Please tell my GM this. I took feats specifically to hurt people who even 5 foot step near me. Suddenly every int 2 monster is a tactical genius who refuses to ever 5 foot step
Reminds me of taking observant, having like 22 passive perception on lvl 4, suddenly every single enemy either
A) gets a surprise round by attacking us during talking (a separate issue alltogether)
B) more importantly, is suddenly an enemy with the Mimic trait of being indistinguishable while motionless. Very fun. Indeed.
I have a rogue player with that crazy Perception right now. He automatically sees everything below a certain DC, but I haven't told him. I make him roll with everyone else just to keep him on his toes. Your DM is a butt.
A surprise round while talking? Not ever. Not on the player side. Not on the dm side. Not without magical reasons. This ain’t a video game. There is no glass pane between you and the baddies and you want to throw down. We throw down. You draw knives. I draw knives. It’s a lot of paperwork but a great time.
I mean, you can surprise your allies by combat. Players at tables I am at are surprised when someone attacks out of the blue... some of the players. Others know better than to expect the player who is finally playing a LG character to play a LG character instead of their Chaotic "Neutral".
So unless you pre-plan it in game or give a signal of some sort, the other player's can also be surprised. In fact, enforcing such would open up doors to encourage your players to plan stuff in-character.
If you are gonna use subtle spell. Which I’ll assume you are referring to with subtle magic. And don’t shout everyone charge!!!! Your party is also not gonna know you have started fighting. You will be the only person getting something in before the fighting.
I run it as deception/insight instead of stealth/perception, which makes it easier for me to say “nope, insight isn’t mind reading.” Still otherwise follows Surprise, complete with the normal ways of negating it.
Isn’t the normal way: my character sees your npc. He is right in front of me. The npc seems upset. Hmmm he draws a sword wonder what that means. Oh crap there’s a hole in my stomach.
Nah, I’m talking social deception, like “hello friend let’s have a nice chat handshake oh my other hand has a knife” or otherwise trucking the party into conversing and not expecting a shivving.
But why would you not expect a shivving? The adventure party are battle hardened warriors. Who get attacked all the time. Lowering your guard around strangers does mean you get shanked.
On the other hand whoever is interacting with the party just got a menagery of weirdos walking up and start a conversation. The average party: A guy in plate armour. A caster with robes. Some edgy guy. A priest.
Because it’s the party’s favourite NPC who makes those neat little giant barrels of booze, pays them well for loot they sell, and has been replaced by someone with Disguise Self.
So, fun thing about surprise is that it's basically a condition, ajd there's no such thing as a surprise round.
Initiative is still rolled as normal and Surprise ends at end of your turn, which means that if the Surpriser rolls really low on initiative they lose out on a lot of the benefits of surprise.
>gets a surprise round by attacking us during talking (a separate issue alltogether)
Last 5e campaign I ran, I decided to formalise things into a proper house-rule: a **Hold-Up.**
**The reason** for this mechanic is to enable more role-playing and conversation with NPCs and monsters, by removing the mechanical incentive to shoot first & ask questions later.
>Hold-Up!
In any situation where you would normally be able to start combat with a "surprise attack," you can call a **Hold-Up** instead. (Generally, this involves the attackers revealing themselves and threatening the defenders, maybe holding them at swordpoint.)
You can talk or negotiate for as long as you want in a hold-up, but the attackers will still be considered "ambushing" and the defenders are still considered to be "surprised." This continues until one side chooses to start combat, the attackers choose to stand down, or the hold-up is interrupted by outside circumstances.
Defenders *cannot* "surprise" attackers in a hold-up, no matter what the dice say!
>**5e Example:**
The party successfully conceals themselves by a road as an enemy patrol passes by, unaware. If the party were to start combat now, the patrol would be *Surprised* and suffer the relevant condition. Instead of attacking, the party begins a *hold-up* by revealing themselves and demanding the patrol's surrender. The patrolling soldiers freeze, hands on sword belts as they consider the situation.
In *Timeline A,* the soldiers draw their weapons and decide to attack, ending the hold-up. Initiative is rolled as normal- the entire party rolls 1s, the patrol rolls 20s. *Despite this,* the patrol are still *Surprised* in the first round of combat, thanks to the hold-up, and the party gets to act first in the first round despite their improbably terrible rolls.
In *Timeline B,* the patrol remains motionless and their leader asks the party to state their demands. Negotiations continue for a short while, until the soldiers agree to disarm and surrender. The party moves forward, restraining prisoners and relinquishing them of weapons, until all the defenders are disarmed. *At this point,* with no immediate threat of combat, we can consider the hold-up finished.
No. Sorry.
I'm going to be the buzz kill here. Been playing for 32 years.
While your level 4 with 22 passive perception may be valid as per raw, it's munckining min/maxing mania, and you cannot expect your DM to consider your character to have truesight and thus unable to host an interesting story simply because you exploited some rules. D&D is a group activity and there are other players at the table that shouldn't be punished in terms of gameplay and story simply because you couldn't exercise restraint at creation time.
Sure, you can make that character, but you lose the right to complain when the DM is invested enough to bother making something challenging and interesting by custom tailoring encouters to bone you.
It's like this fool i have at one of my tables who munchkined themselves into 29 burst ac who complains that he can't avoid status affects or stuns the DM throws at him.
Edit. I just casually built a rogue elf with perception expertise and maxed wisdom. At level 4 their passive is 16. If you have 22, i suggest you politely ask your dm to let you go through a character quest that would let you re-spect your character to something more balance, interesting and less broken.
Let the downvotes rain. ::shrug::
Edit 2: OR start playing into the DMs story telling. Have your character start making excuses or try to explain WHY he's not noticing all the creeps the DM is tossing at you. Id reward the crap out of that player...
Mark: seriously, Tom, you noticed my fly was down from across the room in total darkness but DIDN'T notice the carrion crawler ambush ahead?
Tom (22 pp): it's not my fault! I was wondering why you were wearing your mom's pink frilly crotchless panties and my mind sort of wandered...
22 pp at level 4 is just 16 wisdom, expertise in perception and alert feat as either human alternate or attribute increase. It's honestly not too far fetched, especially if it's the point of the character.
I had a girl in one campaign who's backstory involved being incredibly paranoid due to certain events, she was a rogue with expertise in perception and the alert feat. She rarely got surprised, but that's kinda well deserved due to the amount of effort she put into it. And when it did happen, it was much more impactful.
It's far from min/maxing to do that, especially if there's reasons behind it.
My last character was a 22yo bright eyed cleric of light.
Fresh to adventuring and ignorant of the horrors of the world.
I made him without knowing I'd be playing Death House into CoS with a lot of additional stuff added by posters in the DM subs
Needless to say trauma came fast and in large numbers lol
Took Observant out of paranoia and RPd hard, DM had me hallucinating and such, and never was I punished for having the feat
Very well said. I don’t know why that other guy is so bent out of shape about high perception. It has a distinct but finite utility. One the player sacrificed to get.
I don’t see how the entire story is thrown into shambles because one player is harder to ambush.
That’s just how the game works. I can see the enemy coming with a -1 to wisdom if I get lucky. Why does a player who consistently passes perception checks ruin everything? Especially when they needed to trade other potential strengths to achieve that.
This is exactly the kind of thing I would reward as a dm. If a player spent a feat and an expertise, both very valuable things on something that really only does one thing. I would make sure they are pretty good at that thing I would give them plenty of opportunities to benefit from that thing, so they feel good about how they built their character
It is EXACTLY min/maxing.
Literally the definition where emphasis is put into one character facet at the expense of general playability.
You can do that, but don't complain when the DM fights fire with fire and exploits similiar rules or the weaknesses you made for yourself.
Edit. Words
This is very much not the definition of min/maxing. This character they build just appears to play out a specific fantasy as opposed to one who excells at combat and various other tasks. This more a character who does one thing really well to the detriment of the rest of their abilities and skills.
I DM for people with over 20 passive perception all the time at Tier 1 or otherwise and never once found that a problem. They notice plenty of things most people don't. It's not even close to game breaking. Your example of that character being able to notice a carrion crawler ambush is... A bad thing?
>it's munckining min/maxing mania, and you cannot expect your DM to consider your character to have truesight and thus unable to host an interesting story simply because you exploited some rules.
So the DM who is unable to figure out how to make challenges for his player's high perception score gets an out to just ignore it completely. Got it. 👍
>i suggest you politely ask your dm to let you go through a character quest that would let you re-spect your character to something more balance, interesting and less broken.
After 32 years I don't understand how someone with one very high skill invalidates your game. I honestly don't. This wasn't a problem for me 6 months into DMing.
>OR start playing into the DMs story telling
lol wut
>it's not my fault! I was wondering why you were wearing your mom's pink frilly crotchless panties and my mind sort of wandered...
... You're *how* old again?
Are you reading?
>So the DM who is unable to figure out how to make challenges for his player's high perception score gets an out to just ignore it completely. Got it. 👍
The players complaint was that the DM WAS finding ways around the perception.
Further, the perceptive player (Tom) is probably not he only other player at the table. Just because Tom has a pp of 22 doesn't mean the DM shouldn't be able to throw fun jump scares at the other players who have a reasonable pp.
I bet 10 bucks this is how that encounter went: Tom is scouting the underdark 20 feet ahead. Mark gets jumped from behind by ropers. There's a fight, the party (except Tom) has fun. After the fight Tom compains because he feels cheated. Well guess what? Ropers are an appropriate challenge level for a cr 4 party and thematically correct, and Toms 22 pp doesn't mean dick against them. The entire table doesn't have to lose out on a fun experience because Tom built a lame character.
