of enemies was a polearm master, and the big bad got to dual wield glaives with polearm mastery. It kind of annoyed him when the whole party, myself included decided to stay pretty far back and unload with cantrips and bows instead of walking into the meat grinder.

Your DM, could have led you on an adventure in super tight quarters where it would have been difficult if not impossible to effectively employ a polearm. That then forces a tactics change that he has to counter then with something different. It does keep things interesting.

Highest rated comment ever! Thanks everybody!

Xp to level 3 is pretty good. Not web dm levels but good

Absolutely. Nerdarchy could work as a podcast, but the way they just ramble when talking about concepts WebDM cover, they'll also take 2ce as long. Matt Colville is good too :)

Yes. They've got some camera and editing skills, too. Many content creators in this niche do the classic "sit in the box and talk to the camera from the same angle for the entire length of the video" thing. And then their post-prod is mostly limited to a rough cut. Web DM, on the other hand, has a few different cameras going at different angels, maybe a camera operator to do some dynamic zooming, and then they spend some time in post-prod making it come together. End result is very nice. :)

Agreed. Matt Colville is one of my favorites as he talks about interesting things and his delivery (manner of speaking) is engaging. I usually listen to him at the gym or something as there's nothing really to watch on the screen.

Given the thumbnail, it's too bad they couldn't work in a Robinhood Men in Tights reference, "We need a great feat of strength.... wait, together we have great strength of feet!" :D

Play a fighter in heavy armor who uses the tactic of attempting to knock their opponents off their feet and then grappling them to pin them to the ground, or just sitting/standing on top of their opponent before drawing their dagger and going to town with it. Use shield master or something like it to shove enemies as a bonus action, then go for the kill. Historically accurate and effective fighting technique, especially against opponents in heavy armor since they (the prone combatant) has the weight of their own armor, the combatant on top of them, and that combatant's armor, combined with the fact that that combatant is actively trying to kill the other one with a dagger by stabbing through whatever gaps or crevasses in their prone enemy's armor, and they have fairly low chances of getting back up.

You obviously haven't read how the help action works

@@dylang3177 You clearly don't know what rule 0 is

@@punishedwhispers1218 "Fuck you, you're not my mom"? 🤣

@@dylang3177 You are banned from my campaign.

You Sir, made my day.

He'd smell and lick the screen

"Wiggle your big toe, Jimmy."

Inquisitor Thomas what's that?

I was thinking of Dan "Hold Her Tighter, She's A Fighter" Schneider.

This Lil Fox knows what's going on.

I wouldn't call a dead goblin a "great weapon". Functional? Maybe. Hilarious? Absolutely. Messy? Beyond doubt.

lordnichard anything can be a great weapon if you magic the shit out of it

Harambe shot First I love the idea of a goblin of sharpness

lordnichard Technically it just has to have the "heavy" property, which in reality "unwieldily" is more accurate in 5e.

that's not a bad idea. I still think Lucky is broken. 3 rerolls at any time almost sort of takes away from the drama of rolling that d20. So i think i would continue banning Lucky, but the other feats i think you are correct

That sounds like it's mostly a balance issue; where feats as a general thing aren't bad, but the feats between themselves aren't properly balanced.

@@OMlN0US I'm not sure why people hate lucky so much. It's basically just giving a person advantage or disadvantage three times. There are plenty of other ways to accomplish that, and it's a limited resource.

@@OMlN0US lucky is only broken i you're running too few encounter per day

Tyler Durham by raw it turns disadvantage into super advantage or an enemies attack with advantage into super disadvantage. That’s the issue

Agreed. The PC's are kicking your carefully crafted NPC that were supposted to at least hinder them a bit? Well..Is it an epic moment that they will probably remember because it is hillarious/just fucking badass then..well..good for them..they outsmarted the villian or were seriously fucking lucky on their diceroles and that is okay. Is it however becoming a really anticlimatic and boring fight? Well..Time to have the ring that you describted earlier suddenly give the big bad guy a boost in health and firepower for a limited time so that the PCs are suddenly forced into going into the defensive untill this power goes away again or pull some other asspull that seems at least somewhat believeable. As long as it doesn't down right flatten the PCs because it came out of knowhere then I find it to be fine..

