DM'ing 5e

>DM'ing 5e
>Having fun but need a caster in our group
>New player runs a Warlock
>Constantly spams Detect Magic because of Eldritch Sight
>Wants to know if he detects, what shape of the magic aura, and what school of magic it's from
>Let it slide a few times but now it's an expectation and he's getting cocky

How does Veeky Forums handle ability abuse?

>be DM
>think party needs a caster for some reason
>get upset when someone spams a spell

Is it ability abuse to have the Fighter swing his sword into everything? Does it even matter if the guy is mashing Detect Magic at every bit of scenery? I... don't understand what the problem actually is. What's being abused, and how is it affecting the game?

>Warlock gets at-will power
>Uses it at-will

Do you feel the same way about Guidance, or Thaumaturgy?

Also:

>Party needs magic guy
>Magic guy does magic things

If this is really disrupting your games, just exploit the weaknesses of the ability. Keep magic stuff out of range or behind thick walls.

I'm new to it so you guys got me there

This is actually pretty elegant. It's the cockiness that's getting on my nerves. I want to cut him down to size

>Put neato magical item at end of corridor.
>Pit trap mid corridor.
>He detects magic only on the item.
>Walks over to grab it.
>Impaled on spikes.

There I solved your non problem.

This.

I bet you get mad when he says he's gonna cast false life until he gets max on the die as well

Jesus, I'm sorry but you sound just awful.

Omg

Just assume the ability is always active and add a bit on the aura of a thing in any descriptions of that thing.

In my pathfinder game 3 out of 5 people had detect magic up at all times pretty much.

I just included it in the descriptions. Certain magics had different hues about them. Golden magic was enchantment, red was evocation, green conjuration, and so on and so on.

It became a plot point when the party realised what the beautiful golden halo about the aasimar player character meant.

Buddy, He can see magic. Stop waiting for him to ask and just describe any magic auras he can see the same way you describe a room to everyone when they enter it.

>Be DM
>Playing 5th edition

You brought that on yourself. You could've just played Pathfinder but Hasbro needs another yacht apparently.

If the fighter is swinging his sword into LITERALLY every bit of new scenery, yes it would be fucking annoying. Just because something is possible doesn't mean you have to do it all the fucking time.

Please kill yourself.

Wow bro.

Really, Detect Magic should just be implemented as a Feat or something that lets you use the Perception skill to see magic.

>trying to incite an edition war
Please go and stay go.

>overreacting tumblr gif

Eh. I just scrolled down on my phone and clicked a random picture. I wouldn't focus on a random picture and rather on how this GM wants to fuck over a player for playing the game. Not to mention I found the gif here.

>it's a cocky expectation of the player to have his character's ability work as it does in the rules
I sincerely suggest you stop GMing if you're so petty as to try to cut a guy "down to size" for playing his character correctly.

Are we even sure that this guy is actually cocky about fucking detect magic? I mean seriously, who gets cocky about detect magic? More likely the DM is being a little cock about the player in general and is taking enjoyment of his ability as something it's not.

Also fuck you DM, because you are there to make the players have fun. It is not about you, that's why you put in hours of work for no reward every week.
Unless you like your players having fun (hint: you should, why are you even playing then?), DMing is just straining.

If he keeps doing it, just make everything magical, even the walls, and and watch his confusion

Though one of the most based DMs I've had responded to this with
>As you cast detect magic, you realise that the entire world and everything in it is magical, and then you die from this realisation

Sounds like you've got shitty taste in GM's.

>overabundance of utility magic makes previously hard things no longer a contest
Yay, you figured out the number one problem with D&D!

Until you can run a better game, do

>Player using the caster class that has notably weaker casting in exchange for some useful at-will abilities, uses abilities at-will
Do you ban Maneuvers when someone plays a Battlemaster, because the Barbarian has nothing to add to his attacks? Or remove every shadow from every hall when your Way of the Shadow Monk uses his ability to move around?
Deal with it. If he keeps it on all the time, just describe things to him before he asks, unless combat or other intensive activity lasts longer than 10 minutes and he doesn't have a spare 6 seconds to cast it.
That's how I handle ability use, anyways.

