Awesome video Bob! Last session I ran, the heroes were assigned to a battalion of soldiers that they had to command and use to protect themselves from a sea of chump mobs so they could hunt down and chase down the enemy army generals. Convenient ticking time bomb because they were slowly running out of bodies to protect themselves with, and a nice risk reward with commanding the soldiers to perform riskier assistance
Hello new viewer here. I was wondering if you have ever done a video about capturing the nuance and Intricate subtlety of Martial Arts/pugilism in combat? I.e trapping, slipping(dodging), countering, disarms, continuous strategic and precise hits, feints(goading) and the like. What system would you recommend for this?
Timers: it doesn't have to be represented by dice. Candles work well as a timer for a Halloween oneshot. The roleplaying game Ten Candles even uses it to full effect by having 10 candles (or tea lights) lit at the start of the session, then have them go out one by one as the horrors in the dark lurk ever closer. Timers are a tool of pacing for the players, not for the characters! So feel free to experiment with real world objects to represent each timer.
@@bobhill-ol7wp Clocks do indeed work as a generic countdown timer. They have many advantages, if not the greatest one being that they are easy to set up on the spot. Necessary, if you must set up a clock as part of a consequence on an Action roll. But they do miss out on being thematic. In the most basic sense, if you play the chidren's game Hangman, the stick figure being revealed hanging from a rope as drawn line by line is a kind of countdown clock. But even drawing the stick figure is way more thematic than filling in a pizza pie with 8 or 9 slices. It's that theming that you can bring to tabletop roleplay too, without returning to Blades in the Dark clocks. Especially so if you can prepare them before the game. Candles for a horror campaign; a Jenga tower for a Dread campaign; an empty glass filling with water to represent a trap room with rising water; three turned-off lamps lighting up one by one in an electric circuit representing a hacker breaking into your computer and becoming ever closer. All clocks. And all thematic.
Having just finished BG3, verticality and environmental interactions would elevate any fight to the next level. A few points of high ground, covers, places where you might fall, destructible environment all give the fight a completely different feel. It is so much more satisfying to win an encounter by intelligently positioning yourself and creating chokepoints and giving yourself advantages instead of out damaging the enemy
My current party has 4 small races and 3 medium races, i suggested to my DM to have a combat with a bunch of low walls that block the small characters vision (granting total cover) while not blocking the medium characters vision (probably granting half cover). And i am a halfling so in the camp that can't see. Lots of ways to achieve it, but in my head I'm picturing a maze of low walls and probably mostly ranged enemies. Another idea i have is for a combat in a sort of theatre like the Roman Colosseum where some control room is responsible for a bunch if special effects that would count as lair actions or traps. (Or minion actions, and the players could theoretically break into the control room and trigger the same actions, DM decides if the control panel is labeled, and in what language) Feel free to steal these ideas, combat in a featureless plane is boring, the bare minimum is adding full walls to restrict movement/positioning.
That's definitely my favorite part of early game fights. There is so much to work with for tactics and environment. Late game however is just finding the most busted build who can either hit the hardest or get the most shots in one turn
@@dallinadams9422 I mean end game of course you can be op, it's a fun power fantasy. but you can also restrict yourself and force creative methods of play.
Timer dice definitely amped up the drama in a werewolf encounter. I had the werewolf howl, and threw down a d4 (number of rounds before a pack of wolves answered the call). They didn't know what it meant, and when it ticked down, they freaked out.
I've done something similar to ramp up the excitement. Maybe at the beginning of an encounter, or one already in motion, or even at a point that isn't really an encounter. My players both love and fear my"blind timer". I just - without context - roll a die in the middle of the table, then put on my "significant" face. Or maybe say something like "Won't be long now..." The effect is almost cinematic, as the number showing gets lower the players start talking faster, looking around, can't sit still. When I scoop the die up they sometimes gasp!
Wow. This was one of the very best videos I have ever watched on your channel. Yes, more ideas like this would be MORE than welcome. I am even upping my patreon to the builder level just so I can download this interesting one shot. Thanks, Bob!!!
3:14 regarding the disengage and being chased down by monsters thing: Why don't we just say if you use the disengage action, you get 1.5 times your speed to retreat. So if you have the usual 30, you can disengage and run away for 45 feet. Then most monsters (who also have 30 speed) can't catch up to you, unless they use the dash action. At the same time, dash is still more useful if you just want to cover as much distance as possible; and the Rogue and Monk's special abilities are also still stronger and more useful. I think I'll try using that with my group.
I was thinking of making disengage something you could do as a bonus action, then you could use your action to dash if you were looking to get away. That way, if anyone wanted to keep up, they'd have to use their action to dash as well. I think that might make it too easy to get away though, so I like your idea.
@@shadenone Thanks. Yeah I also thought about making it a Bonus Action first. But I like Rogues and Bards, so I wouldn't want to diminish the value of their special abilities.
Great video, Bob! In our last meeting, one of our players detonated an airship above the town and the rest of the session was spent putting out radioactive fires all over the town. Then having a lively, philosophical discussion about 'What is a military target?' and 'What constitutes a war crime in this world?'
When you said, "they have to stay in one place, king of the hill style," I thought you were talking about the show, and thought the characters would have to stay in Arlen, Texas
That audio transition from phone to Rode mic was so pleasing to my earbuds. Thank you, Bob. And I'm definitely taking the Koala KHAN idea for the climax of my campaign.
A combat I'd like to do one day that we see all the time in games and movies is one set in the middle of hazardous weather, set to a timer. When the timer hits 0, everyone not in cover takes damage/gets knocked down/gets blinded/etc, and then the timer resets. Could be a fun scenario as PCs and enemies struggle to stay in shelter while trying to push each other out of it as the timer ticks down. Could also be combined with a chase or some other objective for a very hectic encounter. Maybe even make the timer hidden to the players to really ramp up the tension.
I learned this from other system - you can make timer somewhat random. You start with some dice let's say d10 and you roll it each round or each turn. When you roll 2 or 1 you take dice lower which is d8 and you roll that and again if you roll 1 or 2 you use d6 and then on 1 or 2 the count down finished. This is actually how you track your supplies in Forbidden Lands but I find this mechanics interesting
@@realdragon For some other mechanics you could also simply roll some die every round and when it hits let's say 1, something happens. Maybe lightning strikes in a storm or something.
One of the most memorable battles in Shining Force (a tactical RPG on Genesis) involved crossing a bridge with a magical laser weapon aimed down it. The laser loudly announced a 4 round warmup sequence, and then everyone on the bridge, friend or foe, got blasted. That was a videogame, but turn-based so the mechanic would work beautifully with timer dice.
Yeah I like that teleport trick too. I think in R20, I would stack maps in the map layer and then move them back, so they would cycle. I think that would keep all the other layers intact. Maybe make a "medium" statue that needed to be grappled and dragged. Maybe the reward would be this controllable teleport device to travel to distant lands....
Every combat, I put a gimmick, be it have dangerous terrain, difficult terrain, cover, a target to rescue, a challenge, a magguffin to get, have the fight be perticullarly hard or easy, have reinforcements etc. Anything more than HP sacs usually does it, and more than one gimmick usually make it too convoluted.
I play my own TTRPG, but yeah a Magguffin is a very strong idea for story telling, you can have a way stronger opponent than what the party could take on and have the Staff of the Chosen or what ever shoot desintegration rays and make impassable force walls using the caster arcana check as attack rolls and completely change in an instant a combat. You can also have an invulnerable golem as an ennemy that looses his invulnerable state when the PCs get the amulet of Whatshisface thats skinking in poisonous waters. Many possibles scenarios revolving around ''get the thing that only works for this encounter'' @@Dice_Dish
Terrain and lair action are usually just action economy related, they don't add anything by themselves except math, terrains are cool when they are actually cool (ex: vestiges related to the lore of the campain, a combat taking place in a tavern dear to the player so they don't wanna break it appart) if you just have space that counts as double square...well the PC get there or they don't, you might as well have started them twice as far and it would have gotten the same place. Lair actions are the same, it's just extra actions in the end, if it's lame actions (an extra bolt of fire or what ever) it's weak, if it's the dragon grabing the PCs as an action and if they don't break free they are swallowed as a lair action, it's kinda cool, but the lair action has little to do with it, an action with a DC could have done pretty much the same. An action twice as powerful is pretty much the same as an action and a lair action half as powerful. For my par I use the ''event'' turn in the initiative at the end, and this is where I include cool stuff that isn't usually in the rules, characters change places in the temple of winds du to strong gusts, character make a dex save or fall down the frozen hills and have to climb back up, characters make a con saving throw or take fire damage near the volcano. It enlightned what makes the encounter special at a specific time, it's easier to envision. Sometimes I put big bad attacks there but that's when there is nothing else I can think off and the action econonomy is too much in favor of the PCs (exemple a Boss with big HP but little damage, if you don't think minions or dangerous environnement fits there, he kinda have to act twice) Sorry for the wall of text :P@@Dice_Dish
One of the best fights I’ve had in dnd was taking down a cannibalism cult in the city sewers. What made the combat great was that we had alternate objectives (save the hostages) but it got better when the warlock’s lightning bolt started a massive fire. Now we needed to spend actions to put out squares of fire, race against time to save the civilians before the fire blocked the door to their cages, AND deal with the cultists. The fire added so much fun to the fight because it changed the terrain, but the players could affect it by spending actions. Years later, my group still talks about that low level fight.
