Look, they're the main characters of the story, they're supposed to look badass sometimes..
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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Plus it's just far more fun when players get to actually use the character building decisions they made. I think it's much more fun to base enemy actions on what they can reasonably perceive. If someone has innate fire resistance, let the enemy sorcerer cast burning hands on them once to figure that out. If it's a fabled and well-known Robe of Fire Resistance that they're wearing, any half-intelligent spellcaster will know not to use fire spells on them, but the goblins with flaming arrows might not be so savvy.
But you see, that's not how 5e works. 5e just throws an endless amount of instant problem solving abilities at your players to the point where there are no problems left except for "How do I deal even more damage?". It still kind of works with characters up to level 7ish, but everything after is just cool™ character moments without any problem left to overcome. I mean, there's a reason why almost no one plays double digit levels in DnD.
I just finished my last DnD campaign and am now enjoying my life with systems that allow me as the DM to actually challenge my players without the need to spend several days of preparation to make sure my encounters won't just be solved by a single "Um actshually..." sentence.
I don’t want to sit here defending 5e but 80% of the complaints I hear about always seem to boil down to “why isn’t the system creative for me?!”. It’s a lot of people self-limiting and then being mad.
You can instantly create a harder, thoughtful encounter by simply introducing more enemies than just one they can beat on, and/or by doing WHAT THE BOOK SAYS and get the players used to multiple encounters per day so they need to manage their resources. My DM wanted to make fights harder and I simply mentioned that a stronger enemy is cool and all but what would be better is making us have to make choices. I was a stupid accurate fighter and focused on range, and while feats and stuff made me a dangerous close-quarters fighter I was also the only one who could reliably down other ranged enemies. We played up to level 13 in that campaign and there were a lot of fights that were pretty stressful and fun. We even had a tournament arc and that was wild.
Your inability to create complex encounters is not the fault of the system, especially when the system literally tells you how to make it work and you ignore what’s in the book. But, of course, not reading the material is pretty standard procedure for D&D players.
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I’ve run campaigns all the way up the level 20. It’s still possible that to challenge the PCs, just increasingly difficult. Eventually it gets to be so much work on the DM that it’s not really worth it anymore.
Any favorites? Our DnD campaign just fizzled out due to several unsatisfying sessions - mostly due to an increasingly boring combat experience.
See, my question here would be "Why is combat boring in your games?" Because I see a lot of people try to fix D&D by focusing on making the most interesting board game possible, but roleplaying games aren't board games, they're stories.
For me, combat in systems like Shadowrun, D&D, WFRP, Storyteller and so on is boring because it brings the game to a crashing halt. The fact that it can takes hours of table time to play out a few rounds of combat in most of those systems is, to my mind, a far bigger issue than their relative quality as tactical gameplay experiences. Shadowrun tried to layer on more and more special moves and manuevers and combat abilities in the name of making combat more "interesting" and the effect was the exact opposite as so much more of the game became looking up the mechanics for the specific action you're trying to take.
Combat should be fast and vibrant, and sometimes really scary. A firefight in Shadowrun - my go-to because it's the game I run the most - should feel like a shootout from Heat or Ronin, or a John Wick movie. And it's impossible to make anything feel like that when it takes an hour for everyone to get a single turn in.
This is just my take at the end of the day, but I don't think the solution to boring combat is more or better rules. I tried that for years and nothing ever worked. What did work was finally shifting to more narrative focused systems with minimal, versatile rules that allowed me to treat combat just like anything else in the game. That way I could stop focusing on tracking hit-points and initiative, and I can make combat flow into the rest of the rest of the story in a way that feels natural, fluid, and visceral.
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I've switched to GURPS because the mechanics aren't so combat-focused, but it has interesting combat mechanics too. A lot of people think it's too complicated, but I've always started off super simple and slow-dripped additional mechanics as players get comfortable with the system and start actively looking for more crunch.