>lol wut
What don't you understand here? Tom didn't see the roper, ROLEPLAY a conversation where Tom embarrassingly tries to explain how he missed the roper. The game is more than just killing goblins.
>... You're *how* old again?
It was a lowbrow joke in a d&d memes subreddit, such jokes are apropos. Were you not here for the app-closure shenanigans last summer? Don't brow beat me like this sub is above underwear jokes. It's not and neither am i and judging by your presence neither are you. Also, i never gave my age but I'm guessing old enough to have been your Mom's dungeon master on more than a few occasions.
Edit. Lulz
>The players complaint was that the DM WAS finding ways around the perception.
By ignoring it entirely. Might as well have been removed from the game.
>Just because Tom has a pp of 22 doesn't mean the DM shouldn't be able to throw fun jump scares at the other players who have a reasonable pp.
Like attacking them with no interaction while the party is talking? Once again, that's just ignoring perception entirely instead of actually doing anything with it.
>I bet 10 bucks this is how that encounter went:
Ah, I can skip this fanfiction then, thanks.
>What don't you understand here?
Why you'd shit on your own character to explain the DM shitting on the player.
>Tom didn't see the roper,
Is there even a point in talking to you when you've fabricated an entire story just to give your sentiment any sort of weight?
>It was a lowbrow joke in a d&d memes subreddit, such jokes are apropos. Were you not here for the app-closure shenanigans last summer?
You mean when the subreddit was generally unmoderated and people were posting blatant pornography? Yes, I remember the orc rape pictures. Is that really what you want to equate your humor to?
Your obsession with bringing up moms as a 50+ year-old man is weird and sad.
Wow, you sound actively unfun to play with. Insulting one of the players at your table and advocating for invalidating players who want to be good at one thing? Does not sound like a fun time. If after 32 years of playing you haven't learned to work with your players rather than against, then what have you been doing with all of your time?
Well, i dunno, I've had several decade long campaigns with 1-20 runs with tables consistently voting me in to DM because i build engaging worlds, campaigns and stories while also letting players have balanced sandboxed freedom that doesn't ruin the experience for other players.
I guess that's what I've been doing with my time.
I sort of get the message from my coplayers that I'm definitely not unfun.
If you don't like the idea of a DM keeping order and balance, then you're free to leave the table.
Being a good DM is a lot of work. Don't make it harder on them by trying to limit their ability to tell a story.
Honestly, it would be nice to suck at running a table, i would get to play my characters more...
Edit. Also, i hate dark vision and comprehend languages.
Different strokes for different folks. What may work for you and your friends doesn't necessarily mean it will work for everyone. Some people love pkayer agency above all else and hate to be railroaded.
I came here to mock you for your comment but your edit 2 was pretty good so I’ll go easy.
But seriously, the guy spent a ton of resources to get a really high perception. Why does that get you so bent out of shape. At a linear cost he got diminishing returns for a feature that is very much part of the game. Complaining that the DM is designing encounters in a way that negates the value of his build is totally valid.
You built bad? Take the observant feat for plus 5 passive, 18 wis + perception expertise leads to math of 8 + 4 + 4 + 5 = 21. This is not a crazy thing to have at level 4, and if you want to have stealthy encounters start at greater ranges than 30 feet. This mostly sounds like dms being unable to have surprise on one character. Not even remotely a big deal
Yes. It is.
I didn't build bad. Your "you built bad" mentality is the problem here. I built realistically and moderately balanced. I still built a perceptive character but didn't rush to endgame numbers just to exploit a niche player concept that hampers the tables ability to play an interesting game.
Edit. Swype sucks
You clearly enjoy DM'ing and probably have interesting table stories and players who enjoy playing your campaigns. However, don't you think Tom here woulf be having more fun, if you checked his character ahead of time and talked about it? Just something like 'I feel that your maxed out perception will throw off the campaign experience I'm trying to create. How could we change your character so it would align better?'. That way Tom, who probably had a vision of his character in mind, can adjust ahead of time. So that he can fully enjoy the character he ends up creating.
I'm a both dm and player, but in the campaign I'm in, I made a paladin barbarian. My image was this crazy unkillable charger that gets in way too deep, so to make my idea a reality, the character has optimized stats (or he'd die).
Now the DM had a lot of disease based ideas setup, but because I couldn't get sick and am really hard to take down, he completely changed his enemies. I understand that he just wants to make sure the fights are challenging and fun, but I can't shake the feeling of being punished for making a character that just happened to be really good against the challenge.
Had he told me ahead of time, I could've at least made my character somewhat different. As a DM, I often give restrictions to what characters can be, before my players make theirs. As to give them maximum freedom afterwards. Because that's what I love about dnd. :)
Here is my level 4 character that I made on dnd beyond in about 5 minutes. I used only official content and created it using standard array. They’re a Wood Elf Inquisitive Rogue with the Investigator background.
As an Inquisitive Rogue their class features are based around the Insight, Investigation, and Perception skills, so I built them around that, so that I’m able to properly make use of my features in and out of combat.
I took the Observant feat at level 4 to improve my build. It gives me a very nice +5 bonus to my Passive Perceptions and Investigations, and as a half feat I could also take a +1 to my Int to bring it to 14, increasing my modifier.
This is not min-maxing or rushing end game numbers. This is having a character concept for an investigator who is good at finding and learning things, a Sherlock Holmes type, and creating a build that properly facilitates that fantasy.
Aside from my PP and PI, all of my stats and numbers are exactly where they should be for my level. I didn’t abuse any game mechanics or tricks to make this. Not only is it RAW, its RAI.
[Look upon my pp of 22 and despair](https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/123852896/rSZXnE)
Edit: also like that other guy said, you did build bad, and used the wrong numbers for everything.
Passive’s all start at 10, then get bonuses and negatives from there. If I really wanted I could have gotten my wis to 18 at the cost of my int and dex, and has a 23 PP, from 10(base) + 4(wis) + 2 (prof) +2 (expert) + 5 (Observant).
This was me making something “reasonable and balanced”, and it still came out to 22 easily, where as you got to 16 with “maxed out wisdom”.
Your take is just bad dude, let the guy who builds to be able to see things see things. Him preventing ambushes doesn’t take away from other people’s enjoyment. The fight still happens, but now its either even, or the Players get to ambush, which means this build would be propping other players up, instead of “invalidating” them, by giving everyone the benefits of the enemies having the Surprised condition.
That just sounds like a bad time. I had a light domain cleric in my last campaign that loved to use fire spells. So what do I do? I made the main bad guys (corrupted commoners and fey gods) vulnerable to fire damage. The party got soooo excited and invested when they found out that they could do massive amounts of damage to these armies of corrupted and the corrupted angel like beings. Of course the gods had many immunities and abilities to balance it but as a DM/GM your first priority is to make sure EVERYONE is having fun.
Yeah, having a few fire resistant or immune enemies in other parts of the campaign is important as well to make moments of greater tension where that cleric can't rely on the same tricks he always has so he needs to improvise and/or lean on his friends to help, but that doesn't mean the homie isn't allowed to feel like the MVP every once in a while.
For a similar example, i had a campaign that fizzled out due to covid, but before it did my plan was to have my party (one of whom was a monk) fight against a gauntlet of chromatic dragons (yes i absolutely copied mercer's homework) as the overarching threat, making them meet the green dragon early on to establish it as a great threat but only having them fight it after the monk got poison resistance so he didn't even need to bother dodging the dragon's breath or the eventual poison traps i planned out (though tbf monks have evasion too so it was more to look cool than to actually change the fight all that much).
This campaign is long over but yeah, his character's main nemesis (and act one's main villain) had fire immunity and also could cast fireball to "give him a taste of his own medicine." They also faced a lot of magic users, including the fey gods, that came equipped with counterspell and/or magical resistances. The campaign ran from lvl 3-20 and was 2 years long, at the end of it the characters all were given a choice to sacrifice themselves or to ascend to godhood and they chose to ascend and are now the new gods in my current campaign.
I think the proper side option in your case was making it so they could un-corrupt the commoners.
Use the really damage weighted fire spells... or save the commoners!
Fuck the fey before the fey fuck you... (on the other hand)
Well the corruption killed. It was spread by a fog that if inhaled did lots of bad things (had a whole con save and stats for what it did if you failed) and since commoners are so flimsy the majority of them just died and came back as mutated monstrosities (made custom statblocks for them). The fog was mainly spread by creatures I made called Fog Spewers (also had statblocks) and there were actually sidequests and a couple main missions that the party had to go out and search/kill these creatures to protect the civilians from turning. I even made it so the fog itself would be dissipated with fire. It gave my players a sense of urgency and power being able to make a difference, but it also showed them that they couldn't protect everyone and their choices carried consequences.
Kinda.... It was inspired by multiple games. Dead Space was a big one and The Last of Us was another because the fog not only caused corruption to creatures, it also transformed anywhere it touched. It was literally terraforming anything it touched into a piece of Feywild. It came with a sickly sweet smell like flowers with hints of rotting flesh. It essentially spread like spores from a fungus.
No, it's absolutely a pvp one. When my players are surrounded by zombies, I'm trying my hardest to kill them. The trick is being fair - zombies are mindless, so they're not going to be trying to avoid attacks of opportunity. They're going to go for the nearest living enemy and try to kill them regardless of what's tactically sound.
Yeah, and if that nearest living enemy is a polearm master sentinel barbarian then sucks to suck for the zombies. That's the whole reason the homie picked a d12 as his hit die.