Necro post, but... You can always staple a few Legendary Actions/Resistances on to your big bad. You could even add some lair effects if the party decides to rush into the baddies home turf. It's extra work, and a tough line to walk, but if you should make the PCs feel like they underestimated the NPC, not that the DM is making stuff up to win.

The issue I see with "just buff the monsters" if you have a min/maxer is that effectively forces EVERYONE to min max so they aren't suddenly stomped. It creates an arms race of sorts

Four words: tarqueske bear totem Barbarian.

thats just a toxic game

Full of thumbs and nails.

not everyone's classes start before noon :D

go to bed ya punk

MAD LAD

SOMEBODY STOP THIS MAN. ONE O'CLOCK !!

you'll get enough sleep when you're dead

It combos really well with moon druid. Going first lets you drop plant growth before your enemies get into position and you won't get caught outside your wildshape. It's also the only way to increase your initiative if you're already in wildshape.

Also being literally immune to surprise nonsense, if you're rolling low wisdom or very squishy. If your DM loves ambushes boy do I have a feat for you

Ashton Ramjee you have just explained why the "power gamer" of my group wanted this feat

Ashton Ramjee The alert feat says you can't be surprised *while you are conscious* The DM could still surprise by surprising sleeping stealth characters, but someone on watch or a few elves trancing would prevent this most of the time

And the fact that you can very rarely be surprised.

Gonna write that down on the inside cover of my PHB.

I found it from this guy: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jrt_irKpnpvOpX0.html

My friend suggested something like that. Power Attack scaled in 3e and therefore was a nice bonus. The lack of scale of these feats makes them feel overpowered.

My DM does exactly this, works great!

I had the same idea while watching this episode.

Try saying you're useless after 3-5 fights where the sorcerer has no more spell slots and can do one thing a round that doesn't matter much. Martial classes are meant to have sustain, they are the highest CONSISTENT damage dealers, not highest burst. It's not broken, it's because of the game you are playing, "normal" 5E those casters have to account for running out of spells and they hope to God they have a fighter with them. If it's a problem in your own game because of changes to how the base game plays, then those changes must be accounted for.

@@Jah_Coby Most adventuring days in 5e do not have 3-5 fights. I know that having 6-8 fights per day is recommended according to the DMG. But survey data shows that most DMs do not run the game that way. Most games run with 2-3 fights per day, tops. In my experience, once spellcasters start to run out of spells, they'll ask for a long rest. And unless you're doing a dungeon crawl or chase sequence, usually they'll get that long rest. And if spellcasters know they're going to be in for the long haul, they will be more conservative with their spell usage. But even if you ignore that, even if we agree that after 3-5 fights spellcasters are running on fumes, then we still have my main problem. During those 3-5 fights, the spellcasters are running circles around the martial classes. Damage, crowd control, utility, healing, debuffs, you name it, they're doing it. As previously stated, the damage dealt by martial classes does not scale well past roughly level 7. Because spellcasters can have such high versatility and burst damage, it can leave martial classes feeling unnecessary. And also it does not address my other complaint, which is that out of combat, a fighter offers no real ability to the group. Yes they can roleplay, but they have no abilities or spells that give them out of combat advantages. Magic-casting classes do not have that problem. I felt bad as a player in that game I talked about. I felt like in combat, I wasn't contributing much. And I felt like out of combat I couldn't contribute much either. Roleplaying only gets you so far when your group has abilities and you don't.

@@williamaitken7533 hence why I said if you are not playing to the "standard" don't complain about standard rules. Change them. Either play towards the intent and change spellcasting or rests. Or, simply account for the difference. Give martial classes an additional feat to use for combat or roleplay. Offer more problems with different solutions, there are still plenty of things a martial only class can provide. I have never had a case where a martial only class felt like less of a contribution in my games, nor have I felt that myself when playing.