I do think it balances the super involved, tactical combat well by making rounds much shorter. Instead of 6 second rounds with Action, Reaction, Bonus Action, Movement, you have 1 second rounds that give you a single Action. There are ways to squeeze in a bit more on your turn, but it comes with trade-offs, like sacrificing active defense.
Active defense is also a great mechanic. Instead of just swinging at an AC, the defender actually gets an opportunity to Parry, Block, or Dodge. This means a lot less damage gets done every round, but that's balanced by having way fewer Hit Points. I always thought people chipping away at each other's mountains of HP until one dies to be kinda boring and unrealistic. In real fights, it's generally a back and forth of attack and defense until an attack finally gets through and does significant damage.
And I won't really get into all the details of the many different maneuvers available to you, or the techniques you can train. I'll just say that it's extremely tactical and provides for suspenseful combat with real stakes.
I think my biggest complaint might actually be that no matter what you plan to do, you're pretty much always better off just bonking your opponent and doing damage.
Taking an extra turn to sneak around enemies and take them out stealthily? Hitting two turns in a row is better! Grapling an enemy to give your teammate a better chance at succeeding his attack? Still, two bonks will do twice as much damage. Healing? Complete waste of time as long as your HP stays above zero (and even then it only matters when you're still down by the start of your next turn).
But I think my biggest paint points are not even combat related. It's stuff like dark vision, spider climb, passive perception or Alarm, fly or breathless nature. A lot of characters start with these get out of jail free cards from level 1. 5e players will never experience the sense of dread and excitement that comes from exploring a deep windy dungeon with only a couple of torches that may run out at any given moment. 5e players will never struggle to hunt down enough prey in the arctic wilderness because someone will just cast goodberry.
DnD takes everything that makes the journey just as interesting as the goal and throws it away. There's only this fight and then a long/short rest followed by the next fight. That's really all the fun DnD allows its players to have.
It's honestly really funny to me how frequently some DMs forget basic writing principles. If something is set-up, either by yourself or your players, you should find a way to pay it off. It's a really lame story if your monk has developed an immunity to poison and it never comes up a single time. Chekov's gun was made to be fired!
Your monk can catch arrows now? Don’t stop shooting them. Shoot them more.
Monk - burns reaction catching arrow
Dm - "and now they turn the balista on you"
Monk - O_O
DM- "Catch this, monk boy"
Even better, just have that inscribed on the ballista bolt/arrow/the flying tree.
I'd like to imagine the monk catching the ballista projectile and getting whisked away by it
In a comedically Looney Toons style
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Yes! Shoot your Monk is standard GM advice! they took those powers to look badass, just give them one useless archer per combat and they will shine! And throw arrows!
And if you still want to throw them a curveball you can always throw in the occasional bit of exotic ammunition that messes with them when they catch it (Use sparingly so they still get to feel cool)
I once let our monk deflect a ballista bolt because he said he was going to do the redirecting with his flying kick instead of his hands, so I had him roll acrobatics with disadvantage since his reaction time would have to be through the roof to pull it off.
rolled two nat 20's. Not only did that ballista go sailing right back at the machine that fired it, it utterly destroyed it and the three dudes manning it, because after kicking half a telephone pole back at your enemies, you've earned the right to walk away from an explosion without looking at it.
I also made him roll to see if he hurt himself landing and he did, so he had to deal with a bad ankle the rest of the encounter (-3 dex, I am a jealous god)
You also don't need to make every enemy an idiot like a videogame. Monk catches an arrow? Archer wastes a turn figuring that out, calls it out to his teammates start of next turn and targets someone else.
A green dragon, depending on your source books, should be more than smart enough to notice its breath attack didn't work on someone and change tactics.
It doesn't work in every situation, like with enemies that shouldn't be smart enough to figure it out, but there's some great room for fun reminding your players that the enemies aren't always braindead.
It also can add an extra layer to combat. Take out the commander that's noticing this stuff to prevent it. Kill the archer before he can call out the monk caught his arrow, so another archer wastes a turn.
Talking is a free action. He'd say it right away.