Besides, if it would break your heart in twain to let him continue or bend the meta ingame a bit so it becomes less useful, with mundane/mechanical items or traps, remember that NPCs will react as well. That Magic Aura spell exists for a reason.

She was not that serious, sure, but serious campaigns are overated.

A. Let an NPC made of pure magical energy follow them around. The NPC wants to steal spell slots (warlocks don't have a lot of those). They can only detect him via detect magic. Let's see if he gets paranoid as fuck.

B. Paladin NPC constantly tries detect evil on warlock to see if he's REALLY evil. All the fucking time and doesn't leave him alone.

C. Fill a city with homunculi servants who are all magical. Let his head explode by explaining the sheer amount of aura's illuminating the city.

D. Person actually has a draconic aura, is a transformed dragon, is pissed that it's discovered and starts a rampage.

E. Discovers a magical trail. Trail leads to an underground lair. Lair is a trap made by witch hunters.

F. Fight in the dark, no enemies are magical but have good senses or can see in the dark.

G. Fight inside a magical aura. Detect magic is like putting on Night Vision goggles at daylight.

H. Gaurd captain is old ragged fucker with nice looking gear. Is former teens level adventurer, everything is enchanted. Roll Dexterity to blink fast, and failing that, Constitution or your magical retnas get burned out for a few days/weeks.

>Just fuck with your players senpai
No better way to implode your group.
Veeky Forums continues to give quality advice.

Hold on a second, I need to cast Detect Faggotry. oh god i'm blind.

So, if I'm understanding right, you're more upset that he never stops declaring it? If I'm wrong correct me.

I always kind of assumed detect magic was a spot check for magic.
If your making him stop, causes him to miss something because he didn't declare detect magic that's a bit of a dick move.

You could make him roll it with everyone else's spot checks or just let him take 20.

I like the way you do things. That moment of OH FUG when you realize the implications of things like that is beautiful and should always be cultivated.

...

I can understand OP, because I've got a player that, whenever he has an at-will ability, spams the hell out of it.

Detect Magic, Detect Evil, Detect Poison, Hide, whatever it might be, he just keeps doing it all the time, and it gets annoying rather quickly, especially when there's really no reason to suspect anything or to do whatever he did outside of a minute chance it might be useful.

Playing "optimally", as some of the people in this thread might put it, is playing less like a human and more like a robot. Casting Detect Poison on the mysterious banquet you find in a dungeon is a natural response, while casting Detect Poison on every bit of food, water, item, or surface you might come into contact with gets tedious, and when you actually find something that's poisoned it's simply a matter of inevitability, rather than insight.

It makes the game boring and procedural, especially in the case of Detect Spells like Detect Evil or Magic, because those are the kind of surprises a DM likes to hold onto.

It's the sort of thing where when I end up playing a character with one of those abilities, I tend to avoid using them, even at moments it's obvious that I should. And, funnily enough, some of the more exciting scenes and pieces of drama came from refusing to use Detect Evil on certain people so as to not offend them or because the character did not want to become the sort of person who doubted everyone they met.

>be DM
>be a cunt
>players are being reasonable

What do Veeky Forums?

At will abilities sort of become just another sense for a character. You spend a few moment looking at a thing before you use it right? Smell your food? Hold your hand near something you think might be hot? If you could just detect poison, why would you not always be doing that as long as it's nothing major to do so. Same for detect magic, that would be like if we could detect electrical fields like some animals can.

I immediately banned guidance when I cracked open the PHB.

c'mon nigga
you can come up with better insults than that

This is Veeky Forums nigga, you'll take the shit with the gems like everyone else does. It did adequately describe OP's faggotry though, so user at least gets marks for that.

1.) Why does EVERYTHING have a magical aura? Doesn't the Warlock just see, say, non-magical walls and floor every now and then?

2.) If you know your Warlock will be asking the question every time, why not write down the answer to any magic auras ahead of time? It shouldn't be too hard to figure out the school, so you just need to think about what general shape it would be in. (Is it round? A cube? A rectangular length?)

Nigga said he was blind, why the fuck are you replying to him?
His text to speech won't read your reply, and it'll be some months before he gets the hang of computer brail.
Be more considerate dude.
Seriously.

