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Yea an adversarial game generally ends badly. With immature gamers, the DM may just start that way. In older groups I notice it is often a player that will start the problem by being provocative.

Another thing with rules restriction is when they just come out of nowhere. When there is no prior discussion with the player untill the rule comes up it can be very frustrating especially if you've developed features or respurces to the rhe thing being ruled out.

Cheating. I had a campaign of over a year break apart, because the DM was cheating with saving throws. He wanted a NPC excape, but also boast and be an asshole so the NPC had to succeed in all saves and still continue fighting. Bonus points because it was in a roll20 campaign where we all had DM rights and could check the logs.

Favoritism has to be at the top of my list followed closely by changing rules on the fly (nerfing character abilities when used, adding abilities to monsters mid combat). This caused me to step away from a game (both). The rest are pet peeves of mine, but never caused me to leave a game. DMs that don't prepare, picking on players, ignores what you say (ignores plans), DMs that attack you before combat starts!!! Oh my gosh, I almost forgot that one! Agreed! Non-sandbox does not mean railroad. Railroading is when you are forced to solve challenges one way and not allowed to brainstorm up you own solution. It can happen in any style of game, even a sandbox. The DM wears about 7 hats. Session 0 is a must!

RAW brings up an interesting issue for me. If we take it that the entirety of RAW is necessary for the mythical beast called "game balance" then by definition if you're not tracking spell components, exhaustion, the expenses of daily living, then what's the point of worrying about whether or not a specific niche is allowed in the game. This kind of behavior leans towards the Rules Lawyer (vs a Rules Sage) perspective of player types. The flexibility of being the DM is really important. I run bespoke adventures for a table of two. One of the two was unable to make a session so I did a one on one to flesh out some backstory. In the second scene the Legio Lex Talionis, the equivalent of the Inquisition in the setting, and the players backstory is as a civic minded good citizen from a family of tax collectors for the empire. My dialogue was written with him being helpful and interested in not angering an official of the Inquisition when his family is vulnerable to the whims of the emperor. Is that what he did? Nope. He challenged the proceedings at every step. Oi vey! All my work out the window and now it's time to adlib. And this is probably where the issue of railroading comes in. Adlibbing is a skill learned over time and practice and requires a degree of confidence that (lets face it) many young DMs may lack. Yup. That's definitely the wrong hat for you. Good use of props. My nit to pick today is that though grey works with the white undershirt, whatever that rectangular thing is at the V is a visual distraction from your face. Very Old School AD&D player here. Our early basement dwelling sessions were very adversarial, in that we took delight in how difficult the DM could make the adventure. We started our D&D careers not as murder-hobos, but as Oceans 11 looters. We robbed everything and everyone. If we were exploring it was to rob someone. So we ran heist games with high levels of lethality. Combat wasn't the core of the sessions, but rather avoiding traps and guards were what we wanted to do. Grimtooth's traps were an inspiration for us. And I leave you with this: there is no such thing as a Good Fun/Bad Fun dichotomy. Be an adult and if you're not having fun, leave. Don't ruin it for the rest of the people at the table.

omg a kitty

Great video. I'm surprised that conflicts in play style didn't make the list. I loved the objectivity of doing this from a poll. 50% for adversarial DMs makes a lot of sense but I never would have guessed the number was so high!

Players walk away from tables?

THANK you. I'm getting really tired of this defeatist zeitgeist that people keep perpetuating because it makes them feel like they know the right words to say to fit in

This is why you should play with friends, and take turns being DM.

This may be a "me" problem, but while I love your videos, I have to crank up the volume on both the video and my computer to hear them. Can you double-check to see if this is the case with others? I love your videos!

I am always a bit critical of the generic dm advice lists, especially when they are contradicting advice: ie, play RAW to give players constant expectations but consider their point of view and let them try crazy plans the rules explicitly forbid. Meh, what are you gonna do, they do not know you or your group? I will say most of these are spectrum issues too. Ie, you can lose people for being adversarial but you can lose people for not providing challenge to players too. The games that end because players are bored from lack of challenge tend to get blamed on the game instead of the gm, but that is a dial you can mess with in the gm seat.

The biggest reason for me for not so much leaving games but not even joining them in the first place is DMs with huge laundry lists of really weird house rules, and a subcategory of this, the 'gritty realism' dms who usually have bunch of house rules with the sole focus of making things as unfun as possible and dedicated solely to nerfing player characters.

Always enjoy the videos. They are very well thought out and conveyed. Many thanks! The only game I ever left, was because another player was so disruptive (the husband of the DM).

For me the wearing the wrong hat and inflexibility are probably the 2 biggest reason to walk. And the way that shows up for me is the game becomes un-fun. And I game to have fun. So if everything is a struggle, not fun, and thinking about spending a day playing just makes me feel bad I am likely to leave the game eventually.

🥳🫂👍🏿 “Didn’t feel welcome” was the reason I didn’t stay at a table

True polymorph yourself into an Adult Red Dragon, or something, wait for your dragon HP to get low, dismiss the spell, and recast. Immortality unlocked.

So haste being abused

Cast demiplane, selecting the ground under the enemy as where the doorway will appear. When they fall in, instantly dismiss the spell so the doorway vanishes. edit: scratch that. The 2024 demiplane has a "i can choose to just not be trapped in here as the spell is ending" clause

I totally agree with you in everything you said here...

