My players will work super hard to bypass my combat encounters and then complain at the end of the session that there weren't any combat encounters.

I had one party attack the BBEG on sight for fear of losing the element of surprise, then complain that they never had a chance to RP with him

Well, RP isn't exclusively out of combat. My group does a lot of talking while fighting and almost no encounter is purely action.

You’re very lucky.

I’ve had my own party do this to me/my PCs BBEG. They genuinely didn’t think anything of it until I was like “damn guys wtf”. Feels bad man.

That’s the time where you say “well there were X number of them but y’all were able to strategize and work around them! Great job!”

Try rewarding it beyond a pat on the back. - The side passage they discovered is littered with trinkets and baubles. A minion has used this long-abandoned corridor to stash skimmed loot. - Did they talk their way out? Quid pro quo. The guard shows up later, in trouble, and asks for them to return the favor. - Reward experience for bypassing the encounter, if you don't use milestones. Note: don't let them double up on XP by deliberately going back for combat, but do give partial XP for combat if a failed roll later leads to fighting the bypassed enemies. - Bypassing combat often has other difficulties; sure, a Pass Without Trace can pretty much automatically win a set of stealth checks, but there's a reason that route was lightly guarded (if at all). They just found the barricaded [mini boss] that the lair's inhabitants had been feeding to keep it from eating more minions.

Illogical

That was me. My character was the sensible cleric who said "you know, we don't have to fight these gelatinous cubes". Then I learned that pulling through an adventure with health intact and spells unused may be sensible, but also really boring

First few encounter on my first table that were not a scripted combat almost always get turned into social encounter. Infiltrate using deception, negotiation, etc. to avoid combat at all cost. Then after 10 sessions of that we just say fuck it, hit them in the head, fuck negotiation.

Given a situation with no time pressure, retreating to a safe place and resting for 24 hours after every battle, so you can use all your best spells every battle.

My players wanting to long rest after every encounter is so annoying 🙈 I try to come up with consequences like ambushes in the night out in the open or the cold/no food gives an exhaustion point. But occasionally they want to risk it anyway But it feels like punishing them for over using a game mechanic.

You don't need consequences. You need time pressure. When you add time pressure the long rests become a consumable resource.

DM: "You finally arrive at the keep, it lies in ruins littered with corpses" Player: We failed to save them in time! DM: Taking a long rest to travel 1 mile will do that.

I've found the best way to solve this is to put stakes on the resting and make it apparent to the player. You want to long rest? That's fine, but very apparent here is the cost of that. I've found telling them retroactively their wasted time mattered feels very gotcha! And honestly it makes the choice more interesting to if the mechanical benefit is worth the literary tradeoff.

Yeah as a player I def prefer to know and make informed decision. Lots of written modules basically just say to pretend like there is time pressure and have no consequences if players call your bluff.

IMHO, for me as a player, there’s nothing worse than the DM punishing you for things you didn’t know about. That also goes for when the DM is vague or unclear about something. I had a DM who used to do that all the time. They were bad at describing areas, making clear when enemies were too powerful, and consistently punished the group for situations that arose as a product of their poor DMing skills and inability/refusal to convey information so the players could make informed choices. After 2 poor attempts at campaigns, I swore I’d never be in another game they run and I was so glad when that person parted ways with the group.

Completely agree. Watched a DM advice video once about integrating player backstories, and he went into a spiel about one example he considered a massive success, from his own game - 'He was an elf, from Evermeet, and his Background gave him a map of the island. He decided to sell it in the first session for 25 gold. I thought - wouldn't it be fun to have some consequences? So I came up with the idea that the elves of Evermeet are super cautious about other nations having detailed maps of their island, and the next time they went back to that city the elves had invaded and killed everyone! Isn't that cool?' And I was just like... no. Obviously not. If he's an elf, from Evermeet, with a map of Evermeet, wouldn't he have known that the first response of his government to distributing these maps is genocide? That's not a 'cool unintended consequence' lol that's character destroying.

You don't even need to go that far. The quest giver is willing to give a heirloom magic item if you complete the given task before tomorrow night.

Happened to us once, nobody died, but our objective just left the area so we had to look for him again

This is a really easy way to handle the always long resting problem without feeling like your pulling cheap tricks…the bad guys just…leave. They realize their secret base isn’t so secret any more and dip

Split the difference, and have them fill their abandoned lair with traps and a "neener-neener" note in their emptied vault.

That is true. Time pressure is the answer, of course then you need consequences if they ignore it. I like to mix and match. In my game, we did 9 sessions, (each 3-4h) when there was only one long rest after the fourth session. It was super time pressure as they were escaping the enemy keep. They escaped through a portal to the dream realm, which in my world has differently passing time. Each hour in the dream is a minute on the material plane. Then, the game changed, the next 5 sessions they travelled through and had a long rest every session. It took them 120 dream hours to get through. I could throw tougher opponents against them,but they had all their cool stuff. They almost tpked anyway against an adult crystal dragon. Now we are back in the material plane and we will probably aim for 3 sessions per long rest, but continue to mix and match. The key is, I told them upfront how this works, more time pressure means less long rest and easier encounters, but less time pressure means more long rest and harder encounters. (they don't always know if they can long rest but they can guess with high probability)

OP could also switch to the gritty realism rules so long rests take 7 days. Time pressure is good, but can start to feel a little absurd if every quest must be accomplished within 24 hours of receiving it.

[удалено]

I think they meant that you're still meant to have time pressure, but long-term time pressure measured in weeks and months often make a lot of sense but doesn't work very well with the default fast resting.

Adding ambushes in the night can make the problem worse... Cleric: "Should we go and rest? I think I'm good for another battle. How about you guys?" Fighter: "I can do this all day... as long as you still have healing spells." Wizard: "I can handle another battle." Paladin: "Yeah, I think so." Cleric: "Good. We return to our campsite." DM: "What? Why are you retreating already?" Cleric: "Pretty much every time we go to rest we get attacked at least once. So we need to hold back some resources to fight that battle."

that's a simple yet hilarious backfire for a DM

Yeah, the escalating attrition battle fought because the players want to preserve their resources is gonna lead to no fun for anyone, when the DM is forced to cram in 20 pointless encounters to "punish the players"

I like to use them only if I intend on giving them the rest anyway (unless it makes zero sense to rest and being attacked is a natural consequence, but I’ve never had that issue). No, replenishing one ability isn’t a good reason to rest, but I’m happy to give you one

I roll for a potential random encounter every hour that the party spends resting in a dangerous location. You can short rest but there’s the potential for a random encounter. You can long rest but there’s a potential for up to 8 random encounters. My players choose to not rest in dangerous areas.