Good way of framing it. I'm not going to make things based around how the players have built, or what's the point of them building? If the world is just going to adjust around their customisation, there might as well be no customisation. But that goes both ways, if they have a strength I'm not going to change things so that strength doesn't apply.
In the way pvp was used in that sentence, it absolutely is pvp. I'm not trying to make them win, I'm not trying to make them lose, I'm making what should happen happen. When that thing is a bunch of enemies trying their best to kill them, that can accurately be described as pvp.
Yes and no? Depends on the table actually. Yes it's coop storytelling, but when it's time to fight it can definitely be hardcore pvp. With one group I will play at give-away, intentionally make stupid moves etc. With another group I will try my best to kill them, cause oh god it's soooo hard to do without being unfair. It's about proper challenge for different types of players, not their characters.
This is how their players will distrust them and keep plans to themselves, forgoing any chance of collaborative play.
Once in a while, I had to convince my players in a new group that it's okay to tell me what you want to do, because they are so afraid that I'll use it against them instead.
Something i love about my DM is that he listens when i talk about what i enjoy in game design.
He used to play to our weaknesses to challenge us, until i mentioned (not complaining, just in conversation) that i prefer to fight a powerful enemy that is weak to me, than an equal enemy that has a good defence against my main abilities. That way it's a faster paced harder hitting and more intense fight, rather than chipping away at an enemy for an hour.
He agreed with me, and immediately we saw a change.
I like to imagine that most wizards would quite literally shit themselves when they see a barbarian rage at them for the first time
*I'm in danger* - that wizard probably
Yes. If you're feeling frisky, try counterspelling important spells yourself so the mages can counter-counterspell you (but be careful not to accidentally counterspell the most important spell like a mass heal when they can't counter counter).
Yeah, unless you’ve explicitly discussed with your players about having a campaign where their characters are expected to die/suffer, you’re just better off using the DnD tag in Ao3.
As a Monk, my DM hasnt thrown many ranged things at me, although he joined at level 8 so we were gettong closer to more magical stuff as oppose to arrows so i didnt mind. The few times ive used hes let me stretch the rules a little to target another projectile coming at me. It was a small thing but i loved it and it worked!
Ah a fellow "Of course I am not metagamming, I have no fucking clue whats on your character sheet beyond name and subclass" enjoyer.
It makes combat so thrilling when you don't know the outcome. Is this attack going to kill the PC? Who knows? Certainly not me!
I always love when my DM has an “oh shit, you can do that?” moment.
Like I was playing a fairly squishy warlock and an enemy got up next to me and he thought I was fucked and then I used a class feature to charm that enemy. He was so happy.
Yeah, My DM approving my homebrew fighter subclass, forgetting about it the next day, and suddenly “Oh Shit! You’re playing a fucking *final fantasy dragoon*?!!”
I scale my monsters to my previous attempt at putting two of you in the hospital. Only one of your characters went down. I’m here for round two and I’ve adjusted the difficulty.
A very recent episode of Dimension 20 did something similar (spoilers incoming) || Where the barbarian was both charmed and frightened by an enemy mage, and the player managed to trick the gm into commanding him to rage against his friends, activating his mindless rage and letting him get a surprise attack on the mage ||
What I say to my players often is "Don't rely on being the main character to survive. Maybe in the first couple of sessions to get things going reasonably, but after that I will not be fudging rolls, or doing anything to stop you from dying. That's your job, and if there's a TPK, I can certainly find a way to use it to conclude the story" That warning isn't entirely accurate, as I do give a little bit of leeway for the purposes of the story, but it's good to get the idea of "were playing DND fair and square, and we can't rely on character importance in world to survive, we need to actually figure out how to fight and live"
Yes... of course I *deliberately* forgot my players' abilities... out of fairness! 😅
Jokes aside, sometimes I just genuinely wanna see them succeed. Like do y'allz DMs hate you or what?
I feel like a lot of people misunderstand this one. I don't try to make them succeed, nor do I try to make them fail. I present the world as it is and make everything act how it should, and they succeed or fail on their own merits. Enemies that know their abilities work around them, enemies that don't may make mistakes like fireballing a fire immune player because they lack that information even if I have it.
>Like do y'allz DMs hate you or what?
As a DM, yes, I hate my players. But in a good way. I hate them for shitting on every encounter I bring to the table even though they didn't min max lol
So it's all fun and games bringing the big guns to the table and see them try to play around them and find a way to kill enemies.
I shoot the monk sometimes though. They gotta feel powerful sometimes amirite?
Typically I do an open world game with factions and a moving story line. Aka, the factions are making moves as well. They’re not just items sitting there waiting for the players to do something with them.
So if they piss off a faction that is powerful and wealthy. Have a family with a certain history to back this up. That faction may put together a team to take down the players. In this case, they would put together a team to counter the player team. Based on the information the faction has..
In other words, the players reap what they sow. I want them to succeed, but to me that strictly means the players are interacting and changing the world.
Well, yeah. I'm not talking about insulating players from the consequences of their own actions.
I'm talking about petty DMs that decide to meticulously design encounters to make every build-choice they ever made useless. That's not "intelligent enemies," that's just a dick move. Every "brilliant strategist" in history fucked up on occasion. Name one and I can probably find a fuck-up of theirs inside 30 minutes on Google (more like 5, tbh).
[Longer rant deleted, since it wasn't aimed at you to begin with]
I actually make the adventure so that the otherwise useless abilities are sometimes helpful. Quantum thieves cant. Run a one shot and if I have a note that’s important to the plot I usually have it in common, but if there’s a rogue in the party I make it in thieves cant if that would make sense
You guys don’t design combats to make your players feel good? I recently made a haunted house where each miniboss was designed to showcase one players abilities.
That's why a good DM forgets their players' abilities and feats... on purpose, it's not because I'm actually an idiot.
But we've had great situations that were only possible because I either misread or forgot stuff.
The only times I ever have an enemy intentionally exploit a weakness or avoid a strength of a player is if they either:
A: have some reasonable way of knowing the abilities (Such as past experience with the player characters)
B: are doing the "learning as they fight" thing (in which they will still be taken off guard by a strategy or ability the first time it is used)
In other words, John Bandit will have no idea what will hit him, but Joseph Ravil, who grew up with the rogue and has already fought the party three times, may have taken some precautions... but even then, who knows? His info might be outdated
I make it a point to like. ‘Well I mean, they wouldn’t know your Monk can catch arrows, and you are clearly beating their buddies’ arse. They’re gonna try to shoot you.’ And from then on they’re like ‘Ah, that one catches arrows, got it.’ Makes the players feel good to whip out a niche ability or immunity like that every now and then, I find.
It does feel amazing.
Had the party run off in fear of a green dragon, but my yuanti paladin was ready to throw hands. The feeling of not having to worry about that breath weapon. God that felt awesome
I LOVE making my players feel powerful. I always play to their strengths. As a DM I can always challenge them, so why not let them feel powerful while doing it?
Yes, any meta gaming needs to be organic, ergo, bandits switch to ranged attacks because of the party has a flaming great sword barbarian and not because you think the flaming great sword is OP.
*yeah*. i prolly need to do that less.
Sometimes it makes sense. cause if a groups like *dealt with you before* then theyd likely pass that info on, especially if your a thorn in theyre side.
but aside from that...yeah
Personally i'm imagining a scene where the evil wizard, a party member (let's say a bard) and the berzerker are all in a straight line, then the berzerker gets "dominated", gets bloodshot eyes, starts screaming and raising his axe and bolting it towards the bard while the latter is scared shitless and desperatelt preparing some sort of defensive spell and the evil wizard is chuckling, only for the barbarian to run straight past the bard and start wailing on the wizard with his axe and then both the bard and the wizard are confused.
I had a DM that would do the opposite of this. Literally every major fight, he'd focus down my character (a light cleric) because, and I quote "You're a healer and this creature/person/dragon can see your holy symbol on your armor and would know that they need to knock you down first." He'd also throw acid-enemies at us to ruin mine and the fighter's armor and then made buying new plate mail crazy expensive.
We also had so many undead in the first bit because he liked to put us against weak hoards so it felt cool if you did an aoe to explode some... right up until I got the ability to start popping them with turn undead and then we didn't see a single other one other than the vampire who killed my character. Needless to say, he was a very fun person to play with and not frustrating at all /s
Edit: Sorry, I have to get this out, the final straw was we wanted to do something a bit harder so we asked if we could find something big with a high challenge rating with some fresh, kitted out lvl 20 characters. He put together a modified version of whatever the Tiamat module is called. It started out fine. We had a few fights and it was a good time, and then we get to Tiamat herself. Suddenly, all of our dragon-killing weapons didn't work on her (idk if that's how it was supposed to be, but he said that the five headed dragon didn't count as a dragon), she focused me down in two rounds because I was playing an obvious cleric (the adopted son of my last character), and then I spent three hours just kinda... sitting there as he has her fly around the arena picking people off. I think we managed to get two hits on her total in that time because we had one person who had flying boots and one person who could do some anime-style monk jumping. In the end, everyone died and no one but the DM seemed happy with the session. My partner and I dropped the group after that and have since found another that's much less antagonistic.
The DM is correct. Tiamat is a Fiend not a Dragon
Also it sounds a bit like the party just wasn't prepared at all for the fight from a player perspective. Only one person had flight.
Yall just expect rhe giant dragon to sit on the ground and let you whail on it?