Ran a magic fruit tree scenario. The fruit gives consumers buffs. Based on how they roll for con save aand a d6. We ran it as a skill challenge arena. Had a support runner a collector and a distraction. A faction the party knew wanted the fruits showed up part way through the encounter pcs realized and booked it with what they managed to get. They almost didnt get away but managed a sneaky trick and slinked off
As a GM, I play the monster with a bit more of agency and that really change the battle a lot. First, use the flanking mechanics from the DM guides. It makes movement and position of the monsters far more important. While PCs have many ways to get advantage, the same is not true about monsters and that change the game a lot once they can flank. Second, play the monsters as if they know what they are doing with a desire to survive. Have them retreat when at half hit point. Let them target the spellcasters and the high damage rogues instead of attacking the tank. Let them prepare ambushes such as retreating and baiting the party in a flanking maneuvers. Take advantage of the terrain such as having range attackers seek covers. Have them surround and focus on one targets like the players would, taking advantage of flanking and forcing that characters to retreat or likely die. Third, creates encounter with multiple monsters rather then a big one. Big monsters are poorly balance and makes the points above far far less interesting. With all those tricks, combat become far more interesting without the needs to add something specials to all the fights.
Yeah huh, players really start paying attention to cover and positioning when you let monsters kite and flank. When they didn't prioritize a scout they got away and warned the base camp the party was going to attack. It allowed them to set up
I use 2 and 3 a lot myself. Used to use flanking too, but it was one of those things that gets everyone into a locked position for the whole fight, so I ended up removing it
Love a good ticking timebomb. Last session the whole dungeon crawl was a ticking time bomb. You have 5 in-world minutes to do as much as possible to find captives, destroy objectives, kill leaders. Be too careful and you won't di enough, and your army will suffer heavy losses, amd yoy will fail. Too reckless and you die.
@@BobWorldBuilder it was that in rounds so like 50 and when they stopped to talk to people or strategize I would mark down 10 rounds a minute. So kind of like Baldur's gate 3 in that way.
I love all of these suggestions. Most of my encounters have been altered by suggestions found online. One of the best was a ritual where 20 bleeding common town folk were chained to a cavern wall in the center was a portal that was fed by their blood the dungeons main bad guy and his minons were present for this ritual. You roll a die to determine how much blood would come and another to determine what sort of undead would be portalled into the room. Then roll to see how many commoners would die that round. I created a chart with some unique undead like the zombie jugganaut and skeleton knight and used the ammount of blood to boost the roll. This ritual slowly dies down as less commoners bleed out.
That also adds the iption of healing the commoners to stop their bleeding early, or for the bad guys to attack a commoner for a big rush of blood. Sounds like an intense fight and a great climax to an arc.
One of the players used the druid spell that summons a sphere of fire and burned the commones, yeah it was kinda brutal. I thought they would try harder to save them.@@jasonreed7522
Static combat is a huge problem in many RPGs. It's not very realistic that two combatants would be locked in place for an entire fight. I'm not a 5e player so I don't know how it works in D&D, but in other games I play (such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) I let the "combat round winner" (whoever caused the most damage) force their opponents back (straight or diagonally) one square after every turn. With a free "follow-up". This makes ledges and campfires and pit traps extra interesting in the scene.
@@BobWorldBuilderYeah, I mean, all your favorite fight scenes in movies, people move around the environment. Either willingly or unwillingly. Think of the cave troll fight in Fellowship Of The Ring. Or the Luke Skywalker vs Vader fight in Empire Strikes Back. The environments play a huge part. Makes it a lot more interesting.
Glad you enjoyed some of these ideas! I didn't want to distract from the scenarios with all the names, but they're all cited in the podcast episode where we went over a few more ideas too
Roll for initiative, and reverse the order of declared actions (lowest to highest) but do not roll anything until all actions are declared starting with the highest initiative roll. Peace! \o/
@@BobWorldBuilder The idea is that the person with the best 'reaction time' gets the super bonus of reacting to what everyone else is doing while having their reaction go first. Thanks for the reply Bob. I think your content is fantastic. When I get back on my feet I resub to you paterion. Peace! \o/
The timer die is awesome! I did a moving encounter many years ago. The players' characters were on a cart pulled by horses. The cart and horses where moving forward but instead of moving them forward, we moved everything else backward. So characters not on the cart would have to spend their move action and their action to negate that effect and jump back on the cart. Another cart was chasing them, trying to stop them from fleeing. I added a bit of randomness so the carts were not anyways at the same relative position to make it like a cart would take the lead for one turn. That's probably the best idea I came up with to spice up an encounter. 😊
A friend of mine was trying dming for the first time and we unexpectedly got into a chase. Not knowing what to do, he started calling for skill checks. Athletics to close the distance, acrobatics to jump over a fallen log, attack roll to trip him, persuasion to try to get him to stop and talk, etc. He asked me later if he did it right. Technically, not really but way more fun than the “right” way!
On the chase one: My players were lvl 11 and were getting quite ballsy. They found information about a gang of drug dealers and a new type of drug in the city they were in so they decided to just waltz inside the bosses quarter and kill him. Slight problem, the boss was a Rakshasa with two Iffrits as bodyguards, as you can imagine the players realized the folly of their ways the second they saw the Iffrit summoning Fire Elementals. They fight a bit but realize it's futile so they start running in different directions. The barbarian takes the wizard and jumps off the window (they were fighting in a tower), he lands down taking massive damage and they start using the buildings to protect themselves from the Iffrit barrage of fire. The monk jumps out the window and starts running down it and hides between buildings and manages to escape first. The other barbarian also jumps, sprains his ankles and barely manages so live with the help of the wizard and other barbarian. The paladin and cleric stay inside the building since they don't have the hp to jump off. The cleric dies and the paladin takes his corpse (the cleric was a tortle) and uses it to skateboard down the stairs to safety. All of this happened while still taking into account opportunity attacks and movement speed. All you need is an interesting place and players willing to improvise and adapt to a situation. The chase wasn't planned but it was epic how they managed to survive and avoid a TPK.
The non-combat combat (06:18) saved me during the start of my "Dragon of Icespire Peak" campaign where I rolled the starting town, Phandalin, as the very first location that the dragon was meant to be at! I couldn't make an actual encounter with the dragon because, at 1st level, they'd likely die, BUT I thought of this technique you mentioned here, and I made the goal being for the players to get all the panicking civilians to safety as the dragon flew around and tried diving at random people to grab and eat. I even included some armed NPCs to give the players the option to run and get help from as part of the encounter. It worked so well, that they all thought it was just part of the module, and if I ever run this module again, I'm going to make that a permanent first encounter, because it was so fun and effective!
This makes me wanna go back and look at FPS games modes for inspiration. Ghouls that respawn at random locations unless you confirm the kill by interacting with the corpse, or a capture the flag scenario where the party has to steal and return battle plans before the enemy does the same and gets an advantage in the larger battle that surrounds the party’s objective. Now I wonder how I can make Bomberman a combat encounter…
If you like the idea of timers, you might be interested to check out the ruleset for the rpg Blades in the Dark. They have a kind of narrative timer called a clock, which ticks down every time the narrative moves closer to the clock’s result. Like “villain gives up” might be a clock, and you could tick it down either by successfully attacking/injuring the villain, or by intimidating or distracting them so they lose the will to keep fighting.
Here is a scene that I had a lot of fun DMing. Feel free to use. Enter players who start exploring what seems to be some kind of cult temple. They see depictions of large humanoid figures throwing gold etc into a volcano. Feel free to throw in the foreshadowing of really hot air blowing through it. Later on the players see a painted scene of a huge red dragon bursting out of volcano and laying waste to a nearby town. Cue end fight, horseshoe/D shaped room with a huge pit of bubbling lava at the flat end. A large pedestal has a small enemy chanting from some old book (I chose kobolds but choose stupid NPC suitable to players level) Several kobolds litter the front shouting and jeering at the "holy Kobold", surrounded by huge piles of gold and jewels. The players panic and think that the holy kobold is trying to summon a dragon. They instantly form a normal plan to stomp only him, then they realise... the gold... The ones that were cheering begin grabbing handfuls of the gold and sprinting to the lava pit to hurl it in. The players were stuck between stopping the holy one and not losing all that lovely gold. They were not sure how much had been thrown in so far so were not sure if stopping the gold throwing would even stop it. After a set number of gold throwings have gone in, the ground starts to shake, lava bubbles into fountains out of the pool a figure starts to rise out of the lava... Players panic, should they flee? Should they fight? Luckily Kobolds are stupid and they only summoned a Magmin this time... Their faces were worth the effort, the whole fight they were on the edge of their seat, strategizing like I had never heard them do before.
I did a 3 stage chase in a star wars game. The players had sprung a wookiee medic out of a detention center and went to escape in a speeder truck to their ship outside the city. Stage one was them racing through the streets, avoid obstacles and other vehicles while being chased by speeder bikes. Stage 2 was when they got near the outskirts, avoid a blockade and outrunning more speeder bikes before getting to their ship. Stage 3 is them on the ship racing into orbit to jump to hyperspace with TIE fighters from the base in pursuit. They were shooting out the back of the truck and the windows against the speeder bikes in the first stage, and in the second stage the speeder bikes were trying to take out their vehicle instead of them. Changed up the scenery and the challenge in each stage and it was tons of fun. :)
Chase scenes are probably the main reason I put Speed as a main stat in my game. It functions like any other ability score. Want to chase a fleeing foe down? Roll Speed. Need to escape? Roll Speed. Hurdle an obstacle? Speed. The teleporting king of the hill encounter is something I may have to steal at some point, if only for the sheer level of chaos it involves.