It depends on the at-will ability, and for most of them, no, it still requires the whole process of casting the spell, which isn't as casual as just looking at something. And, it's even tiring to just intently look at things for several minutes (this is coming from a photo editor), and that's considerably less effort than casting spells every few seconds.

And, it's not passive detection like it is for things like sharks sensing electricity. The person has to typically stop whatever it is that they're doing and concentrate in order to use these detect abilities. It's the kind of tiring, tedious process that we're more than glad to subject fictional characters to, because we can make them march for hours or swing their swords around all day and at best the GM might only request some sort of endurance check that we still personally don't feel or are overly concerned with.

Ignoring how tiresome it might be for the character, it's tiresome for the other players and the GM.

I'm going to have to say you are ten times gayer than whatever you're projecting OP to be.

Look DM, just talk to the guy and assume he is always casting it if something isn't stopping him. He has the magic equivalent to dark vision.

Jesus, you seem like an asshole of a DM.

Ambient magic fills the room and you feel a mix of old remnants of magical rituals mixed in with fresh arcane signatures of recent spellcasters. If you want to try and push yourself to reveal the room in better detail, roll an Arcana check.

At least its a check with chance of success or fail

Detect Magic
1st-level divination (ritual)
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Components: V, S
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
For the duration, you sense the presence o f magic
within 30 feet of you. If you sense magic in this way, you
can use your action to see a faint aura around any visible
creature or object in the area that bears magic, and you learn its school of magic, if any.
The spell can penetrate most barriers, but it is blocked by 1 foot o f stone, 1 inch o f common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt.

Its a concentration spell that takes one action to cast, shit takes mere seconds to start up and you can do literally anything but another concentration spell while using it.

For the record user, I'm stealing this for whenever I DM, if I ever get the chance to.

> Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes

Why isn't it forever? Why only 10 minutes? Because its concentration. Shit is strenuous. A 10 minute concentration on the spell is like asking a barbarian to do a 100m sprint. Sure both the warlock and the barbarian can do multiple 10 minute concentrations and 100m sprints but because the spell requires concentration, if the warlock keeps doing it eventually, like the sprinting Barbarian, the warlock will get tired and begin to enter stages of Exhaustion.

>hey so i took the class which allows me to have access to a severely limited spell list, but gives me access to invocations so that I can have capabilities beyond that of a bard or even a wizard

>>>WOW FAGGOT YOU WANT TO CAST MORE THAN TWO SPELLS PER SHORT REST HAHAHAHA YOU IDIOT

you should just start including magical auras in the description of the areas

>DMing 5E
>having fun but need a party face for group
>new player runs a bard
>constantly performs on his lute
>wants to know if he draws a crowd, if people like it, what affect it has on people
>let it slide a few times but now it's an expectation and he's getting cocky.

How do I cut this fucker down to size? The cocky little prick is just so entitled to playing and practicing on his instrument. How do I fuck him over for this egregious offense?

Have an assassin cover his lute in contact poison.
Serves the little shitcunt right.

I mean, let's be honest you shouldn't be punishing your players like that

but a fun thing you might get some enjoyment out of doing would be if next time he rolls relatively lowly during a performance, a heckler shows up. Have him dodge a few tomatoes and roleplay the interaction with the heckler, bearing in mind as he does that the crowd is watching his every move. Might be a fun kind of thing to see how his character would react if that's what you're looking for.

It seems like that's hardly the same as just "being another sense." Either way, it's not about whether or not it's easy for the character, since they can theoretically do it forever.

It's about the tone and style of the game.

Now, if the DM is running a Tomb of Horrors type of adventure, the players need all the detection spells they can get. They should spend every round prodding ahead of themselves with 10-foot poles, checking and rechecking for traps every few inches, doing all the most tedious and meticulously annoying practices that were necessary for survival back in the day. With that as the style, the DM might request that at least one player play a character with a decent wisdom score to help everyone have fun not dying.

But, it sounds like the DM is not running that kind of game, and he's realized that the Detect Magic ability is making the game less fun, potentially even for the player who is using that ability. He's really in the best position to judge this, since he can see the entire adventure and has it designed with the players entertainment in mind.

