I am honored to get the Monarchs Seal of Approval! I was hoping you would see at least a glimpse of the inspiration you bring to this community! Send me an email and I’ll send ya a copy for grins! Thedungeoncoach@gmail.com
My DM did this a couple months ago, it was unforgettable! The circus came to town during a downtime session. So I(my character) got dressed up, invited an NPC lady on a date, and left all my weapons save for a dagger at home. We bought savory snacks and overpriced buster sword souvenirs. Then the ring master was messing with magic above his pay grade and loosed a fire elemental that started burning the tent down. It was a surprising and intense encounter. Fortunately my companions were packing heat and my date was the local guild wizard. We rescued an acrobat, chased down the fleeing ring master, and intimidated him into refunding everyone. And the source of his magic turned out to be an intriguing plot hook. All that to say, circuses are great.
Can you make some sort of system for weakening monsters if you mess up? I find a lot of times I need to nerf on the fly but I don't just want to just get rid of health or modifiers, when players find a proper weakness it always feels so good.
If I want to change it I do some of the following 5 things: 1. The easiest is messing up its tactics like switching targets or using less powerful abilities (ghoul's bite) - it can be because of frenzy for animalistic monsters or overconfidence for inteligent monsters. It makes a big difference and ussually is not noticed by the players. 2. Make it deal minimum damage with attacks for a round (number of damage dice + modifier + a small random number). 3. Switching off abilities - the pit fiend is grounded and losses its fly speed or the dragon starts coughing blood and cannot use his breath weapon at the moment. 4. Spells like slow and conditions are also a good thing to nerf it - have it be dazed (Slow) so it only gets one attack instead of a multi-attack, has it. Affect it with an appropriate condition (shadow demon might be blinded by the light the players produced). 5. Terrain and or other people in the fight help the players - a unit of archers might fire on the dragon before dying a fiery death, a tower collapses on the Goristro forcing it to dig out from rouble for a round etc. Also, I usually try to do it in a way that is temporary - Dragon who has his eyes cut out is a piece of cake, but one who is dazed gives players an opening and builds narrative tension. Also, you can reverse it once the fight goes back towards the players. Lastly, I think of why the monster is in the fight in the first place. Not all of them want a TPK, Devil might offer players peace for a price, an evil overlord at 1/2 HP might teleport away and leave PCs to his minions because even after a TPK he might be weakened to the point that one of his lieutenants will try to overthrow him etc.
In my case I tend to give a lot of my boss monsters a re-skinned True Strike where they spend a turn doing something like laughing confidently and then since it has advantage on its next attack I give it extra dramatic description to at least make it feel more powerful and maybe even decide to max out the damage instead of taking the average or rolling. That can make it seem like the boss is still a threat but technically is less optimal than simply going for the usual multi-attack which depending on the monster also has some nasty secondary effects.
Excellent video (Dael is awesome). I've done something similar, though less organized, for my own homebrew for monsters. Glancing Blow AC is a BRILLAINT solution to issues I've had with monsters who should be easier to hit, but just sacks of HP. I am totally running with that concept. Thanks!
Loved the "build a baddie" section of the March PDF. I used it to make the typical "City Guards" or "City Watch" more effective... gave each guard a Lair Action, where they could blow their whistle one to three times (depending on toughness of the altercation) and then reinforcements would arrive 2+1d4 rounds later. The City Guard Sargeant was given a bonus action to be able to order a single City Guard to take another specific action (like attack, or subdue, or whatever). Lastly, I gave the Watch/Guard Commander at special ability that gave each of the Guards and Sargeants a +1 to AC, +1 to attack rolls and +1 to saving throws within a 30ft radius kinda like a Paladin's aura. Can't wait to try this out on my group... Thanks Dungeon Coach!
Nothing better than starting a video with "Here is a chart for DM's that makes encounters more free-form" Followed by the realization that it is only available through patreon and nothing else. At least release the stuff from patreon on DM's guild. This way people who can't afford patreon could make a single purchase. This feels like a cheap way to get money from a lot of people because they find something you created interesting, but making them subscribe to patreon in order to use it.