I dunno if the new books do this, but when I started DMing, I was surprised that actually the NPCs are like a video game. They have rules for their behavior that dictates what they will attempt to do, and will be fairly stupid if you just do things by the book.
But by no longer utilizing poison against the party because of the monk, the monk has effectively made the entire party immune to poison by virtue of it no longer being present in encounters! Hah!
But seriously though, cutting out stuff you know the party will hard-counter is just going to make the party not feel as cool. A balance of both is important. Believe me, as the guy in the party who could cast Silence, I know; hard-countering every boss encounter kind of makes the boss feel lame instead of fun.
I feel like too many DMs play against the players instead of with them
The goal is not for the DM to win and feel cool
The goal is to let the players win and feel cool
The goal is to let the players win and feel cool
I wouldn't use "win" here because that's not always the case. I'd say'
"The goal is to acknowledge players decisions and show that their actions matter, regardless of the final result."
I prefer the BLeeM method: try to kill them and then be amazed at how they, like cockroaches, survive anyways
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I'm somewhat glad that Pathfinder doesn't have silence in the same way that dnd has and nerfed the shit out of counterspell as well. The second one makes it so much more satisfying when you get to do it.
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I managed to work up an immunity to Poison, so our DM had a drow princess get one last action when she got to 0 hp to attack me with her only attack spell as I had severely pissed her off, and it was cast at 5th level
But her only attack spell was Ray of Sickness
Now this is how you make a player feel like a badass.
Did that and when the monk was engulfed in the cloud of poison taking no damage he felt like quite the badass going for a flurry of blows with advantage (I told him with advantage because the dragon wasn't expecting him to be unfazed and he kept himself concealed in the cloud on his approach).
That's also when the rest of the party found out the monk was immune to poison.
10/10 would do that again
Last campaign I ran the paladin was so proud of herself for smiting down a couple lesser demons and gushed about it for the rest of the week. So for the next 3 arcs of that campaign I snuck in a cambion who was hounding the party and got his lights clocked in multiple times just knowing the dopamine release it gave that player even when every 'challenging' encounter crafter for that group was done in about 5 terms and took me nearly and hour to craft ahead of time.
To me as the DM it's your job to learn what quirks or functionality of the players particularly enjoy about their characters and find a way to sneak in encounters, puzzles or situations that give that player time to shine and enjoy it. Even and especially if it trivializes the challenge you put into it.
I have started to balance the game less and less and its getting more and more fun.
Let your players do cool shit. Let them be good at what they built their character for. You can challenge them while still giving them opportunities to be awesome.
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No party is immune to 100 twig blights in close proximity.
Turn undead and fire spells.
First, hell yes.
Second, if you like being an adversarial DM, just let them know that's the type of game you like to run. They don't have to play and you will have to find some players that like that style.
This was always frustrating. One particular dm did that a lot. Oh, x was showing up so someone took y ability to deal with it? X no longer shows up ever again. Cool. Feels bad.
My favorite dragon encounter was a dragon that I still don't know the species of. The damn thing was puce. My DM didn't want us to have any meta knowledge.
It was fun though because of how we got to, and dealt with, said dragon. Dragon was in a mountain lair that, when scryed upon it was revealed, was full of traps and minions.
My wizard figured out that she had just enough 8th and 9th level spell slots to cast Xorn Movement, and Improved Invisibility on the entire party (no invisibility on herself though), and still have 2 casts of Unfailing Missiles (9th level spell she created). We successfully snuck into the dragons lair, and took positions. Our monk was ready to grapple its tail, our rogue was ready to backstab, and was flying because he had a magic item, our cleric was prepping Harm,and our fighter was annoyed that I put her behind myself.
I tapped said sleeping dragon on the nose, and said in Draconic, "Wakey wakey." The dragon opened its mouth to use whatever breath weapon it had, and I said, "That's not a good idea, that will just make me and my friends angry."