@@theastralwanderer The stats associated with skills are guidelines. The rules as written 100% allow you to call for an athletics (dexterity) check if you think it's appropriate for the situation. You can even call for an athletics (wisdom) check if you want to.
Changing combat goal is the number 1 advice I give newer DM and these are great ideas. It’ll be much easier to just share this video with them. Great stuff!
That intro the the best!! =) easily equal to the wizards presentation\trip intro. I wish I could do more TotM combat without squares. Sadly. One of my players really likes that and gets way into the details on *exactly* how many feet a thing does. And the other players are not bothered\enjoy it well enough as well so I get out-voted. Lol.
Thank you! And hey a good medium between squares and no squares that your player might enjoy is to use maps without a grid, and letting them measure things with a ruler (1 in = 5 ft)
@@BobWorldBuilder Ai though about maybe getting one of those dry erase mats and using that? Cuz then I could scale out (I only have chessex map now with limited scale) but am looking for solutions that don't require goo art skills and stopping to draw maps. Hmmm. Wonder if I could do TotM and have them draw it themselves as we go?
Man I started playing dnd about 4 years ago, using the dragon at icespire peak module. I found your videos about that module, when your channel was much smaller. I just wanted to say how happy i am to see your channel, confidence, and quality grow. Thanks for your hard work on your content!
A great way to do a chase. We’ll say we’re in a market Aladdin style. The target takes off in a direction. Your players would then obviously chase the target. When you get to an intersection, you describe what they see in multiple different directions. They can spend extra time (in seconds game time) to get more descriptions. They can wait more and more to get a more clear picture but allows the target to get further. If they correctly guess the direction the target went, they can get closer to the target. Slowly but surely spending time searching and chasing, they inevitably either lose the target or catch it. Losing the target however isn’t necessarily bad. It can lead to an investigation segment where they try and find the target in a slower more Sherlock Holmes kinda way.
You're welcome! And I'm not sure how gravity works in Spelljammer, but I feel like you'd be well in your rights to use weird gravity to your advantage in space D&D!
Yes, make a whole video about that kind of encounter design. The Franken Armor encounter reminds me of an adventure I made in which early on one player found a skein of Troll-Gut rope. Later in the adventure, they wandered into a cloud of prismatic mist, which had a number of different effects depending on the color of the mists that round. One color cause wooden objects to sprout green leaves, leather items to leak grease and blood, and for people's hair and fingernails to grow super-fast. I decided that this effect was enough to regenerate a tiny troll a timer die later in the PC's backpack, which set about trying to throttle him with the length of its own intestine hanging out of its body.
The game Fantasy Age has an interesting chase mechanic built into their combat. They don't have opportunity attacks either, but on each turn you can choose a 'minor action' which usually is like a stance that stays active for the whole combat, like "aiming" gives a +1 to hit or "guard" gives you +1 to defense. There is also "press the attack" which allows you to chase any enemy that leaves your melee range. This essentially helps you keep an enemy from fleeing in a more realistic way. They also have the opposite "blockade" where you make it difficult for an enemy to get past you.
One of my favourite combats involved my players trying to save an elf village. The party arrived at an elf village which was being menaced by frenzied goblins. The villagers, along with families from the immediate area, had taken refuge in various of their cottages and communal buildings. Various groups of goblins/goblin bosses were fixated on menacing assorted buildings, attempting to set them on fire, break down the doors, get in the windows etc. The goblins were sufficiently fixated that they were unlikely to attack the party unless the party engaged them BUT at the end of each combat round there was a chance of an escalation. At the end of each round I rolled a d6 for each goblin group not engaged in combat with the party, and on a 1 the goblin group progressed in their diabolical plans - get the thatch alight, break a shutter off a window, hack a hole in a door with an axe - or would turn their attentions to the party. As a particular building suffered successive escalations the situation become more dire, until the villagers hiding within would begin to take casualties. There was also a group of NPC elf warriors on the far side of the village who were pinned down but holding their own. This meant that: A) The players felt like badasses as they cut a swath (literally or figuratively) through a horde of relatively low-level adversaries. B) Escalating tension and uncertainty as the situation worsened at different locations throughout the village. C) Tactical decision making - which groups to prioritise as the sitiation escalates, or to deliberately engage multiple groups to draw their attention, at the expense of facing more enemies simultaneously? Or should they help the elf warriors first, to free them up to take on some of the goblins themselves? In the end all the villagers were saved, but only by some good tactics. One player used an inspiration point to offset the disadvantage of engaging the goblin boss pinning down the elf warriors at the extreme range of his shortbow. A good hit drew their attenrion, allowing the elves to break out of their position and join the fight. Even then things seemed desperate, so again the party engaged another group of goblins at range, causing them to rush to engage the party - only the sorcerer had readied an action to cast thunderwave, which not only wiped out that group, but the thunderous sound attracted the remaining goblins to them.
these are good suggestions. I've been pushing for tougher choices in my encounters for a while now. - forces that split the party (not massively, just use some walls and slit rooms will do) - different objectives at different parts of the map - time sensitive elements so the party cannot reliably do more than one objective at a time, but the others have a chance of ending if not handled for high level encounters, this helps break up the stomping aspect of over powered PCs without needing to resort to "every enemy is Tiamat" Allow the party to be against threats that they could very well handle easily... if they were grouped.
@@BobWorldBuilder this week's session I had a simple case of three different enemies trying to flee from the lair at differing parts of the map. It wasn't large map, but there were enough ruined walls and pillars that made it very difficult to get line of sight to more than 1 of the NPCs at a time Each was a named NPC (attached to long running story beats, 2 known, 1 new), which each in a 1v1 was enough of a challenge to not be easily taken out, but not so strong as to need more than a couple of PCs to reliably handle. For minions, there were 2 canoloths, functionally acting as guard dogs and locking down teleportation (Dimensional Lock). And 1 roper refluffed as a golem that was just a sack of hitpoints and a big body in the centre of the room. If the party ignored the canoloths, the casters would be harassed by them If the party killed the canoloths, the fleeing NPCs would be able to use their teleports for an easy escape The golem was just a distraction. they'd fought off a pack of 3 in the past 5 levels prior, sole purpose is to soak damage and be in the way. Like the canoloths, it would force move the PCs and make them rest with a grapple/restrain. The NPCs for the most part were just moving to get away; only really attacking on their turns if they couldn't end a turn closer to the exit. If any of the targets were to be focused fired, they'd not last a round; party of 5x lv15's can hit hard.... but doing so would easily allow the others to escape. Encounter became a juggling act of body blocking, crowd controls, and trying to keep everyone within 60ft of a canoloth to prevent teleports, while at the same time being unable to use any of their own teleports to get around the map. Party made a call at one stage to allow the sorcerer to get killed off by a canoloth (they had a wild magic reincarnate ready... but still wasn't happy) rather than allow teleports back on the table. "We can always seek a quest to restore the sorcerer's original body... but we don't know if we'll be able to lock these guys down without their easy getaways again" (many prior encounters had them just teleport or planeshift away when confronted, they had no interest in duking it out with the party, would instead just retreat to continue their evil elsewhere). Encounter ended with the 2 known NPCs finally slain and the new guy escaping. Whole party's alive. Though the sorcerer has gone from dragonborn to an elf, so that'll be an identity struggle being their whole arc so far was to do with their bloodline. Works for me, more fuel for making adventure hooks out of.
I absolutely love adding environmental features to combat. There will be conditions that the party has to avoid (and can possibly utilize against their enemies) and other ways of winning the fight. Lots of options can let players be even more creative in their approach if they choose. It can also let the less "fighty" PCs utilize their skills to help succeed in the fight. Everyone feels more fulfilled in the actions they take.
Hey! I normally listen to your videos so I don't see your face very often but you are ROCKING the short hair! Don't know when that happened but you look great ^-^
I was DMing a 3ed Ed game, I described the room as 10' by 15', with 3 orcs, and a shaman, the party wiz declared magic, and won initiative. He cast Fireball, and killed the monsters, and 4 of the PCs.
5e does have chase rules that are actually far more useable than people give them credit for, but if you want really good chase rules look up the Call of Cthulhu 7e chase rules. They are second to none.
