Recognizing How 5E D&D Characters are Not Regular People

May 7, 2022

Character Stories/ Dungeons & Dragons/ Game Master Tips/ Player tips/ Roleplaying

Salutations, nerds! I’m having a debate right now with one of my friend groups about why everyone in a Dungeons & Dragons world isn’t a wizard if wizards are so powerful. If people in your world can blow up a quarter of a city all at once with giant balls of fire and wipe out whole armies ten why does everyone not do this? Because the barrier of entry for being a high level spellcaster is prohibitively high for most people. Then why are so many D&D player characters spellcasters? Because D&D player characters are not regular people.

A Party of Protagonists

There are a lot of Dungeon Masters who see a party going around acting like they’re the main characters as a problem. I’ve never understood this perspective. Most commoners are walking around with a 10 in every ability score and once in a while you find a rare one with higher stats because they’re a professional in a specialized field.

And then you have PCs who regularly boast 18’s or higher in their ability scores and grow tremendously over the course of a matter of months.

You will find playable species in most settings described as being incredibly rare and yet are still available to the players. This creates some dissonance in an MMO. Viera males aren’t supposed to leave the forest and now they’re all over the place in Final Fantasy XIV for example. But there’s a huge difference between the characters in a game being legion and the characters in a game being four to seven dorks and one of their friends constructing the world around them. If a player wants to play something incredibly rare a DM ought to have the NPCs react to them as such. If you’re one of the other PCs then react to them likewise.

People talk a lot about player buy in for the DM but the other players want buy in too — for their characters. If they chose to play something so uncommon they probably want people to be drawn up short by their presence. If the campaign blurb for tieflings states they are often mistrusted by people then there’s a good chance the player wants the angst that comes from people not trusting their character at first.

Power Gaming Is Not Bad

I’m not here to tell the munchkins they’re having fun wrong. The truth is some people have a fantasy about entering an imaginary world and struggling in a Conan style sword and sorcery adventure and some people want to play the one solitary guy mowing down an entire army by themselves with meteor swarm.

High level spells are a huge deal but they’re not about nerfing them to make them compatible with the game you’re trying to run. Think about the fantasy casting a spell like that appeals to for the player. If your wizard has meteor swarm they probably want to take out a very large number of bad guys in a flashy way. Give then an army to mow down. Let them burn the 9th level spell on a crowning moment of bad assery and then get back to your grit afterward when they’ve cast it already.

These abilities aren’t liabilities — they are opportunities for you to add more content to your game as a DM and to roleplay as a player. When things happen mechanically, when you are Godric the Fighter and you see Melina the Sorcerer absolutely incinerate a hundred people all at once, you’re going to have some concerns about the scenario.

Just make sure when Godric sits down to ask her about it that it’s actually Godric saying, “Hey, wow! That was a lot of carnage. How are you feeling about that?” and not a thin veneer to cover the fact you the player actually want to say, “It was so lame you chose that spell.” If you’re feeling ways about it out of character the best thing to do is address it out of character, but try to remember at the end of the day it’s the other player’s choice what they do with their character.

I’ll get off my soap box now. My point is if being the chosen one appeals to you then go be the chosen one. However you have fun is okay. That’s part of being nerdy. Oh, by the way? Stay nerdy.

*Featured image — In this battle scene from the cover of Tome of Beasts 2 from Kobold Press, heroes face a servant of the Unsated God as it summons the demon lord Hriggala. Does that sound like something regular people might do?! [Illustration by Hugh Pindur]