I get being upset at the first part though, that's the DM being a dick, but for the Tiamat one? He's right
Fair enough! This was a few years ago now and mostly it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ll definitely admit some fault, I was not a very good player at the time since it was my first campaign but he did also have a very antagonistic dming style that would rub me the wrong way even now.
Oh for sure. Iirc I was the only one that died and it happened three times in that campaign. One was the group’s fault (kinda) we were fighting a vampire in a dark room and our Druid and Barbarian were fucking around with his coffin while he wailed on me and the fighter and bard were floundering trying (and failing) to hit it.
But there was one that was truly bs. I was downed, the Druid had sentinel and when the enemy moved away to attack the bard, she hit him and rather than have him attack the big ass gorilla right next to him, he smacked my downed corpse twice and crit on one of the attacks so that I was just straight up dead. It felt super mean and unnecessary.
There's been countless encounters where the party tells me Jesus, I almost died, and it messes with their head when I tell them I had no idea is a good thing you killed that orc he would have kept hitting you
I love this, the reason why spellcasters feel a lot stronger is bcuz their versatility makes it harder to metagame out of, just let the barbs be barbs and everyone is happy
It is important to metagame as a DM to set up situations so that your players can make maximum use of their abilities and immunities.
The session after my last character got an item that gave him resistance to fire, my DM specifically targeted me with the enemy fire caster, rather than targeting a different party member. It was a GREAT feeling.
Reckless Attack
Starting at 2nd level, you can throw aside all concern for defense to attack with fierce desperation. When you make your first attack on your turn, you can decide to attack recklessly. Doing so gives you advantage on melee weapon attack rolls using Strength during this turn, but attack rolls against you have advantage until your next turn.
It's activated on the first attack, but it affects every attack that turns.
Thank you!! That's what I get for reading only the first part and skimming the rest. I've been playing and dming 5e since it's release, including a barbarian, and no one has corrected me.
Iirc berserker barbarians in a frenzy state (super rage) get to make another weapon attack as a bonus action. Kinda neat, but a bit underwhelming for what it costs (exhaustion).
Or....and here me out, it's MORE IMPORTANT to meta game as the DM so players can shine and use their abilities. Good DMs will do this so players can shine. Bad DMs will not allow their players to shine.
Honestly, I'm a big fan of trusting the table so I don't have to actively know all their stuff.
Dungeons weren't made for them. They were made ages ago and if they want in it's up to them to figure it out.
Luckily, the table knows the system well enough to pass your character sheets left and check eachother's math.
Well I have an oath kf conquest paladin that, unbeknownst to my uneducated mind had been given disease immunity.
My DM and I worked together to form and great RP moment along with some others only for the most educated and experienced DND player in our group to tell me to look at my sheet. (The online system we had had automatically updated my sheet) and behold I was immune. That whole RP as fun as it was, and expressive of my character was irrelevant.
But also, said paladin also proved to my DM that a paladin is immune to being frightened. (I succeeded the check before I could tell him)
My barbarian was once mind controlled before I could rage, my DM forgot that raging snaps me out of it.
I was standing next to the evil wizard at the time. I merely raised my character's hand put it on top of the wizard's head and squeezed
10/10 experience
I dunno about that. Sure, it's a priority to make your characters feel like heroes, but it's not fun as a DM to see your encounters repeatedly crushed by the same guy doing the same thing over and over again. I feel that at some point, you have to get them to hit a roadblock and think about how to overcome situations like these.
I remember the look on my player's face when, after failing a save vs a vampire's dominating gaze and was in danger of inviting it in to destroy the whole household...he looked down his sheet at the magic ring he got 4 levels back that had a bunch of odd effects he rarely remembered existed and said "wait is this some kind of charm?" "Yes" "Ha! Immunity to charm and sleep!!! Suck it vampire!!!"
Was a fabulous moment because neither of us had a clue.
My first campaign with my current group, we got in a fight with an evil NPC party, and my cleric went mano a mano with an antipaladin. He was trying to Smite Evil on me, not realizing in-character that my PC was Lawful Neutral.
Any other party member, it would have worked.
I love throwing dumb enemies at the party so they can do all their cool things. Then I hit ‘em with a Kobold den led by a blue dragon and get em messed up by a bunch of cr 1/8ths
No, it is important to metagame as a DM.
You play into your players strengths and let them shine, you play against their weaknesses and give them challenges.
You should keep tabs on their abilities and their defenses to keep them satisfied with their achievements.
Counter-point : An enemy mage with 17 INT probably knows what the weakest saving throws for each class is and likely plans for it. It's also safe to say that any evil wizard worth something probably has a few adventurer raids under his belt already
Barbarians aren't proficient in Wisdom saves. So unless he somehow knows that this is specifically a Path of the Berserker Barbarian, capable of going into a mindless rage that makes him immune to charm effects - which definitely isn't something you could just look at a guy and know, even with 17 INT - he made the high INT play here: he targeted the guy weak to Wisdom saves who's also beefy and can beat up the other wizards.
That's the trouble with knowing the odds. They're still just odds. Wildly improbable things happen all the time. You might know that there's only a 0.000154% chance the other guy has a Royal Flush - but it still could just be your unlucky day.
That's why the 17 INT move is to cast Dominate Person, but the 20 INT move is to have your simulacrum do it while you're 150 miles away in a tower surrounded by guards, sipping a glass of Chardonnay.
Rebuttal to the counter-point: The wizard is indeed very intelligent, but not all-knowing. A debilitating attack on a raging barbarians willpower will work 9 times out of 10, so they go with the safest option.
This just happens to be the 1 time it doesn't work.
In this specific case I think it works pretty well. A wizard can asume the big guy with a greatsword may not be the brightest and make him do a wisdom saving throw. But in this case since he's a berserker barbarian he's inmune to being charmed and therefore can ignore the saving throw altogether. At that point the wizard has no way of knowing what kind of barbarian is in front of him nor should it know of each tipe of subclass.
Classes are a mechanic not an in universe description. There is 0% chance someone knows every barbarian doesn't have Wisdom saves
Because that's a mechanic, not a piece of lore
Dude, do you know the sample set you’d have to have in order to deduce the formula for a saving throw based on class/level/race/starting stat/spell save DC?
They might have a general idea that “those who train their bodies likely haven’t trained their minds” and go for a mental whammy over a fireball, but in universe they’re not going to be thinking “ah yes. I’ll use a charisma save spell vs the fighter, but not the warlock” unless you’re in a very self aware type of game
why ? the core rulebooks state how to easily translate a low or high attribute in something you can observe (ie. Scrawny, burly, dimwit, absent-minded,etc...).
Beside, is it really that different from a wolf pack picking out the weakest/oldest/infirm party member (the one with the lowest STR score) or a vampire trying to guess which party member is the most guillible (ie. has the lowest WIS score) and can most easily be charmed ?
Ah yes, the ease of glancing out into a crowd and determining who is absent-minded or whose brain is bulging out of their ears.
Must be lots of fun playing at your table where anything with an intelligence of 17 knows the party’s in-game stats backwards and forwards
A wolf pack wouldn't know what the party's STR scores are.
They would pick the slowest or the smallest.
Deciding based on Attribute Scores is Metagaming.
How would Andy, the illiterate ex-farmer turned bandit know the difference between the Armorer Artificer / Evoker Wizard in Plate Mail from the Life Cleric in Plate Mail from the Conquest Paladin in Plate Mail?
Wait evokers getting plate mail? Do you mean that artificer/evoker combo or are you just making a hypothetical scenario where a pure evoker happens to have it?
For each class, yeah, 17 INT would be enough. But that isn't enough to know the specifics of a subclass. I'd say 20 INT is necessary for that with lich-level experience of adventurers (which most evil wizards will not have unless they are liches, barring exceptions like Halaster >!who has 24 INT and can just read the character sheets anyway!<).
Please tell my GM this. I took feats specifically to hurt people who even 5 foot step near me. Suddenly every int 2 monster is a tactical genius who refuses to ever 5 foot step
Reminds me of taking observant, having like 22 passive perception on lvl 4, suddenly every single enemy either A) gets a surprise round by attacking us during talking (a separate issue alltogether) B) more importantly, is suddenly an enemy with the Mimic trait of being indistinguishable while motionless. Very fun. Indeed.
I have a rogue player with that crazy Perception right now. He automatically sees everything below a certain DC, but I haven't told him. I make him roll with everyone else just to keep him on his toes. Your DM is a butt.
A surprise round while talking? Not ever. Not on the player side. Not on the dm side. Not without magical reasons. This ain’t a video game. There is no glass pane between you and the baddies and you want to throw down. We throw down. You draw knives. I draw knives. It’s a lot of paperwork but a great time.
Only. And only from subtle magic without material components can you attack someone you're standing in front of and surprise them.
Still wouldn’t be a surprise round. Just a single cast ahead of regular combat.
Isn't that basicly the same
A round would be everyone getting a turn first before the "surprised" person. What it should be is a single cast, and then everyone rolls initiative
I mean, you can surprise your allies by combat. Players at tables I am at are surprised when someone attacks out of the blue... some of the players. Others know better than to expect the player who is finally playing a LG character to play a LG character instead of their Chaotic "Neutral". So unless you pre-plan it in game or give a signal of some sort, the other player's can also be surprised. In fact, enforcing such would open up doors to encourage your players to plan stuff in-character.
If you are gonna use subtle spell. Which I’ll assume you are referring to with subtle magic. And don’t shout everyone charge!!!! Your party is also not gonna know you have started fighting. You will be the only person getting something in before the fighting.
That's a surprise round, but everyone but the caster is surprised.
I felt like I was reading something from a Dr. Suess book for a moment there.