I create my monsters by picking a random monsters and a random spell and fusing them together. I got a lamia with cat nap and everyone in a radius kept falling asleep.
Awesome ideas! I don't think I'd ever run a giant monster without a range of armor classes (the idea of somehow even being able to miss something the size of a house seems crazy to me) and the concept of the die roll mattering more than just a binary hit or miss (the better you roll, the more damage you do) would really make epic battles a whole lot cooler. Can't wait to browse the PDF!
A collab with Dael would be great, her channel helped my GMing a lot, and I gotta say. This kind of table is one I can see be useful, typically I don't find tables useful at all, but this was smooth AF.
I am now subscribed. For those who haven't yet. For the Baddie Chart you need to subscribe to the WYRMLING not the hatchling. I got mixed up with that.
So, certain things I really like...but I'm not hip to the variability of some of them. Having to arbitrarily decide values for things on the fly is not a strong-suit of mine. I can't NOT overthink it. I need predetermined values set beforehand. . I'm thinking something like, for the Glancing Blow AC being for Large or larger creatures only, and that it's equal to their normal AC -5, for half damage as you described. Anything above their full AC, is full damage. . Part of this I suppose grows out of the natural disconnect regarding the over-abstraction of AC in 5e that removes size as a factor. I'd have instead just narrowed the size modifiers...Small/Med/large being "normal", with anything bigger getting a penalty, and anything smaller getting a bonus. Or, I guess with the way 5e works...smaller creatures would get a bonus to AC, while larger creatures would confer an attack bonus to those targeting it. They don't really do penalties. . So, I guess the above version of Glancing Blow AC would work out more like... "For Large or larger creatures, their Glancing Blow AC is 5 + applicable modifiers. Their full AC is calculated normally. Any attack that exceeds the target's Glancing Blow AC deals half-damage. Attacks that exceed their full AC deal damage normally."
Thank you for your interest! You can join Patreon at the $30 level and you get the VAULT. And after that you can downgrade to another tier or whatever 👌🏼 that’s the cheapest way to do it Other than that you’ll have to go to teespring (link in the description of the videos that have PDFs with them) Let me know if that helps! Dm me on discord too if you need
My players traveled in a wagon transporting wine, defended a stuck convoy ambushed by Goblins who then retreated, but were about to come back with "The Dreadful Snuggler". They all heard rumors about him. I gave my players empty paper sheets and let them answer 3 questions: "What is he? What attracts him? What scares him?". We made a break and I used their notes to build the baddy. "The Dreadful Snuggler" was a 4 meter tall, albino hedgehog with 4 arms, tosks, cute teddy bear button eyes, and super fluffy, prestine white fur on his belly. He was attracted by shiny things. He would try to grab the players, then merge to a ball and cuddle them, which did not damage them, but may charm them. They then would get released charmed, or be thrown away. He was quite armored, but extremly afraid of colourful liquids as it would dye his prestine white fur. One player noticed by coincedence that giving the goblins wine would break the charm. He was the tank, but used all his turn to run around the battlefield to collect a wine barrel, while the others were fighting and complaining. After several chaotic rounds of combat and half the group getting charmed and uncharmed by falling into the wagon with all the wine, the tank was in position to throw the barrel into the face of the Snuggler. He rolled a nat 20 and described beatifully how the wine spread all over the snuggler, which turned him pink and he fled in terror. It was hilarious! My players loved that the snuggler was a construct of their collaborate imagination. And I know that I would not have come up with those ideas on my own. I recommed to try out this technique.
As always great advice coach! The issue I have with building in the fly is that I try to give my players a chance to learn about a monsters abilities prior to the encounter. Or at least see some clues to what the monster is about or can do. But that doesn't always go as planned.
Great vid!👍 but I was wondering if you have any advice for running a gestalt campighn like how much stronger should I expect them to be able to take out a dragon by like level 6 like how strong are they going to be
Very much like the charts Five Torches Deep and Tome of Adventure Design have. My question, though, is what about stating monsters out on the fly? Obviously this doesn't apply to existing monsters, but humanoids especially are difficult because they can vary so much. One thing that drives me nuts about DnD is all the stats for monsters. I really feel they should be much simpler. I don't care about how much charisma most things have.