Yeah like most people, I'm aware of the DMG's chase rules, but never bothered with them for one reason or another. I will have to check Cthulhu's though!
i recently made an encounter where the party returns to the city under siege(they had a 15 day time limit and wasted a lot of time doing other things and forgot what day they were on) when they entered the city they were met with a choice to save either: -guardsmen(who could help them fight bbeg) -black smith who could do the same -Mayor (who is gonna pay them) -orphans -hardworking farmers and traders and shopkeepers (who had lost of goods) -Love interest npc’s and other people they’ve specifically met along the way. essentially they had to pick to save the people who can’t defend themselves or save who is gonna help them defeat the bbeg and figure out who’s the most important to them and have mini 1v2 fights potentially losing health and resources to fight individually or quickly saving people as groups of two but not helping as many groups while saving spell slots and abilities.
ran the black cabin encounter from ROTFM and when the characters activated the summer star an avalanche started. but before the mountain of snow hit the cabin, the stilts holding the cabin up collapsed and the section of the building the players were standing in slid down the hill. the players then had to outrun the avalanche in a makeshift cabin sled. this turned out to be a blast! the best quote was " I never rode a building down the side of a mountain before"
I've been running a Cypher System campaign based on Barotrauma, most fights are a balancing act of welding the hull back shut so the submarine doesn't flood and drag the party into the abyss while still trying to keep people on the guns to kill whatever it is that's come after them this time. It's extra fun if anyone is still outside of the submarine when the attack happens. Shouldn't be too hard to pull off something similar with airships where flying monsters of some variety are punching holes in balloons forcing some characters to climb up the rigging with patch kits to avoid crashing down into the earth.
Im wrapping up tomb of annihilation currently. Theres a companion guide over on dms guild that has some truely spectacular alternative racing rules. Ive run many chase scenes in chult. Players chasing a hag through the jungle, being chased by a zombie vomiting T-Rex and even escaping a crumbling ancient ruin. It can be done in 5e. You just have to run it like an old 4e skill challenge.
I agree. I encouraged my players to envision combat as more than just toe-to-toe exchanging blows by using opponents to demonstrate tactical play. Now they're coming up with brilliant stuff that isn't covered in *any* rulesets I've ever used, or ever tried to adjudicate! I'm okay with making ad hoc rulings, but I always wonder if I could have done it better.
Having the terrain be an important element in the combat can be fun as well. My players were taking a small ship to get from city to city. This "three hour tour" got hit with a massive storm in the middle of the night. The sailors were working hard to keep the ship scudding before the wind so it didn't get broached (if the ship got turned side-on to a big wave, the wave will send it to the bottom). Just as dawn was about to break, the bell rings for all hands on deck. As the players reach the top deck, the situation is even more chaotic. The waves are irregular, so the deck is bucking like a wild horse. There are life-lines stretched across the deck to give you something to hold onto as you try and walk across this unstable surface. The ship is attacked first by waves of crabs, then by three massive crab monsters. As the players enter combat, the rolling deck is now a factor. At the top of each turn, each player standing on the deck needs to roll a dex check. 16+ and they stand their ground and can use both hands. 8-15 and they remain standing but can only use one hand for their turn as they have to hold on with the other. 3-7 and they are thrown to the deck and they're prone, getting up they can only use one hand. 2 and they are prone and slide 10 feet to starboard, and a 1 they are prone and thrown 10 feet to larboard. The archer quickly learned he needed to get up into the rigging because he couldn't shoot with only one hand. Same with the magic users. The monk was usually pretty good, but did have a tumble and slide at one point. They had to stay away from the sides because a 10-foot slide the wrong way and they're over the side. They also had to keep the sailors safe because for every sailor that they lost, the ship became more likely to not be under control and turn unexpectedly and get broached. So, the party had to fight hoards of crabs, three giant crabs, protect the sailors and keep their feet. One of them up on top finally said they wanted to look around and they were able to see, in the distance, a giant crab wizard on the back of a shark, who was obviously controlling the weather. They could stop the ship from bucking around and possibly sinking by stopping the storm by killing or at least breaking the concentration of the wizard. It was chaotic and fun and tense. The archer finally took out the wizard and by the end of the current round they no longer had to make rolls to stay upright. The party felt a real sense of accomplishment at the end of the fight. They were bloodied and exhausted, but had only lost two sailors and saved the ship.
Great video! Lots of great ideas. I'd be interested to see more videos on related topics. In particular, I'd be interested to hear more ideas for chase mechanics.
My level 4 or 5 party (I cant remember) was traveling through the underdark while trying to escourt 80 or so prisoners of war that they had just rescued. When they got to the final chamber, they realized they were deep into an ancient deep dragons layer. They had to survive a couple of turns, moving 200 or so feet to the exit, all while javelins were being hurled at them and the prisoners from the dragons kobold minions, and the dragon ominously flying overhead, blasting large stalagmites with its breath weapon to kill as many prisoners as possible. The party got creative, using eldritch blast and shatter to send stalatites crashing down onto the dragon, stunning it. They got out successfully with minimal casualties, and I applauded their creativity to handle the dragon.
For chases: The one-shot "Cross City Race" By James “Grim” Desborough has an effective chase mechanic. Over simplified version - you get several uses of the dash action each of your turns, with each consecutive dash risking a temporary level of exhaustion. It's for an old edition, but worked great for one of my 5th edition games
I have an idea for a goat herding scenario, where a village needs at least 70% of them back if they wish to survive winter. When the party catches up with them, most goats are halfway climbing a mountain side, and heading into a cave, led by two aggressive giant goats. The party can use whatever skill they can think of to try and lure the bulk of the herd back home, and fighting will occur only if the giant goats will feel threatened. If they fail, the cave is home to an ogre that is found playing with the goats as if they were toys and will have to be dealt with the old fashioned way.
I have so many examples of these from my experiences. Another idea is the mystery combat, as I like to call it. I'm sure other people have other names for it. Basically yes, there's a big assholy enemy to beat. But, even though they're not steamrollers that one shot the party, they're basically immortal. Something is up. Wounds don't seem to bother them, or maybe they go back to full health every round. The players have to first figure out what's going on, then disable whatever it is that's making the fight impossible. This way some players have to keep the enemy busy, survive, distract them, and one or two others have to stay out of trouble while investigating and sabotaging the enemy's secret gimmick. It's pretty awesome.
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Awesome video Bob! Last session I ran, the heroes were assigned to a battalion of soldiers that they had to command and use to protect themselves from a sea of chump mobs so they could hunt down and chase down the enemy army generals. Convenient ticking time bomb because they were slowly running out of bodies to protect themselves with, and a nice risk reward with commanding the soldiers to perform riskier assistance
The combat reminds me of RuneScape! 😂🤣
Hello new viewer here. I was wondering if you have ever done a video about capturing the nuance and Intricate subtlety of Martial Arts/pugilism in combat? I.e trapping, slipping(dodging), countering, disarms, continuous strategic and precise hits, feints(goading) and the like.
What system would you recommend for this?
I LOVE that teleporting McGuffin
It's a great idea!
Turned it into a battle royale
a friend of mine describes DnD 5e combat as rubbing big numbers together until one of them hits zero, which honestly feels fairly accurate
Oh no, too real xD
Timers: it doesn't have to be represented by dice. Candles work well as a timer for a Halloween oneshot. The roleplaying game Ten Candles even uses it to full effect by having 10 candles (or tea lights) lit at the start of the session, then have them go out one by one as the horrors in the dark lurk ever closer.
Timers are a tool of pacing for the players, not for the characters! So feel free to experiment with real world objects to represent each timer.
Love the ten candles game....shame we don't play it enough in our group but is definitely a favourite around Halloween
That's a great point!
Just use clocks from Blades in the dark.
@@bobhill-ol7wp Clocks do indeed work as a generic countdown timer. They have many advantages, if not the greatest one being that they are easy to set up on the spot. Necessary, if you must set up a clock as part of a consequence on an Action roll.
But they do miss out on being thematic.
In the most basic sense, if you play the chidren's game Hangman, the stick figure being revealed hanging from a rope as drawn line by line is a kind of countdown clock. But even drawing the stick figure is way more thematic than filling in a pizza pie with 8 or 9 slices.
It's that theming that you can bring to tabletop roleplay too, without returning to Blades in the Dark clocks. Especially so if you can prepare them before the game.
Candles for a horror campaign; a Jenga tower for a Dread campaign; an empty glass filling with water to represent a trap room with rising water; three turned-off lamps lighting up one by one in an electric circuit representing a hacker breaking into your computer and becoming ever closer.
All clocks. And all thematic.
@@amyloriley wow I never thought about using a cup of water as a timer, I will try to do that next time!
Having just finished BG3, verticality and environmental interactions would elevate any fight to the next level. A few points of high ground, covers, places where you might fall, destructible environment all give the fight a completely different feel. It is so much more satisfying to win an encounter by intelligently positioning yourself and creating chokepoints and giving yourself advantages instead of out damaging the enemy
My current party has 4 small races and 3 medium races, i suggested to my DM to have a combat with a bunch of low walls that block the small characters vision (granting total cover) while not blocking the medium characters vision (probably granting half cover). And i am a halfling so in the camp that can't see.
Lots of ways to achieve it, but in my head I'm picturing a maze of low walls and probably mostly ranged enemies.
Another idea i have is for a combat in a sort of theatre like the Roman Colosseum where some control room is responsible for a bunch if special effects that would count as lair actions or traps. (Or minion actions, and the players could theoretically break into the control room and trigger the same actions, DM decides if the control panel is labeled, and in what language)
Feel free to steal these ideas, combat in a featureless plane is boring, the bare minimum is adding full walls to restrict movement/positioning.
Oh man those are great ideas! One of my favorite things is letting magic actually affect the environment. These are good ideas for a follow up!
That's definitely my favorite part of early game fights. There is so much to work with for tactics and environment. Late game however is just finding the most busted build who can either hit the hardest or get the most shots in one turn
@@dallinadams9422 I mean end game of course you can be op, it's a fun power fantasy. but you can also restrict yourself and force creative methods of play.