Thisold Hatte glad I'm not the only one who gets annoyed by how much spears get nerfed, like seriously most of the most formidable historical armies had shield and spears as their go to for war

Spears being the default for infantry strikes me as a cost thing. It's extremely cost efficient to hand spears to a bunch of peasants.

Msoulwing It's cheap, has range, is easy to carry and store, works wonders in large numbers and formations and is one of the easiest weapons to get decent at using in short time.

Spears are great in mass not alone. Most weapons beat spears one v one. That's why games "nerf" spears. I would give spears some bonus when fighting in a group together. Also spear v horse spear should win.

Shadowgear Most weapons beat spears 1v1? What the hell have you been smoking my man. In full plate armor maybe daggers and swords are better but in almost all fiction even plate armor doesn't do shit most of the time and spears still beat axes, halberds, maces, curved swords and bows when it comes to stabbing a dude through a hole in armor. Spears are seriously underrated as there's more situations where it's better than say a sword or an axe in fight than those where it's not advantageous.

Agreed. Not having played 5ed I don't have clear picture of how classes develop so if there are other choices in the character progression then that gives some diversity, but without feats what keeps all characters of a class from being literally the same character?

Much of the things that would be called feats in earlier editions are embedded in the class and subclasses. So that obviously creates different characters. But the addition of the background (where you get extra proficiencies and character traits) it really gives a unique twist to your character and to the class you're playing imo. Because a background can interact with each class in a different way which result in different character personalities. Plus, my personal experience in 5e is that if a player comes with a cool suggestion for a character I am more likely to say "sure" even though that would make their character a little stronger to begin with. Because I have the feeling 5e is very flexible when it comes to adjusting things that are in the PHB (in the background they explicitly tell you that you can deviate from what's in the book). Where when I played at a friend who played 3.5e if there was a cool idea, my friend would have to go through multiple books if there was a rule or feat for it to work. To be fair, I've played mostly 5e and just a handful of 3.5e so I'm probably pretty biased towards 5e :p

I'm not saying you're wrong, but to me backgrounds are something that make deviation only to the starting point where as feats (and the choices in them) are something that differentiate characters based on how they grow. I'm not saying that you can't play characters differently without those choices but it comes to mechanical support for me like stated in the video. The example of a fighter that wants to "Captain America it up" is really good in pointing it this out. Without feats or some other decision based progression you're limited to describing how your character is a badass with a shield. With feats or some other way to differentiate characters when they grow during a campaign your character can really be that shield wielding badass. Feats to me are a "build your own subclass" system where I get to decide how my character changes instead of being given a prebuild line of future changes that will happen to them. A nature vs nurture situation if you will.

You make a very good point.

(Just jumping back in) -- To clarify (as I didn't comment on Backgrounds) : Backgrounds are also a good addition for 5E, as they do make for interesting "pre-variation", so to speak, for characters. And as Killian said, some aspects of Feats (and general subclasses) are built into the paths (or similar variations) that characters get/advance with when they hit 3rd+ level in a given class (Rogues, as a base, having "x" general advancement, but then being able to choose Thief, Assassin, Arcane Trickster, Swashbuckler, et al, at 3rd level+ with more variations coming down the pike all the time via playtesting). My comment, though, as indicated, had to do (and I probably should have time-indexed it to indicate it was more of a direct/specific comment vs. a general one, so my bad in that regard) with those DMs who don't allow Feats in general vs. a setting-specific prohibition for specific Feats that don't exist, as such, due to how a given world/setting is. Feats in-and-of-themselves can act both as an additional level of base "pre-variation" (especially for Variant Humans, who can start with a feat, such as Tavern Brawler or Magic Initiate which add a degree of (B)ackground by their nature, contextually) and of course allow for more personalized variation/distinction as you go along (a highly intelligent warrior, for example, who doesn't follow the Eldritch Knight path but who, by association with his mage compatriots over time, not only develops more variations on his warrior-based abilities (via getting the Tough Feat, or what-have-you), but also picks up a degree of understanding about magic but not so much that he actually multi-classes, per say, nor follows necessarily the narrower Evocation/Abjuration limits of Eldritch Knight -- he does so by taking the Magic Initiate Feat (for the couple cantrips, which aren't limited to any school, and the one-per-long-rest 1st level spell which again can be whatever) and then later the Ritual Caster Feat (which while not combat-related due to time requirements can really help out in a pinch when the casters are down and/or the warrior is alone and finds that certain ritual spells would really help out a lot). There are, of course, a wide variation on those possibilities; just using those couple examples above to show how Feats really are the "thing" that can truly differentiate a character (along with Backgrounds) from 1st level through 20th+, especially for FIghters and Rogues who get two and one (respectively) extra advancements as they go along (fighters at 6th and 14th, rogues at 10th).