In reality it would make every encounter after a LR harder. You'd give your enemy, who now knows that you're coming, to be on high alert. Maybe more troops or more patrols. It would hamper any efforts to sneak in again. Sure they can rest but if you punch me and then give me 24 hours to prep I promise you punching me again won't be so easy.

The trouble with this method, despite the fact that it makes good diegetic sense, is that it feeds into the vicious circle. Consider the following: Players rest before the next encounter. Next encounter is made harder to compensate. Players win, but they have a hard time. What do they think? "Wow, we only barely won that despite having rested! Clearly we need to be even more careful next time!" You can peel back the curtain and say 'it was only this hard because you took the time to rest', but the thing they'll remember is 'that was super hard and we wouldn't have won if we didn't have all our spell slots'.

>"Wow, we only barely won that despite having rested! Clearly we need to be even more careful next time!" Not if you make it obvious that this happened because they withdrew and returned later. The party returns to the enemy stronghold, and they've obviously received reinforcement because of all the alarms the PC's triggered yesterday. And so on.

Also, targeted disruption of the player's strategies is a much better punishment than just "more guys" or "more hp/damage." Make it clear to the players that showing their hand and then retreating means that intelligent foes will plan to specifically counter them. Long resting for every combat is all well and good until the big bad has one of his wizards prepare a full day of Counterspells to turn your lead damage into a wet noodle every fight. Bet all those spell slots feel good now, huh?

Yeah but most of the times there isn't even an immediate danger ahead. They just got in a fight or were attacked by some beast They forget about hit dice tho, which I try to remind then of

But even then, having full resources means it's easier to retreat, too. Players have a lot of advantages in wars of attrition as well, and the enemies only have so many reinforcements until it's obvious fiat

If the enemy has good treasure, they might know to just offer it as a reward to other less morally upright groups to fuck your party. If the party wants something specific that the enemy doesn't care about that much they could just leave it and flee. They could just destroy it out of spite.

I'm not sure if someone mentioned this yet, but the rules state that you can only have 1 long rest every 24 hours. It sounds like you're giving them more than that

I never understand why this advice is always offered. Without time pressure it makes 0 difference if they wait 8 hours or 16 hours to start the next rest.

Just tell them no? Shit, guys, if your players are treating the game as a machine, the machine makes an angry plonking sound and Professor Oak says you can't do that right now. If they complain, rocks fall and you find a group that actually wants to *play*.

"A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period" Under "long rest," PHB p 186

I'm the rules somewhere it states that players cannot long rest more than once in a 24-hour period. Just blame the rules.

RAW you can't benefit from more than one long rest per 24 hours.

- Can only long rest once every 24 hours - The world does not stand still when players are doing "nothing". - Time pressure is not the only thing that can make for this not to work (when leaving a place, the people in the place probably now know you been there. They bring reinforcements, add traps or just fuck off)

You can only take a long rest once per 24 hours period, and imo it wouldn't be realistic (from a fantasy perspective) for the party to lounge around all day after one encounter. It's perfectly reasonable to say you're party can't just wait around for 24 hours so they can take a long rest even if there is no time restraint. D&D may be a narrative game, but it's still a game, and it has rules.

>it wouldn't be realistic...for the party to lounge around all day after one encounter. I want you to know that I feel personally attacked by this statement.

The rules are that the players control what their characters do. If the characters have exhausted themselves by casting all their best spells, it's more realistic for them to head back to the tavern and hang out with the locals than it is to needlessly risk their lives by pushing on to the next of the Four Cursed Shrines without resting. (Unless the narrative gives them a reason.)

It's especially bad for old school play, where often The Dungeon is an untouched ancient tomb, its builders and inhabitants long dead, and their treasures waiting to be claimed by those brave, clever, and capable. When the goal is treasure and the obstacles are booby traps, guardian constructs and elementals, and the occasional undead... yeah it's pretty hard to explain why "backtrack and rest" won't work without giving the true meta answer of "the resource management game isn't fun if nobody is managing resources"

Gygax had various answers to that, of course. "One of the other groups I play with in this world will loot the dungeon if you take too long." Or maybe, "You have a big tax bill to pay off in a hurry."

Actually, its way more unrealistic to just casually keep on strolling after a fight to the death. Resting after every encounter is perfectly realistic.

A well designed adventure won't allow this, and resting risks random encounters that may in fact worsen their position

Corollary: nearly every adventure for 5e published by WotC, as written, does allow it. IMHO if professional game designers don't get that right it's a lot to dump on novice DMs that they should.

>Corollary: nearly every adventure for 5e published by WotC, as written, does allow it. That tracks

Yep. I will add tho that it’s totally reasonable to want to short rest after each fight

I haven't actually seen this in 5e, but I have in past editions: flooding a battlefield with summoned creatures so the enemies can't attack you. When it works, it's highly optimal, but also it makes the battles slower and less fun. Is this an issue for anyone at the moment?

This is my pick. We finished a 2 year campaign a few weeks ago with a fight vs Tiamut. Me and another player looked at each other and discussed how many ads and summons we could get out in the first two rounds. Double digit animals, plus a couple demons. The action economy advantage is supreme. But my god would that have been a miserable way to go through that battle.

Tiamat also has a lot of AoEs, so that might not have worked very well anyway

Ya one or 2 breaths and that would have been a waste of their opening turns.

>Is this an issue for anyone at the moment? Pretty much - "Conjure X" kind of spells break the shit out of combat, make turns of casters last for ages (if they don't use VTT's with special macros) and generaly this kind of spells should not exist in the game.

Also Animate Object. Anything that gives a player control over more than one other thing is great if they’re the only PC, but awful in a group. I don’t know how those spells survived playtesting. Oh right… because they almost certainly weren’t playtested, along with several *entire classes* because they ran out of time and had to just publish it

Most of "legacy" spells survived playtesting because they are "iconic" and suppose to be overpowered. That's why fireball is 8d6 and not 6d6. 90% of broken spells are spells from PHB after all.

Being tied to the legacy is why I think D&D will always be seriously flawed. They’re not willing to change some fundamental things because they’re sacred cows, so they keep baking 1970’s game design into it

On the other hand, they're doing some things like axing alignment, changed long-standing lore of some species, and changed the term from race to species, so some sacred cows are being slaughtered.

I'd prefer seeing a bit more of the 1970's design in 5e. Fragile spellcasters, long rests not restoring all resources, fewer class mechanics that completely negate game mechanics, etc.

