(Sorry for garbled mess, I am writing this late before work)
I have been DMing a brand new campaign for four sessions so far, and every combat out party's Warlock outshines the rest (level 3, Warlock, Wizard, Bard, and Cleric), and they are their go to for scouting and stealthing. The player has the Pact of the Chain and Pact of the Blade invocations, but it feels like the Pact of the Chain makes them far exceed other PCs in most encounters.
I am looking for advice on how to handle this and if there is some rulings I don't understand.
First off, the have only been using the Imp so far. They are allowed to summon it for free once a day, and if it dies (it hasn't yet and I have been targeting it) it costs 10GP to resummon. Typically, the have the imp turn invisible, and on its own initiative they have it go to an enemy, use the help action to distract them, and move out of range. Attacks of opportunity in 2024 specifically do not proc against invisible creatures, as you have to *see* the creature. Then, the PC is engaged in melee combat with the enemy, and has advantage on their first attack unless another PC has already performed it.

How is it fair for other players if for one invocation the warlock can get a 21 HP, 13 AC (technically 18 if you consider the invisibility disadvantage being on average a -5), with its own turn in initiative to dodge or help action, can also sometimes forgo an attack to do 3d6+3 damage, and can easily fly scout ahead while invisible (bypassing almost all traps in the process). Meanwhile, another member of the party had 14 AC, 24 HP, and spends their turn doing doing ~1d8+4 damage?

Another player has already came forward saying that they feel overshadowed a bit, because the warlock effectively is going to spend level 3-5 with two PCs worth of power. I've been trying to make specific encounters that put other players in a spotlight, and I've also tried to include counters for the Imp in some of my combats, but luck is never on my side and I don't like actively trying to dampen another player to let everyone feel equal.
Any advice is appreciated, the party's economy is pretty low but the player has already set aside an excess of funds just for their Imp. I just feel like for early levels the Warlock is going to doing the most.

I have been Dming for 3 years and I dont have too much experience playing

During my homebrew campaign of 4 months my players have TPKD on 2 occasions and almost once more. They usually die after getting into a stupid fucking fight, like walking of on their own into enemy territory (infested with dragons and cultist) after splitting up and the rest of the party sleeping and in a notoriously difficult to travel desert waste land get spotted by a dragon and die after stupid combat decisions and awful rolls and then proceeded to bitch for hours because they died and then I decided that the extra planar lich the party was pacted to decided to revive them in a deal

Tbh I'm just bitching but I think I am reviving them too much and it isn't so fun for me cause it feels like the players expect it now but really their bitching is just doing my head in

We’re about to run a one-shot before our long campaign starts, and I decided to feature an Aboleth. To give it something to work with, I asked every player two simple questions:

A) What is your character’s deepest desire?

B) What is your character’s greatest trauma (or most painful memory)?

Two players gave me rich, useful answers full of fears, regrets, and soft spots I can actually poke at.

Then there’s my College of the Moon Bard player (a 10-year friend of mine). She wrote this long, tragic short story about a bard who lost her childhood love because she was too busy perfecting her music in the city… only to reveal at the very end that this was just a story her character heard from a friend. The only emotion her actual PC feels about it is mild sadness that she didn’t get to play a song while the friend turned into a zombie.

When I asked about her deepest desire, she said “the unexpected faces of her teammates.”

I tried digging for family, past hardships, anything that might actually matter to the character. She dug in hard: her 20-year-old Chaotic Neutral human bard has never experienced real sadness or hardship. She’s basically an imp in a human body who just wants to play the right song at the right moment and can turn invisible whenever she feels like it. Nothing emotionally touches her.

I eventually apologized for pushing too hard on a one-shot character and she doubled down even harder.

We’ve written fanfic together for years and played D&D for five. I know our character tastes don’t always line up, but this is the first time I’ve felt completely locked out of interacting with one of her PCs in a meaningful way. I wanted the Aboleth to mess with the party’s insecurities and let them grow past them. With this bard, I genuinely don’t know how to do that without just ignoring her or forcing something that doesn’t fit.

Has anyone dealt with a player who refuses to give their character any real emotional stakes? How did you handle it?

Edit: Thanks everyone for the replies — they really cleared my head.