rosey The material component thing they go over in a couple other videos. Tyranny of Fun and Low Magic Settings

rosey agreed with the other comments are they did a pretty good job of discussing material components in the tyranny of fun video and you can also check out their low magic campaign video where they go into further detail about magical material components and how you can make them special and not just a chore to attain them.

Malcolm Grant ive had it recommended to me before. I liked Toriko so I plan on checking it out.

Glad to hear it! Would be interested to listen to an episode or podcast about stuff like Dungeon Meshi and other DND inspired media that holds close to the tabletop game.

It makes me so happy that you like Toriko

JohnnyBoy Do You happen to be the Barbarian?

Wavingatfat lol no im the DM

My warforged greatweapon master carried a greatsword, but also two shortswords. But his greatest spree had him knock 9 people out..... with beermugs.....

enjoy

Codey Reumkens Have a nice game!

Codey Reumkens hell yea

Yeah! D&D is the best! :)

Sven Helgrim all I need are the two great weapons attached to my arms.

yeah a 20th level wizard can rewrite reality and summon meteors, i don’t see it too out of line for a fighter to be good at every weapon

Feats... Feets

It was a hold over from 3rd edition?

Sneak Attack is once per turn, not once per round (yes, a rouge could get an AOO with sneak attack, if the conditions are met)

HHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmm.........

Mark Dunlap every week on Save or Dice twitch channel

Save Or Dice

At the moment you have the one game they posted a long time ago or save or dice every Wednesday which so far has been pretty good with Will dming and was quite fun to watch when Jim was dming

Yes! Exactly. If something is crazy good for players, the enemies know it, too. For instance, Hypnotic Pattern is very powerful and often the mainstay of spellcasting players. Well, a spell that works that well is also likely to be the mainstay of enemy spellcasters. And, as a bonus, people in the world know how to deal with its effects: just shake your buddy out of it.

Elzipper 7 A Toriko inspired campaign would be so dope

Elzipper7 is your picture Octavia melody?

This is true! Monmusu is a great anime about getting your hands on the most tender of monster flesh.

Elzipper 7 Dungeon Meshi!

That's the one!

An asinine assertion. Feats aren't more meaningful for fighter than other classes, and clearly plenty of people have fun without the rules bloat and balance arms race they represent.

@@Eunostos no, a fighter can clearly get more use out of feats than any other class you have 7 asi's as opposed to the 4 most other classes get. It's highly unlikely you will need to add 14 points to your character, 5e characters already start pretty well off stat wise. The only other thing to use those asi's on are feats. Fighters can still be used without them, but I wouldn't personally. It takes away from their versatility.

@Remy B That's still banning feats.

@Remy B But it is part of the game. It's an option, which makes it part of the game.

@Remy B You are correct, but many do not think with a forward thought, they think popularity = correct. Feats and MC are popular, but they are not part of the standard rules, they are optional, which means they shouldn't be expected, but welcomed if they are in effect!