Timer dice definitely amped up the drama in a werewolf encounter. I had the werewolf howl, and threw down a d4 (number of rounds before a pack of wolves answered the call). They didn't know what it meant, and when it ticked down, they freaked out.
Excellent use of a timer!
I've done something similar to ramp up the excitement. Maybe at the beginning of an encounter, or one already in motion, or even at a point that isn't really an encounter. My players both love and fear my"blind timer".
I just - without context - roll a die in the middle of the table, then put on my "significant" face. Or maybe say something like "Won't be long now..."
The effect is almost cinematic, as the number showing gets lower the players start talking faster, looking around, can't sit still. When I scoop the die up they sometimes gasp!
Wow. This was one of the very best videos I have ever watched on your channel. Yes, more ideas like this would be MORE than welcome. I am even upping my patreon to the builder level just so I can download this interesting one shot. Thanks, Bob!!!
Thank you very much! I really appreciate the enthusiasm and the support :D
Oh hey, that's me at the end! Thanks for including me again, I love the name Koala KHAN lmao.
The King has arrived! Haha yep, love that scenario. Glad you liked the name :)
Damn, I would love to be in one of your games
love the shark
3:14 regarding the disengage and being chased down by monsters thing: Why don't we just say if you use the disengage action, you get 1.5 times your speed to retreat. So if you have the usual 30, you can disengage and run away for 45 feet. Then most monsters (who also have 30 speed) can't catch up to you, unless they use the dash action.
At the same time, dash is still more useful if you just want to cover as much distance as possible; and the Rogue and Monk's special abilities are also still stronger and more useful. I think I'll try using that with my group.
I was thinking of making disengage something you could do as a bonus action, then you could use your action to dash if you were looking to get away. That way, if anyone wanted to keep up, they'd have to use their action to dash as well. I think that might make it too easy to get away though, so I like your idea.
@@shadenone Thanks. Yeah I also thought about making it a Bonus Action first. But I like Rogues and Bards, so I wouldn't want to diminish the value of their special abilities.
That was a fun and well-executed intro, it actually held my microscopic goblin youtube attention span
Glad it worked lol
Nice cinematogrophy in the beginning!
I appreciate it! That was fun but tricky!
I'd love a whole *series* of these honestly.
Whoa! The teleporting macguffin thing is something I planned for a short game that never happened! Cool someone else had the same idea!
Awesome! It's never too late to try it out!
Great minds think alike
Yes, tes, YES! I've seen similar on other channels. "Why are we fighting?" Not just because they're there.
These are all great, but yeah, that "Koala KHAN" is an instant classic. Stealing that one, for sure.
Haha glad you like it!
The best combats end with snailshark becoming your long-time friend.
Works every time!
Oh this video was perfect for me right now. Next session is saturday and this video had so many great ideas.
Great video, Bob! In our last meeting, one of our players detonated an airship above the town and the rest of the session was spent putting out radioactive fires all over the town. Then having a lively, philosophical discussion about 'What is a military target?' and 'What constitutes a war crime in this world?'
nothing is a war crime the "first" time..lol
Sounds like a productive session! xD
When you said, "they have to stay in one place, king of the hill style," I thought you were talking about the show, and thought the characters would have to stay in Arlen, Texas
If the shoe fits lol
That audio transition from phone to Rode mic was so pleasing to my earbuds. Thank you, Bob. And I'm definitely taking the Koala KHAN idea for the climax of my campaign.
That was very hard to smooth out! Glad you liked the result! :)
That transition into the video proper was pure gold. Literally grabbed my attention
A combat I'd like to do one day that we see all the time in games and movies is one set in the middle of hazardous weather, set to a timer. When the timer hits 0, everyone not in cover takes damage/gets knocked down/gets blinded/etc, and then the timer resets. Could be a fun scenario as PCs and enemies struggle to stay in shelter while trying to push each other out of it as the timer ticks down. Could also be combined with a chase or some other objective for a very hectic encounter. Maybe even make the timer hidden to the players to really ramp up the tension.
Yeah that could be epic! Good mix of the timer and king of the hill scenarios
I learned this from other system - you can make timer somewhat random. You start with some dice let's say d10 and you roll it each round or each turn. When you roll 2 or 1 you take dice lower which is d8 and you roll that and again if you roll 1 or 2 you use d6 and then on 1 or 2 the count down finished. This is actually how you track your supplies in Forbidden Lands but I find this mechanics interesting
@@realdragon For some other mechanics you could also simply roll some die every round and when it hits let's say 1, something happens. Maybe lightning strikes in a storm or something.
Makes me think of the latest Zelda and wearing weapons while in the rain.
One of the most memorable battles in Shining Force (a tactical RPG on Genesis) involved crossing a bridge with a magical laser weapon aimed down it. The laser loudly announced a 4 round warmup sequence, and then everyone on the bridge, friend or foe, got blasted. That was a videogame, but turn-based so the mechanic would work beautifully with timer dice.
Yeah I like that teleport trick too. I think in R20, I would stack maps in the map layer and then move them back, so they would cycle. I think that would keep all the other layers intact. Maybe make a "medium" statue that needed to be grappled and dragged. Maybe the reward would be this controllable teleport device to travel to distant lands....
Glad this video got your wheels turning!
It’s fun to do this with dreams, and try to line up cliffs on the fore map with rivers and such on the rear map.
Seems like theater of the mind would save a lot of head ache there.
pretty cool how the intro sketch flowed into the video, definitely caught me off guard !
Glad you liked it!
Glad you liked it! That was tricky to get right
Every combat, I put a gimmick, be it have dangerous terrain, difficult terrain, cover, a target to rescue, a challenge, a magguffin to get, have the fight be perticullarly hard or easy, have reinforcements etc. Anything more than HP sacs usually does it, and more than one gimmick usually make it too convoluted.
I like the idea of magguffin. I don’t think I’ve seen a DM use that. I mostly see terrain and lair actions.
I play my own TTRPG, but yeah a Magguffin is a very strong idea for story telling, you can have a way stronger opponent than what the party could take on and have the Staff of the Chosen or what ever shoot desintegration rays and make impassable force walls using the caster arcana check as attack rolls and completely change in an instant a combat. You can also have an invulnerable golem as an ennemy that looses his invulnerable state when the PCs get the amulet of Whatshisface thats skinking in poisonous waters. Many possibles scenarios revolving around ''get the thing that only works for this encounter''
@@Dice_Dish
Terrain and lair action are usually just action economy related, they don't add anything by themselves except math, terrains are cool when they are actually cool (ex: vestiges related to the lore of the campain, a combat taking place in a tavern dear to the player so they don't wanna break it appart) if you just have space that counts as double square...well the PC get there or they don't, you might as well have started them twice as far and it would have gotten the same place. Lair actions are the same, it's just extra actions in the end, if it's lame actions (an extra bolt of fire or what ever) it's weak, if it's the dragon grabing the PCs as an action and if they don't break free they are swallowed as a lair action, it's kinda cool, but the lair action has little to do with it, an action with a DC could have done pretty much the same. An action twice as powerful is pretty much the same as an action and a lair action half as powerful. For my par I use the ''event'' turn in the initiative at the end, and this is where I include cool stuff that isn't usually in the rules, characters change places in the temple of winds du to strong gusts, character make a dex save or fall down the frozen hills and have to climb back up, characters make a con saving throw or take fire damage near the volcano. It enlightned what makes the encounter special at a specific time, it's easier to envision. Sometimes I put big bad attacks there but that's when there is nothing else I can think off and the action econonomy is too much in favor of the PCs (exemple a Boss with big HP but little damage, if you don't think minions or dangerous environnement fits there, he kinda have to act twice) Sorry for the wall of text :P@@Dice_Dish
One of the best fights I’ve had in dnd was taking down a cannibalism cult in the city sewers. What made the combat great was that we had alternate objectives (save the hostages) but it got better when the warlock’s lightning bolt started a massive fire.
Now we needed to spend actions to put out squares of fire, race against time to save the civilians before the fire blocked the door to their cages, AND deal with the cultists.
The fire added so much fun to the fight because it changed the terrain, but the players could affect it by spending actions.
Years later, my group still talks about that low level fight.
Excellent point there! Having magical elements like fire behave naturally can really change an encounter
That cat portrait lifted the intro combat a full notch.
He watches over all of us
The flying down chase and the koala khan encounter is cool
Glad you liked them!
I've never felt so called out in the first 40 seconds of a video before
We've all been there lol
That wrestler getting thrown onto the dice made me flinch. Ouch
A fate worse than death
Great video as always Bob! I definitely plan to try and include more "non-combat" objectives. Things have been getting a little stale lately
Thank you! Yeah it's important to mix it up every once in a while!
Agreed great idea of how to make the combat more dynamic. I’ve been kinda burned out on 5e combat lately
Great opening transition!
Thank you! :)
Glad to have you back! I got worried when there was no BWB video last Wednesday
I really appreciate that! I kinda fell behind schedule with videos, and it took a lot of time to get this intro right haha
Ran a magic fruit tree scenario. The fruit gives consumers buffs. Based on how they roll for con save aand a d6. We ran it as a skill challenge arena. Had a support runner a collector and a distraction. A faction the party knew wanted the fruits showed up part way through the encounter pcs realized and booked it with what they managed to get. They almost didnt get away but managed a sneaky trick and slinked off
Very creative! Sounds like a fun encounter
Pathfinder has Chase Combat, with abstracted movement and skill checks to progress. It also has Performance Combat, with emphasis on showboating.
