Tabletop games

As the title says. In session 0 there were quite a few spells that the DM outlawed, such as Silvery Barbs, Mage Armor, Create Undead, Forcecage, Clone, etc. It felt like a little much, but he claimed that they were game breaking and unbalanced, so we decided that it was fine as long as it was consistent. Just to clarify, he said that in this realm those spells don't even exist.

Now, nearly 15 sessions in, we met a villain, and he was able to use Silvery Barbs, and Forcecage, which he used to trap our barbarian and paladin. We got pretty annoyed by this, and I addressed it instantly, but the DM said I was overreacting and that "he's powerful so he found a way to do it". I gave up on the argument, and play continued.

However, it happened again next session, and this time a different villain that we were beating used Plane Shift (which was also banned) to escape from us. We all got pretty mad, but again we didn't press it too hard and the session continued. Things like this kept happening, but none of us brought up anything again for the rest of the session

Now, my main problem with this is not that the spells are banned, but that multiple NPCs are able to use the spells that supposedly do not even exist in this realm.

So the question is, are we just overreacting, and should we just leave it? Or should this be addressed more seriously?

UPDATE: I just sent a direct message to the DM confronting him about the whole business, and his response was that he didn't want to ruin the vibe in the middle of the session, which was why he was waving it away. So he is telling me now (in a private message) that he does it because there is no other way for him to "win", unless he makes NPCs super overpowered, which he said he doesn't like doing. So instead, he just takes away player capability. Of course, he said he wants me to shut up about the whole thing, relax, and just play because I will ruin his campaign for him otherwise.

I am officially out of that campaign.

TLDR: I keep seeing players who only play as the weird exotic races and will just leave a game or complain endlessly if they have to play human or human adjacent and i don’t get it.

I’m running a game for friends of a friend who are all brand new to dnd. I decided to keep character creation simple and not overwhelm them that I would limit the options presented to the PHB races so I’m not dropping 50+ (I think that’s the right number. Feels like it sometimes) on their heads at once. As well as letting them focus on how the attack action works rather than trying to figure out the logistics of centaurs.

My friend who who set this game up for me to run has been a vet for 5ish years, and when I mentioned that I wanted to do PHB only he got very annoyed and did a “I guess I can maybe make an interesting character” after trying to convince me to allow everything.

I also see posts and comments about people complaining when the dm doesn’t allow lion people or the humble wood folks. A while ago I posted an idea for an all human oneshot and a bunch of comments were along the lines of “I’d rather just not play”.

Idk if this is just me but my favorite campaigns to play and run were the ones that had all human adjacent characters (elves, dwarves, etc).

Im sure there’s also lots of other factors that went into making those games so great but I do think the fact that the dm didn’t have to keep thinking about how the world reacts to a giant lizard person eating people did help.

This isn’t a post telling people not to play exotic races or anything. Ive had fun with some of them myself. But I feel like people use them to make up for not having an interesting character or wanting to be special in some way.

You can have a super cool and interesting human fighter with a lot of depth and creativity, and a crazy generic and boring character that has no defining characteristics beyond they sometimes shift into a half dog man.

I guess I didn’t really have a point to this post more just wanted to vent some thoughts and feelings I have had brewing in the back of my brain for a while.

Update: Wow. I really didn’t expect this to blow up like it did. I made this post while waiting in line at the vet worrying about my cat and reading everyone’s comments helped take my mind off of it.

Also if anyone is wondering the cat is fine. Just a hypochondriac.

More of a vent post.

I'm playing in a campaign with 3 other players. They're all great, really good roleplay, love the characters. Our DM has put a bunch of effort into the campaign, and all-in-all, I'm enjoying it. The campaign is mostly roleplay and intrigue, and combat is few and far between; we'll have a deadly combat encounter every 4 or 5 sessions. It's unorthadox, but its really enjoyable. We take the game at our own pace.

I am, however, increasingly frustrated by one of the players at my table. His RP is excellent, real acting stuff, but he always complains when he has to engage with the system at all. He dislikes combat, to the point where last session he showed up late so that he didn't have to get involved with the combat encounter. Additionally, he has made in-character decisions with the express purpose of avoiding having to do combat. Despite playing a spellcaster, I can count on one hand the number of times he has used a spell outside of combat. We're level 8.

Our DM has asked us once or twice before "do you want to level up this session or next" and he always says next session. He always complains when we level up because he doesn't want to change his sheet. Despite the fact that we are 27 sessions into our third campaign, I'm still having to help him level up his sheet.

Anyone experienced anything like this?