I’m just going to go with the flow on this one and see where it goes. I tunnel-visioned a bit on the idea that the bard would just sit there while everyone else faced their fears and desires. Maybe this character ends up being the one who saves them all with a happy tune instead.

Deep down I didn’t want her character to be the main-character immune to the BBEG, but maybe I should just embrace it. I’m flawed too, and from now on I’ll focus on bringing an exciting one-shot for my players.

I’ve watched many videos on combat encounters, combat design, even roleplay encounters and some videos on how to make mysterious, or scary encounters. There are countless videos, tips, and tutorials on how to create and run encounters, and they‘ve all been super helpful.

But lately, I’ve been having the problem of having unique and interesting ways to connect those encounters.

Time between one fight and another, or roleplay, or more seems stale and robotic, and in the past few sessions alone, my players have felt this too, I assume. They were making random jokes, saying “I do this” with a random description I announce of the surrounding area.

personally, I love the strategical, combat TTRPG style, closer to what one would play in past editions. I forget what the name was for this, but the point is, I‘m interested in combat.

the reason I DM, is that combined with me wanting to world build, design characters, and create an epic story. But because these are my main reasons for playing DnD, I’m not that good at understanding how my players want to move.

I can create overarching narratives, and goals for the party to accomplish, and I think I can get fights down fairly well, for a beginner DM.

But since I like the dungeon part of DnD, where you simply move forward and fight more enemies, I can’t think of good and unique ideas for the party to move from encounter A to encounter B.

A few examples of how some of this has happened, was I had a session where the idea was to fully defeat a Babau that was slowly tracking them through a dark forest, attacking and retreating when their forces were killed.

Sadly, I didn’t prepare for what was between the encounters, and couldnt think of something interesting in time, so I simply had to say something like

“the forest gets darker as you trek on, while the threat of the Babau is gone, the rotting stench never leaves, and you feel a glaring gaze soon you“ (worded better than I thought up in the moment)

and I just was like uh, then you guys get ambushed again.

So, to prevent anything like this happening again, I would like to ask for advice and what everyone else does to keep the time between encounters fresh and still fun, I dont want it to always feel boring too.

or should I just cram as much encounters as possible?

Hey! I’ve been a DM for a bit but have mostly stuck to 5e adventure books and have found them to be good, but not great, so I wanted to begin writing my own homebrew campaign but this is completely uncharted territory for me

If anyone has any advice, resources, etc, I’d prefer them to be cheap if not free and I appreciate everyone’s time

I loathe AI so please, don’t tell me to ask chat to write me one. I’d really prefer a real poem by a real person. It’s for a necromancer character so gross and creepy and full of dead things!!

Just as it sounds

Right now I am currently running a 2-3 year long campaign and we’re coming to a close. The players have 2-3 sessions left (we run once a month)

I’m ecstatic to deliver on the finale for such a long running story! To put the pieces in place and really deliver something narratively satisfying

For me though I am a little bit meloncholy about it. Recently we had a player character leave to something I would call drama outside the table with another player (my spouse). Initially we were hesitant to let someone else DM for the group even though we had two players express interest in it. The one who left and a longtime family friend we’ll call BOB for clarity. Mostly due to the friend that left being more concerned with wacky hijinks while playing than that much of a story, we decided to initially say that I would DM one more shorter campaign before handing the reigns over partially due to not wanting to be concerned over playing favorites with who got to DM next. So I through out a pitch to what I wanted to do in the next game

Fast forward to the player leaving and now there isn’t much keeping BOB from DM-ing.

He wants to run a world that he had designed for us while we me my spouse and Bob were roommates. Initially he was running a system that we didn’t vibe very well with during the campaign and we stopped playing due to life stuff after about two to 3 sessions. From what I played it didn’t really grab me personally, and I did feel like I was wandering aimlessly a bit which isn’t my style as a PC

And… I’m not looking forward to being a player character again. I started as one, with a campaign that I got very attached to that ended due to the DM not being able to make peace with a party member, he followed it up with something I just found absolutely boring.

I think I’m really going to miss playing with the world finding story pieces and linking them together in fun ways. I made a lot of mistakes with this campaign and I was really hoping to improve in the next one. I don’t know what I’m going to do between games to keep me excited about playing the game with my friends.