I LOVE Dael!!! I think however my favorite videos that she does are the Mythology stories!!! I love stuff like that, it's nice to steal... I mean, get inspired by ;)
Those are great! I need to make something link this for My star wars game, to change up the fights for the player. Also include the Destiny Pool that they use in that game system. Thanks Coach! I will also go check out Deal. It great to know who inspires you.
YESSS! Yes, this is so COOOOL!
I am honored to get the Monarchs Seal of Approval! I was hoping you would see at least a glimpse of the inspiration you bring to this community!
Send me an email and I’ll send ya a copy for grins!
Thedungeoncoach@gmail.com
Monarch's Factory is great. I'm a fan of her Fairy Daels series as well as her D&D content.
I haven’t seen Fairy Dales! I’m gonna check that out now!
OMG I want to play in that circus encounter. Or run it. I NEED A CIRCUS ENCOUNTER.
I’ve done one... and can’t wait for the next one! Haha 😂
Have you heard about Heckna? It's a campaign setting from Hit Point Press that's basically a nightmare circus. It kickstarted some months ago.
@@zreyon I saw that yea! I’ll have to see what the final product looks like!!
@@zreyon I was just trying to remember that name . It looks very cool
My DM did this a couple months ago, it was unforgettable! The circus came to town during a downtime session. So I(my character) got dressed up, invited an NPC lady on a date, and left all my weapons save for a dagger at home. We bought savory snacks and overpriced buster sword souvenirs. Then the ring master was messing with magic above his pay grade and loosed a fire elemental that started burning the tent down. It was a surprising and intense encounter. Fortunately my companions were packing heat and my date was the local guild wizard. We rescued an acrobat, chased down the fleeing ring master, and intimidated him into refunding everyone. And the source of his magic turned out to be an intriguing plot hook. All that to say, circuses are great.
Can you make some sort of system for weakening monsters if you mess up? I find a lot of times I need to nerf on the fly but I don't just want to just get rid of health or modifiers, when players find a proper weakness it always feels so good.
If I want to change it I do some of the following 5 things:
1. The easiest is messing up its tactics like switching targets or using less powerful abilities (ghoul's bite) - it can be because of frenzy for animalistic monsters or overconfidence for inteligent monsters. It makes a big difference and ussually is not noticed by the players.
2. Make it deal minimum damage with attacks for a round (number of damage dice + modifier + a small random number).
3. Switching off abilities - the pit fiend is grounded and losses its fly speed or the dragon starts coughing blood and cannot use his breath weapon at the moment.
4. Spells like slow and conditions are also a good thing to nerf it - have it be dazed (Slow) so it only gets one attack instead of a multi-attack, has it. Affect it with an appropriate condition (shadow demon might be blinded by the light the players produced).
5. Terrain and or other people in the fight help the players - a unit of archers might fire on the dragon before dying a fiery death, a tower collapses on the Goristro forcing it to dig out from rouble for a round etc.
Also, I usually try to do it in a way that is temporary - Dragon who has his eyes cut out is a piece of cake, but one who is dazed gives players an opening and builds narrative tension. Also, you can reverse it once the fight goes back towards the players.
Lastly, I think of why the monster is in the fight in the first place. Not all of them want a TPK, Devil might offer players peace for a price, an evil overlord at 1/2 HP might teleport away and leave PCs to his minions because even after a TPK he might be weakened to the point that one of his lieutenants will try to overthrow him etc.
That is a great idea for a video!! I’ll add it to the list!
@@MarvelOfRain DUDE!!! Epic list here and thank you so much for helping another memeber of this awesome community! Your an all star bro!
@@MarvelOfRain Did not expect this. Thank you so much for your great advice!
In my case I tend to give a lot of my boss monsters a re-skinned True Strike where they spend a turn doing something like laughing confidently and then since it has advantage on its next attack I give it extra dramatic description to at least make it feel more powerful and maybe even decide to max out the damage instead of taking the average or rolling.
That can make it seem like the boss is still a threat but technically is less optimal than simply going for the usual multi-attack which depending on the monster also has some nasty secondary effects.