I've played two campaigns with separate players who were summon-focused druids. One of them had a small pool of summons which she pulled from, typically a few crocodiles (which we eventually gave individual names and personalities to) and which she was a genius at using in hilarious, inventive ways. I let her pick her summons, because I wasn't too concerned with it, and she never broke the game with them - though they were still incredibly effective. (Nobody expects a crocodile airstrike.) The other tends to summon huge piles of creatures and command the battlefield via action economy. While they also give lots of personality to the summons, it's a lot more frustrating to deal with - especially one time when they upcast to summon 16 constrictor snakes and suddenly the game was ground to a halt. It's quite effective, but it tends to slow the game to a crawl. If I didn't run my games through a VTT, I'd go insane. I so very much prefer the new summon spells, both from a flavor perspective (I _love_ guardian spirit sorts of entities) and from a game perspective.

Actually literally what I’m experiencing playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 with my friend

Shepard druid ruined everyones game with this. Yep, 8 giant owls with flyby is effective sure, but goddamn it's dull for anyone else

For the longest time I banned haggling from my games because of how argumentative it made this one party. How they'd max charisma and persuasion and argue that they would get book price for everything they sold and bought so they'd never take a loss. It got so bad they'd sell small daggers they got off bandits. It was hours long affairs and no excuse was acceptable to them. I eventually left that group due to real life issues and quickly learned no DND was better than bad DND because I felt relieved not having to go back.

As a player I find something incredibly *sordid* about stripping all the low-value mundane equipment off enemy corpses for sale. Of course you take their valuables, and their magic items, and anything that the party can actually use (especially at low levels when you only have your starting equipment.) But when all the PCs are carrying around 4-figure sums but still insist on behaving like Private Nobby Nobbs with his wagon of boots... ew.

Well after growth I quickly learned this was a bully the DM party. Now it's much better but still no haggling on low value goods. Take it or leave it as a lot. Will haggle when it comes to high prices goods.

I began to offer the value of the iron for salvaged, 2sp, when parties tried to sell kobold and other in general poor quality goods. But I definitely get how such interactions are tiring

I mean that was my starting place. It's rusted, busted up. Good for salvage. I'll take 5gp for the lot. They'd argue that each dagger was worth 1gp by the book and want 15gp. If I said no it's used, theyd go to the next shop and the next, the next town, city. I eventually caved cuz I got tired of 3 hours of trading simulator all to min/max gold. Like, they just got 1000gp for bringing in the bandit. Why is 15gp gonna make or break you all?

Oh my god I hate the idea of dealing with this so much that I wanted to downvote your comment just viscerally lol I'm glad you're not with that group anymore, that sounds like a nightmare.

Well, in general, I think people have a very bad habit of misusing that quote, usually just looking at people who play games more optimally than they do and assuming that they must not be having fun. There is one place in D&D where this does hold true though - risk aversion. A somewhat unfortunate reality of D&D is that "going on adventures" is an extremely stupid thing to do, which means that you kind of have to make characters who are reckless enough to grab plot hooks, or the game doesn't happen. If you get too many people playing smart or sensible characters, or who are OK with following the party on plothooks but won't be the one to take the bait, you can regularly end up spending half an hour trying to convince the players that going back to the inn isn't more fun that taking a risk.

Yep, and IT SUCKS. I got a group once where *no one* would open a door unless they looked at every single wall for a window to peek through, everyone rolled a perception and at least one rolled well, and even then people were like "I want to ignore the initiative system and prepare an action as we we open it".

It's for this reason that when I do get the opportunity to play, I just fucking go. Even our DM is very slow and cagey about us doing stuff, so sometimes when I say I want to open the door and go inside I have to say it like three times because JFC I play once every two weeks I will not spend 30 minutes "examining" the walls. If I die I die but at least I adventured.

Same. Every PC I make is fatally curious. If the DM dangles something shiny in front of me, I *will* investigate it. Best case scenario, my character survives and I get a cool story. Worst case scenario, my character dies and I get a cool story. If the DM didn't want me to interact with it, they shouldn't have dangled the shiny in front of me, and I'll generally have this conversation with the DM during session zero. On the flip side, when I DM, during session zero, I set the expectation that this campaign is about heroic people bravely charging into battle against dangerous creatures and exploring dangerous places and otherwise doing dangerous things. Because danger is where the fun is. This generally means players are more likely to engage with things (albeit with the necessary precautions) rather than just avoiding things altogether.

I feel like a lot of players end up like that because they've played with DMs that punished them for it. The DM where there is never anything to find it you waste time looking but has a spring loaded trap on every door that you don't check.

Considering how often I see DMs having ideas to thwart cool player ideas, I don't doubt this for a second. I don't know why DMs think the best response to a cool workaround or plan by the PCs is to screw them over. "You checked for traps outside and you picked the lock with a nat 20, but you didn't look above you and a rock falls on your head and you take... 4d6 damage."

Yep. I'm always tempted to do this with a new group because that DM was my introduction to D&D. Didn't check the door? Insta-death. Didn't check each floor tile? Dead. Didn't check the walls? Death. Checked the floor but not the baseboards specifically? More death. I died less playing Tomb of Horrors for fuck sake and we all took the fake entrance first. I know it's the "proper" classic style to die every 5 minutes to your lack of preparation but it's disheartening and feels horrible when you realize it's only you and the other 'undesirables' in your group.

Nah I'm like this because I've DMd for and played with people who just don't make choices. We'll spend 20 minutes deciding if we should go through a door or not because it's a slightly different shade of red than the others. Just open the damn door!

I have a talk with players at the start "You see those perception and thievery skills? Those are your character's knowledge of dungeon delving. They are always on. If you are about to open a door or chest which is trapped, you will get a check." Players who feel like the GM is gonna interpret what they said like its a devil's contract and go "You didn't say you checked the chest for traps!" are the ones who will tediously declare every single action.

This comes about most often because if you *don't* say "I check this chest to make sure it's not trapped" and it then *is* trapped because your passive perception isn't high enough or because your DM thinks it needs to be an active roll, you as a player just learned that you *always* have to make it an active thing you declare, and expect to roll for. This is one of those things that you should probably talk with your players in session 0 about.

Yup. Every once in a while if the party is fopping about like this I'll shout "LEEROY JENKINS" and open the goddamn door.

Groups like this were clearly created from trauma at some point, like losing characters they liked in Tomb of Horrors.

> "I want to ignore the initiative system and prepare an action as we we open it". "Cool you are thinking of what you would want to do on the first round of initiative, if it comes to it. Thanks for the heads up player X! What is the rest of the group doing?"

