u/DistantStardust

Hello Dungeon Masters!

I'm looking to try and create an engaging and challenging encounter for my party of five level 13 adventurers. We're playing 5.5e/2024 rules.

For a bit of context, I am playing in a campaign that the DM diverted to a bit of homebrew based on my character's backstory. Long story short, I was completely shut down in every important encounter (3/6 of these encounters were big boss fights). My spells were negated by high saving throws, magic resistance, and legendary resistances. My character can also make strong attacks, but could never get close enough to attack. When I did damage, the boss was resistant. I was counterspelled with DC 22 CON saves, and could also never counterspell the boss due to +13 CON and magic resistance.

My DM asked what I thought of the homebrew and I explained that I wasn't having a good time. Nothing I did worked! I told them I thought encounters were more fun if players had things they could do. If a melee martial can't attack the big bad, give them a ritual to stop. If you don't want the Boss shut down by spells, give your casters some things to CC or things they can damage. Don't want players dunking on an encounter with their high level stats, features, and spells? Give them a way to achieve their goals in a non-conventional way. Stuff like that.

So the DM said they wanted me to design an encounter, to prove that my ideas were correct.

So here I am. My goal is to create an encounter that will challenge the party, but also give them a chance to use their cool characters in a way that they'll enjoy.

The lineup:

Tiefling Celestial Warlock: Good support, good ranged damage. Good single target damage with Eldritch Blast and Crown of Stars. Sprinkle in some healing and warlock support stuff.

Human Worldtree Barbarian: High single-target damage, tons of HP. Has a cool magic weapon that boosts crits.

Dwarf Forge Cleric: Tanky, Robust. All that cleric goodstuff, wildly high AC. Lots of HP.

Hexblood Archery Sorlock: Elusive! Likes to teleport away and go invisible. Not conventionally Tanky, but decent HP. Has some good control spells and decent aoe and single target damage.

Eladrin Bladesinger Wizard: Tanky. High AC and way more HP than any wizard ought to have. Strong potential melee DPR and a healthy suite of control and damage spells. Will likely have a Simulacrum in tow.

Here's what I've got so far: The fight will take place in a swampy forest, the big bad an Adult Green Dragon. I'll tweak it so that the Dragon has a bit more HP and does slightly more damage. However, it won't be able to fly, its wings are damaged by a powerful character from one of the PC's backstories. Instead, it uses 4 ponds in the arena to move around the battlefield, going into one, popping up in another.

For support, two Archmages. AoE and spell support. They can be shut down with spells or just killed outright, but they'll put a little extra pressure on the party without doing anything too oppressive. I'm giving them Vortex Warp to teleport the Dragon around as well. I think it'll be a cool feature of the fight, and it can be counterspelled since they have mediocre CON. It also costs them their turn, so if they do this they're not blasting the party.

Minions! For this I picked Dragonflesh Abominations. I think they fit into the fight well, and they can do okay damage but will die pretty quickly due to low HP and AC. I'm going to reduce their size to Large so they don't clog up the battlefield and tube down the damage on the breath weapon a bit so the party doesn't get nuked too hard if initiative goes awry. I'm thinking five or six of these.

Gimmick-men! Men who gimmick! I'm going to place three sets of three cultists around the arena. They will be performing a ritual that corrupts trees. Upon the completion of the ritual, a Duskwalker will spawn and join the fight on the side of the Dragon. The idea is that this is some extra excitement for the players, and a good way to feel like they're contributing to the fight if they aren't able to get to the Archmages or the Dragon. They'd have low HP so a player could kill one or two in a turn easily.

I also plan on having the ponds around the battle map usable by the players as a free action Athletics check. If they succeed, they can swim to another pond like the Dragon. If they don't, they can just get out of the pond or convert their normal speed to swim speed.

A DM friend of mine has been helping me out with a few of the finer details. I enjoy hearing new perspectives as well!

What do y'all think? Too much? Too little? Is there something I'm missing or overlooked? Any advice is welcome! I want to do the best I can and I have only DM'd a few times.

Thanks so much for reading!

Hello r/DMAcademy! I hope you're having a great day!

I'm looking to try and create an engaging and challenging encounter for my party of five level 13 adventurers. We're playing 5.5e/2024 rules.

For a bit of context, I am playing in a campaign that the DM diverted to a bit of homebrew based on my character's backstory. Long story short, I was completely shut down in every important encounter (3/6 of these encounters were big boss fights). My spells were negated by high saving throws, magic resistance, and legendary resistances. My character can also make strong attacks, but could never get close enough to attack. When I did damage, the boss was resistant. I was counterspelled with DC 22 CON saves, and could also never counterspell the boss due to +13 CON and magic resistance.

My DM asked what I thought of the homebrew and I explained that I wasn't having a good time. Nothing I did worked! I told them I thought encounters were more fun if players had things they could do. If a melee martial can't attack the big bad, give them a ritual to stop. If you don't want the Boss shut down by spells, give your casters some things to CC or things they can damage. Don't want players dunking on an encounter with their high level stats, features, and spells? Give them a way to achieve their goals in a non-conventional way. Stuff like that.