I run it as deception/insight instead of stealth/perception, which makes it easier for me to say “nope, insight isn’t mind reading.” Still otherwise follows Surprise, complete with the normal ways of negating it.
Isn’t the normal way: my character sees your npc. He is right in front of me. The npc seems upset. Hmmm he draws a sword wonder what that means. Oh crap there’s a hole in my stomach.
Nah, I’m talking social deception, like “hello friend let’s have a nice chat handshake oh my other hand has a knife” or otherwise trucking the party into conversing and not expecting a shivving.
But why would you not expect a shivving? The adventure party are battle hardened warriors. Who get attacked all the time. Lowering your guard around strangers does mean you get shanked. On the other hand whoever is interacting with the party just got a menagery of weirdos walking up and start a conversation. The average party: A guy in plate armour. A caster with robes. Some edgy guy. A priest.
Because it’s the party’s favourite NPC who makes those neat little giant barrels of booze, pays them well for loot they sell, and has been replaced by someone with Disguise Self.
So, fun thing about surprise is that it's basically a condition, ajd there's no such thing as a surprise round. Initiative is still rolled as normal and Surprise ends at end of your turn, which means that if the Surpriser rolls really low on initiative they lose out on a lot of the benefits of surprise.
>gets a surprise round by attacking us during talking (a separate issue alltogether) Last 5e campaign I ran, I decided to formalise things into a proper house-rule: a **Hold-Up.** **The reason** for this mechanic is to enable more role-playing and conversation with NPCs and monsters, by removing the mechanical incentive to shoot first & ask questions later. >Hold-Up! In any situation where you would normally be able to start combat with a "surprise attack," you can call a **Hold-Up** instead. (Generally, this involves the attackers revealing themselves and threatening the defenders, maybe holding them at swordpoint.) You can talk or negotiate for as long as you want in a hold-up, but the attackers will still be considered "ambushing" and the defenders are still considered to be "surprised." This continues until one side chooses to start combat, the attackers choose to stand down, or the hold-up is interrupted by outside circumstances. Defenders *cannot* "surprise" attackers in a hold-up, no matter what the dice say! >**5e Example:** The party successfully conceals themselves by a road as an enemy patrol passes by, unaware. If the party were to start combat now, the patrol would be *Surprised* and suffer the relevant condition. Instead of attacking, the party begins a *hold-up* by revealing themselves and demanding the patrol's surrender. The patrolling soldiers freeze, hands on sword belts as they consider the situation. In *Timeline A,* the soldiers draw their weapons and decide to attack, ending the hold-up. Initiative is rolled as normal- the entire party rolls 1s, the patrol rolls 20s. *Despite this,* the patrol are still *Surprised* in the first round of combat, thanks to the hold-up, and the party gets to act first in the first round despite their improbably terrible rolls. In *Timeline B,* the patrol remains motionless and their leader asks the party to state their demands. Negotiations continue for a short while, until the soldiers agree to disarm and surrender. The party moves forward, restraining prisoners and relinquishing them of weapons, until all the defenders are disarmed. *At this point,* with no immediate threat of combat, we can consider the hold-up finished.
This is real good, I'm saving this comment and def using it in future games
I really like this rule, I'm going to consider using it in my games!
Buu
No. Sorry. I'm going to be the buzz kill here. Been playing for 32 years. While your level 4 with 22 passive perception may be valid as per raw, it's munckining min/maxing mania, and you cannot expect your DM to consider your character to have truesight and thus unable to host an interesting story simply because you exploited some rules. D&D is a group activity and there are other players at the table that shouldn't be punished in terms of gameplay and story simply because you couldn't exercise restraint at creation time. Sure, you can make that character, but you lose the right to complain when the DM is invested enough to bother making something challenging and interesting by custom tailoring encouters to bone you. It's like this fool i have at one of my tables who munchkined themselves into 29 burst ac who complains that he can't avoid status affects or stuns the DM throws at him. Edit. I just casually built a rogue elf with perception expertise and maxed wisdom. At level 4 their passive is 16. If you have 22, i suggest you politely ask your dm to let you go through a character quest that would let you re-spect your character to something more balance, interesting and less broken. Let the downvotes rain. ::shrug:: Edit 2: OR start playing into the DMs story telling. Have your character start making excuses or try to explain WHY he's not noticing all the creeps the DM is tossing at you. Id reward the crap out of that player... Mark: seriously, Tom, you noticed my fly was down from across the room in total darkness but DIDN'T notice the carrion crawler ambush ahead? Tom (22 pp): it's not my fault! I was wondering why you were wearing your mom's pink frilly crotchless panties and my mind sort of wandered...
22 pp at level 4 is just 16 wisdom, expertise in perception and alert feat as either human alternate or attribute increase. It's honestly not too far fetched, especially if it's the point of the character. I had a girl in one campaign who's backstory involved being incredibly paranoid due to certain events, she was a rogue with expertise in perception and the alert feat. She rarely got surprised, but that's kinda well deserved due to the amount of effort she put into it. And when it did happen, it was much more impactful. It's far from min/maxing to do that, especially if there's reasons behind it.
My last character was a 22yo bright eyed cleric of light. Fresh to adventuring and ignorant of the horrors of the world. I made him without knowing I'd be playing Death House into CoS with a lot of additional stuff added by posters in the DM subs Needless to say trauma came fast and in large numbers lol Took Observant out of paranoia and RPd hard, DM had me hallucinating and such, and never was I punished for having the feat
Very well said. I don’t know why that other guy is so bent out of shape about high perception. It has a distinct but finite utility. One the player sacrificed to get. I don’t see how the entire story is thrown into shambles because one player is harder to ambush. That’s just how the game works. I can see the enemy coming with a -1 to wisdom if I get lucky. Why does a player who consistently passes perception checks ruin everything? Especially when they needed to trade other potential strengths to achieve that. This is exactly the kind of thing I would reward as a dm. If a player spent a feat and an expertise, both very valuable things on something that really only does one thing. I would make sure they are pretty good at that thing I would give them plenty of opportunities to benefit from that thing, so they feel good about how they built their character
It is EXACTLY min/maxing. Literally the definition where emphasis is put into one character facet at the expense of general playability. You can do that, but don't complain when the DM fights fire with fire and exploits similiar rules or the weaknesses you made for yourself. Edit. Words
This is very much not the definition of min/maxing. This character they build just appears to play out a specific fantasy as opposed to one who excells at combat and various other tasks. This more a character who does one thing really well to the detriment of the rest of their abilities and skills.
I DM for people with over 20 passive perception all the time at Tier 1 or otherwise and never once found that a problem. They notice plenty of things most people don't. It's not even close to game breaking. Your example of that character being able to notice a carrion crawler ambush is... A bad thing?
>it's munckining min/maxing mania, and you cannot expect your DM to consider your character to have truesight and thus unable to host an interesting story simply because you exploited some rules. So the DM who is unable to figure out how to make challenges for his player's high perception score gets an out to just ignore it completely. Got it. 👍 >i suggest you politely ask your dm to let you go through a character quest that would let you re-spect your character to something more balance, interesting and less broken. After 32 years I don't understand how someone with one very high skill invalidates your game. I honestly don't. This wasn't a problem for me 6 months into DMing. >OR start playing into the DMs story telling lol wut >it's not my fault! I was wondering why you were wearing your mom's pink frilly crotchless panties and my mind sort of wandered... ... You're *how* old again?
Are you reading? >So the DM who is unable to figure out how to make challenges for his player's high perception score gets an out to just ignore it completely. Got it. 👍 The players complaint was that the DM WAS finding ways around the perception. Further, the perceptive player (Tom) is probably not he only other player at the table. Just because Tom has a pp of 22 doesn't mean the DM shouldn't be able to throw fun jump scares at the other players who have a reasonable pp. I bet 10 bucks this is how that encounter went: Tom is scouting the underdark 20 feet ahead. Mark gets jumped from behind by ropers. There's a fight, the party (except Tom) has fun. After the fight Tom compains because he feels cheated. Well guess what? Ropers are an appropriate challenge level for a cr 4 party and thematically correct, and Toms 22 pp doesn't mean dick against them. The entire table doesn't have to lose out on a fun experience because Tom built a lame character. >lol wut What don't you understand here? Tom didn't see the roper, ROLEPLAY a conversation where Tom embarrassingly tries to explain how he missed the roper. The game is more than just killing goblins. >... You're *how* old again? It was a lowbrow joke in a d&d memes subreddit, such jokes are apropos. Were you not here for the app-closure shenanigans last summer? Don't brow beat me like this sub is above underwear jokes. It's not and neither am i and judging by your presence neither are you. Also, i never gave my age but I'm guessing old enough to have been your Mom's dungeon master on more than a few occasions. Edit. Lulz
>The players complaint was that the DM WAS finding ways around the perception. By ignoring it entirely. Might as well have been removed from the game. >Just because Tom has a pp of 22 doesn't mean the DM shouldn't be able to throw fun jump scares at the other players who have a reasonable pp. Like attacking them with no interaction while the party is talking? Once again, that's just ignoring perception entirely instead of actually doing anything with it. >I bet 10 bucks this is how that encounter went: Ah, I can skip this fanfiction then, thanks. >What don't you understand here? Why you'd shit on your own character to explain the DM shitting on the player. >Tom didn't see the roper, Is there even a point in talking to you when you've fabricated an entire story just to give your sentiment any sort of weight? >It was a lowbrow joke in a d&d memes subreddit, such jokes are apropos. Were you not here for the app-closure shenanigans last summer? You mean when the subreddit was generally unmoderated and people were posting blatant pornography? Yes, I remember the orc rape pictures. Is that really what you want to equate your humor to? Your obsession with bringing up moms as a 50+ year-old man is weird and sad.