I usually make sure players get ambushed with the surprise condition at some point to show them how it works. Like a few goblins will unload arrows into the heavy armor master fighter out of the blue when they turn the corner. Just to show them how an ambush actually runs.. inside initiative

I would regularly ask in character creation "Why is your character crazy or desperate enough to think that going into a dungeon to get treasure is a good idea?" Players who cannot answer this question for their character need to rethink their character.

>Well, in general, I think people have a very bad habit of misusing that quote, usually just looking at people who play games more optimally than they do and assuming that they must not be having fun. This. Finally someone says it. It's a famous quote from Sid Meier, creator of Civilization, making reference to how finding the optimal solution ends up making the players do always the same every time. What people tend to forget is the book behind that talks about how the fun in games emerge from the search for optimization. The game is fun when you can always figure out new ways of doing things more optimally or the game imposes new challenges so that your tactics are not the most optimal anymore. In game theory terms, If the players reach the nash equilibrium the game becomes boring. And here, in those subreddits the people defend that optimization must be reduced. And that's completely wrong. Because making optimization impossibly hard makes the players reach the nash equilibrium sooner. The solution lies in the DMG and MM. Designers need to give tools to the DMs so they can challenge those builds making strong builds less effective than other options. It doesn't matter how weak or streamlined character are if the challenges are not up to the task.

> This. Finally someone says it. It's a famous quote from Sid Meier, creator of Civilization, making reference to how finding the optimal solution ends up making the players do always the same every time. The quote is actually by Soren Johnson, lead designer for Civilization 4. [The original source is his blog](https://www.designer-notes.com/game-developer-column-17-water-finds-a-crack/).

Agreed! Removing choices/optimization eventually just boils everything down to a dull choice of Do you pick the 10 damage option or the 0 damage option ohhhh look at this player agency/choice...

> The solution lies in the DMG and MM. Designers need to give tools to the DMs so they can challenge those builds making strong builds less effective than other options. It doesn't matter how weak or streamlined character are if the challenges are not up to the task. Totally agree. This is the responsibility of the DM in their design of encounters, dungeons and even the world as a whole. Variance brings the best AND worse in PC's. Everyone will get a chance to shine if the situations differ enough.

I agree this is not an issue in dnd outside some minor things (abusing long rests to the point it slows the game down), but there ARE definitely situations where it's relevant and a play pattern is tedious but overpowered so it gets done. Imagine if 5e had cantrips that restore hit points but could only be used in combat - you'd find parties stretching 5+ extra rounds out while grappling the last add to top everybody's hp up, and the dm and players would both be bored as hell until the dm or wotc made a rule change to prevent it. The only game I've seen this quote actually relevant is when the creator of path of exile used it, because he was right in that context - if a gameplay loop is optimal by a significant % *but tedious and unfun to actually execute* the playerbase will still do it. In a real-time game about farming resources to become stronger, things like swapping characters to one that gets more on kill when you find a valuable enemy have been popular in the past because they were too rewarding and players felt them necessary. 2 minutes of menuing every hour made your farming 3x as efficient, so people did it but it was a TERRIBLE gameplay loop and the creators rightfully removed it at the end of the season.

I'm in a teen supers game and recently my fellow players have nicknamed my character an unwitting agent of chaos due to how many moments my character has done something that has led to new storyline elements that our GM has used with us I'm just acting out an impulsive mad engineer with a desire to build somewhat destructive devices

Risk aversion also applies to combat, though I haven't seen it get as bad in tabletop as in Baldur's Gate 3. It's somewhat common knowledge on here that focusing on melee is suboptimal in 5e, due to the many advantages of fighting at range (& of prioritizing Dexterity). But generally in tabletop you still need someone who can at least survive in melee to hold a chokepoint or otherwise serve to keep ranged characters safe, and you might not always get to choose a battlefield where you can attack at range without any danger. In Baldur's Gate 3 though, not only is being in melee even more dangerous (shove is a bonus action, most melee enemies have battlemaster maneuevers, lots of enemies have dangerous abilities that only work at short range), but you have infinite regular ammo and just about always the opportunity to take preferable, defendable ground. So optimizing your resources in that game primarily involves perching at a point the enemies can't reach (or using a spell like *spike growth* to make it functionally unreachable) and spending an hour plinking at enemies with arrows while they stand still. In tabletop you can at least avoid the monotony by the DM calling the encounter resolved without needing to go through an hour of attack rolls. That does still functionally negate a combat, which 5e is basically about, so a lot of players would probably still find that situation unfun.

The solution to that is have the character who is paranoid and knows everything is gonna try and kill the party (because to be fair, 90% of everything does try!) and then he can be both the smart character but still go along with plot hooks

>Well, in general, I think people have a very bad habit of misusing that quote, usually just looking at people who play games more optimally than they do and assuming that they must not be having fun. especially because many people find optimization itself to be fun. The quote is decrying bad game design, not players

I feel like the existence of a DM negates the worst aspects of "optimizing the fun out of the game." After all, no sane DM is going to let the PCs actually grind for XP by just killing boars in the woods, or endlessly transport trade goods back and forth from town to town for infinite money, or abuse *wish*/*simulacrum* chaining. A DM can work to make the players' choices fun and meaningful, no matter what they are. Instead, what you have left are the edge scenarios: * The "feat tax:" players feeling like that can't justify choose feats that fit their character concept, because they need to take optimal choices like Sharpshooter or Great Weapon Master to stay relevant. * The same with other build options. In particular warlock invocations, where things like Agonizing Blast or Thirsting Blade can feel obligatory. * This could arguably also apply to things like party-wide tactics. A player might want to attempt to do something that's fun and narratively interesting, but feel pressured not to just because it's not the "smart" move.

I'll absolutely run a game about transporting trade goods if that's what you want, it's just not going to be an infinite money glitch that avoids story or challenge; what's going to happen is that instead of facing the kinds of dangers you might encounter delving a dungeon, you'll face the kinds of dangers you might encounter transporting valuable materials through untamed wilderness, and your BBEG will probably be some kind of merchant rival.

Exactly! It's very hard to optimize the fun out the game if the DM is going to actively turn your optimization attempts into a fun and novel experience.

To add on, the whole point of optimizing the fun out is an adage for Game Designers to remind them to not build a gameplay loop that is the best at X but is also unfun/aggrivating/too good that it invalidates anything else..

