87
Your player is correct
Making a special mechanical representation of this is very likely to cause problems, and you should not do so. A trait like this simply shouldn’t be in the dice’s hands—it is important to bring it up with care and judgment, in situations where it adds to the game. Otherwise, this sort of thing has a tendency to just derail games and ...
59
What happens when a king doesn't get what he wants?
This is not a trick question. What you should do next depends on what your prep about this front says about King Cyndemund and why he wanted the books in the first place.
Because he wanted the books, right? This wasn't just some misadventure with no intentionality on anyone's part? If it was one of those, ...
53
Ask "How do you do that?"
Players do things by describing their actions. "I want to investigate the room for odd books" is not an action, it's a desirable goal. An action would be:
"I browse through every book on these shelves, until I find something like a spellbook"
"I start tapping the walls, trying to find a hiding ...
46
You say your player is a good role player, so trust them to be a good role player.
You’ve said they are a good role player. So trust them to handle this trait appropriately through good role playing. They have expressed discontent with ruling that there are mechanical disadvantages to this trait, so implementing these mechanical disadvantages discourages fun ...
38
At present, it sounds like everyone (including your 'non-RP' player) is having fun. So, as of now, there isn't a problem here. But, you've said in the comments that you mostly want to know if this may become a problem, and how to handle it early...
Maintain Communication
Just keep checking in, make sure he's having fun. I have DM'd for players like this in ...
26
For switching your player's character's race, it's best to cooperate.
At my table, I have a rule: if you're ever unhappy with your character's race or class, I will fix it for you. If you want, you can retire your character and bring in a new character with the same xp and gp. If you'd like to keep the same character but just change their race or class, we ...
20
Tables are full of different people
And that's okay! You've noticed that some players like certain aspects of a game and others like different aspects. As long as everyone is getting along, enjoying the game, and the whole table (including you) is having fun, then everything is going well.
I've been at tables both as DM and player where we've all had ...
19
It's good that you're helping someone who is sight impaired, and here are some tips from my experience with helping blind players at my table.
Have someone there to assist them if needed. They will say something like: "I want to attack the demon king with a fireball." And you'll need someone to translate that into letters and numbers for your ...
18
Let The Player Play Their Character
...Because that's how D&D works.
There are some games where character building works explicitly on a "points buy" system for everything. These systems often include disadvantageous things that can be "bought" for negative points, thus allowing more points to be spent in an area of particular ...
16
No
To put it simply, there are no individual spells (short of Wish) that can do what you want. Either you resurrect someone with free will, or you change their stat block.
Alternatives...
You are the DM, and you have a great deal of latitude here. As you said, you could just make up some plot device magic spell...but there are some closer-to-RAW solutions ...
14
Give them Inspiration for Role-playing their traits
Others have great answers, but fifth edition has a mechanic for rewarding good RP and it's probably the most forgotten mechanic in the game, as well as being basically the exact opposite of the feat you created. That said, if the PLAYER wanted, I'd totally allow them to CHOOSE to roll with disadvantage on ...
13
I agree with @guildsbounty that it sounds like everyone is having fun. Party members participate differently - not everyone plays DnD for the role playing and that's okay. For example, in our group of five players, we have two members who love the role playing part, two of us participate in the role playing but enjoy the combat more, and the fifth person is ...
13
"That Sounds Interesting-- How Is Your Character Going To Do That?"
Having a player who knows what he wants his characters' story to be is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, at least you know what your player wants, and when you need to throw him a bone over some other disappointment or circumstance, you know what will be effective. On the ...
12
Conduct a new session 0
Session 0 is essentially a term for a discussion with the group about the expectations of the group as a whole for the game, how it will run, and what everyone wants out of it.
It sounds like your game has now been running for so long, and even changed systems, that people's expectations may have drifted apart. It may therefore be a ...
11
What is to say the knowledge is destroyed just because the books are?
In hindsight this may be what one of my previous DMs did. In a similar scenario (except we knew the books were headed for someone powerful), we destroyed the books but as we did a strange mist rose up. Didn't think much of it until we all started having strange snippets of dreams. Turns ...
9
Turn it into a story.
You seem to be viewing narrative, storytelling, like it's procedural - you develop a story only by talking and organically having it happen. However you can do it the other way, setting a story goal and then defining the path that is taken to these goals. If your player wants the goal of their character dying, rising from the dead as ...
8
I find in this situation it helps to consider the basic costs that a player might face in this situation. The king has lost the macguffin they need, and so if they want to achieve the ritual goal, they need to pay a much higher cost.
Consider the other issue. One of the stakes the players feel is important is money and loot.
Your stakes questions are 1-3 ...
7
tl;dr: I mostly use this sort of declaration to guide narration. Not all information is equally hide-able, and direct, mechanical benefits for generic, player-dictated rolls can be problematic.
Different information has differing flexibility for being hidden behind dice rolls
What I do varies a bit by situation, specifically what the player is looking for ...
7
Large parties can be diffcult to run for any DM. You have a couple options to deal with this.
Force split the party
Pitfall traps, haunted houses with secret rotating doors, dopplegangers inflitrating the party, Magic maze, etc. By dividing the group, they can handle a lot less at once. This allows you to use creatures such as goblins, zombies and other ...
5
When your players just stopped the plot by accident, are they aware of it?
When they aren't, that's no problem, because you can just change the plot.
Remember that any information you didn't give to the players could just as well not exist at all. Nothing you have in your notes is set in stone until your players know about it. Any untold plot-points can be ...
4
You can probably come close
This does depend heavily on your setting, specifically the details of "what exactly happens to your soul when it dies?" I don't know the answer to that question for any official setting, but if you're the DM then you get to choose for your setting. As long as the answer is something like "Your soul travels to a ...
4
It depends on the situation
In general, I prefer that the players are specific about what they're doing, but I'll help them by using their specific words as a guideline, not a hard limitation. I typically allow a check to find things that weren't explicitly searched for, as long as it makes sense that the act of searching for X could reasonably uncover Y.
...
4
What does the general public already know?
Think about some real-world organization and what we, as public people, know about them. This can help by establishing how secretive the organization might be.
Ask yourself some questions of your org. Do they do work in the open? Have they been linked to incidents or crimes? Do they call themselves the same thing ...
3
description and intention
You generally want to things from your players, description and intention. What they are doing and why they are doing it.
I had a player describing in detail how he searched a floor in dungeon. I though they were searching for traps so told them you find nothing out of place. They were really searching for footprints, which I had ...
3
There are no available options to do this
Which is frustrating for you regarding your preference to keep your monster/NPC making follow PC rules. (Un)fortunately, as DM, you are free to make your NPCs however you like. Yes, it means they can do things that players can't, but the RAW Monsters have abilities that players don't get, either.
It's okay to dip ...
2
Yes, with some help
You need two spellcasters, 7th level Warlock or Wizard with Metamagic Adept feat (Extended Spell) and a 9+ level Bard, Cleric, Druid or Wizard. If you want a foolproof plan, one of spellcasters must be a Divination wizard who rolled a Portent die sufficiently low (10 or less will do).
Pick the following spells: Magic Circle and Summon ...
1
Don't give wrong answers, give inconclusive answers
If you roll low on an Insight check and get told that they seem honest, as in your answer, the player obviously knows out of character that they've been given the wrong answer, and can assume that the opposite is actually true.
However, if instead you said "You don't know. She's hard to read." ...
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