So does 5e.
I'm not sure why people keep trying to use the standard combat rules for chases.
@@rich63113probably because they dont know about the other rules
i dont think anybody in my player group has ever read the PHB tbh
As a GM, I play the monster with a bit more of agency and that really change the battle a lot.
First, use the flanking mechanics from the DM guides. It makes movement and position of the monsters far more important. While PCs have many ways to get advantage, the same is not true about monsters and that change the game a lot once they can flank.
Second, play the monsters as if they know what they are doing with a desire to survive. Have them retreat when at half hit point. Let them target the spellcasters and the high damage rogues instead of attacking the tank. Let them prepare ambushes such as retreating and baiting the party in a flanking maneuvers. Take advantage of the terrain such as having range attackers seek covers. Have them surround and focus on one targets like the players would, taking advantage of flanking and forcing that characters to retreat or likely die.
Third, creates encounter with multiple monsters rather then a big one. Big monsters are poorly balance and makes the points above far far less interesting.
With all those tricks, combat become far more interesting without the needs to add something specials to all the fights.
Yeah huh, players really start paying attention to cover and positioning when you let monsters kite and flank.
When they didn't prioritize a scout they got away and warned the base camp the party was going to attack. It allowed them to set up
I use 2 and 3 a lot myself. Used to use flanking too, but it was one of those things that gets everyone into a locked position for the whole fight, so I ended up removing it
This is so so so clean! Love this video!
Thank you so much!
@@BobWorldBuilder Thank You for making such amazing videos! Also, that long cut at the start was very impressive and did not go unnoticed >:3
I _loved_ that intro combat sequence! _I was on the edge of my seat with excitement!!!!_ ❤
Love a good ticking timebomb. Last session the whole dungeon crawl was a ticking time bomb. You have 5 in-world minutes to do as much as possible to find captives, destroy objectives, kill leaders. Be too careful and you won't di enough, and your army will suffer heavy losses, amd yoy will fail. Too reckless and you die.
Only 5 minutes?? Sounds exciting!
@@BobWorldBuilder it was that in rounds so like 50 and when they stopped to talk to people or strategize I would mark down 10 rounds a minute. So kind of like Baldur's gate 3 in that way.
Great intro. very smooth transition from skit to video! Great rest of the video too but big ups for that one shot intro
That's a brilliant use of owlbear rodeo! I've gotta use that fight sometime, wow
Go for it!
3:59 Yeah this sounds waaay more like something ripped straight outta Shadowrun to me...
Maybe it is! Playing other games allows you to find so many good ideas
I love all of these suggestions. Most of my encounters have been altered by suggestions found online. One of the best was a ritual where 20 bleeding common town folk were chained to a cavern wall in the center was a portal that was fed by their blood the dungeons main bad guy and his minons were present for this ritual. You roll a die to determine how much blood would come and another to determine what sort of undead would be portalled into the room. Then roll to see how many commoners would die that round. I created a chart with some unique undead like the zombie jugganaut and skeleton knight and used the ammount of blood to boost the roll. This ritual slowly dies down as less commoners bleed out.
That also adds the iption of healing the commoners to stop their bleeding early, or for the bad guys to attack a commoner for a big rush of blood.
Sounds like an intense fight and a great climax to an arc.
One of the players used the druid spell that summons a sphere of fire and burned the commones, yeah it was kinda brutal. I thought they would try harder to save them.@@jasonreed7522
Static combat is a huge problem in many RPGs. It's not very realistic that two combatants would be locked in place for an entire fight. I'm not a 5e player so I don't know how it works in D&D, but in other games I play (such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) I let the "combat round winner" (whoever caused the most damage) force their opponents back (straight or diagonally) one square after every turn. With a free "follow-up". This makes ledges and campfires and pit traps extra interesting in the scene.
That sounds like a fun way to keep things moving--literally!
@@BobWorldBuilderYeah, I mean, all your favorite fight scenes in movies, people move around the environment. Either willingly or unwillingly. Think of the cave troll fight in Fellowship Of The Ring. Or the Luke Skywalker vs Vader fight in Empire Strikes Back. The environments play a huge part. Makes it a lot more interesting.
D&D is fun math. Oh my god how did I not realize this.
I'm sorry, but it was time you knew
I am smitten by the "gang war" mechanic. Countdown dice as civilians to be saved? Very fresh idea. Thanks to whomever submitted that one!
Glad you enjoyed some of these ideas! I didn't want to distract from the scenarios with all the names, but they're all cited in the podcast episode where we went over a few more ideas too
Roll for initiative, and reverse the order of declared actions (lowest to highest) but do not roll anything until all actions are declared starting with the highest initiative roll.
Peace!
\o/
That'll definitely mix things up!
@@BobWorldBuilder
The idea is that the person with the best 'reaction time' gets the super bonus of reacting to what everyone else is doing while having their reaction go first.
Thanks for the reply Bob. I think your content is fantastic. When I get back on my feet I resub to you paterion.
Peace!
\o/
Holy crap..... I've had a demon allied with characters briefly before, but never a shark as a reoccurring character.... that's wild :)
Now all we need is a demon shark!!
@@BobWorldBuilder sounds like an awesome idea :)
Great video. The intro was next level.
Thank you very much!
btw, I am totally going to steal the teleporting cube idea, thanks to Koala!
The timer die is awesome!
I did a moving encounter many years ago. The players' characters were on a cart pulled by horses. The cart and horses where moving forward but instead of moving them forward, we moved everything else backward. So characters not on the cart would have to spend their move action and their action to negate that effect and jump back on the cart. Another cart was chasing them, trying to stop them from fleeing. I added a bit of randomness so the carts were not anyways at the same relative position to make it like a cart would take the lead for one turn. That's probably the best idea I came up with to spice up an encounter. 😊
That was awesome Bob. I love the creative camera work. Cheers
Thanks! Yep, just like stale combat, I needed to make this editing for interesting for my own sake lol
A friend of mine was trying dming for the first time and we unexpectedly got into a chase. Not knowing what to do, he started calling for skill checks. Athletics to close the distance, acrobatics to jump over a fallen log, attack roll to trip him, persuasion to try to get him to stop and talk, etc. He asked me later if he did it right. Technically, not really but way more fun than the “right” way!
Wow I really love the teleporting king of the hill idea im stealing that for my campaign
Do it!!
On the chase one:
My players were lvl 11 and were getting quite ballsy. They found information about a gang of drug dealers and a new type of drug in the city they were in so they decided to just waltz inside the bosses quarter and kill him.
Slight problem, the boss was a Rakshasa with two Iffrits as bodyguards, as you can imagine the players realized the folly of their ways the second they saw the Iffrit summoning Fire Elementals.
They fight a bit but realize it's futile so they start running in different directions. The barbarian takes the wizard and jumps off the window (they were fighting in a tower), he lands down taking massive damage and they start using the buildings to protect themselves from the Iffrit barrage of fire.
The monk jumps out the window and starts running down it and hides between buildings and manages to escape first.
The other barbarian also jumps, sprains his ankles and barely manages so live with the help of the wizard and other barbarian.
The paladin and cleric stay inside the building since they don't have the hp to jump off. The cleric dies and the paladin takes his corpse (the cleric was a tortle) and uses it to skateboard down the stairs to safety.
All of this happened while still taking into account opportunity attacks and movement speed. All you need is an interesting place and players willing to improvise and adapt to a situation. The chase wasn't planned but it was epic how they managed to survive and avoid a TPK.
The Koala-Khan sounds so fun! Those players must have had a blast
Great video, this is exactly what I needed for my upcoming game!
Thanks very much! :) Hope your group has fun with it!
The non-combat combat (06:18) saved me during the start of my "Dragon of Icespire Peak" campaign where I rolled the starting town, Phandalin, as the very first location that the dragon was meant to be at!
I couldn't make an actual encounter with the dragon because, at 1st level, they'd likely die, BUT I thought of this technique you mentioned here, and I made the goal being for the players to get all the panicking civilians to safety as the dragon flew around and tried diving at random people to grab and eat. I even included some armed NPCs to give the players the option to run and get help from as part of the encounter.
It worked so well, that they all thought it was just part of the module, and if I ever run this module again, I'm going to make that a permanent first encounter, because it was so fun and effective!
This makes me wanna go back and look at FPS games modes for inspiration. Ghouls that respawn at random locations unless you confirm the kill by interacting with the corpse, or a capture the flag scenario where the party has to steal and return battle plans before the enemy does the same and gets an advantage in the larger battle that surrounds the party’s objective. Now I wonder how I can make Bomberman a combat encounter…
If you like the idea of timers, you might be interested to check out the ruleset for the rpg Blades in the Dark. They have a kind of narrative timer called a clock, which ticks down every time the narrative moves closer to the clock’s result. Like “villain gives up” might be a clock, and you could tick it down either by successfully attacking/injuring the villain, or by intimidating or distracting them so they lose the will to keep fighting.