The dragon then realized I was speaking draconic and parlayed with us. We explained that we didn't even want to be there, but the gods had tasked us with the eviction of the few dragons that weren't supposed to be on this particular prime material plane in the first place. We also explained that we had brought with us 20 empty bags of holding, and would prefer to relocate them off the plane to a plane of their choice. Thankfully that dragon took the deal. The other three ended up with their souls in rather large black diamonds, that the God of Knowledge had provided us.
I have a character in a campaign DM'd by my buddy, and they're a pretty weak build, as he was giving powerups to the party I asked for a much weaker change to my character that would let me make an attack while staying hidden.
Literally, the first time I got to try out the strategy, it was immediately invalidated, and I wanted to quit on the spot. The one cool thing my character could do I wasn't allowed to do...
Reminds me of the time my GM buddy wanted lunch at school and offered me 3 capital ships in our SW RPG game if I bought him a taco salad. So I did and then promptly lost two of them in a battle that was more of a cutscene than anything else.
I was pissed but whatever the one ship ended up being fun.
So later, in another game, I did the same for a submarine. Again, same session, we found the enemy on land after searching around in the sub. So we get out and have this epic battle where our characters take out a goblin army or something. Then we go to get back in the sub. "You never said you turned it off, so it's gone." So what we breached the surface and all tuck and rolled to get off of it, no roll to avoid getting sucked in to the propellers or anything?
I think that's about when I just went back to playing magic most of the time at lunch at school.
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I mean, the Monk being immune to poison doesn't save anyone else in the breath attack.
Part of D&D is building synergy between the classes and operating as a team. At the same time, it's the group's biggest vulnerability.
Mind-splort the meat shield, gum up the support, grapple the damage dealer, or backstab the controller. Suddenly, the team is scrambling as their game plan falls apart.
And green dragons have so many tricks up their sleeves! The last thing I'm worried about is the breath weapon. It's our horny bard falling for her damned come-hither smile that keeps me up at night.
Honestly, why do DMs feel the need to try and wipe the party? DMs should be hoping the party succeeds because the party is usually going to find a way to wipe without their assistance.
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I tailor my encounters to what my players like, not what's going to challenge their dice and IRL luck. If my players are finding themselves having to cheese their build and pick the optimum feats and talents just so they can stand a chance, then I've failed as a DM.
If you're cheesing your build because you want to feel powerful, just tell me, and I'll do a campaign where you can feel powerful without needing to cheese your build. You should be able to make the character you want to roleplay as without feeling like you're inadvertently gimping yourself.
It's why I like Genesys and Powered by the Apocalypse, because those are RP heavy systems that don't require you to spend ages messing with stats in order to play the character you want to play.
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"Oh the monk is immune to poison?! Well hah! ......I completely forgot"
That's all we'll and good but in my experience DMing, it takes a lot of work to prepare interesting outcomes for the actions my players might take during a pivotal moment. A player with a guaranteed success at something is usually something I try to avoid so they don't feel railroads or like doing things that way is the ONLY solution. With 4 players I want everyone to have an equal share of interesting moments but when one person starts being a powerbuilding min/maxer I tend to build events from time to time that won't let them just steal the whole show.
Unfortunately, because they are a min maxing powerbuilder they are keenly aware of any opportunity for which they should have been the most OPest of characters and will sniff out how they have been silently slighted. They lock on to the fact that they didn't get to shine a few times while glazing over the times where they were OP because in their mind, that's how it's supposed to be!
Before you know it they start pouting, complaining to others, backseat rules lawyering, and just generally acting like they are being mistreated rather than trusting the DM to be trying their best to fit their fucking chadly, mind-controlling demigod in to situations with 3 other people who haven't hyper focused for days on the most efficient use of their action economy.
I'm bitching sure but end effect was similar to this meme's bad DM. I just stopped putting effort into letting the flawless demigod look cool because while he was A main character he was not THE main character and if that upset him... Well maybe next time he'll finally learn why the actual best characters to play are the ones with lots of interesting flaws
They removed that from monk in 2024 😭
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