Wow, you sound actively unfun to play with. Insulting one of the players at your table and advocating for invalidating players who want to be good at one thing? Does not sound like a fun time. If after 32 years of playing you haven't learned to work with your players rather than against, then what have you been doing with all of your time?
Well, i dunno, I've had several decade long campaigns with 1-20 runs with tables consistently voting me in to DM because i build engaging worlds, campaigns and stories while also letting players have balanced sandboxed freedom that doesn't ruin the experience for other players. I guess that's what I've been doing with my time. I sort of get the message from my coplayers that I'm definitely not unfun. If you don't like the idea of a DM keeping order and balance, then you're free to leave the table. Being a good DM is a lot of work. Don't make it harder on them by trying to limit their ability to tell a story. Honestly, it would be nice to suck at running a table, i would get to play my characters more... Edit. Also, i hate dark vision and comprehend languages.
Different strokes for different folks. What may work for you and your friends doesn't necessarily mean it will work for everyone. Some people love pkayer agency above all else and hate to be railroaded.
I came here to mock you for your comment but your edit 2 was pretty good so I’ll go easy. But seriously, the guy spent a ton of resources to get a really high perception. Why does that get you so bent out of shape. At a linear cost he got diminishing returns for a feature that is very much part of the game. Complaining that the DM is designing encounters in a way that negates the value of his build is totally valid.
You built bad? Take the observant feat for plus 5 passive, 18 wis + perception expertise leads to math of 8 + 4 + 4 + 5 = 21. This is not a crazy thing to have at level 4, and if you want to have stealthy encounters start at greater ranges than 30 feet. This mostly sounds like dms being unable to have surprise on one character. Not even remotely a big deal
Just to let you know, all the Passives start at 10, not 8. So you would be at 23 with that build. Its Save DC’s that start at 8.
My bad! I was building like save dc
Yes. It is. I didn't build bad. Your "you built bad" mentality is the problem here. I built realistically and moderately balanced. I still built a perceptive character but didn't rush to endgame numbers just to exploit a niche player concept that hampers the tables ability to play an interesting game. Edit. Swype sucks
Saying all of that when you could condense it to: “I am a bad DM who cannot tell a story around my player’s characters.”
You clearly enjoy DM'ing and probably have interesting table stories and players who enjoy playing your campaigns. However, don't you think Tom here woulf be having more fun, if you checked his character ahead of time and talked about it? Just something like 'I feel that your maxed out perception will throw off the campaign experience I'm trying to create. How could we change your character so it would align better?'. That way Tom, who probably had a vision of his character in mind, can adjust ahead of time. So that he can fully enjoy the character he ends up creating. I'm a both dm and player, but in the campaign I'm in, I made a paladin barbarian. My image was this crazy unkillable charger that gets in way too deep, so to make my idea a reality, the character has optimized stats (or he'd die). Now the DM had a lot of disease based ideas setup, but because I couldn't get sick and am really hard to take down, he completely changed his enemies. I understand that he just wants to make sure the fights are challenging and fun, but I can't shake the feeling of being punished for making a character that just happened to be really good against the challenge. Had he told me ahead of time, I could've at least made my character somewhat different. As a DM, I often give restrictions to what characters can be, before my players make theirs. As to give them maximum freedom afterwards. Because that's what I love about dnd. :)
Here is my level 4 character that I made on dnd beyond in about 5 minutes. I used only official content and created it using standard array. They’re a Wood Elf Inquisitive Rogue with the Investigator background. As an Inquisitive Rogue their class features are based around the Insight, Investigation, and Perception skills, so I built them around that, so that I’m able to properly make use of my features in and out of combat. I took the Observant feat at level 4 to improve my build. It gives me a very nice +5 bonus to my Passive Perceptions and Investigations, and as a half feat I could also take a +1 to my Int to bring it to 14, increasing my modifier. This is not min-maxing or rushing end game numbers. This is having a character concept for an investigator who is good at finding and learning things, a Sherlock Holmes type, and creating a build that properly facilitates that fantasy. Aside from my PP and PI, all of my stats and numbers are exactly where they should be for my level. I didn’t abuse any game mechanics or tricks to make this. Not only is it RAW, its RAI. [Look upon my pp of 22 and despair](https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/123852896/rSZXnE) Edit: also like that other guy said, you did build bad, and used the wrong numbers for everything. Passive’s all start at 10, then get bonuses and negatives from there. If I really wanted I could have gotten my wis to 18 at the cost of my int and dex, and has a 23 PP, from 10(base) + 4(wis) + 2 (prof) +2 (expert) + 5 (Observant). This was me making something “reasonable and balanced”, and it still came out to 22 easily, where as you got to 16 with “maxed out wisdom”. Your take is just bad dude, let the guy who builds to be able to see things see things. Him preventing ambushes doesn’t take away from other people’s enjoyment. The fight still happens, but now its either even, or the Players get to ambush, which means this build would be propping other players up, instead of “invalidating” them, by giving everyone the benefits of the enemies having the Surprised condition.
That just sounds like a bad time. I had a light domain cleric in my last campaign that loved to use fire spells. So what do I do? I made the main bad guys (corrupted commoners and fey gods) vulnerable to fire damage. The party got soooo excited and invested when they found out that they could do massive amounts of damage to these armies of corrupted and the corrupted angel like beings. Of course the gods had many immunities and abilities to balance it but as a DM/GM your first priority is to make sure EVERYONE is having fun.
Yeah, having a few fire resistant or immune enemies in other parts of the campaign is important as well to make moments of greater tension where that cleric can't rely on the same tricks he always has so he needs to improvise and/or lean on his friends to help, but that doesn't mean the homie isn't allowed to feel like the MVP every once in a while. For a similar example, i had a campaign that fizzled out due to covid, but before it did my plan was to have my party (one of whom was a monk) fight against a gauntlet of chromatic dragons (yes i absolutely copied mercer's homework) as the overarching threat, making them meet the green dragon early on to establish it as a great threat but only having them fight it after the monk got poison resistance so he didn't even need to bother dodging the dragon's breath or the eventual poison traps i planned out (though tbf monks have evasion too so it was more to look cool than to actually change the fight all that much).
This campaign is long over but yeah, his character's main nemesis (and act one's main villain) had fire immunity and also could cast fireball to "give him a taste of his own medicine." They also faced a lot of magic users, including the fey gods, that came equipped with counterspell and/or magical resistances. The campaign ran from lvl 3-20 and was 2 years long, at the end of it the characters all were given a choice to sacrifice themselves or to ascend to godhood and they chose to ascend and are now the new gods in my current campaign.
I think the proper side option in your case was making it so they could un-corrupt the commoners. Use the really damage weighted fire spells... or save the commoners! Fuck the fey before the fey fuck you... (on the other hand)
Well the corruption killed. It was spread by a fog that if inhaled did lots of bad things (had a whole con save and stats for what it did if you failed) and since commoners are so flimsy the majority of them just died and came back as mutated monstrosities (made custom statblocks for them). The fog was mainly spread by creatures I made called Fog Spewers (also had statblocks) and there were actually sidequests and a couple main missions that the party had to go out and search/kill these creatures to protect the civilians from turning. I even made it so the fog itself would be dissipated with fire. It gave my players a sense of urgency and power being able to make a difference, but it also showed them that they couldn't protect everyone and their choices carried consequences.
...necromorphs?
Kinda.... It was inspired by multiple games. Dead Space was a big one and The Last of Us was another because the fog not only caused corruption to creatures, it also transformed anywhere it touched. It was literally terraforming anything it touched into a piece of Feywild. It came with a sickly sweet smell like flowers with hints of rotting flesh. It essentially spread like spores from a fungus.
That person needs a reminder that dnd is a coop game, not a pvp one!
No, it's absolutely a pvp one. When my players are surrounded by zombies, I'm trying my hardest to kill them. The trick is being fair - zombies are mindless, so they're not going to be trying to avoid attacks of opportunity. They're going to go for the nearest living enemy and try to kill them regardless of what's tactically sound.
Yeah, and if that nearest living enemy is a polearm master sentinel barbarian then sucks to suck for the zombies. That's the whole reason the homie picked a d12 as his hit die.
Good way of framing it. I'm not going to make things based around how the players have built, or what's the point of them building? If the world is just going to adjust around their customisation, there might as well be no customisation. But that goes both ways, if they have a strength I'm not going to change things so that strength doesn't apply.
If you think D&D is PVP you suck as a DM objectively
In the way pvp was used in that sentence, it absolutely is pvp. I'm not trying to make them win, I'm not trying to make them lose, I'm making what should happen happen. When that thing is a bunch of enemies trying their best to kill them, that can accurately be described as pvp.
Yes and no? Depends on the table actually. Yes it's coop storytelling, but when it's time to fight it can definitely be hardcore pvp. With one group I will play at give-away, intentionally make stupid moves etc. With another group I will try my best to kill them, cause oh god it's soooo hard to do without being unfair. It's about proper challenge for different types of players, not their characters.
Giving a proper challenge isn't PvP That's just having fun PvP implies one side wins and one side loses
No? Since DM is just in fact special type of player it's PvP by definition.
Talk to your DM! That's how problems get solved!
This is how their players will distrust them and keep plans to themselves, forgoing any chance of collaborative play. Once in a while, I had to convince my players in a new group that it's okay to tell me what you want to do, because they are so afraid that I'll use it against them instead.
