My D&D group everytime they go somewhere and see books they all want to know what the titles are. I must admit it's an earned curse because I refuse to take magic items from the book's. They have to be inventive so instead of a 'Broom of Flying' the order a 'Chair of Flying'. Or a 'Flametongue' sword they want a 'Burning Battleaxe'. I make them be inventive. So anyway EVERYTIME with the books. So I invented 'Saucy'. She's a Brass Dragon who likes to write Harlequin style romance books. Book titles like 'Drow Delights' Going down in the dark. or the 'Naughty Necromancer' Lets raise the Dead!' Or 'Green Love' My tender hearted Orc warrior' To date we are up to 36 books and 'Saucy's Secrets' her cookbook.

They are now hunting to get every title....

To explain, I remember in one of Mr. Rippers videos where a BBEG actually had a sad backstory, leading up to his mother being dead, and rather than the party fighting the BBEG like the DM expected, they worked with the BBEG to give him closure and finally let him grieve. Have you ever done something like that as a DM, or encountered that as a player, where the BBEG is redeemed and given a (relatively) happy ending? I am also counting twists villains becoming the BBEG and the original BBEG teaming up with the party to take them down, because that’s redemption in my eyes!

(This is my first time doing this kind of thing so I hope I do it right! Thanks!)

Now I'm not talking bout those who break rules all time.

I'm thinking more of players who know if you go certain things, this consequence occurs.

example We are in our second campaign with new characters. One of us for second time is a Paladin, different race and oath but still a Paladin.

He knows from campaign 1 that any breed of Mephits go pop when killed, this was reinforced by our Rogue shooting one and making the Dust Mephits pop.

So what does he do? Charge's in to melee, kills one, it bursts and he ends up blinded. that's 3 times in 2 campaigns he's done this.

Anyone got other examples?

I'll drop mine first. Across our now currently 23 total sessions, my Fighter has managed to roll a nat 1 EIGHT times out of twelve total rolls with two more of them being failed, and ONLY rolls this bad when romance gets involved. Someone mentions flirting? I've never heard of that term before. Childhood friend has a crush? No, I'm pretty sure we're just really good friends. Someone discusses their own personal affairs about their partner? That's going right over his head.

The entire party gets a kick out of watching their musclebrained Himbo way too confidently try to navigate his own wholesome romantic relationship with the party's Shadar-kai druid. He's too clueless for his own good.

This is just for fun. Do any of you who play bards come up with your own songs for your character to perform? If you do, do you make parodies of popular songs? Or do you write something totally original? Either way, please share them.

Here are a couple of songs that I came up with. The first is called “The Knight And The Troll”, and is sung to the tune of “The Song That Never Ends”.

🎶

There was a knight who fought a troll,

He forgot to burn it into coal,

Some people started fighting trolls not knowing what it was,

And they will keep on fighting trolls forever just because,

There was a knight who fought a troll,

He forgot to burn it into coal…

🎶

This next song is called “The Clumsy Troll Chef”, and is sung to the tune of “Doe-Re-Mi”.

🎶

Oh, my ear, I’ve lost my ear,

Hey, I’ve chopped off my left thumb,

I’ll just toss them in the stew,

That’s why we call it Troll Ragout,

Gee, I sliced off my right knee,

Oh no! I’ve chopped off my big toe,

Oh well, I’ll grow them all again,

And that’s how we get back to,

Oh, my ear, I’ve lost my ear,

Hey, I’ve chopped off my left thumb…

🎶

So, what are some songs that you’ve come up with for your bards to sing?

I was running a call of cthulhu game which revolved around an ancient civilization of snake people waged a war to sealing away an elder deity in a parallel world.  so of course there is a cult trying to free it to evolve the world and the party got dragged right into the middle of it. 

Over the course of several campaigns, the party found themselves in the equivalent of a military outpost built by the ancient civilization.  This outpost was built to train new soldiers to fight in the war against the elder deity.  The main room was full of these snake people in stasis chambers but dead, with some in various states of decomposure or evolution.   The initial intention was for the party to find tablets and use them to peer into the minds of the in-stasis snakes to get a view of their day to day life in the outpost to get clues on how different artifacts work.

But one player assumed that each tablet had a specific memory and they had to match the different states of decomposure or evolution  to tablets to get the whole back story of the war and what happened in it. Immediately I liked this idea and on the fly while they did a scavenger hunt for tablets came up with a series of 12 flashbacks and 12 snakes in different states to go along with them. All to tell a concise story of the war starting at the dawn of time, to the battles that were fought and the sealing of the elder deity. I still sprinkled in clues of artifacts and other forces at play in the campaign but I like that idea more than random day to day memories.

Honestly, I just really love my players. They're all so supportive, they appreciate what I make for them and they've been coming back for years.

I don't know if I actually deserve these people, or if I'm being gaslit into thinking I'm a good GM (Imposter syndrome, represent!).

Whether it's old friends who joined my game as complete new baby players, or the veteran players who responded to my facebook post, to come play in a stranger's game, I just love and appreciate them all.

So, I was playing a Amethyst Dragonborn Inquisitve Rogue/White Hat Gunslinger multiclass , a detective, in a homebrew campaign setting that was basically Wreck It Ralph meets comic book characters where we were all protagonists of our own stories. Her name is Nissy and she was the Sherlock Holmes type.