So the DM said they wanted me to design an encounter, to prove that my ideas were correct.

So here I am. My goal is to create an encounter that will challenge the party, but also give them a chance to use their cool characters in a way that they'll enjoy.

The lineup:

Tiefling Celestial Warlock: Good support, good ranged damage. Good single target damage with Eldritch Blast and Crown of Stars. Sprinkle in some healing and warlock support stuff.

Human Worldtree Barbarian: High single-target damage, tons of HP. Has a cool magic weapon that boosts crits.

Dwarf Forge Cleric: Tanky, Robust. All that cleric goodstuff, wildly high AC. Lots of HP.

Hexblood Archery Sorlock: Elusive! Likes to teleport away and go invisible. Not conventionally Tanky, but decent HP. Has some good control spells and decent aoe and single target damage.

Eladrin Bladesinger Wizard: Tanky. High AC and way more HP than any wizard ought to have. Strong potential melee DPR and a healthy suite of control and damage spells. Will likely have a Simulacrum in tow.

Here's what I've got so far: The fight will take place in a swampy forest, the big bad an Adult Green Dragon. I'll tweak it so that the Dragon has a bit more HP and does slightly more damage. However, it won't be able to fly, its wings are damaged by a powerful character from one of the PC's backstories. Instead, it uses 4 ponds in the arena to move around the battlefield, going into one, popping up in another.

For support, two Archmages. AoE and spell support. They can be shut down with spells or just killed outright, but they'll put a little extra pressure on the party without doing anything too oppressive. I'm giving them Vortex Warp to teleport the Dragon around as well. I think it'll be a cool feature of the fight, and it can be counterspelled since they have mediocre CON. It also costs them their turn, so if they do this they're not blasting the party.

Minions! For this I picked Dragonflesh Abominations. I think they fit into the fight well, and they can do okay damage but will die pretty quickly due to low HP and AC. I'm going to reduce their size to Large so they don't clog up the battlefield and tube down the damage on the breath weapon a bit so the party doesn't get nuked too hard if initiative goes awry. I'm thinking five or six of these.

Gimmick-men! Men who gimmick! I'm going to place three sets of three cultists around the arena. They will be performing a ritual that corrupts trees. Upon the completion of the ritual, a Duskwalker will spawn and join the fight on the side of the Dragon. The idea is that this is some extra excitement for the players, and a good way to feel like they're contributing to the fight if they aren't able to get to the Archmages or the Dragon. They'd have low HP so a player could kill one or two in a turn easily.

I also plan on having the ponds around the battle map usable by the players as a free action Athletics check. If they succeed, they can swim to another pond like the Dragon. If they don't, they can just get out of the pond or convert their normal speed to swim speed.

A DM friend of mine has been helping me out with a few of the finer details. I enjoy hearing new perspectives as well!

What do y'all think? Too much? Too little? Is there something I'm missing or overlooked? Any advice is welcome! I want to do the best I can and I have only DM'd a few times.

Thanks so much for reading!

Alright, hello people of RPG horror stories.

I play with 4 other players in a 5.5e/2024 campaign. We started up the game a few months ago, and are playing with characters we brought in from other campaigns we played with this DM. We're pretty high level. I play a Bladesinger Wizard (I know, I'm a bad person).

The campaign kind of got off to a rough start. There was no session 0 to go over character integration or player expectations, anything like that. DM just kicked us right off into the campaign immediately. We were just told to have at least two characters ready because it was going to be a tough campaign.

My character, along with one other, was from a campaign that wasn't able finish prior to this one starting, just hadn't managed to get everyone together to wrap it up and it had been put on indefinite hiatus. The DM teleported all the characters into a throne room to start the campaign. Of the five characters, three previous campaigns were represented. Myself and other character from Hiatus Campaign were also told 100 years had passed while they were teleported. There was no setup, no explanation, nothing. That was how the campaign kicked off.

Shortly after starting the campaign, the DM decided to do a bit of a homebrew side-quest to fill in a time gap that takes place in the module being ran. The DM asked to use my character's hometown as the setting, so they asked me to write up some information for them. I gave the rundown. Culture, how they lived, what they made, even how they built their houses and other structures. I also provided the names and occupations of some NPCs so they could fill out the town a bit.

Right away it was very hard to get into it, because I honestly wasn't told very much about how the final version of the town was going to be, so it felt like a place my character had almost no connection with. There were some NPCs from my character's past there, but they were being presented in a way quite different from how I imagined them. There were also a lot of gag-enconters with NPCs I hadn't written that were just long jokes.

The quest basically consisted of boss encounters. Big bad had taken over, we had to get them out. These encounters essentially hard-countered my character (I know, I play a Bladesinger, so I deserve it). They save against all my spells with high saves and Magic Resistance, and anything that got through was stopped by Legendary Resistance. I could never get close enough to attack either, since they teleported away every turn. They were also resistant to every damage type my character dealt. I was also frequently counter spelled, and would always fail the save since the DC was over 20. I couldn't counterspell the bosses since they had very large CON saves and would roll with advantage.