Excellent video (Dael is awesome). I've done something similar, though less organized, for my own homebrew for monsters. Glancing Blow AC is a BRILLAINT solution to issues I've had with monsters who should be easier to hit, but just sacks of HP. I am totally running with that concept. Thanks!
It’s one of my favorite go tos for sure!! Thanks for that!
Loved the "build a baddie" section of the March PDF. I used it to make the typical "City Guards" or "City Watch" more effective... gave each guard a Lair Action, where they could blow their whistle one to three times (depending on toughness of the altercation) and then reinforcements would arrive 2+1d4 rounds later. The City Guard Sargeant was given a bonus action to be able to order a single City Guard to take another specific action (like attack, or subdue, or whatever). Lastly, I gave the Watch/Guard Commander at special ability that gave each of the Guards and Sargeants a +1 to AC, +1 to attack rolls and +1 to saving throws within a 30ft radius kinda like a Paladin's aura. Can't wait to try this out on my group... Thanks Dungeon Coach!
Ooooooo I love to hear it!! Yea! That’s exactly what I would do!
Nothing better than starting a video with "Here is a chart for DM's that makes encounters more free-form"
Followed by the realization that it is only available through patreon and nothing else.
At least release the stuff from patreon on DM's guild. This way people who can't afford patreon could make a single purchase. This feels like a cheap way to get money from a lot of people because they find something you created interesting, but making them subscribe to patreon in order to use it.
That's funny, I was just thinking the other day that Dael and DC are probably my two favourite D&D youtubers.
Collab then??? Haha the dream!
This idea is gonna be so useful, thank you! Time to make my own custom table :3
I’ve made my own homebrew monsters by taking a stat block and adding class abilities to it (such as Rogue features for a Lizardfolk hunter)
@@umbra4729 yes yes and yes I steal class abilities SO much too!
Awesome! Take this as inspiration and do your thing bro! Hell yea!
I gave the like just for mentioning Dael. Now to watch the video.
Hahaha she is a bad ass! I 100% agree! Love that you had to get that out before watching the vid! 💜
I create my monsters by picking a random monsters and a random spell and fusing them together. I got a lamia with cat nap and everyone in a radius kept falling asleep.
From one Bro to another, that's a cute thumbnail man.
This video was awesome Coach. I love the fact that you kept it generic so now I can use it for pretty much any TTRPG
Awesome ideas! I don't think I'd ever run a giant monster without a range of armor classes (the idea of somehow even being able to miss something the size of a house seems crazy to me) and the concept of the die roll mattering more than just a binary hit or miss (the better you roll, the more damage you do) would really make epic battles a whole lot cooler.
Can't wait to browse the PDF!
A collab with Dael would be great, her channel helped my GMing a lot, and I gotta say. This kind of table is one I can see be useful, typically I don't find tables useful at all, but this was smooth AF.
Thanks for that! I also love it because you can use it before or during the game 👍🏼
You should definitely try for a colab with Dael. I've watched her for advice for years now.
I am now subscribed. For those who haven't yet. For the Baddie Chart you need to subscribe to the WYRMLING not the hatchling. I got mixed up with that.
So, certain things I really like...but I'm not hip to the variability of some of them. Having to arbitrarily decide values for things on the fly is not a strong-suit of mine. I can't NOT overthink it. I need predetermined values set beforehand.
.
I'm thinking something like, for the Glancing Blow AC being for Large or larger creatures only, and that it's equal to their normal AC -5, for half damage as you described. Anything above their full AC, is full damage.
.
Part of this I suppose grows out of the natural disconnect regarding the over-abstraction of AC in 5e that removes size as a factor. I'd have instead just narrowed the size modifiers...Small/Med/large being "normal", with anything bigger getting a penalty, and anything smaller getting a bonus. Or, I guess with the way 5e works...smaller creatures would get a bonus to AC, while larger creatures would confer an attack bonus to those targeting it. They don't really do penalties.
.
So, I guess the above version of Glancing Blow AC would work out more like...
"For Large or larger creatures, their Glancing Blow AC is 5 + applicable modifiers. Their full AC is calculated normally. Any attack that exceeds the target's Glancing Blow AC deals half-damage. Attacks that exceed their full AC deal damage normally."