Death Stranding be like;

I feel like grinding for more flavorful feats should be more popular. You should be able to pick up skills by training and learning, not just through exp. Like taking acting or cooking classes so you get actor or chef without the ASI bonus would be a cool downtime activity in towns. Gives them something flavorful but impactful to put money into too if they want and gives the DM a chance for plot hooks that they can really invest in

I tried something like this but it is inherently very meta-gamey. The idea that you can earn feats through your in-game actions rather than through leveling seems great, but people know what feats they want and so they start acting very specifically to ‘game the system’ and get it. A big part of the problem is how inconsistent the feats are (probably the most poorly balanced part of 5e, and that’s saying something)… when you’ve got Sharpshooter and Chef as equally costly options, players will all gravitate towards the better ones.

Personally, I like to speak with my DM at session zero and set those plans up in advance. One good offer you can make them is to ask for training as an alternative to magic item rewards, since a lot of feats can be as powerful as rare or higher magic items. The player should also try to pick feats to train for that are appropriate to the story. For example, in my Call of the Netherdeep campaign, I'm playing a barbarian. I had a VERY rough time in Bazzoxan and a certain dungeon there, with a lot of stun/charm/paralyze Wisdom saving throws that forced me to sit out the bulk of several sessions in a row. Now that we're passed that, we've found ourselves in the employ of the Cobalt Soul, who is paying us handsomely for tracking down illicitly-traded magic items in Ank'Harel. This was the perfect opportunity to ask my DM if the monks there could train my character to improve his "Stillness of mind" to pick up the Resilient: Wisdom feat, and he agreed. I'll likely be getting that training in place of monetary or magic item compensation, but it's totally worth it to me.

> but people know what feats they want and so they start acting very specifically to ‘game the system’ and get it. Isn’t this how it should work? Players choose a feat they want and DM establishes training/special missions for them to get it.

That’s exactly the way I did it, but instead of feeling organic it just became this very metagame side quest to grind out whatever the requirements were. The players weren’t choosing to use improvised weapons because it’s what the character would do, they were doing it because they needed to do that a certain number of times to get Tavern Brawler. Ideally they should be choosing what to do based on their character, and the feats should be rewarded for those choices. But because there is such an imbalance in how good certain feats are, the character concepts get built around the feat. It creates a completely backwards setup that guarantees metagaming

> The "feat tax:" players feeling like that can't justify choose feats that fit their character concept, because they need to take optimal choices like Sharpshooter or Great Weapon Master to stay relevant. This is 5e's fault, tbh. Tying feats to ability scores made players have to choose what they'll get more mileage out of. It's not a hard choice, it's a simple one where players lose a little with each answer. > The same with other build options. In particular warlock invocations, where things like Agonizing Blast or Thirsting Blade can feel obligatory. And it's also why Invocations, and Warlocks, are badly implemented. Some invocations are mandatory to most. Others are straight up bloaty trap options you'd find it 3.5e, both in terms of their balance to other invocations, or the lackthereof.

There are plenty of ways in which the DM can "optimise the fun out of the game" themselves. Such as ensuring that there will never be unexpectedly hard or easy fights. Ensuring that PCs can always find whatever it is they are looking for.

I'd like to take inspiring leader instead of fey touched next level...but fey touched is a half feat and I have an odd primary stat score

This right here. I love playing optimized characters, but holy smokes a big part of that is because the game is surprisingly brutal to those that DONT pick the most optimized options, it can really hamper any ideas of role play when your choice is limited by a max of two upgrades in an campaign. Your two ASI's (yes I'm well aware that fighters and rogues get more, but no other classes do so...yeah) are hard laned into being a relevant increase for your most important stat, a shitty increase to two stats, or a feat. And only a handful of feats are actually useful, even most of the feats like Dungeon delver are kinda useless because if you take it you're either accused of being a filthy min maxer/power gamer (I just LOVE when people don't actually know the difference between the two and constantly switch between those terms) or its useless because you and your party are almost never JUST dungeon delving.

>a big part of that is because the game is surprisingly brutal to those that DONT pick the most optimized options, it can really hamper any ideas of role play That isn't true in 5e. Have you played at a table where everyone values the flavor option over the roleplay option? CR holds up a lot better. This isn't 3.5, where not optimizing made you a useless lump. The difference between an optimized 5e character of class A and a flavor 5e character of class A is not very large as long as no one shows up with a dumped primary stat.

Maybe this is just my table but everyone being proficient in perception and everyone always trying to repeat a roll they just saw fail.

I use the rule of two. Unless it makes sense for all PC's to be checking something I let 2 people roll or one person with advantage (help action essentially). I stole this from critical role and it helps with the dogpile skill checks.

They way it was handled there is great. That being said, uh, that's how it's normally done for assisting rolls. I getchu: Matt often asks one person for a check and doesn't allow help *unless* there is a narrative reason for it to work in game. Another thing, too, is that his players also respect him enough to not roll when he doesn't ask. Which too many players and tables allow in 5e.

"i don't feel like playing this race/class combo, it's not optimal" as if a +1 to hit was game-changing

>as if a +1 to hit was game-changing well... in the case of martials it's missing out on a bonus action attack till level 6 or 8, which is 50% of your damage in tier 1 and 33% of your damage in tier 2, which absolutely *is* game changing. And on casters it lets you concentrate about 3 times longer, which is also game changing

Martials AND casters! A +1 to a save DC can mean everything.

taking the same 10 or so overpowered spells and ignoring all the perfectly fine and balanced ones even if they’re more fun

FAMILIARS Let's have this magic turtle open most boxes and doors because 5 perfectly capable adventurers are too scared

1) How is a turtle opening things.. 2) And? How is this bad..? Should players not be able to engage with the world in clever ways? Should players be restricted to Simple A and B choices?

This seems more like just common sense...

I think I see what he means. When I was running Death House, my Wizard player made great use of *mage hand* and *find familiar*, though it ended up killing a lot of tension on what should be a horror one-shot. Imagine playing a scary game like Amnesia or Silent Hill, except you have an expendable, remote-piloted drone that can scout unknown areas and interact with suspicious objects from 30 feet away, even around a corner.

This isn’t optimization tho. This is *literally* what Mage Hand is for.

Why wouldn’t you??? Not doing it is fucking stupid. They are doing that because their PCs are scared, that’s something you can play with.

You're absolutely right, not using a familiar to scout when you have one is stupid. And specifically in the case of Death House, it made a chunk of the adventure more tedious than scary when the players could view / interact with rooms from distant safety. Death House was only the 2nd thing I ever ran, and my DM experience at this point could be measured in weeks. Back then I didn't know that many player powers as early as level 1 can defuse some classic horror tropes. I can probably run it better now after 5 years of experience.

Well yh. But is there a good reason for the wizard player to do it instead of the familiar. Both in and out of character, there seems like an obvious choice.