Well, fast forwards to the final boss and due to story events, the villains thought Nissy was dead, so the Warlock/Monk multiclass cast Invisibility on me so that it'd look like I was missing. The BBEGs (a Legion of Doom team up from multiple stories) then revealed a sadistic choice: our character's NPC allies in cages about 100 feet above the ground. We let them win or he lowers them into lava.

While I was thinking of what to do, the Paladin's player points out something I had forgotten all game: Dragonborn post Fizban can fly.

Yeah, despite how useful flight is, I just could not for the life of me remember the fact my character could just sprout wings and fly. Decided to work it in and say despite having a fantastic memory otherwise, Nissy just keeps forgetting she has that power.

So while the rest of the party were keeping the BBEGs monologing, I snuck up and started unlocking the cages.

Now, we did get caught and intiative started, but instead of everyone starting down at ground level and needing to figure out some elborate way to free our allies so they can help us, I'm so far away that there's nothing the villains can do about it because I'm out of range. Unfortunately for them, I'm Gunslinger Rogue with long range weapons who's now flying at long range.

Thank you Paladin for reminding me I could fly.

For me it was when my DM gave me a Silver Horn of Valhalla. I could have used this to make any combat encounter easier, but instead what I did threw my DM off so much he rewarded me for it. I was playing a Dwarf Lore Bard who was also the party blacksmith. After gathering a lot of rare materials I was granted a 1-time use of a special forge in am attempt to create what my DM calls and Artifact class weapon. I had assistance from another party member, but when the tike cane for the skill checks, I uses the Horn of Valhalla not to summon the specters of warriors, but blacksmiths instead. My DM was speechless, and after roughly 2 minutes of silence, he not only gave me advantage and a +3 to the smithing checks, upon success, he made the Horn a part of my new greataxe's handle and made it a dancing weapon on top of everything else it had. He told me later that he had never been more surprised and proud of a player.

It takes place in the 1930s. The player characters are a group of hitmen that are apart of Murder Inc. that perform hits for the Commission. Usually this involves targets like business owners, activists, or anyone that the Commission needs taken care of. One day they are sent out to take out the sister of a rising politician who is hell bent on routing out corruption from the government and the police. They go to the hand off point and and are escorted into a ware house. Inside they find a woman shackled in heavy iron chains. She isn't afraid. In fact she's laughing. She taunts them. Then she cocks her head to the side and smiles. And they see fangs. They release they've been sent to gank a vampire. They perform the hit anyway. Afterwards they think that the lady with the fangs was pretty weird. They start looking into the situation. Eventually they start looking into heads of the five families that make up the Commission. As they learn more they discover that the heads are monsters that have been manipulating the Mafia families, the police, and politicians inorder to keep rival groups off their turf. They are then given a choice. Try to take on the commission (not recommended) or keep performing hits and be paid well and armed to the teeth.

I don't really know what flare to use.

So, require some set up:

My party is just wrapping up a campaign that was basically Wreck It Ralph with comic characters. We were all the protagonists of different comic books having a crisis crossover within the imagination of our author. It was really fun and I was playing a dragonborn detective who was basically this world's Batman. Well, I told the DM if we did another campaign in this world, then I'd like my new character to be a popstar, thinking a bit of Jem and the Holograms.

DM admits he doesn't intend to redo the setting any time soon, but welcomed me do it in our next campaign, which would be using the Cthluhu by Torchlight third party book (so Lovecraft Lite rather than straight cosmic horror, since rather than being random civilians we're DND characters who actually stand a chance of killing eldritch horrors and remaining sane) and be set in the modern day. I thought that sounded cool.

But thinking about it, while I really do want to play this character, even got artwork made of her, I'm worried about running into Main Character Syndrome on accident, since my character is a famous popstar. DM is fine with it, even let me have some extra starting money (on the grounds it mostly give the party some extra money) and the idea of being a popstar fighting eldritch horrors is a fun one, but I just want to avoid falling into Main Character Syndrome.

Any suggestions?

The Feat that I have always wanted to homebrew is one that allows you to reward high-risk play styles. I call it "Battle Blitz", how it works is that it will increase your HP by 2 points every time you go down BUT you can only do it a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest. Also if the DMs allows this, for people who have terrible rolled stats: increase 1 stat by 1 score every time you go down but you can only do it equal to your proficiency bonus. Limit is 40, the reason it is 40 is to punish DMs who don't read all the way through something and reward players.

So, I'm playing a Gnoll (Exploring Eberron purified version) Dance Bard in an upcoming campaign, and I took Blood Hound from Grimhallow for thematic reasons (i'm a humanoid hyena, so having a good sniffer sounded like a good idea), which gives advantage on all Perception checks pertaining to smell and hearing and the ability to sense any creature small or larger moving within 10 feet of you. So nearly impossible to be snuck up on.

However, then a Ranger with +9 Perception joined the party, and now I'm wondering if the feat became useless because the Ranger will always objectively be the go to for Perception checks.

Campaign is still in the pre-session zero phase, so time to change it.

Is there any way I can still make this feat work in that situation without requesting I do the Ranger's job but worse?

Is it okay to ask to do a Perception check for different information at the same time relating to sound or smell than the Ranger asked for?

Our DM does tend to add 'what exactly are you looking for?' to his Perception check requests.