d&d is great I just tried to slam a guy with a two-handed maul and missed, swinging into the floor I roll for damage against the floor bc of course I do. I roll high. The tiles are crushed to bits As a free action, I grab a handful of floor gravel and shovel it into my mouth and straight up eat it in an intimidation attempt My combat opponent is horrified. I get +2 to hit him next turn
I fought an opponent who had an eye patch. I used Mage Hand to pick up his eye patch and move it to his other eye.
my favorite thing about dnd is that it literally doesnt let you do either of these. good dms do
This is one of the things that I deeply hate about specifically Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition. So, so much of what people describe loving about the game isn’t…the game. It’s the work of good storytellers and DMs. Often going directly against the rules of the game because they can. Which, yes, is how TTRPGs are supposed to work. But the context of that changes considerably with how shitty and regressive of a company WotC is, and they get shielded from judgement because of good DMs having created good experiences where WotC then rakes all the credit because they were “Playing” “D&D 5e”. The queerphobia, the rainbow capitalism (pretty sure that Matt Mercer’s content aside there’s more items of rainbow merch available than there are important queer characters in WotC published content), the racism, the protection of the person who brought on a known serial sexual abuser and transphobe to help design the game, Mike Mearls, who then served as the face of the company for years, who more recently they pretended to fire for PR reasons but still employ full time, all of it. The fact that they decided Fireball and Lightning Bolt were the “right” spells because they were “iconic” and made them intentionally overpowered. The design of Martial characters only having 4 skills using their key ability scores, most of which are completely eclipsed by use of a single spell, creating two distinct tiers of characters being able to interact with the world with a sense of agency. That is Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition. Eating the floor you just shattered for Intimidation? Mage Handing an eyepatch to blind a foe? Skating down a mountain on a Floating Disc like Link on shields in BOTW? The Combat Wheelchair homebrew whose author has said that WotC pointedly ignore her and her work? Running tweaked versions of UA content that never made it to print? That is the work of hard working DMs and homebrewers who work their asses off to provide a good experience that then gets relayed as “Oh we were playing 5e”. That is why this is one of the many, many things to hate about D&D 5e.