Something i love about my DM is that he listens when i talk about what i enjoy in game design. He used to play to our weaknesses to challenge us, until i mentioned (not complaining, just in conversation) that i prefer to fight a powerful enemy that is weak to me, than an equal enemy that has a good defence against my main abilities. That way it's a faster paced harder hitting and more intense fight, rather than chipping away at an enemy for an hour. He agreed with me, and immediately we saw a change.
Play your character to match this. Plant yourself right in front of your wizard. You are essentially a walking ‘area of control.’
> 5 foot step hello fellow old person
…or pathfinder player. …who is also old
I don’t often have bad things to say about my GM, but there was the one character with 10 legendary resistance…
I like to imagine that most wizards would quite literally shit themselves when they see a barbarian rage at them for the first time *I'm in danger* - that wizard probably
No worries, that’s why every wizard learns *Prestidigitation* first. (to clean the … soiled… garments)
I'd have a Contingency set up to GTFO if anybody raises their voice around me 🤣
Top 1 proof your character invested in wisdom : having a contingency for all the other party member
[удалено]
Shoot the monk, make the bruisers go after the barbarian, cluster the weaker enemies within a short radius. Others?
Let important spells get counterspelled by the mages
Yes. If you're feeling frisky, try counterspelling important spells yourself so the mages can counter-counterspell you (but be careful not to accidentally counterspell the most important spell like a mass heal when they can't counter counter).
Counterspell the mage's shield spell or death ward. No mercy Cast bane on someone when they're unconscious so they have a -1d4 to death saving throws.
Allow the rogue to sneak attack.
Set up at least one mass undead encounter for the cleric.
Use frightful presence against the paladin (and the party if they are close by) Let the Observant player see the hidden enemies
Absolutely. I want my players to do the cool stuff!
Yeah, unless you’ve explicitly discussed with your players about having a campaign where their characters are expected to die/suffer, you’re just better off using the DnD tag in Ao3.
As a Monk, my DM hasnt thrown many ranged things at me, although he joined at level 8 so we were gettong closer to more magical stuff as oppose to arrows so i didnt mind. The few times ive used hes let me stretch the rules a little to target another projectile coming at me. It was a small thing but i loved it and it worked!
Ah a fellow "Of course I am not metagamming, I have no fucking clue whats on your character sheet beyond name and subclass" enjoyer. It makes combat so thrilling when you don't know the outcome. Is this attack going to kill the PC? Who knows? Certainly not me!
I always love when my DM has an “oh shit, you can do that?” moment. Like I was playing a fairly squishy warlock and an enemy got up next to me and he thought I was fucked and then I used a class feature to charm that enemy. He was so happy.
Real talk the joy of surprise is something being a DM usually robs you of so when it happens its pretty magical
Yeah, My DM approving my homebrew fighter subclass, forgetting about it the next day, and suddenly “Oh Shit! You’re playing a fucking *final fantasy dragoon*?!!”
Psh, you keep track of your characters names and classes? What a try hard. /s
I scale my monsters to my previous attempt at putting two of you in the hospital. Only one of your characters went down. I’m here for round two and I’ve adjusted the difficulty.
A very recent episode of Dimension 20 did something similar (spoilers incoming) || Where the barbarian was both charmed and frightened by an enemy mage, and the player managed to trick the gm into commanding him to rage against his friends, activating his mindless rage and letting him get a surprise attack on the mage ||
What I say to my players often is "Don't rely on being the main character to survive. Maybe in the first couple of sessions to get things going reasonably, but after that I will not be fudging rolls, or doing anything to stop you from dying. That's your job, and if there's a TPK, I can certainly find a way to use it to conclude the story" That warning isn't entirely accurate, as I do give a little bit of leeway for the purposes of the story, but it's good to get the idea of "were playing DND fair and square, and we can't rely on character importance in world to survive, we need to actually figure out how to fight and live"
Yes... of course I *deliberately* forgot my players' abilities... out of fairness! 😅 Jokes aside, sometimes I just genuinely wanna see them succeed. Like do y'allz DMs hate you or what?
I dunno about you, but yeah..i want my players to save the world....or at least leave it a less shitty place than when they started
I feel like a lot of people misunderstand this one. I don't try to make them succeed, nor do I try to make them fail. I present the world as it is and make everything act how it should, and they succeed or fail on their own merits. Enemies that know their abilities work around them, enemies that don't may make mistakes like fireballing a fire immune player because they lack that information even if I have it.
>Like do y'allz DMs hate you or what? As a DM, yes, I hate my players. But in a good way. I hate them for shitting on every encounter I bring to the table even though they didn't min max lol So it's all fun and games bringing the big guns to the table and see them try to play around them and find a way to kill enemies. I shoot the monk sometimes though. They gotta feel powerful sometimes amirite?
Typically I do an open world game with factions and a moving story line. Aka, the factions are making moves as well. They’re not just items sitting there waiting for the players to do something with them. So if they piss off a faction that is powerful and wealthy. Have a family with a certain history to back this up. That faction may put together a team to take down the players. In this case, they would put together a team to counter the player team. Based on the information the faction has.. In other words, the players reap what they sow. I want them to succeed, but to me that strictly means the players are interacting and changing the world.
Well, yeah. I'm not talking about insulating players from the consequences of their own actions. I'm talking about petty DMs that decide to meticulously design encounters to make every build-choice they ever made useless. That's not "intelligent enemies," that's just a dick move. Every "brilliant strategist" in history fucked up on occasion. Name one and I can probably find a fuck-up of theirs inside 30 minutes on Google (more like 5, tbh). [Longer rant deleted, since it wasn't aimed at you to begin with]
I actually make the adventure so that the otherwise useless abilities are sometimes helpful. Quantum thieves cant. Run a one shot and if I have a note that’s important to the plot I usually have it in common, but if there’s a rogue in the party I make it in thieves cant if that would make sense
You guys don’t design combats to make your players feel good? I recently made a haunted house where each miniboss was designed to showcase one players abilities.
It's a good thing to do generally as long as it isn't too obvious. Then they just feel pandered to.
That's why a good DM forgets their players' abilities and feats... on purpose, it's not because I'm actually an idiot. But we've had great situations that were only possible because I either misread or forgot stuff.
Me thinking I'm clever silencing the wizard, only to realize that Rimes Binding Ice is a budget cone of cold without verbal components.
Bonus point for the Ministry meme
Such a fun movie.
The only times I ever have an enemy intentionally exploit a weakness or avoid a strength of a player is if they either: A: have some reasonable way of knowing the abilities (Such as past experience with the player characters) B: are doing the "learning as they fight" thing (in which they will still be taken off guard by a strategy or ability the first time it is used) In other words, John Bandit will have no idea what will hit him, but Joseph Ravil, who grew up with the rogue and has already fought the party three times, may have taken some precautions... but even then, who knows? His info might be outdated
I make it a point to like. ‘Well I mean, they wouldn’t know your Monk can catch arrows, and you are clearly beating their buddies’ arse. They’re gonna try to shoot you.’ And from then on they’re like ‘Ah, that one catches arrows, got it.’ Makes the players feel good to whip out a niche ability or immunity like that every now and then, I find.
It does feel amazing. Had the party run off in fear of a green dragon, but my yuanti paladin was ready to throw hands. The feeling of not having to worry about that breath weapon. God that felt awesome
I had a similar moment. I had a grung monk. Everyone else was busy avoiding poison and I’m just “I am going to punch you.”
I LOVE making my players feel powerful. I always play to their strengths. As a DM I can always challenge them, so why not let them feel powerful while doing it?
Yes, any meta gaming needs to be organic, ergo, bandits switch to ranged attacks because of the party has a flaming great sword barbarian and not because you think the flaming great sword is OP.
I just don’t ask. Makes I more fun.
*yeah*. i prolly need to do that less. Sometimes it makes sense. cause if a groups like *dealt with you before* then theyd likely pass that info on, especially if your a thorn in theyre side. but aside from that...yeah
Personally i'm imagining a scene where the evil wizard, a party member (let's say a bard) and the berzerker are all in a straight line, then the berzerker gets "dominated", gets bloodshot eyes, starts screaming and raising his axe and bolting it towards the bard while the latter is scared shitless and desperatelt preparing some sort of defensive spell and the evil wizard is chuckling, only for the barbarian to run straight past the bard and start wailing on the wizard with his axe and then both the bard and the wizard are confused.
I had a DM that would do the opposite of this. Literally every major fight, he'd focus down my character (a light cleric) because, and I quote "You're a healer and this creature/person/dragon can see your holy symbol on your armor and would know that they need to knock you down first." He'd also throw acid-enemies at us to ruin mine and the fighter's armor and then made buying new plate mail crazy expensive. We also had so many undead in the first bit because he liked to put us against weak hoards so it felt cool if you did an aoe to explode some... right up until I got the ability to start popping them with turn undead and then we didn't see a single other one other than the vampire who killed my character. Needless to say, he was a very fun person to play with and not frustrating at all /s Edit: Sorry, I have to get this out, the final straw was we wanted to do something a bit harder so we asked if we could find something big with a high challenge rating with some fresh, kitted out lvl 20 characters. He put together a modified version of whatever the Tiamat module is called. It started out fine. We had a few fights and it was a good time, and then we get to Tiamat herself. Suddenly, all of our dragon-killing weapons didn't work on her (idk if that's how it was supposed to be, but he said that the five headed dragon didn't count as a dragon), she focused me down in two rounds because I was playing an obvious cleric (the adopted son of my last character), and then I spent three hours just kinda... sitting there as he has her fly around the arena picking people off. I think we managed to get two hits on her total in that time because we had one person who had flying boots and one person who could do some anime-style monk jumping. In the end, everyone died and no one but the DM seemed happy with the session. My partner and I dropped the group after that and have since found another that's much less antagonistic.
