Wow the discussion about doom points hits hard! Loved the analogy with the force cage. My group already uses homebrew “hero coins” (like luck) for PCs, but it could be very cool to use a version of that for monsters. Fear in Daggerheart is on the right track as well, but I’d need to simplify it.
I was just about to post about Fear in DH and read your comment. I also agree, DH was what I was hoping for mechanics and story blended well, but not as well as I imagined.
Duality dice system is a trip. The major difference from PBTA is that the default to hit isn't 10+ (or whatever the high end of 2d12 would be), the GM gets to arbitrate the DC based on the circumstance like in 4e/5e. On the other hand, while you start w same base chance to roll fear vs hope, it's way more in hope's favor since you have a 1/12 chance to crit succeed (and gain hope) which really pushes the game in the player's favor. I think to balance that, the power level on fear moves feels high Given that, the feedback I got from two very veteran 5e players was that seeing how much Fear I was stocking up gave them a ton of anxiety cause they didn't feel like they could do anything to mitigate it, other than not roll dice. 😅
I was immediately thinking of Daggerheart. I think I like the way Daggerheart works a bit better, because it's more proactive, and it does involve the players. The doom points are a bit passive and bland like legendary resistances, where fear gives the GM things their monsters can do. In other words most of the things doom points do is just make PC's worse. Making PC's worse is just going to feel bad. I'd rather make the monsters better, and I really like the idea of having a boss interject a reaction in response to player actions. I might have a think of some sort of system like that for boss fights where directly attacking the boss provokes additional actions from them.
They've already committed to that by releasing the PHB first. I mean, what's the game going to look like between this release, and the new DMG/MM? We don't have monsters that have been designed to challenge these new PCs, and we have no (presumably better, fingers crossed) encounter design guidelines to account for them either. They've power-crept the martials - reasonably so, I don't think it's a bad idea to bring them more in line with caster performance - but even if the PC balance is now better, the power-level of the average party has gone up. Now, most experienced GMs have been ignoring the DMG guidelines for ages - we either make our own, or use Forge of Foes, A5E or Flee, Mortals! But even those might now be off, given the new options in the 2024 PHB. They're re-releasing a game without the crucial tools needed to run it.
@@strandedstarfish Interestingly of all the full editions 4e is the only one to release as a complete set of books at the same time (3.5 also did but was an updated version of 3e).
Speaking as someone who didn’t get the 1e “Big 3” all at once, I can tell you what we did. We pulled what we needed from our OD&D, Holmes, or Moldvay boxed sets and used the new rules as supplemental material. That’s been the history of the hobby since the start. And it’s also why both the 3e and 5e PHBs included all the rules for running the game, plus a small monster section. I expect 2024 will hold to that.
Im just kind of tired of the "hahaha i did this ridiculous thing to frustrate my dm and throw their whole plans off kilter" humor that is so pervasive in dnd and espicially 5e. That shows up so much in peoples storytelling or build goals. And i dont know how to feel about the designers themselves leaning into that as well like, feels a bit like kicking down. Dms already have to do a lot for this game, without them there is no game, why perpetuate a humor and playstyle thats very on the dms expense.
Yeah, it's not fun. I tend to find many of these players online and it's exhausting. It almost made me quit DnD because I just decided that most D&D players want different things than me.
As someone who got into PF2e last year, it really is opposite-town over there. I haven't had to fix a thing; every encounter was just as difficult as the guidelines predicted; I've never had a spell with a bullshit absolute effect circumvent my scenario design; my blood pressure's way down, and my hair is thicker (OK, I jest). On the other hand, I've seen plenty of players coming from 5e complain that everything in PF2e is too rigorous, measured, balanced, defined, how every spell has limitations or countermeasures, how they feel like they can't get away with anything, how they can't stack the deck during character creation... It breaks my heart; GM-friendly design should not be perceived as hostile. When I'm a player, I don't play to breeze through challenges, feel untouchable, and solve every problem with a flick of the wrist.
Players who do that shouldn’t be at your table, they are jerks through and through. I don’t do all the prep work and effort I put into the game to have them try to purposely ruin my game!
If I’m playing with people I haven’t played with before, I definitely let people know my expectations before starting a game with them. The “gotcha” mentality is not exclusive to players. DM’s do it, too. In those cases, it’s not a problem with the game system, it’s because the players and the DM don’t trust in each other. No rules system is going to fix that.
Theres nothing* wrong with giving players new toys as long as DMs are provided with equivalent ways of challenging them but yeah thats always been the most broken part of 5e and theyre not showing any signs of wanting to solve that. This sucks
@taejaskudva2543 The people saying this were promised DM materials being playtested. So we can guess based on the reality of that why they feel like the game won't have tolls for DMs
@@taejaskudva2543 Doubt it. Wotc seems to think cool stuff means monsters can cast spells. We haven't seen anything innovating in the last couple books.
David's Question at the end @1:12:00 I do like PDF's on my big Tablet. The only thing I want is for some of the publishers to use some of the features that are built into the PDF. For instance the the books from LootTavern (Heliana's and Ryoko's) not only have the Table of Contents linked to the pages so you can jump to a subject, but also, ALL THE PAGE NUMBERS on Every Page are connected back to the Table of Contents so you can move faster, you don't have to scroll back to the beginning.