Here is a scene that I had a lot of fun DMing. Feel free to use. Enter players who start exploring what seems to be some kind of cult temple. They see depictions of large humanoid figures throwing gold etc into a volcano. Feel free to throw in the foreshadowing of really hot air blowing through it. Later on the players see a painted scene of a huge red dragon bursting out of volcano and laying waste to a nearby town. Cue end fight, horseshoe/D shaped room with a huge pit of bubbling lava at the flat end. A large pedestal has a small enemy chanting from some old book (I chose kobolds but choose stupid NPC suitable to players level) Several kobolds litter the front shouting and jeering at the "holy Kobold", surrounded by huge piles of gold and jewels. The players panic and think that the holy kobold is trying to summon a dragon. They instantly form a normal plan to stomp only him, then they realise... the gold... The ones that were cheering begin grabbing handfuls of the gold and sprinting to the lava pit to hurl it in. The players were stuck between stopping the holy one and not losing all that lovely gold. They were not sure how much had been thrown in so far so were not sure if stopping the gold throwing would even stop it. After a set number of gold throwings have gone in, the ground starts to shake, lava bubbles into fountains out of the pool a figure starts to rise out of the lava... Players panic, should they flee? Should they fight? Luckily Kobolds are stupid and they only summoned a Magmin this time... Their faces were worth the effort, the whole fight they were on the edge of their seat, strategizing like I had never heard them do before.
Yes I'd love to see a full video about timers!!
I did a 3 stage chase in a star wars game. The players had sprung a wookiee medic out of a detention center and went to escape in a speeder truck to their ship outside the city. Stage one was them racing through the streets, avoid obstacles and other vehicles while being chased by speeder bikes. Stage 2 was when they got near the outskirts, avoid a blockade and outrunning more speeder bikes before getting to their ship. Stage 3 is them on the ship racing into orbit to jump to hyperspace with TIE fighters from the base in pursuit. They were shooting out the back of the truck and the windows against the speeder bikes in the first stage, and in the second stage the speeder bikes were trying to take out their vehicle instead of them. Changed up the scenery and the challenge in each stage and it was tons of fun. :)
Nice! Just joined Patreon for Fraken-Armor!
Welcome aboard! Thank you! :)
Chase scenes are probably the main reason I put Speed as a main stat in my game. It functions like any other ability score. Want to chase a fleeing foe down? Roll Speed. Need to escape? Roll Speed. Hurdle an obstacle? Speed.
The teleporting king of the hill encounter is something I may have to steal at some point, if only for the sheer level of chaos it involves.
Interesting!
My speed is Athletic... because you know... athletic is athletic
@@ruggerosimonetta2885That's sensible, except that Athletics is Strength, and Strength doesn't necessarily mean Speed, and that bothers me.
@@theastralwanderer yes but if you think about runners, they usually have a good amount of strenght in the legs
@@theastralwanderer The stats associated with skills are guidelines. The rules as written 100% allow you to call for an athletics (dexterity) check if you think it's appropriate for the situation. You can even call for an athletics (wisdom) check if you want to.
Changing combat goal is the number 1 advice I give newer DM and these are great ideas. It’ll be much easier to just share this video with them. Great stuff!
Fantastic video sir. Would love to see more of this stuff.
Thanks very much! It was some great stories from the community that pulled this one together
You sure have some creative alternative rules.
Thanks!
That intro the the best!! =) easily equal to the wizards presentation\trip intro.
I wish I could do more TotM combat without squares. Sadly. One of my players really likes that and gets way into the details on *exactly* how many feet a thing does. And the other players are not bothered\enjoy it well enough as well so I get out-voted. Lol.
Thank you! And hey a good medium between squares and no squares that your player might enjoy is to use maps without a grid, and letting them measure things with a ruler (1 in = 5 ft)
@@BobWorldBuilder Ai though about maybe getting one of those dry erase mats and using that? Cuz then I could scale out (I only have chessex map now with limited scale) but am looking for solutions that don't require goo art skills and stopping to draw maps. Hmmm. Wonder if I could do TotM and have them draw it themselves as we go?
Man I started playing dnd about 4 years ago, using the dragon at icespire peak module. I found your videos about that module, when your channel was much smaller. I just wanted to say how happy i am to see your channel, confidence, and quality grow. Thanks for your hard work on your content!
A great way to do a chase. We’ll say we’re in a market Aladdin style. The target takes off in a direction. Your players would then obviously chase the target. When you get to an intersection, you describe what they see in multiple different directions. They can spend extra time (in seconds game time) to get more descriptions. They can wait more and more to get a more clear picture but allows the target to get further. If they correctly guess the direction the target went, they can get closer to the target. Slowly but surely spending time searching and chasing, they inevitably either lose the target or catch it. Losing the target however isn’t necessarily bad. It can lead to an investigation segment where they try and find the target in a slower more Sherlock Holmes kinda way.
Love all these ideas. I'm starting a spelljammer campaign I'm excited to work some of these in. Thanks Bob!
You're welcome! And I'm not sure how gravity works in Spelljammer, but I feel like you'd be well in your rights to use weird gravity to your advantage in space D&D!
...Is more GURPS 3rd edition. That being said still a good video.
Feel pretty stoked that I've already introduced quite a few of these modifications to my own homebrew totally naturally.
Nicely done!
Yes, make a whole video about that kind of encounter design.
The Franken Armor encounter reminds me of an adventure I made in which early on one player found a skein of Troll-Gut rope. Later in the adventure, they wandered into a cloud of prismatic mist, which had a number of different effects depending on the color of the mists that round. One color cause wooden objects to sprout green leaves, leather items to leak grease and blood, and for people's hair and fingernails to grow super-fast. I decided that this effect was enough to regenerate a tiny troll a timer die later in the PC's backpack, which set about trying to throttle him with the length of its own intestine hanging out of its body.
The game Fantasy Age has an interesting chase mechanic built into their combat. They don't have opportunity attacks either, but on each turn you can choose a 'minor action' which usually is like a stance that stays active for the whole combat, like "aiming" gives a +1 to hit or "guard" gives you +1 to defense. There is also "press the attack" which allows you to chase any enemy that leaves your melee range. This essentially helps you keep an enemy from fleeing in a more realistic way. They also have the opposite "blockade" where you make it difficult for an enemy to get past you.
Would love to see you explore more dynamic combat elements!
Thanks! Yeah I definitely plan to expand on some of these and go into more ideas for future videos :)
One of my favourite combats involved my players trying to save an elf village.
The party arrived at an elf village which was being menaced by frenzied goblins. The villagers, along with families from the immediate area, had taken refuge in various of their cottages and communal buildings.
Various groups of goblins/goblin bosses were fixated on menacing assorted buildings, attempting to set them on fire, break down the doors, get in the windows etc.
The goblins were sufficiently fixated that they were unlikely to attack the party unless the party engaged them BUT at the end of each combat round there was a chance of an escalation. At the end of each round I rolled a d6 for each goblin group not engaged in combat with the party, and on a 1 the goblin group progressed in their diabolical plans - get the thatch alight, break a shutter off a window, hack a hole in a door with an axe - or would turn their attentions to the party.
As a particular building suffered successive escalations the situation become more dire, until the villagers hiding within would begin to take casualties.
There was also a group of NPC elf warriors on the far side of the village who were pinned down but holding their own.
This meant that:
A) The players felt like badasses as they cut a swath (literally or figuratively) through a horde of relatively low-level adversaries.
B) Escalating tension and uncertainty as the situation worsened at different locations throughout the village.
C) Tactical decision making - which groups to prioritise as the sitiation escalates, or to deliberately engage multiple groups to draw their attention, at the expense of facing more enemies simultaneously? Or should they help the elf warriors first, to free them up to take on some of the goblins themselves?
In the end all the villagers were saved, but only by some good tactics. One player used an inspiration point to offset the disadvantage of engaging the goblin boss pinning down the elf warriors at the extreme range of his shortbow. A good hit drew their attenrion, allowing the elves to break out of their position and join the fight. Even then things seemed desperate, so again the party engaged another group of goblins at range, causing them to rush to engage the party - only the sorcerer had readied an action to cast thunderwave, which not only wiped out that group, but the thunderous sound attracted the remaining goblins to them.
these are good suggestions.
I've been pushing for tougher choices in my encounters for a while now.
- forces that split the party (not massively, just use some walls and slit rooms will do)
- different objectives at different parts of the map
- time sensitive elements so the party cannot reliably do more than one objective at a time, but the others have a chance of ending if not handled
for high level encounters, this helps break up the stomping aspect of over powered PCs without needing to resort to "every enemy is Tiamat"
Allow the party to be against threats that they could very well handle easily... if they were grouped.
Great ideas! Splitting up the party in simple ways can be another fun way to get the players thinking
@@BobWorldBuilder this week's session I had a simple case of three different enemies trying to flee from the lair at differing parts of the map. It wasn't large map, but there were enough ruined walls and pillars that made it very difficult to get line of sight to more than 1 of the NPCs at a time
Each was a named NPC (attached to long running story beats, 2 known, 1 new), which each in a 1v1 was enough of a challenge to not be easily taken out, but not so strong as to need more than a couple of PCs to reliably handle.
For minions, there were 2 canoloths, functionally acting as guard dogs and locking down teleportation (Dimensional Lock). And 1 roper refluffed as a golem that was just a sack of hitpoints and a big body in the centre of the room.
If the party ignored the canoloths, the casters would be harassed by them
If the party killed the canoloths, the fleeing NPCs would be able to use their teleports for an easy escape
The golem was just a distraction. they'd fought off a pack of 3 in the past 5 levels prior, sole purpose is to soak damage and be in the way. Like the canoloths, it would force move the PCs and make them rest with a grapple/restrain.