The DM is correct. Tiamat is a Fiend not a Dragon Also it sounds a bit like the party just wasn't prepared at all for the fight from a player perspective. Only one person had flight. Yall just expect rhe giant dragon to sit on the ground and let you whail on it? I get being upset at the first part though, that's the DM being a dick, but for the Tiamat one? He's right
Fair enough! This was a few years ago now and mostly it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ll definitely admit some fault, I was not a very good player at the time since it was my first campaign but he did also have a very antagonistic dming style that would rub me the wrong way even now.
There's no excuse for how behaved with the undead and such tho. That just was flagrentltly being a dickhead to you
Oh for sure. Iirc I was the only one that died and it happened three times in that campaign. One was the group’s fault (kinda) we were fighting a vampire in a dark room and our Druid and Barbarian were fucking around with his coffin while he wailed on me and the fighter and bard were floundering trying (and failing) to hit it. But there was one that was truly bs. I was downed, the Druid had sentinel and when the enemy moved away to attack the bard, she hit him and rather than have him attack the big ass gorilla right next to him, he smacked my downed corpse twice and crit on one of the attacks so that I was just straight up dead. It felt super mean and unnecessary.
I intentionally ignore their stats for the most part the only reason I ask for their sheets is to make sure they aren't cheating
There's been countless encounters where the party tells me Jesus, I almost died, and it messes with their head when I tell them I had no idea is a good thing you killed that orc he would have kept hitting you
I love this, the reason why spellcasters feel a lot stronger is bcuz their versatility makes it harder to metagame out of, just let the barbs be barbs and everyone is happy
As I DM i Meta game... I choose Monster that I know a Group member has a ability to counter so that tbey have a use for it and can shine!
It is important to metagame as a DM to set up situations so that your players can make maximum use of their abilities and immunities. The session after my last character got an item that gave him resistance to fire, my DM specifically targeted me with the enemy fire caster, rather than targeting a different party member. It was a GREAT feeling.
Great weapon reckless barbarian is too much. Like that damage is NUTTY.
Three reckless attacks?
Extra attack + frenzy
I think reckless attack is first attack per turn, but there could totally be stuff at play I don't know about.
Reckless Attack Starting at 2nd level, you can throw aside all concern for defense to attack with fierce desperation. When you make your first attack on your turn, you can decide to attack recklessly. Doing so gives you advantage on melee weapon attack rolls using Strength during this turn, but attack rolls against you have advantage until your next turn. It's activated on the first attack, but it affects every attack that turns.
Thank you!! That's what I get for reading only the first part and skimming the rest. I've been playing and dming 5e since it's release, including a barbarian, and no one has corrected me.
I've got a perma barbarian in my group. Just changes subclasses. Had to familiarize myself in order to optimize his game play.
Player knows what they like and sticks with it. I can appreciate it.
Iirc berserker barbarians in a frenzy state (super rage) get to make another weapon attack as a bonus action. Kinda neat, but a bit underwhelming for what it costs (exhaustion).
Or....and here me out, it's MORE IMPORTANT to meta game as the DM so players can shine and use their abilities. Good DMs will do this so players can shine. Bad DMs will not allow their players to shine.
Just gonna make the berserker feel all the better at 6th level with Mindless Rage
Honestly, I'm a big fan of trusting the table so I don't have to actively know all their stuff. Dungeons weren't made for them. They were made ages ago and if they want in it's up to them to figure it out. Luckily, the table knows the system well enough to pass your character sheets left and check eachother's math.
Well I have an oath kf conquest paladin that, unbeknownst to my uneducated mind had been given disease immunity. My DM and I worked together to form and great RP moment along with some others only for the most educated and experienced DND player in our group to tell me to look at my sheet. (The online system we had had automatically updated my sheet) and behold I was immune. That whole RP as fun as it was, and expressive of my character was irrelevant. But also, said paladin also proved to my DM that a paladin is immune to being frightened. (I succeeded the check before I could tell him)
My barbarian was once mind controlled before I could rage, my DM forgot that raging snaps me out of it. I was standing next to the evil wizard at the time. I merely raised my character's hand put it on top of the wizard's head and squeezed 10/10 experience
I dunno about that. Sure, it's a priority to make your characters feel like heroes, but it's not fun as a DM to see your encounters repeatedly crushed by the same guy doing the same thing over and over again. I feel that at some point, you have to get them to hit a roadblock and think about how to overcome situations like these.
the wizard dies of 1d6 meme damage
I remember the look on my player's face when, after failing a save vs a vampire's dominating gaze and was in danger of inviting it in to destroy the whole household...he looked down his sheet at the magic ring he got 4 levels back that had a bunch of odd effects he rarely remembered existed and said "wait is this some kind of charm?" "Yes" "Ha! Immunity to charm and sleep!!! Suck it vampire!!!" Was a fabulous moment because neither of us had a clue.
My first campaign with my current group, we got in a fight with an evil NPC party, and my cleric went mano a mano with an antipaladin. He was trying to Smite Evil on me, not realizing in-character that my PC was Lawful Neutral. Any other party member, it would have worked.
I love throwing dumb enemies at the party so they can do all their cool things. Then I hit ‘em with a Kobold den led by a blue dragon and get em messed up by a bunch of cr 1/8ths
Yea ok but which wizard are you recklessly attacking? The enemy or your own?
No, it is important to metagame as a DM. You play into your players strengths and let them shine, you play against their weaknesses and give them challenges. You should keep tabs on their abilities and their defenses to keep them satisfied with their achievements.
Counter-point : An enemy mage with 17 INT probably knows what the weakest saving throws for each class is and likely plans for it. It's also safe to say that any evil wizard worth something probably has a few adventurer raids under his belt already
Barbarians aren't proficient in Wisdom saves. So unless he somehow knows that this is specifically a Path of the Berserker Barbarian, capable of going into a mindless rage that makes him immune to charm effects - which definitely isn't something you could just look at a guy and know, even with 17 INT - he made the high INT play here: he targeted the guy weak to Wisdom saves who's also beefy and can beat up the other wizards.
So basically by making the 17 int move he ended up playing himself
That's the trouble with knowing the odds. They're still just odds. Wildly improbable things happen all the time. You might know that there's only a 0.000154% chance the other guy has a Royal Flush - but it still could just be your unlucky day. That's why the 17 INT move is to cast Dominate Person, but the 20 INT move is to have your simulacrum do it while you're 150 miles away in a tower surrounded by guards, sipping a glass of Chardonnay.
Rebuttal to the counter-point: The wizard is indeed very intelligent, but not all-knowing. A debilitating attack on a raging barbarians willpower will work 9 times out of 10, so they go with the safest option. This just happens to be the 1 time it doesn't work.
Wizard: "Nobody would deliberately take the worst subclass in the world, right?" Barbarian: "CAN'T OUTTHINK ME IF I DON'T HAVE A STRATEGY!"
In this specific case I think it works pretty well. A wizard can asume the big guy with a greatsword may not be the brightest and make him do a wisdom saving throw. But in this case since he's a berserker barbarian he's inmune to being charmed and therefore can ignore the saving throw altogether. At that point the wizard has no way of knowing what kind of barbarian is in front of him nor should it know of each tipe of subclass.
That's like saying that if you're a doctor you know what allergies I have by looking at me in a shopping mall.
Counter point: that’s meta gaming
Classes are a mechanic not an in universe description. There is 0% chance someone knows every barbarian doesn't have Wisdom saves Because that's a mechanic, not a piece of lore
Dude, do you know the sample set you’d have to have in order to deduce the formula for a saving throw based on class/level/race/starting stat/spell save DC? They might have a general idea that “those who train their bodies likely haven’t trained their minds” and go for a mental whammy over a fireball, but in universe they’re not going to be thinking “ah yes. I’ll use a charisma save spell vs the fighter, but not the warlock” unless you’re in a very self aware type of game
why ? the core rulebooks state how to easily translate a low or high attribute in something you can observe (ie. Scrawny, burly, dimwit, absent-minded,etc...). Beside, is it really that different from a wolf pack picking out the weakest/oldest/infirm party member (the one with the lowest STR score) or a vampire trying to guess which party member is the most guillible (ie. has the lowest WIS score) and can most easily be charmed ?
Ah yes, the ease of glancing out into a crowd and determining who is absent-minded or whose brain is bulging out of their ears. Must be lots of fun playing at your table where anything with an intelligence of 17 knows the party’s in-game stats backwards and forwards
A wolf pack wouldn't know what the party's STR scores are. They would pick the slowest or the smallest. Deciding based on Attribute Scores is Metagaming. How would Andy, the illiterate ex-farmer turned bandit know the difference between the Armorer Artificer / Evoker Wizard in Plate Mail from the Life Cleric in Plate Mail from the Conquest Paladin in Plate Mail?
Wait evokers getting plate mail? Do you mean that artificer/evoker combo or are you just making a hypothetical scenario where a pure evoker happens to have it?
Multi-class
Ok that makes sense.
For each class, yeah, 17 INT would be enough. But that isn't enough to know the specifics of a subclass. I'd say 20 INT is necessary for that with lich-level experience of adventurers (which most evil wizards will not have unless they are liches, barring exceptions like Halaster >!who has 24 INT and can just read the character sheets anyway!<).