How do I access "the vault"? I really want to buy your stuff but I can't seem to find anything but Patreon!
Thank you for your interest!
You can join Patreon at the $30 level and you get the VAULT. And after that you can downgrade to another tier or whatever 👌🏼 that’s the cheapest way to do it
Other than that you’ll have to go to teespring (link in the description of the videos that have PDFs with them)
Let me know if that helps! Dm me on discord too if you need
@@TheDungeonCoach Thank you!
My players traveled in a wagon transporting wine, defended a stuck convoy ambushed by Goblins who then retreated, but were about to come back with "The Dreadful Snuggler". They all heard rumors about him. I gave my players empty paper sheets and let them answer 3 questions: "What is he? What attracts him? What scares him?". We made a break and I used their notes to build the baddy.
"The Dreadful Snuggler" was a 4 meter tall, albino hedgehog with 4 arms, tosks, cute teddy bear button eyes, and super fluffy, prestine white fur on his belly. He was attracted by shiny things. He would try to grab the players, then merge to a ball and cuddle them, which did not damage them, but may charm them. They then would get released charmed, or be thrown away. He was quite armored, but extremly afraid of colourful liquids as it would dye his prestine white fur. One player noticed by coincedence that giving the goblins wine would break the charm. He was the tank, but used all his turn to run around the battlefield to collect a wine barrel, while the others were fighting and complaining. After several chaotic rounds of combat and half the group getting charmed and uncharmed by falling into the wagon with all the wine, the tank was in position to throw the barrel into the face of the Snuggler. He rolled a nat 20 and described beatifully how the wine spread all over the snuggler, which turned him pink and he fled in terror.
It was hilarious! My players loved that the snuggler was a construct of their collaborate imagination. And I know that I would not have come up with those ideas on my own. I recommed to try out this technique.
As always great advice coach!
The issue I have with building in the fly is that I try to give my players a chance to learn about a monsters abilities prior to the encounter. Or at least see some clues to what the monster is about or can do. But that doesn't always go as planned.
You can always give them hints during the fight. But I get what you mean, I love creating bosses between sessions and make story hooks for them.
@@Piqipeg I do the same! With my descriptions I hint at certain things that they could maybe take advantage of! I agree!
Great vid!👍 but I was wondering if you have any advice for running a gestalt campighn like how much stronger should I expect them to be able to take out a dragon by like level 6 like how strong are they going to be
Awesome Video! Really Appreciate the ideas!
Could you do another video on how to set health and AC of monsters?
Very much like the charts Five Torches Deep and Tome of Adventure Design have. My question, though, is what about stating monsters out on the fly? Obviously this doesn't apply to existing monsters, but humanoids especially are difficult because they can vary so much.
One thing that drives me nuts about DnD is all the stats for monsters. I really feel they should be much simpler. I don't care about how much charisma most things have.
I know right! I have a video coming out soon on that too!!
I LOVE Dael!!! I think however my favorite videos that she does are the Mythology stories!!! I love stuff like that, it's nice to steal... I mean, get inspired by ;)
Hahaha hey call it inspiration if you want but steal away man 👍🏼💜
I’m with ya
Yup. Please do the “On the fly” video
Very cool.
Those are great! I need to make something link this for My star wars game, to change up the fights for the player. Also include the Destiny Pool that they use in that game system. Thanks Coach! I will also go check out Deal. It great to know who inspires you.
Ooooo that’s so awesome that your doing this for Star Wars! YES!! 💜
Always good, useful ideas from you! Thank you!
Thanks Jon! Thanks for being around here on the channel for so long!
Wow, that chart looks amazing, I'll get it and add my own ideas to it! I'll share it in the Discord if I ever write it in a beautiful PDF
Man, it feels good to be a Patron. Great video and great PDF! This is going to make my combats so much easier.
Got here from Dael's reblog on the socials. Subbed and dinged the bell.
Funny that this came out the day after I had to improv a boss monster for a modified Death House.
Awwwww I just missed ya then!
That's fine! It'll still be useful for making things to lurk in the mists of Barovia.
hi