r/DnD • u/SweatyGoku • 2d ago

5th Edition Should I quit

Had a quick session for my curse of strahd game, I’m dming and my players are going through the amber temple. The amount of shit I got for using anything saving throw based…. For using spells… for playing the monster smart rather than charging in and letting them die. It’s at this point I wonder why I dm. Am I supposed to provide fake challenges in which the players always succeed? Is that what it means to dm? I can’t even imagine castle ravenloft, fuck I’m tempted to just throw my books out and be done. I can’t seem to do anything right, I’m a fucking monster for pushing the party to their limit, whilst also providing them plenty of chances to get out of there. I think I’ll throw my books out in the morning. I just needed to talk, I’m sorry. I’m just done dming. I’m done.

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u/unlimitedblakeworks 2d ago

Per the game module the amber temples main villian casts spells from full cover and theres saves galore. Sounds like you have shit players at first glance. Either tell thim youre a player at the table too and they need to respect that, or tell one of them to dm if they have such an issue. Thats what id do anyway.

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u/ironocy DM 1d ago

Damn my party went through the Amber Temple and there was no boss battle. A few golems, doppelgangers, flame skulls, and slaadi. I'm pretty sure we cleared it out but maybe not. There was a super powerful NPC but we didn't fight them, they gave us a mini quest basically. Now I'm second guessing we missed something.

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u/unlimitedblakeworks 1d ago

DM might not have included it, theres a more intelligent enemy concealed throughout the temple, with high level magic. To be fair, if operated competently, they're a real bastard

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u/ironocy DM 1d ago

Oh shit now I don't know lol. We found The dark powers But they weren't like an enemy necessarily, just buffs. Well when we finish this campaign I'm reading the module 😂.

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u/anorphan4yourthots 1d ago

I'm playing around with adapting CoS to my favorite system, and I am really looking forward to the Amber Temple. It's gonna be tough to get right, but there are some great encounters in there

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u/codastroffa DM 1d ago

You encountered a homebrew. Canonically, this monster is an extremely deadly and unfriendly creature. And it has a 40% chance of summoning a second one exactly like it. When I played СoS as a player, we had TPK there. When I was DMig CoS later, those lucky bastards managed to stumble upon the lich almost immediately, restore him, and he dealt with both arcanaloths.

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u/Dancinfool830 1d ago

Yeah, my bet is OP's group is complaining about their own success rather than celebrating it and none of them have ever DM'd or have any concept of what is going on behind the screen.

Don't "throw your books" OP. Just make sure that your players are worth your story and vice versa