A player demonstrates that the biggest weakness of any class in Dungeons & Dragons is the memory and cognitive abilities of the players. Although the long-overlooked insight annoys her, the community states that this happens to almost everyone.
What has the player noticed? The DnD player and rabbitantlers reports on Reddit that it was only after years of playing with her group that she noticed something that would have really benefited her cleric: “I have been playing this absurd character for 3 YEARS without realizing that I get some spells that I don’t need to prepare.”
She explains that she regularly, at every level up, has read the cleric section in the Player’s Handbook “surely a million times” and still has not realized each time that there are spells available to her that she doesn’t need to prepare. She has gone without these spells for years until level 9.
rabbitantlers herself writes that she attributes this to her ADHD and that she is one of the players in her group with the least experience in Dungeons & Dragons. She says that she still makes mistakes but feels pretty confident in choosing solid spells – until she realized what she had overlooked all this time.
“Maybe I am unfortunately just a total idiot,” she writes, but other players reassure her. Because she is definitely not the only one who has experienced such a situation.
Here you can see the presentation of “Daggerheart”, Critical Role’s own role-playing game:
The biggest weakness of a character is the player themselves
How does the community react? Other DnD players explain to rabbitantlers that she doesn’t have to feel like a total idiot, as such situations happen to almost every player. SubConsciousBound writes in the comments on Reddit, that it happens to the best and even players with years of experience forget certain talents and class features.
Especially at higher levels, where more and more talents, abilities, and features of the class, race, and items are added, it can actually become difficult, as CuriousText880 admits (via Reddit).
What unfortunate situations has this led to for other players? Many players report their own misfortunes, for which they (fairly speaking) are to blame:
- “In the last session, I found out that my cleric/draconic wizard at level 11 was wearing a scale mail that gave me disadvantage on stealth and at the same time an armor class that I already have from my skin,” reports Fabulous_Tie991 on Reddit.
- “I play a cleric of the war domain and have completely forgotten to use ‘Divine Power Focus’ for 8 months,” says SubConsciousBound on Reddit.
- “Features of the race. It’s always the features of the race. They come at level 1 and are then forgotten for the rest of the game,” reminds ODX_GhostRecon on Reddit.
- “At the very beginning of the last session of the campaign, we reached level 6 and my DM [Dungeon Master = game leader] asked me what I get from my bard subclass. Then I asked what a subclass is. That’s how I found out that subclasses exist and that characters can have subclasses,” admits Tide_Hunter on Reddit.
The examples from rabbitantlers and other players in the community prove that it is completely normal not to have all specific abilities and features of one’s character on the radar – however, that doesn’t make it any less annoying. If players are not haunted by overlooked bonuses, there is always one player in every group who ensures that the group never feels safe: Dungeon Masters reveal their dark secrets, share the best ways to unsettle their players in Dungeons & Dragons
