In any RPG, but perhaps especially D&D 5E, the DM runs the world and the players run their characters, who are built within the rules of the game. You should let players build the characters they want to play, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it!
It’s OK to have a PC build that pisses you off. Whether it’s because they’re unkillable, unhittable, undetectable, unsurvivable, or, like our listener question this week, they passively perceive absolutely frickin’ everything! This may mean you have to change your game or not use pieces you wanted to use — like big dumb monster fights against casters with Banish. (“Which is BULL$#!7!” – DM Thorin.) But you can adjust both your own DMing and the player expectations of how their showcase abilities work in the game.
In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about how to handle builds that piss you off or at least challenge you as a DM. Along the way, they talk about builds, abilities and spells they’ve struggled with and how you can handle the situation without ruining the game for yourself or any of your players.
If you don’t see the podcast player below, click here to listen to the episode.
2:00: Extreme passives: A listener asks how to handle a D&D 5E PC with extremely high passive perception and investigation who expects all the secrets to be revealed automatically
6:00 Respect is a 2-way street: Just like the DM wants to run the world they built, the players want to play the characters they created
10:00 How we handle passive perception, use stats and dice rolls, and the problem with dice rolls
16:00 Is it unfair for a player to build a character so good in one area they automatically succeed?
21:00 The Observant Problem: Creating challenges and obstacles for builds that see all the secrets
26:00 DMing Sherlock Holmes: How do you reign the player in but make sure they’re still having fun?
32:00 Player builds and abilities that piss us off — and why Banishment is a really poorly designed spell
45:00 Moon Druids, Barbarians, and dealing with ridiculous damage absorption
55:00 Challenging control and stealth character builds in D&D 5E
64:00 “If we’re not encouraging clever ideas at the table, then what are we doing as DMs?” Adapting your DMing style to fit the character builds at your table
69:00 Final thoughts
Thanks for taking the time to talk through my question during the episode. It sounded like it also sparked a further great discussion topic. I really appreciate hearing all three of your opinions on these situations, even if my information around it was a bit sparse. How passives function is definitely something I learned needed to be covered in session 0 and the idea of giving more clues rather than “hey there is a hidden door” is similar to the approach I ended up taking (though a bit more growth will be needed there for me in execution I think).