I never once had an opportunity to use my character's skill set. We made 0 Intelligence based skill-checks the entire time we were there. Not even a chance to use her knowledge of the town or the people to get information.

So I was having a bad time, and I told the DM when I was asked how I felt. I explained that I was basically the LVP in my own character's story. DM said I was upset because the encounters were too hard. I tried to explain that my problem was the lack of interactivity I had the whole time. I never had a chance to use my character to do anything I had built them to do. Couldn't use spells, couldn't attack, couldn't make checks, couldn't use their backstory to impact the scenario that was ostensibly about them.

So I tried to explain to DM that I think Encounters should be fun for players. It doesn't need to be easy, but give them something to do. If a melee martial can't get close enough to attack, give them a ritual to stop or something. If you don't want to get your boss dunked on by spells, give the casters things they can CC or deal damage with attacks so they can still feel useful. If something is supposed to be too hard for players to overcome conventionally, give them other avenues to achieve their goals.

DM told me to design an encounter for the party myself, to prove that the way I think about the game is actually good. I'm going to try but I've only DM'd myself a few times. Seems like I'm being set up to fail so the DM can tell me I'm wrong.

Maybe I'm crazy. DM said the goal was for me to have fun. They've never said anything good about my participation in campaigns they've ran, though. I used to write journals because DM said they liked reading them, but they never read mine, for example. They've complained about my character being too strong before, that's kind of all the feedback I've gotten.

I'm leaving the campaign either way, but do y'all think I'm crazy? Should I have just left if I wasn't having a good time? Should I not have said anything?

EDIT: Minor edits for grammar and spelling.

EDIT 2: To clarify/reiterate, we are playing with 5.5e/2024 rules. Counterspell was changed in the edition update and now requires the target of the spell to make a CON save against the caster's Spell Save DC. On a failure, they lose the spell.

Hello everyone. I (30F) have been with my partner (30NB) for 5 years and some change now, and I am struggling in this relationship.

We've lived together for nearly 5 years. When we moved in together, things were okay but have since degraded quite a bit. We no longer are intimate in the bedroom and haven't been for a long time and have a lot of issues. I don't know how to proceed with making things better.

My partner is on disability due to ASD and does not work. They cover half of rent and utilities. I work 40 hours a week at a full time job. The household chores are split, if I'm being generous, 60% to 40%. I am the 60%. We split kitchen duties 50-50. I am the only one that cleans the bathroom, which I do weekly. I wash the sheets and fold/put away the laundry. They tend to start the clothing laundry more often than I do. When my partner does the dishes, they do not scrub or rinse the dishes at all, so they come out dirty sometimes. They also leave food residue/bits in the sink afterwards. They do all the cooking. I cook occasionally and feed myself about half the time.

I take care of everything else. Neither of us drive. I can drive but not confidently and am inexperienced and don't have my license. I was practicing for my license test, but the person who was helping me moved away. I schedule all their appointments, whether it be doctor, dentist, or anything else. I also go with them to all their appointments at their request because they "don't know how" to fill out paperwork/check in, etc. I also manage their disability and insurance coverage. I was even paying for the insurance for them for a while, until I switched it over to a new plan with a lower premium for them.

I manage rent, utilities, internet, accounts like Amazon and Instacart. We moved last year, and I arranged everything and paid for the move. I pay for the Internet and the Amazon and Instacart subscription, as well as our joint Spotify account. I pay for half of groceries. My partner eats 2/3 to 3/4 of the food week to week, depending on what we bought.

They have said before that they are depressed and that they have anxiety. They never seek out treatment or try to change anything. They've had one session with a therapist, but I had to find the therapist and schedule the appointment for them.

I have depression and anxiety as well. I went to therapy for a long time and am on medication. Recently I had to discontinue therapy because it wasn't helping and I couldn't afford it. I self medicated with alcohol for a long time, and had some blackouts where I said mean things to my partner. I have stopped drinking completely. Things have gotten so bad lately, I was planning to kill myself in March.

I try to ask my partner how they feel and address problems and imbalances that I've noticed, but they never engage. When I ask how they feel, they just say okay or that they're tired, even when that's clearly not true. I tell them every day that I love them, that I think they're smart, that I think they're cute and good looking. I encourage them to do things that make them happy, spend time with friends, talk to their family, pursue their hobbies, etc. They do not tell me those things, or anything like it. They never say anything good about me unless I bring it up.

I cannot tell my partner how I feel. They get angry at me if I tell them I'm suicidal. They shut down if I say I'm stressed or depressed or upset. I asked for ways that would help them communicate how they feel, and they suggested a whiteboard where they could write how they're feeling. I bought the whiteboard, but they've never used it. They also say they don't remember having that conversation.

There are other things too. I don't know what to do to improve things. Couple's therapy maybe? What should I do to improve the health of our relationship?

TL;DR: I (30f) and my partner (30NB) are struggling. They are disabled and I work full-time. I still do more chores than they do and manage everything from groceries to utilities, from rent to managing their appointments and disability. They are depressed and don't seek treatment. What steps should I take to make things better?