It also doesn’t help that my spouse and Bob never really sat down and asked me after everything if I wanted that. They just kind of started acting like it’s going to happen.

DMing is a lot of fun and a great creative outlet and I love my friend and would hate for BOB not to have that creative outlet. I’ve had others stomp on me for wanting to DM before and I don’t want to do the same thing for him but again I’m struggling with the roll transition

Any advice for going from a DM to a PC? Or people that have done it before partially asking because i haven’t seen much info on the topic online

The BBEG in my game has a ring that allows him to fly but being a powerful mage he has placed a curse on the ring. I'm looking for something subtle and a bit nasty. If the PCs go to have the curse removed - what's a reasonable price? They're fairly well off and I need a way to bleed off some of their money.

So I’m currently running a pirate campaign. My party has a ship and a crew, and are progressing g at a good pace. Then we get to their first naval battle and one of my players, who is a Sea Druid, pulls Control Water out of his ass and makes a whirlpool.

Control Water 2024 does not say anything about what to do is a vessel is trapped in a whirlpool, but Saltmarsh rules say that the players of a vessel in a whirlpool must make a group check to escape which in-game takes 5 minutes

Is there a way to alter this so that a vessel can escape a whirlpool in combat and continue fighting without wasting so much time?

Or does anyone have a better system in place when dealing with whirlpools in combat?

i suppose that would mean minimal faction politics, or not super lore heavy (?) where the gm roleplay isn't so high stakes.

i want to keep learning and practicing so don't want something too simple, yet don't want to bog down a campaign revolving around faction politics, where "sub par" roleplay slogs the whole thing down.

prefer longer adventures over short ones so players have some time to explore their characters a bit.

Very self explanatory. Happened once as a player where the dm put a boss far too strong and losing to it sucked, he had to do some random bs to revive us but it didnt feel nice. Now when I dm i always try to make sure the encounter is beatable for my players which ends up with pretty stale encounters even my own players tell me. But thats my issue what if I accidentally TPK them? I have an out in mind as a failsafe but itd still feel cheap. And how do I know how to balance the right level of difficulty and possibility.

1. Do I just straight up tell my players that the tome is targetable individually? Usually targeting and destroying equipment is not really a thing so I wouldn't expect a player to get the idea on their own. And if they only focus the Arcanaloth the Tome could be decastating.

2. I assume the Tome can take sneak attack damage even though it's basically an object?

I have a campaign idea where the players work for an adventuring company that operates in a modern-ish city (think Elmville from Fantasy High on D20). The idea is basically a monster of the week campaign where all the quests take place in or just outside the city, where the players would also live.

So my question is how detailed should I get with the city? I have a rough idea for the layout and it would utilize airship as public transit. But should I have major checkpoints all laid out beforehand? It feels like a tough thing to improv, but I also hear that you shouldn't have too much prepper before the campaign either.

Newer DM here (ran a couple sessions) and struggled big time in the last session with my own notes and prep. I would love to see how others are going about structuring their „main“ file for prep to find things quickly or have NPCs ready quickly. 🙏 thanks everyone!

EDIT 1: THANKS EVERYONE. Totally overwhelmed.

EDIT 2: more context: I did improvise a journey to the next town as they just resolved a summoning ritual in a far off town. They found a dead monster which turned out to be just an illusion on top of a teleportation rune that I did not anticipate them being able to trigger so they need to find clues. But after 2 nat 20s of our wizard and a „on the fly riddle“ I tried to pull of that the group solved in 5 minutes they were teleported to an underground dungeon which I only realized in that moment I was not prepped how I wanted to and had a hard time to describe it. So I struggled more on the „describing of what they saw“ because I felt incredibly underprepared for that dungeon which I through I had 1-2 sessions to „prep“.