Now, the best move would simply be to talk to the player, and to ask them to choose a different ability, with the explanation that it's making the game a bit of a chore and that it prematurely spoils many of the surprises for the group, and that it's kind of like bringing a flashlight into a Touch Tunnel. He doesn't need to get into the whole "You're attitude is pissing me off" business, because if the DM is sensible and his requests are sensible, the player will either respect the rational decisions of his DM or throw a tantrum and get kicked out of the game.

This up a small, quick interaction with him in the next town. Have the crowd applaud, or have another bard challenge him to a music match, or have a heckler jeer him. Come up with a few different ideas, either just rattle them off as it comes up or roll to see which one happens.

Nothing wrong with the player getting in a little bit of RP, especially if it doesn't take over a session.

>Running a game designed to be fun
>having fun, but want party to be a certain way
>new player obliges
>uses one of his character's abilities in accordance with the rules
>expects it to function
>I allow it to do so, but after a few times he begins expecting it to continue to function

How do I fix this problem?

>banning the Cleric and Druid's best cantrip

You sound like a shit DM.

This.

It's not exactly that they make it no longer a context, but you need to internalize the magic in your thought processes a lot in order to make there still be challenges, which makes it harder to run. This is totally not unique to D&D though, and is often an element of very well-regarded games.

It sounds like that's OP's goal anyway.

>serious answer
user...

>This

Is wrong.

What's wrong about it?

>uses one of his character's abilities in accordance with the rules

Why do the worst kind of players assume this is the end-all-be-all?

It's not. You'll notice that there are more lines than that in the post.

Which of them matter in context of that question? None of them seem to.

That's the thing. There is no other factor. So there's no problem. If there was a negative factor too, that would be a problem. But there's not.

Seems like you're not as clever as you hope you are.

Let me ask again.
Why do the worst kind of players assume that following the rules serves as a valid excuse?

>Be GM
>Am too shortsighted to make dungeons that have no magical elements in them, and are loaded with purely mechanical traps.

This is you right now. Be more creative about showing how useless detect magic can be and he will not want to spam it as much.

>Seems like you're not as clever as you hope you are.
Perhaps, but nor are you, for I've already answered this question.

I get that OP is being a bit of a dick but it really is annoying for a player to detect evil/magic/perception check every five fucking steps because it breaks up the flow of the game.

Assuming your player isn't a nice, functioning human being who will elect to use their detect abilities only when they suspect there is something to detect. Or refuses to do so when you ask to tone it down (or in my case when one of the other players fucking yelled at them to knock it off) a good way to handle it is just with a perception check.

The DM rolls and has all of the player's perception scores on a little piece of paper, if they have detect whatever that is also on the paper. If they succeed they succeed in spotting whatever hidden thing is nearby, and they also detect magical/evil/etc. shit.

And then you can say something like "Sexboy the Paladin smells the sulfurous taint of devilmagic" or whatever, unless it is obvious what nearby is magical or evil.

It works out to be functionally the same, prevents an otherwise cool and useful ability/spell from being removed from the game wholesale, and saves everyone a headache.

>she

shitty GM confirmed

You can say nigger here instead of nigga; nobody's going to ban you or shun your for it. Nigger isn't even an effective slur on Veeky Forums anymore, it is so overused and used so casually that the actual racists have had to resort to other terms.

The OP should just kill his players directly with no rolls for using detect magic. They'll realize they could do better faster than if he did some elaborate fuck you, and maybe he could be a player when one of them DMs if they don't only put up with him because he's their DM

The different spellings have different meanings, in this case they mean it how they've spelled it.

It's equally banned regardless of the spelling in most places anyway.

>be DM
>having fun along with players but need to fulfill my rape fantasies
>bring in a furry weeaboo who focuses on raping animals
> I allow this to continue a few times but now it's an expectation that he performs disgusting sex acts and now he's getting cocky.

How do I cut this fucker down to size? the disgusting little prick is just so entitled to raping animals and practicing cunnilingus. How do I fuck him over for this burdensome behaviour?

Face it, you just want to play a low fantasy campaign. Just have Fighters, Barbarians and Rogue. Take out Ranger spells. No healing for those asshole Clerics to abuse everytime a party member gets injured, so that you can get to your TPK that much faster and go back to playing a single player game that anally rapes you as much as you raped your players.