You could have witches and hags cursing people at some point and then dismissing it way in the future after they fulfilled their bargain, Arch Mages that carry favor by casting permanent spells that they can dismiss whenever, banished creatures that have been sent to another plane can be trapped there by breaking concentration and dismissing the magic, therefore therefore removing the ability to return to their home plane, undoing the effects of any wish spell simply by ending the magic that caused the change in the first place, breaking concentration on polymorph causing the person who has been changed into another non-magical creature to Simply remain in that form... shall I go on?

Grappling seems worse to me. Without Athleticism affecting it we seem less likely to land and far less likely to maintain a grapple.

What is the mechanical difference between a throw and a push/shove? I have used them interchangeably and we use throw’s narratively.

Ranger is undoubtedly mechanically better now than in 2014 and even tashas version. My biggest gripe is that 2014 leaned into the “skilled” or magicless capability of a fantasy ranger, which i personally loved, but as time went on more features were replaced with magic. Instead of being a skilled woodsman with some magic, now you are a spellcaster/ magic user that goes camping on the weekends. Favored enemy went from knowledge about certain creature types to just a free spell usage, hide in plain sight and vanish turned into natures veil, lvls 13, 17, and 20 are just buffs to a lvl 1 spell. I dont want a wizard in the forest I want a skilled hunter who dabbles in magic to augment his already impressive mundane skills. The 2024 ranger is a total miss for me in terms of flavor, even if its mechanically stronger I would still consider playing 2014 instead.

Thanks! I’m VERY new to DND and sacrificed myself to help my friend not be the only DM, so this bit of information will really help me out to make my campaigns interesting.

Honestly, I think smite should work similar to sneak attack. Smiting being a thing paladin do, then having a standard, sacrifice damage dice for effects mechanic that get expanded depending on subclass. Since it requires a resource it should do more damage but still only be available once a turn.

I actually like the new divine smite. While i can get why people are upset about it, i think it makes the palidin a better multiclass option. It also loses the damage cap that devine smite had in reg 5e.

By far my favourite DnD channel. I wish I was as elegant spewing my nonsense haha

I thought once per turn would be good, but thinking on it more that means it is a free action and the new version means if you have a powerful bonus action you are now competing for bonus actions and I think that is good as it makes divine smite one type of bonus action rather than a free action this is hard to not be tempted to dip for to get some free damage a few times at least

You could have a permanent spell on the rest of your crew and then get rid of it during a fight to get an advantage somehow

Putting up your points on each subclass at the end of each section would help rank them by your metrics. Otherwise it feels like you’re merely comparing them instead of saying which one you think is best/worst.

playing a 2024 Monk in an upcoming campaign and this video was very informative. Thanks!

I think 5.5e might be remember as worse than 4e

Enemy Illusionist Wizard waits until youre halfway across the insanely high bridge and then drops concentration on their "illusory reality" bridge

Convince an enemy to let you cast haste on them, drop concentration

5th ed still exists, and everything i hear about 2024 is still the vastly superior edition. Dont play 2024, dont let it succeed. Stop buying from WoTC.

🥳🫂👍🏿 I’m a big fan of the way treantmonk put together “Divine Strike” - that’s how we do it at our table

Set up a continual flame and use it to send a message from any distance by saying “when this flame goes out, it means ____”?

Once per turn is the way to go. Not really OP anymore, but still useful and won't be shutdown by something that should be aimed towards casters. Smite being counterspelled feels... wrong? I wouldn't even use it against a player honestly.

5.5 is just complete shit overall. This is just a really sloppy and stupid way to nerf Silence.

I honestly can’t wait to get to higher levels. It’s not that much fun watching my level 4 players get whooped by the big bad because of some poor decisions and bad dice roles.

The bigger problem was that you could stack both an Eldritch Smite, and a spell smite onto your divine Smite which would do an insane amount of damage regardless of the number of attacks

Oh NOOO... Restrictions... We who are older and have played prior to 3.X are no strangers to "restrictions" and limitations to character features. Personally, I don't mind the minor Paladin nerf, making the Divine Smite a spell makes it susceptible to the other ways to "lock down" a spell caster. To which I say, "Welcome to the party, Pal." Nevermind the old Advanced editions of D&D where if someone so much as struck you with an attack roll or threw a rock at you while you were casting a spell, you lost the spell and the spell was lost from the day's memorized list.

Haste on an enemy. End the spell, and they are basically paralyzed for a full round.

Wizard casts Silence in the villain so party can sneak up on the big bad. Paladin wonders why his divine smite is not working.

Want to make one smiting attack. Treat it like Booming Blade. Make a weapon attack as part of the spell casting action and add 1D8 plus 1D8 Radiant damage per spell level to the weapon's damage. No V, M component. the Somatic component can be a weapon flourish before the strike.

You no longer have to wait till your turn to drop concentration on haste. Wait till the dragon starts flying, or the lich tries to cast a high-level spell.

Easy frezze water, run across and snap fingers when enemys are on it insta drowning trap.

The change is fine. Players will chafe until a wild DM (me) makes them fight a player-character enemy party, and they hate dealing with paladins who just hit that much harder with no workarounds.