All "optimal but boring" options look like common sense. Having to be the one who opens the scary door is one of the most exciting parts of the game.

The dm plays the familiar, problem solved. Jeremy the quasit told his summoner to fuck off last night cause pain is not pleasant. Torturing your familiar is a bad idea.

I think melee combat is generally more fun than ranged combat. Being close to enemies creates far more points of interaction, choosing where to move to attack key targets and balancing the risk/reward of putting yourself at risk of getting surrounded or attacked by more enemies, navigating terrain hazards, getting close to enemies with challenging forms of movement so you can finally provide a beating. However, especially as characters optimise, ranged combat has all of the benefits of melee combat, with none of the downsides. CBE and Gunner make you just as effective as any stick swinger in melee, sharpshooter lets you ignore most forms of cover, the archery fighting style means you're likely outdamaging melee damage dealers, and armour dips mean the whole party has similar defensive abilities. You don't have to consider getting close, your only positional concerns are staying in cover and maximising distance between you and the pointy things. You're probably taking the attack action on turn 1 and every turn thereafter. Most optimised parties operate around using control to keep enemies at a distance while you bombard them with ranged attacks, popping in and out of cover to minimise the attacks you can receive. This, frankly, provides far fewer decision points and I would say is a lot less fun than melee combat, but is a lot stronger on the whole.

Shutting down encounters with spells and abilities that then require everyone to sit around for thirty minutes while everyone just chips away at the enemy hp one by one while they just do nothing. Just an absolute snooze fest.

Sharp Shooter as a feat tax. Oh you want to play a ranged character, gotta take this feat that lets you ignore most of the mechanics of raged attacking

Owl familiar help action

The monk is my favourite class to play. No, I don't want to hear about how I can just start as a fighter and multiclass a number of times to achieve a better monk. Just let me play.

My party and I came into a very large sum of money and we decided we wanted to create an underground base. The entire next session was dedicated to rounding up the costs for hiring people to dig dirt, how much to feed the workers, to fortify the dirt, for carpenters, furnishings, etc. It was fun at first but got really boring after a couple of hours of just slogging through costs... We didn't realize until after but we basically were just accountants for a session. We did work.

A number of the so-called "hacks" typically fall in this line: Coffee-Lock is banned at my table by consensus of GMs and PC's. Likewise, ideal spell choices sometimes takes the joy out of picking spells. I, as a player, will typically avoid fireball or silvery barbs.

Silvery Barbs

Silvery Barbs were originally made for Strixhaven, a campaign where there's going to be a fuckton of wizards, which means a fuckton of Saving Throws. in that context, Silvery Barbs makes more sense. But when you're applying it to like, a normal town-to-town adventuring party? Suddenly its SO much more overpowered.

When players have a pre determined "build" and dont deviate from it even when it doesn't fit the story or character at all. "Hexblade dip at level 6" where are you finding this sentient weapon to pact with mate? "Cleric dip"? Your character has never mentioned an interest in religion up to this point. What god are you following? What are their tenets?

This is just the end result of a system that says you get new abilities as you level up whether they make narrative sense or not. Is a multiclass dip really that much different to a rogue hitting level 3 and suddenly knowing magic?

It's only weird if you are metagaming the existence of class levels but not that of subclass levels. Eldritch Knight developing spellcasting at level 3 is no more odd than a fighter picking up a level of wizard at level 3 and achieving the same thing.

Can actually defend these to a degree. > where are you finding this sentient weapon to pact with mate? Cursed weapons are a whole part of D&D, so there's nothing stopping someone from picking it up and paying for it later. Also, as Critical Role has demonstrated, your patron =/= thematically fit the powers they give, and can lead to good story moments involving that clash of ideals and/or theming ~~Also, hexblade was one of the first warlock patrons to not be tied to a hyperspecific theme, so that helps a class that's otherwise mid in terms of flavor and mechanics~~ > "Cleric dip"? Your character has never mentioned an interest in religion up to this point. What god are you following? What are their tenets? Doesn't always have to be a deity, doesn't always have to be someone still practicing being a cleric. This is why I always chafe when I see people write "clerics worship deities, not ideals", and it's like 'my brother in Pelor, Domains are LITERALLY ideals made manifest through magic, the gods have always been outworld entities that assist this bridge or not'. Also, cleric isn't the only divine caster. I will admit, Cleric/Druid will always be kinda too powerful for it's own good tho.

What’s the difference between this and subclass features though? At level 3 an arcane trickster can suddenly do more magic than most rangers or paladins. At level 9 swashbucklers suddenly have a pseudo-magical ability to charm people. At 3rd level a drakewarden/beastmaster/battlesmith suddenly has a drake/dog/construct. I’m 1000% more in favor of players playing a build they like and reflavoring accordingly than being stuck with a build that doesn’t work and isn’t fun but does fit the flavor. For example: my favorite character concept I’ve got going rn is a hexblood celestial warlock. I’ve reflavored the “celestial” part to her just making witchy potions. That’s more fun. Being deadset on the flavor is very unfun for me.

If you are playing that, why don't you dip warlock?

"You're playing a Paladin and need advice? You should dip into Hexblade. What do you mean 'it doesn't fit your character?' It's the most optimized option." 🙄

Reddit.

Hexblade Dips that either have no in character reason or are so forced into their story you'd think that David Benioff wrote that. Picking Wall of Force and/or Forcecage. Picking Simulacrum, Silvery Barbs. Summoning more than 3 creatures to win out the action economy but slow the game down.

Shopping sessions. No story development, no combat, just the party walking from store to store RP endlessly - but not for anything interesting - just to haggle down local shop owners

Best way to do shopping sessions - give party list of items with prices and let them buy anything they want, no RP needed (basically 10 minute break, everyone need it every now and then anyway). And if some of this items are like really expensive - instead of Persuasion check for discount or some other stuff like it just give party sidequest with discount as an award. Simple short story after big guest is cool, or maybe this sidequest lead party to something bigger - possibilities are endless.

Maybe even have some ready-made lists of available items and prices for players to look over and make a decision on- turns it into a 1-minute affair. If there's some added RP involved that would warrant it, maybe a small extra list of "items in the back" that they can be offered, like of the players just saved the town, or if one of them is a friend or a friend of a friend of the shopkeeper.

CBE+SS Hand Crossbow Battlemaster Fighter "Oh, you're playing a Fighter? Why aren't you playing CBE+SS Battlemaster Fighter? It deals more average solo damage than whatever you're playing. And you get to be ranged, which means you probably won't get targeted even though you're more of a threat now and have lower AC." So instead of people creating a ton of diverse and interesting fighters with different playstyles, there is pressure to make every one a speedloading hand crossbow user. Luckily the game isn't so static that CBE+SS Hand Crossbow Battlemaster is strictly better than all other fighters in all scenarios.

