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Flight is not the end all be all. It has a number of disadvantage. A flying creature can not easily benefit from cover or stealth. Flying players can stray too far from their party and get over whelmed. Flying creatures are at the mercy of the weather. Strong winds and harsh rain or snow can count as difficult terrain for flyers. Flyers are at the mercy of ranged attackers. Most creatures can be given a ranged attack either through weapons or spells. Its not uncommon for bandits to have slings, short bows and crossbows. Weapons with the thrown property are also effective. Larger creatures can hurl rocks. If it does not make sense for it to have a ranged attack then use cover and stealth. Enemies can take advantage of the same things players can. Flight usually has some kind of restriction. Either in armor type or number of uses. A DM should always look for subtle ways to burn through a parties resources. Scenarios can be created to eat through limited uses for flight. As for armor type restrictions, as per the rules of flight a character that has their speed reduced to zero, can't move or is knocked prone falls. I believe its as a rate of 10ft a turn, but I might be wrong about that. My point is fall damage exists at a rate of 1d6 per ten feet for a max of 20d6. Magic exists. Earth bind is a second level spell that is tailor made to stop flying creatures. Tasha's hideous laughter can be a death sentence for low level flyers. Same with hold person, sleep, web and levitate. Those are only first and second level spells. Spells like fire ball, bestow curse, lightning bolt, sleet storm, ice storm, banishment, polymorph, resilient sphere, I could go on. There are a large number of spells that can either cripple of out right kill flying targets. Flight is common place in dnd and should only take some minor considerations to counter. Weather, terrain and local wild life are good ways to hinder flyers. If your party starts to abuse their flight then you can always give them a reason to walk. Or start handing out flight to the enemy. If one of your players is a flying race then make that race a more prominent fixture in that part of the world. Having your campaign turn into an air war might but fun.

Great vid! You mentioned Sly Flourish's monsters and 'glass canon' design - is that an article or vid Mike has posted somewhere and goes into that approach to monsters in more detail? Or was his reference to it just meaning the classic glass canon monster, high damage, low AC etc.?

I play a cowardly bard, she never really wants to fight but will fight with a tenacity unseen to protect her friends

It's really cool to hear from another GM that runs their games / encounters similar to the way that I do them! It's fun to have a skeleton to improvise off of like that during the heat of the battle to keep them guessing and reward creative thinking more dynamically. Those book recs sounded interesting. I bet there's lots of good inspiration in there for future events. Thanks!

Yes you’ll learn as you DM more and you’ll get better.

Yes let them fly. There are ways to deal with it if you want

The Valley Girl's Guide to GMing: Vibes Edition

Take the OSR approach. Make the foes believable and don't customize the challenge level to the player characters. Get the players to learn to fight dirty. If a foe is particularly powerful, foreshadow that. A believable world is one that doesn't care about what level the players are.

My player's favorite combat from the last sessions was an improvised bar fight were I just made up stats on the fly, didn't even define a number of enemies or put any minis. The combat ended when they knocked out 6 people. They had a blast with crazier and crazier descriptions. Granted making stats on the fly is a lot easier on Warhammer fantasy than DnD.

When making combat, i usually take the stat block as a reference for what the creatures can do in terms of powers and actions, but throw away most of the numbers. Then, i use a roll expectation of "6-9-11" for players and a "9-12-15" for monsters. For players, i want them to roll 6+ for easy, 9+ for average and 11+ for hard. For monsters, i want them to roll 9+ for easy, 12+ for average and 15+ for hard. Then i take my players stats to create the status block based on the rolls i want. If the tank has 22 AC, minions should have a hard time hitting him. So i give my minions +7 to hit (22 - 15). The damage dealer has +7 to hit? So he should hit easyly the minions. So minions AC should be 13 (6 + 7). Now, the BBEG (for the same tank and DPS) would be hard to hit and good hitting, so i would give him +13 to hit (22 - 9) and a AC of 18 (11 + 7). This usually balances things A LOT.

You mentioned sly flourish i think you might like lazy dms forge of foes

Yes! Combat encounters are more art than science.

You said "Baroness in her Mansion" What are you taking about my wife for? 😂

5/5 content 1/5 music (not being a hater, trying to be helpful 😅)

Hell yeah fake combat 🔥🔥🔥

I also just go by vibes, i just pick whatever looks cool to me from the books and then yeet it in. Sometimes i just make up a whole monster from scratch right then and there. I've premade some monsters and I generally just go with my gut for stuff like damage and HP, and/or adjust an existing statblock to make it work for the level of players i have. I'm a big believer in "encounter design doesn't end when you roll initiative", your job as a DM is to curate the experience. If the enemy dies but it was too boring, i have them get back up and have a last hurrah with different abilities that are very thematic until someone knocks them out after a hit or two.

I loved the video, do you roll behind a screen? Do you have any tips for DMs who roll in front of the players?

I will admit I don't technically plan combat per se. I just expect my PCs to fight whatever comes up. I wouldn't call them murder hobos but if they come up against what could be considered an enemy they are normally apt to fight. Maybe they're just angry because they also got that weird fork.

I think this made me reconsider how im gonna try to do this next encounter im planning

Great advice! For a second I thought you were talking about FAKE fake combat, like not giving the enemy HP and just letting players hit it until you decide it's been long enough kinda combat lol.

Combat should give a vibe, not be a chore. My favourite vibe of combat is all or nothing, weighty and punchy combat, where one round can leave everyone bloodied and gasping for breath.

Good stuff sister soldier :) I'm a big improvised combat enthusiast as well. After a while it's kinda swirling attacks hazards and complications together in n initiative-arranged slurry of "what do u do now?"

