Magic missile can become a lot more potent than that (on average):

1. Make a Scribes wizard
2. Take the Elemental Adept feat and pick something that very few creatures are immune to, e.g. thunder.
3. Change the MM’s damage to thunder.

Now you can pew-pew to your heart’s content with each pew doing a guaranteed 3 damage instead of 2, and puming the average damage of the pews from 3.5 to 3.75. Not a huge jump, but if you upcast it to level 5 with 7 pews, that’s 26.25 on average instead of 24.5 with a minimum of 21 instead of 14.

Yeah, the story setup makes it seem like your mission is actually urgent, so I also only long rest when it’s absolutely necessary.

If it’s a common item with a listed price, and you’re in a city big enough to reasonably have that item in stock, just do your shopping “offline”. Sometimes I even include a low-level Forge cleric in small towns so the party could do their sub-100gp item shopping. (In that case the cleric charges an extra 10% donation for the Forgetemple, which they will use to feed orphans, create farming equipment, etc…)

That being said, I straight-up stole Dr. T’Ana from Lower Decks as a ship surgeon.

Evil DM: the bookcase is also a mimic.

A recurring villain was introduced on the first session. She was a human pirate captain with very pale skin. One of my players immediately thought that she was a vampire.

…

So she is a dhamphir now. (Couldn’t make her a full vampire, they met her in daylight.) Not like it gave her much of a boost except for a climbing speed and spider climb anyway.

Greek is also Indo-European though.

If 1-2 players are missing then their characters receive the Talisman of Protection from DM Stupidity and I take them over in combat.

Clone. Doesn’t work post-mortem, but if they can last for ~120 days… and if they can’t, there’s always Imprisonment or True Polymorph to keep them alive until the clone body matures.

Plan 1: Raulothim’s Psychic Lance. By the time I get to take that spell, I must have had at least one ASI so I’ll just take metamagic adept for subtle spell. I just have to know the name of the target and be within 120 feet of them (240 if the second metamagic option I take is distant spell), and it’s pretty close to a guaranteed kill vs. a commoner, no murder weapon, and nothing showing that I was there.

Plan 2: Clone. Claim that it’s some revolutionary stem cell rejuvenation therapy and sell it to the super-rich. (Though I might make it fail accidentally if it’s someone like Murdoch or Kissinger. Payment in advance, no guarantees, and I’ll do it on international waters.)

This was my motivation behind allowing more players in the first place. My previous group basically fell apart because I had 3 players and when one of them canceled last minute - which was basically all sessions - there weren’t enough players for a session. When one of those players dropped out permanently, I went online to look for more players, and I figured: “Hey, if I have 6 players with the same flake ratio then I’ll have a 4-person party most of the time. Let’s do this!”

But then the fuckers started showing up consistently for every session!

And even though I’m a noob (well, not so much since I’ve been DMing for a year now, 7 months of this for this large weekly group… but I still have no idea what I’m doing) I still have to make some new applicants take a number. Which just underlines how much of a DM/player imbalance there is.

(I’m planning to split the group based on player experience level into two biweekly campaigns of 5 players, that way I might be able to allow a couple of newer players to join and still preserve what was left of my sanity.)

Just put your foot down and refuse to add more than 5 players until you’re experienced enough. (*sigh* I wish I had followed my own advice.) Sure, CR started with 7 regular players and sometimes they have even bigger parties with guest players… but that’s Matt Mercer, he knows what he’s doing, and the players are also good enough to avoid making it a nightmare for him and each other. You as a noob DM will have your hands full with herding 4-5 overly excitable cats and managing the rest of the game.

Yeah, there’s a ridiculous imbalance.

And then you start DMing, even as a beginner who has no idea what he’s doing you get 6-8 players at the table, that party size is unsupported by the balancing tools given by WotC so you wrack your brain trying to come up with challenging encounters for the whole group, burn out, stop DMing, and the imbalance worsens even further.

Magma mephit says hello.

Oh hey, that’s my dice. In game and in life.

That final element has this amazing interplay where you feel that you’re burning your humanity (or species neutral equivalent term) as you use magic, and your innate or monsterous side comes through, it was a really cool design and I’d love to see it taken even further with a subclass that also incorporated hitpoints into the flow somehow, meaning that you are a tank before you cast your spells, but literally burn out your life force as you do so, revealing the monster underneath. It could be really cool for a vampire or something else that has an interesting interplay with harm, healing and magic.

The Order of the Lycan blood hunter has a similar mechanic. Every blood hunter has abilities with a HP cost, but the lycan might also go berserk if they start the turn with less than half HP.

Whenever I have a problem, I chuck a fireball at it, and BOOM! I have a different problem.

You’re forgetting Toll the dead. Long range, WIS save, d12 if the target is missing even a single HP. (Sacred flame is crap though.)

(Minor correction, wizards have no access to heat metal. It’s only available to druids, rangers, and bards. But at level 7 wizards have access to Conjure Minor Elementals, which can summon 4 magma mephits and they each have one daily casting of heat metal.)

Yep. While the bard-sorcerer maintains that level 4 heat metal, they can also do 2d10/turn with fire bolts if they don’t want to expend additional spell slots. Also assuming that all of those hit, that’s 110 additional damage beyond the 180 from the heat metal.

Cantrips. Which also get more powerful based on character level.