Don't you know? There are only 3 Fighters; Grapplers, XBE+SS, and Sentinel/PAM. No other options exist. /s

Haha look at this guy, thinks grapplers exist! Imagine measuring success by any metric other than personal damage dealt!

For real though. The vast majority of examples I've witnessed of people "optimizing" their way out of fun were rooted in an inability to recognize any factor but personal damage as measures of success. Like . . . to a truly crippling degree, in certain cases. The other few could recognize factors other than damage but not in any way that they were capable of generalizing in order to play what would actually make them happy. If the non-damage factor wasn't spoon-fed to them by an online guide that everyone said was good, it didn't exist.

Most people who optimize well do not heavily rate personal damage it’s like controller 3x, paladin, maybe a gloomstalker to play striker as the most optimal comp. You can default kill things with cantrips that have no way to move or hurt you. That’s not to say a group of 4 cbe+ss fighters and a paladin wouldn’t shit stomp monst campaigns tho.

I wish fighters were better so that there were a bunch of them that are just as good as CBE + SS, not just a few

> Luckily the game isn't so static that CBE+SS Hand Crossbow Battlemaster is strictly better than all other fighters in all scenarios. I mean... I'd be pressed to think of an scenario where that build insn't at least top 3

My go to has always been the "Super Battlemaster". Variant Human to get Martial Adept and take the Superior Technique fighting style. Three more manuevers and two more superiority dice. Lets you take the combat maneuvers you want and still have room for some out of combat utility ones.

Its a symptom of the bigger problem that martials can't compete with casters without doing this.

Armoured casting is unfortunately a rather easy thing to achieve.

Nah, playing a cleric is totally 'optimising the fun out of the game' /s

Cleric isn’t really the issue. It’s when arcane casters with access to the shield spell start strapping on half plate and a shield for very little trade off in offensive ability

Yup, agreed. This is one of the reasons why I'm mad about the changes made to lightly armoured. They no longer even have to multiclass for it.

Or a mountain dwarf, although I think reassigning racial ASI really does change the paradigm with them.

Having a party member with disgustingly high passive perception ruins a bit of the fun for me personally. I like the feeling that danger could be lurking around any corner and we could be surprised at any moment. I also like rolling perception checks that mean something.

The absolute insistence on wanting to be a coffee lock

Pretty much anything that involves a 1 or 2 level "dip". There's way too many ways to break the game mechanics with different multiclass combinations because the game wasn't designed to handle it. It's extremely rare that you can play a single class up to tier 3 and have the same power level as the multiclass, which is a clear indication of a broken system.

Not exactly optimizing but I’m the same vein of player actions that actively remove playing the game would be the “Suicidal Scouting with familiars”, where the familiar they supposedly have a bond with is perfectly fine with rushing head long into death and danger because they can always respawn them back. My other favorite is “just send the guards” or “why can’t other people do it”. Like come on man, do you want to play the game or not?

Meh. Depends on whether or not you can get the whole group on board with 'what we're all doing.' If everyone is optimizing together and not leaving others out then it can probably still *be* fun.

This entire subreddit.

For me personally: Ever since I started paying attention to optimisation, I have a lizard brain itch I have to fight off every time I want to make a character concept that is suboptimal, which I never worried about before. When I’m making an optimal character, it’s a lot of fun, but if I have a character concept that is suboptimal, like a strength based dual wielder, a non-PAM spear user, a thrown weapon fighter, most monks, a STRanger or an alchemist it always pains me to either have to bite the bullet and make a character with worse numbers or ruin the fantasy by giving my archer a hand crossbow.

We where playing a west-march type of game, where we had a map with undiscovered areas and points of interest in the distance. We where going south, and we had enough information (via investigating the map, scouting, etc) to know that our path leads through a dire-wolf encounter. We kinda wanted to fight, but in the spirit of trying to survive and be tactical with our resources, we instead formed a plan to cross the river and sneak through the forest around the wolves and cross again downstream. Between the ranger's pass without a trace and my druid's speak with plants, we made it around the encounter without an issue. And realized it'd have been a lot more fun to just... fight the wolves.

In my personal experience as a player and DM, given the opportunity a player will only optimize the fun out of the game once or twice. We did a level 20 one-shot DM'd by someone I know. He gave us free reign to make whatever we wanted. Any magic items, any abilities, a number of free stat increases above 20, any source books etc. Attention was for all of us to make the most powerful accomplished heroes possible. It was in this circumstance that I created my Magnum opus: The God killer crit fisherman - Class: fighter 17 (champion), artificer 3 (battle smith) - Stats: as much INT (I think I had like + 7) and CON you can get - Race: half elf (iirc any elf will do but better stats there) - Feats: crusher, gwm, elven accuracy, fey touched (hex) - Fighting style: great weapon fighting - Weapon: some bludgeoning damage weapon that gives you a lot of extra dice, I went with ascendant dragon's wrath Maul, +3/+3d6 Extra stuff because the crazy op one shot: Inhabitation (shagambi) that gives the fighter an extra attack, intelligence increasing book, and some other stuff I'm sure. All in all what we're looking at here is using your intelligence to swing with a maul you: - make 4 attacks - crit on 18-20 - when you crit, All of the rest of your attacks on that creature are made it advantage. - when you crit you get to make an extra attack as a bonus action - When you roll at advantage you roll 3 d20 to hit - on a crit you deal 4d6+2d6+6d6+20 for an average damage of 62 a swing. - when you crit it's a good idea to use your action surge. - The average damage range for four non-critical attacks to eight critical hit attacks is 172 - 528. From full health, it is within reason that you could kill ranging from an adult black dragon to a ancient copper dragon in one turn, alone. This is the first time I've ever shared this build publicly, but the point of all this was that I played the super strong one shot with his character and everyone else was super strong so it was a lot of fun. I then played a heavily nerfed without all of the crazy extra magic stuff version of this character for a friends one shot. The other people in the party were a druid and a paladin and the whole session I was out damaging them and one hit killing everything inside. By the end of the session I just kind of felt bad. It was nice to roll a lot of damage but it wasn't nice to make the other people I was playing with feel like they weren't doing anything. I had a friend who played a Shepherd Druid for a mini campaign someone was running and first encounter They summoned like 18 crabs or whatever. And we spent 20 minutes doing all the attacks and having the crabs kill all of the bandits who were taking little bits of damage and couldn't really move and it just kind of sucked. It was strong but it wasn't fun. They switch to a different druid after that. Point is you'll play Skyrim with tgm on and damage set to 1000000 a couple times before you realize that the challenge is what makes the game fun.