I'd never considered the mental aspect of the DEX stat, I always thought of the sneaky side of DEX as the control you have of the little muscles you need to move slowly and quietly. But it makes total sense that sneaking would require both DEX and WIS, to know how loud you're being, or where to hide.

This is some great advice, though I'd recommend it only for more experienced gamemasters. It's much easier to tell when a novice is adjusting things on the fly, or never looked up the stats of a given type of creature before throwing it into an adventure. Elder dragons that breath for 20 damage, goblins that regularly tank two hits before going down are going to raise some flags for certain players and may make a lot of the combats feel arbitrary. Now an experienced GM knows kinda how things are supposed to play out, and can easily make stats they pulled from their posterior seem realistic, but someone who's only played a couple games probably won't be able to pull that off. Though this is definitely great advice though for those gamemasters that have been running for 10 years and still won't run a combat until they've got a full stat block that includes a creatures knowledge history skill check,

I very much like the mathematical part of combat design, but I'm glad there are multiple ways to do things are you're enjoying your way.

Ok I was doing this and feeling bad about it… until NOW!!!

These are great tips especially combining stats. I wish I got to play d&d more lol being a hockey player d&d isnt high in popularity among most people I know.

I'm in a similar boat with encounter design. As a GM, I want to find out what happens just as much as the players do, so encounters are really just a pacing mechanism. I don't even consider whether or not the players could "win" the fight, so if the narrative or pacing requires they encounter opposition far above their weight-class, then I just let'er rip. Unbalanced encounters are far more interesting, and helps newbie players learn there are alternatives to, "I slice/shoot/stab <enemy>". Also, I always roll in the open so the players know their decisions matter.

The fear induced by a glass cannon is a good point. As both a player and a DM there’s much more terror in a combat that lasts one round and has the DM say “he does 30 points of damage” than a combat that lasts ten rounds of 3 points damage. The end result is the same but one feels like a slog through a war of attrition while the other will make everyone at the table sit up in shock

I love your kuo-toa ideas! There's so much potential with those silly guys for some wild monster horror + existential horror combinations.

I'm also very vibes based on encounter/dungeon design. I don't change AC/HP and stuff mid-combat though! Retreat is always an option. Also, reaction rolls and morale do wonders for making encounters fun and surprising (for me, too)! Enjoyed hearing how you run things

I don't balance encounters almost at all, but I also don't fudge any numbers or dice rolls. I feel like it takes some of the magic out of the game if I really am directing every event that happens, instead of the more collaborative experience the uncertainty of the dice enables.

Another awesome vid, definitely something people should watch if they're feeling stressed about specifically 5e combat encounter planning. We gave up on CR pretty immediately which definitely seems the norm, especially since I like to homebrew basically everything. The only amount of work I do ahead of a game is periodically checking how much HP my players have on average, and how much damage they can put out in a round on average. Once I wanna plan a proper encounter I add up the total of all the players average damage per round then multiply that by how many rounds I want combat to last, that becomes my HP pool that I divide out to all (or just one) of the enemies. For attacks, I flip it around, how many rounds do I want one or two PCs to last before going down, dividing their hp up and setting the damage of an attack to average out to whatever that may be. Then I move these numbers up or down from those baselines and add special abilities, resistances, and weaknesses according to how hard or easy I want it to be (or just the vibes!).

I've always run combat like this... And felt super guilty about it. I don't want do deadly combat, or if I do I make an avenue of escape clear. I tinker with lair actions, ignore legendary, raise or lower hp and ac, have mobs 'forget' certain attacks. I'm a special combo of lazy and I really love my player's pc's. I want them to know they can die, but I do my best to give them the tools of survival. Because heroes survive. Usually.

This is perfect timing for me! Im a new DM. Ive been panicking over encounter design and setting up virtual tabletop stuff (so tedious) for my campaigns. this suggested mindset is a relief. I have been reading through the free booklet for flee mortals! And Its been enlightening, I'm hoping to get the full book ASAP

LOVE this! Despite being a big defender of RAW combat encounter design in 5e, I've been a vibes combat DM for most of my time behind the screen. I've got some helpful text references for folks who want to do this but don't want to feel it out from scratch each time; The "Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating" in chapter 9 of the 2014 DMG has a great table that gives suggested AC, HP, Saves, Attack bonus, and damage by CR which is really useful for building monsters on the fly. The "Damage Severity and Level" table in the improvising damage section of chapter 8 of the 2014 DMG breaks down dice expressions of damage by level range and whether you want the damage to be a setback, dangerous, or deadly, which is incredibly useful for improvising monster damage. Then the "Monster Features" table in step 20 of building a monster in chapter 9 of the 2014 DMG lists out a bunch of different monster abilities and which monsters have them, which is super useful for gleaning inspiration for giving monsters cool abilities. If you put these 3 tables on your DM screen, you'll never be caught out again when you're PCs start a fight you weren't expecting or you need to throw a monster at them at the last second.

Yup, always blows me away how stressed people make themselves about "perfectly balanced encounters." Ballparking is the only way to go.

I love this! I don't balance combat either. This video is refreshing. I too "design" my combat like this. Great vid.

Have you ever tried running combat like this? What other combat tricks do you have to help cut down on prep time?

My High Seas campaign I run has an Air Genasi PC that I've given a feature reward to (whole separate topic). He can cast Fly 1/day for free. Because it is limited, it definitely allows him to feel like the character fantasy is validated and have awesome moments, but it is not overbearing for every encounter's balance. I'm definitely a proponent of limited flight. Always-on flight from level 1 is something that can feel intrusive. As you've pointed out; there are ways to deal with it, but the problem many people have is that over half of DnD enemies are melee-only which means either the flying PC dominates the majority of possible encounters, or you have to edit enemies (which can feel targeted if you're not an expert at balancing) or go digging through options to find options that can take on the flying Warlock raining down eldritch blasts.