The NPCs for the most part were just moving to get away; only really attacking on their turns if they couldn't end a turn closer to the exit.
If any of the targets were to be focused fired, they'd not last a round; party of 5x lv15's can hit hard.... but doing so would easily allow the others to escape.
Encounter became a juggling act of body blocking, crowd controls, and trying to keep everyone within 60ft of a canoloth to prevent teleports, while at the same time being unable to use any of their own teleports to get around the map.
Party made a call at one stage to allow the sorcerer to get killed off by a canoloth (they had a wild magic reincarnate ready... but still wasn't happy) rather than allow teleports back on the table. "We can always seek a quest to restore the sorcerer's original body... but we don't know if we'll be able to lock these guys down without their easy getaways again" (many prior encounters had them just teleport or planeshift away when confronted, they had no interest in duking it out with the party, would instead just retreat to continue their evil elsewhere).
Encounter ended with the 2 known NPCs finally slain and the new guy escaping. Whole party's alive. Though the sorcerer has gone from dragonborn to an elf, so that'll be an identity struggle being their whole arc so far was to do with their bloodline. Works for me, more fuel for making adventure hooks out of.
Yes please, more unique encounter/combat ideas. Always looking to make my encounters more interesting.
I definitely need to up my combat game. Thanks! 😊
Hope this helps! :)
I absolutely love adding environmental features to combat. There will be conditions that the party has to avoid (and can possibly utilize against their enemies) and other ways of winning the fight. Lots of options can let players be even more creative in their approach if they choose. It can also let the less "fighty" PCs utilize their skills to help succeed in the fight. Everyone feels more fulfilled in the actions they take.
Hey! I normally listen to your videos so I don't see your face very often but you are ROCKING the short hair! Don't know when that happened but you look great ^-^
Haha thank you! :)
I was DMing a 3ed Ed game, I described the room as 10' by 15', with 3 orcs, and a shaman, the party wiz declared magic, and won initiative. He cast Fireball, and killed the monsters, and 4 of the PCs.
Sounds like a tie!
5e does have chase rules that are actually far more useable than people give them credit for, but if you want really good chase rules look up the Call of Cthulhu 7e chase rules. They are second to none.
Yeah like most people, I'm aware of the DMG's chase rules, but never bothered with them for one reason or another. I will have to check Cthulhu's though!
i recently made an encounter where the party returns to the city under siege(they had a 15 day time limit and wasted a lot of time doing other things and forgot what day they were on) when they entered the city they were met with a choice to save either:
-guardsmen(who could help them fight bbeg)
-black smith who could do the same
-Mayor (who is gonna pay them)
-orphans
-hardworking farmers and traders and shopkeepers (who had lost of goods)
-Love interest npc’s and other people they’ve specifically met along the way.
essentially they had to pick to save the people who can’t defend themselves or save who is gonna help them defeat the bbeg and figure out who’s the most important to them and have mini 1v2 fights potentially losing health and resources to fight individually or quickly saving people as groups of two but not helping as many groups while saving spell slots and abilities.
Epic!
Bob back at it with another banger video!
Thank you very much!
ran the black cabin encounter from ROTFM and when the characters activated the summer star an avalanche started. but before the mountain of snow hit the cabin, the stilts holding the cabin up collapsed and the section of the building the players were standing in slid down the hill. the players then had to outrun the avalanche in a makeshift cabin sled. this turned out to be a blast! the best quote was " I never rode a building down the side of a mountain before"
Id love to see more encounter idea videos. Keep it up Bob
Glad you liked this one! I'm thinking about doing a video focused on chases to continue this
@@BobWorldBuilder honestly you are you of the select few that I enjoy watching so keep up the great work.
This was a fun video Bob!
Thanks!
Amazing tips! Please share more of these different scenarios and plug ins for combat!
I've been running a Cypher System campaign based on Barotrauma, most fights are a balancing act of welding the hull back shut so the submarine doesn't flood and drag the party into the abyss while still trying to keep people on the guns to kill whatever it is that's come after them this time. It's extra fun if anyone is still outside of the submarine when the attack happens. Shouldn't be too hard to pull off something similar with airships where flying monsters of some variety are punching holes in balloons forcing some characters to climb up the rigging with patch kits to avoid crashing down into the earth.
Im wrapping up tomb of annihilation currently. Theres a companion guide over on dms guild that has some truely spectacular alternative racing rules.
Ive run many chase scenes in chult. Players chasing a hag through the jungle, being chased by a zombie vomiting T-Rex and even escaping a crumbling ancient ruin. It can be done in 5e. You just have to run it like an old 4e skill challenge.
Man my party took out the undead T rex way too easily >.
Please make a whole series on encounter design. All you find anywhere is cooking cutter here’s how you make monsters go bang.
I agree. I encouraged my players to envision combat as more than just toe-to-toe exchanging blows by using opponents to demonstrate tactical play.
Now they're coming up with brilliant stuff that isn't covered in *any* rulesets I've ever used, or ever tried to adjudicate! I'm okay with making ad hoc rulings, but I always wonder if I could have done it better.
Having the terrain be an important element in the combat can be fun as well. My players were taking a small ship to get from city to city. This "three hour tour" got hit with a massive storm in the middle of the night. The sailors were working hard to keep the ship scudding before the wind so it didn't get broached (if the ship got turned side-on to a big wave, the wave will send it to the bottom). Just as dawn was about to break, the bell rings for all hands on deck. As the players reach the top deck, the situation is even more chaotic. The waves are irregular, so the deck is bucking like a wild horse. There are life-lines stretched across the deck to give you something to hold onto as you try and walk across this unstable surface.
The ship is attacked first by waves of crabs, then by three massive crab monsters. As the players enter combat, the rolling deck is now a factor. At the top of each turn, each player standing on the deck needs to roll a dex check. 16+ and they stand their ground and can use both hands. 8-15 and they remain standing but can only use one hand for their turn as they have to hold on with the other. 3-7 and they are thrown to the deck and they're prone, getting up they can only use one hand. 2 and they are prone and slide 10 feet to starboard, and a 1 they are prone and thrown 10 feet to larboard. The archer quickly learned he needed to get up into the rigging because he couldn't shoot with only one hand. Same with the magic users. The monk was usually pretty good, but did have a tumble and slide at one point. They had to stay away from the sides because a 10-foot slide the wrong way and they're over the side.
They also had to keep the sailors safe because for every sailor that they lost, the ship became more likely to not be under control and turn unexpectedly and get broached. So, the party had to fight hoards of crabs, three giant crabs, protect the sailors and keep their feet. One of them up on top finally said they wanted to look around and they were able to see, in the distance, a giant crab wizard on the back of a shark, who was obviously controlling the weather. They could stop the ship from bucking around and possibly sinking by stopping the storm by killing or at least breaking the concentration of the wizard.
It was chaotic and fun and tense. The archer finally took out the wizard and by the end of the current round they no longer had to make rolls to stay upright.
The party felt a real sense of accomplishment at the end of the fight. They were bloodied and exhausted, but had only lost two sailors and saved the ship.
Great video! Lots of great ideas.
I'd be interested to see more videos on related topics. In particular, I'd be interested to hear more ideas for chase mechanics.
Perfect! I was thinking that a chase-focused video would be a good follow up
@@BobWorldBuilder Wow, I hadn't realized how engaged you are with the comments. Really cool!
My level 4 or 5 party (I cant remember) was traveling through the underdark while trying to escourt 80 or so prisoners of war that they had just rescued. When they got to the final chamber, they realized they were deep into an ancient deep dragons layer. They had to survive a couple of turns, moving 200 or so feet to the exit, all while javelins were being hurled at them and the prisoners from the dragons kobold minions, and the dragon ominously flying overhead, blasting large stalagmites with its breath weapon to kill as many prisoners as possible. The party got creative, using eldritch blast and shatter to send stalatites crashing down onto the dragon, stunning it. They got out successfully with minimal casualties, and I applauded their creativity to handle the dragon.
For chases: The one-shot "Cross City Race" By James “Grim” Desborough has an effective chase mechanic. Over simplified version - you get several uses of the dash action each of your turns, with each consecutive dash risking a temporary level of exhaustion. It's for an old edition, but worked great for one of my 5th edition games
I have an idea for a goat herding scenario, where a village needs at least 70% of them back if they wish to survive winter. When the party catches up with them, most goats are halfway climbing a mountain side, and heading into a cave, led by two aggressive giant goats. The party can use whatever skill they can think of to try and lure the bulk of the herd back home, and fighting will occur only if the giant goats will feel threatened. If they fail, the cave is home to an ogre that is found playing with the goats as if they were toys and will have to be dealt with the old fashioned way.
I have so many examples of these from my experiences. Another idea is the mystery combat, as I like to call it. I'm sure other people have other names for it.
Basically yes, there's a big assholy enemy to beat. But, even though they're not steamrollers that one shot the party, they're basically immortal. Something is up. Wounds don't seem to bother them, or maybe they go back to full health every round. The players have to first figure out what's going on, then disable whatever it is that's making the fight impossible. This way some players have to keep the enemy busy, survive, distract them, and one or two others have to stay out of trouble while investigating and sabotaging the enemy's secret gimmick. It's pretty awesome.
Great stuff, Bob!! Thank you!
My pleasure! Glad you enjoyed it