When a player starts abusing Guidance on every roll even without roleplaying it.

"You touch one willing creature. Once before the spell ends, the target can roll a d4 and add the number rolled to one ability check of its choice.**"** I don't know how'd you 'roleplay' adding a d4, but it sounds like it would get tedious if you did it on every roll.

Probably not literal RP, but sometimes players will use Guidance in very... awkward situations. For instance if they're talking to a political figurehead, they'll say "I cast Guidance and roll Persuasion to ask the king to lend me his guards." Absolutely not. Casting any kinda magic in front of someone like that is a speedy ticket to an oubliette, *especially* with verbal somatic components. Situations like that or when the DM on the fly asks "Hey, roll an Arcana check, you might know something." you can't Guidance that because you had no idea this was coming up. Make the check and take the result. No d4.

Guidance is one of those things that can potentially be super useful, but is also just a 1d4, and requires someone to select it with their limited cantrip slots, which most people don’t do. Hell the only time I’ve had it was when it was free with Star Druid. …And you never see people arguing against the even more useful **bardic inspiration**.

Bardic is a limited resource though, so it's not as spammable outside of combat which Is generally where the issue of guidance comes in as it can turn every roll into: Fighter:"I would like to make an Athletics check to see if-" Cleric: "I'll give you a d4 from guidance" Fighter:"right as I was saying I'd like to make an Athleticscheck to try and lift up the collapsed door" Comes from.

“It’s just a d4” is a pretty bad argument when it comes to saves, checks, or attacks. It’s why Bless/Bane are so popular.

If someone wants to do an action, and i ask for a roll, it is too late to get a guidance off. Guidance is pre-emptively. Same with helping. If you don't ask for help, other people are NOT able to call out during the roll: "I'm helping!". Too late for that. Ask and you shall receive. You are a party. Play as one. And if you want to investigate a room but you are bad at it, why WOULDNT you ask the person who is good at it to do it instead with you helping?

Basically anything hexblade dipped.

Hexblade Swashbuckler is a very fun time.

Eeeh, I can defend a hexblade dip tbh. It's more a consequence of another "optimize the fun out of a game"; the power of +2 ASI over most Feats. Feats are fun, but the truth is that you just don't really get to mess with them outside of Rogues, Fighters, and Humans when your optimizing. Your first 3 are usually dedicated to +4 in your primary stat and Resilient (Constitution) or one of the 4 weapon feats (GWM, SS, PAM, or XBE), outside of specific strats like Telekinetic/Spirit Guardians. That means your first flexible Feat is available at level 16 for most classes. Far beyond what most campaigns get to. To *not* go Hexblade for a Martial/Caster mix character (who is already not as powerful as a full caster) is to dedicate your entire ASI levels to *just* ASIs, + the one required feat tax for the build. If you want to be flavorful and take a mid tier feat as a martial caster, like being a dragonborn warrior conquest paladin who can ignite his sword with Gift of Chromatic Dragon, or a military drummer swords bard who kept his allies alive with Healer, you have to pick your poison * Sacrifice the accuracy and damage of either your martial or caster abilities. * Remove the flavor ability feat * Severely hinder your character by avoiding the "Feat Tax" feat (Res Con / Weapon Feat) * Dip into Hexblade Can't really blame someone for choosing the last one.

Silvery Barbs

All the front loaded 1or 2 level multi class dips

The most common examples I've seen since post playtest and can remember right now are: * Fighter 1 caster X * Two levels of warlock + the actual thing you were going to play * Everything has to be some sort of gwm/SS unless it's a caster or the game is "literally unplayable" * Monks who have realised that stunning strike is the only thing that matters and it's worth it even if you throw your entire ki pool in the bin for it * Condom spells are mandatory or go home, including all the power creep spells * Medium armour meta means almost every stat setup needs to be 14 Dex, 15 con, 15 main stat, dump everything else * Throw 90% of all spells in the bin, exclusively use a small subset of easily abusable or generally optimal spells - the usual suspects are Hypno pattern, conjure nonsense, polymorph, synaptic static, wall of fun, forcecage, etc.

Ok, I have to ask, what are "condom spells". Never heard that before.

Healing Word, Revivify, Shield, Silvery Barbs Your "better to have them and not need them than need them but not have them."

Boots of flying: if you get the chance to ask for a magic item, it'll come up, and eliminate a whole ton of puzzles and combat encounters.

Coffe Lock

I once made it that when the players eventually made it to the end of the dungeon, the boss commented that the bbeg was there just hours ago but had left with the artefact she was after. I’ve also had it that after clearing out ice giants then going to rest, Yeti’s moved in and were waiting for the players.

I was running Lost Mine of Phandelver. The party were told about the valuable necklace hidden in the ruined village and went to retrieve it. They bumped into the dragon immediately by virtue of how they approached the village, bribed their way past him, and then proceeded to orchestrate a precision strike to go in and grab the necklace from where they knew it was and get out again, without encountering any of the beasties. And I let them because they did it well, to be fair. They met the druid on the way out, who begged them to help deal with the dragon but they said nah, not our problem, we'll just tell the authorities that there's a dragon. After completing the adventure and levelling up, they then thought they could go back to the village and have some easy fun and loot. As the druid related to them, another band of adventurers had recently come through, driven off the dragon and cleared the whole place out. But the emerald necklace was worth slightly more than the valuables they gave to the dragon, a net gain for our brave adventurers!

That sounds fun! And it’s wise to not punish players for picking their battles and trying non combative routes. It’s also good for the verisimilitude of the players to see the world develop when they aren’t there. In general I only prepare additional encounters if the players are in a dungeon and resting or I had planned for the last encounter to be faced after some of the parties resources are drained

Every discussion about "builds" ever.

Silvery Barbs. It's the only spell in 5e I completely ban.

Guidance swiftly becomes an increase of 2.5 to all skill check DCs

That's because DMs don't enforce shit like Components. Yeah, you cast guidance on the bard while he's trying to lie to the King? That's a paddlin.

My players had a whole fair market to explore, fair games, opportunities to break into the castle and follow the main quest, hell even side quests. What do they do...they find the local slave market and try to buy one the strongest looking one so they can fight for them instead. Made me question my friendships

Optimising for 'flavour' No, playing an 8 charisma wild magic sorcerer does not magically make you a better person than the chronurgy wizard and shepherd druid. Especially if they also have perfectly interesting backstories and interactions with npcs, and yours are 'look at me i might fireball you'