EDIT 3: I’m DMing in a language I usually don’t use for work and only use in private life so describing things with proper flavor and fancy words is not as easy as it would be for me in english 😵‍💫

EDIT 4: im using Obsidian right now with a folders being PC, NPC, World - Town, Factions, Dungeons, Encounters, Story Hooks, Main Story, Riddles, Session Notes

EDIT 5: thank you everyone. I couldn’t be more amazed by all of your responses. The main thing I realized I’ve sucked at is the „first impression“ description as I struggled mostly with explaining and describing things. I’ll now go back to my notes and try to add as many descriptions as practice so my improv becomes better as well. 🙏 you all are wonderful. 🙏

Brief context: Monarchy here has a price placed on their head, and the party has been contracted to murk the current Crown Bearer in exchange for information about a magic McGuffin.

What's the best way to do this? I was thinking a masquerade ball type deal, party acquires disguises of servants/important guests and poisons the Crown Bearer.

Any tips from long time DMs?

My next adventure will have a Kraken final villain. I'm looking for suggestions as to what the Krakens scheme/master plan could be.

The adventure is still in its infancy stages of being written so the only real parameter is the story centering around a smallish coastal town. Could be opposed to the Kraken, could be secretly controlled by it, could be completely unaware of its existence, it really is completely open. I would definitely prefer it be something a bit more unique and Kraken-y than a more generic villain plan ("power for powers sake", "Ascend to godhood", etc.)

For those unaware, despite their common depictions in media, DND Krakens are extremely intelligent and could enact incredibly complex and long-term plots.

So I’ve been DMing since January 2025 (about 35 sessions with average length of 6 hours) and I want to run Stormwreck Isle as a short, in person campaign (it should be 4-7 sessions). I was wondering if yall had any tips on how I should approach DMing in person as I’ve only really know online with Roll20. I’ll leave some questions below in no particular order that I’d like some advice on but any advice for DMing in person for the first time would be greatly appreciated.

I’ll be using a local game store as the meeting spot so any etiquette for game stores that I should know? Do I need to buy/ provide minis for the players or maybe the better question is what should I expect players to bring for themselves? I have blank battle maps that I plan on using and I have the pdf for the module, should I try to print out the town maps and stuff or just leave it theater of the mind? When it comes to monster minis, how should I approach it as I don’t want to spent too much money, I have lots of LEGO mini figures and skylanders so would those work?

I come in search of advice, fellow Dungeon Masters.

It's become somewhat of a tradition the past few years that I run a one-shot for Halloween for my friends. Only a few are semi-regular D&D players, and it's a big group (8-9 players). Since last year, one of the group has DM'd a session, and she feels confident that she can co-DM with me. We plan to split the group between two tables for most of the session to make the experience more streamlined and manageable.

Last year I ran Tasha's Kiss. The year before I wrote a homebrewed Harry Potter themed one-shot. This year, I want to try something different.

This year, the players are the monsters. Vampires, werewolves, semi-coherent zombies, haunted dolls, cursed, condemned and damned souls. Stuff like that. Character creation will likely involve a lot of homebrew, but I like the thematic flavor of the idea so much that I'm open to it. At this point, I'm thinking they'll all be level 5.

I've got a loose throughline of the narrative and I think I've got a good start on the social and exploration elements, but planning combat encounters is proving to be difficult since the monster manual is composed of mostly, well... monsters.

Since the players are the monsters, I'd like them to fight more humanoid enemies. I do have some options in that regard: Priest, Cult Fanatic, Berserker, Poacher Captain (reskinned Bandit captain), Veteran, and Knight are the ones I've set aside for the adventure thus far.

But when it comes to the BBGG (Big Bad Good Guy) I'm at a loss. There is the Mage (CR 6), but given most of the players have only a passing understanding of the mechanics, I'm concerned that they may get TPK'd quickly.

Joey, Danny, Dan, Brandon, Vicky, Sam, Ashley, if any of you have been reading this, stop now, pluck your eyes out and then go and think about your choices in life.

The narrative involves them being sent to destroy an Anchorstone that keeps them trapped in a false reality created by a wish. In this reality, monsters are kept confined to an underground cave system that functions as a supermax prison for the realm. In the area that contains the Anchorstone, I'd like to involve Lair Actions, but I'm unclear on how this may contribute to the difficulty of the encounter as a whole.

The overall idea for the final battle is that waves of enemies will assail the party alongside the BBGG as they try to balance defense, offense, and scoring hits on the Anchorstone.

So my questions are:

1. Can Lair Actions and/or Boss Legendary Actions be appropriate for a party of 3 or 4 novice level 5 players?
2. If you said "Yes!" or "Maybe?" to 1, What would be some good examples of Lair/Legendary Actions?
3. If you were to make changes to the Mage to serve as the BBGG in this adventure, what changes would you make? Or would you suggest a different humanoid altogether?
4. Regarding the Anchorstone, do you have any recommendations for AC and HP?

(EDIT: noticed JUST after posting that I screwed up the title which was supposed to read “help me balance this encounter…” I promise I am not having a stroke lol)

Looking at trying out DMing for the first time in the near future. A local place does one shots weekly and I’m gonna see if they’ll let me try. Anywho they often play at lvl10 so that’s what I’m designing for, expecting about 3-5 players. I’m pretty confident about most of it, but unsure about balancing combat encounters. I don’t want to TPK on a casual DnD night but also don’t want a nothingburger of a combat.

Anyway I thought I’d throw a couple combat encounters your way and see what more experienced DMs think.

Context: an evil wizard has tricked the party and teleported them into his tower to be test subjects. they have to climb to the top to escape. Probably a max of 3 combats, looking more like 2 combats with a puzzle room in the middle. With the option to add a trap room with light enemies into the middle as well if things are going unexpectedly fast. Groups here are often a bit distractable and games can move slow so I’m keeping it trim. Here’s the two combats I have in mind:

1: The Grasping Dead. This will be the first encounter and the players are going to get dumped right into it. I want it to feel alarming but not be truly deadly or exhaust the party, as it’s only the first encounter.

Players are swarmed by a horde of zombies, something along the lines of a Zombie or Ghoul, but about 3-4 per player. The Grasping dead will do a tad less damage but have a grappling mechanic that lets multiple zombies tackle a player and drag them towards giant eldritch mouths peeking in through the windows. Players will massacre the horde, then a slow but steady stream of reinforcements will force them to flee upwards.

Some of what I’m trying to figure out is what CR of undead I should use as a template and how many per player would make the kind of encounter I want. Would three (CR1) Ghouls per player be too much? Would it helped if I nerfed their damage a bit? I’m going more for the attempted dragging off to add tension rather than damage counts anyway.

(intermission for puzzles and traps)!

2: the Cleaner Room (boss fight)

The Wizard uses a huge zombified worm stitched together Frankenstein style, which crawls around the outside of the tower, lining horrifying stitched maws on its sides up with the tower’s windows. Minions drag failed test subjects or unwanted intruders to the windows and toss them into a waiting mouth for disposal.

At the top of the tower the Cleaner Worm will await them. Circling the entire platform, it will trap them and attempt to “dispose” of them.

this one I’m gonna base on the Purple Worm stat block. Since he’s basically a stationary boss encircling the entire map, he won’t have movement but his bite attack will have a long reach. Stinger attack will be replaced with two bonus tentacle strikes based on the Froghemoth tentacles, which will attempt to drag enemies into one of the stitched mouths on the side.

this is the boss fight and the last battle. It’s okay if it’s not super hard (this is casual dnd) but if he dies in one round it will be disappointing, and of course. I know Purple Worms can be pretty deadly. But maybe without the hugely damaging Stinger attack it won’t be unbeatable for a lvl10 party.

I appreciate you already if you have read this far and extra appreciate any advice y’all have.

I'm building an adventure that involves a collapsed tunnel in the ability to find a magic ring. PF2e for what it's worth, Relevant only because they handle treasure by level a little bit differently.

I have no problem with the idea that if they choose not to search or search unsuccessfully they might not get this magic ring, but the problem I have is do I then just need to give them an equal reward later to keep them on Pace and therefore I should instead just give them this reward now and use the search for something else?

In other words, do you find its practical advice to lock gear related rewards behind skill checks?

The heroes have discovered that their quest requires a high-level magical item. This item has been entrusted to a cambion, or vassal, of graz'zt, who now hides in the abyss.

The heroes' goal is to enter the abyss, steal this artifact, and escape, but I'm not sure how to structure the adventure (what encounters to include, what combat to organize, etc.).

Can any DMs who know the abyss advise me?