“Optimizing your way out of fun” is a good way of putting it. I really like Treantmonk’s perspective: Builds should be A or B tier, not S tier. I also strongly agree that certain tricks can and do become incredibly boring if they get used all the time, and making things more annoying for the DM is not a good thing. Doom is very much a component of the Modiphius house system 2d20 (which is not a d20 type game but a die pool game). It works great for cinematic action type games like Star Trek. They also use it as a way to have players generate it by pushing their luck.
Certainly. How else are you going to get those subscriptions? Players have to be able to tell intuitively that their 2014 PC will be left in the dust to tap into that sweet, sweet, "under monetized" FOMO revenue.
The 2d20 Conan (other 2d20 games have the same basic mechanic but call it different) has a Doom Pool. The fun thing is the players can buy extra dice for a roll by giving the gm more Doom. Then the gm can do stuff buy spending it adding dice to his rolls, adding npc's, just making things a bit more difficult for the players. It was a fun mechanic and players agonized over giving me more Doom to make sure they had a good roll on something. I generally never used even half of it, but they'd get nervous seeing how big the pile was lol.
To those frustrated by 5e but want a well supported dnd alternative try Old School Essentials. Tons of adventures and modules and so much easier and its the dnd we had before 2nd edition.
Mike, as mostly a GM, currently running A5E, there are really frustrating maneuvers. There is a stunning maneuver that one of my players uses as a two weapon fighter. Five potential stuns each round for very low cost in points. I hate it. There are also other maneuvers where you can use a skill roll against the monsters AC to do debilitating attacks. I find it does not scale correctly and I hate them. Granted my players are 16th level but this has been an ongoing issue for me as a GM.
These maneuvers is why, despite having backed and own A5E, I still haven't played it. It is daunting as a GM to go over all that stuffs and also requires a lot of brainpower from my players which are also busy with their lives.
@@philippemarcil2004 Truth be told, I gave up trying to learn it myself. I just let my veteran players tell me all the shenanigans they can do. I roll my eyes, curse the poor design decisions, and just go with it.
The player facing content in A5E is all over the place: sometimes overcomplicated, sometimes worded in ways that don't make sense, sometimes way over or underpowered.
Maybe add some lightening rods to the encounters. Could also be time to think about wrapping up the campaign soon and maybe talking to your players about not running A5E in the next one.
@@MannonMartin We're actually trying to get to 20 before we wrap. But yeah, I have switched things up. I've been using more groups of monsters for combat encounters. And adding more non-combat challenges for story arc purposes.
For asking clarifying questions I try to keep my party on their toes by asking clarifying questions at random times. For example, once a session I'll ask a question like "how do you open the door", "do you walk near the wall", or "are you sneaking" irregardless to any actual danger, that way when I do have something they don't know if I'm bluffing. Also, it adds tension when there is no danger, which is kind of fun, it is surprising how much relief they get when they realize there is no danger or they think they avoided danger.
Embrace the unpredictability. As a GM of an old school type game myself, I love the randomness of not knowing what's going to happen next. It's like the GM is playing the game with the players as well. Not just GM'ing.
Yeah, my big issue with the maul thing is adding an extra dice roll to every attack; it's an alternating dice roll too so each roll switches player priority, and attacks can't be batched together at all. All this said, I think this sort of slower, crunchier power fantasy experience is something that appeals to a lot of 5e players, at least in principle. Even if people have less fun ultimately, they won't blame D&D for it. People would be incensed if 5e tried to slim down to the level where combat became genuinely fast and easy to run. Also, I feel like the people who consciously want an OSR experience move very easily away from 5e, while those who want a more complex experience tend to stick with it and add thing on.
Make no mistake and mark my words. WOTC is looking to maximize returns. The smallest group of players are DMs. So this is the rub... WOTC is going to keep changing the game until it's no longer dependent on a DM at all. Every player will have to purchase their own gear to play and DMs will not be required to play (much like a board game or MTG). Get the DMs out of the way and market directly to the player base. I don't think it'll be successful, but that's going to be what WOTC shoots for until they realize how bad of an idea it is. I may be wrong, but I don't think so and most DMs I talk to are already feeling the crunch.
I got the DM screen in addition to the books for ToV because I've found screens give the best quick overview of major rules. I was delighted when I saw doom points on there. I can't wait to try them out in my 5e campaign. I HATE when the boss dies in one round, often not getting to do a single action. I already give all bosses legendary actions, including modding or homebrewing some to be more like Matt Colville's "villain actions". I also buff them with more HP and higher AC. I also give them special features based on countering--but not eliminating--some of the more devastating or over-optimized actions of the PCs. And then there's making the minions have stronger attacks (while still being low HP) just to force the PCs to deal with them up front. All this to make boss fights more challenging and epic. That's a lot of work, but I'm glad to have another tool in the toolbox to help this endeavor. Go doom points!!
I like the idea, but not sold on the implementation. One thing I like the idea of is to actually add a special reaction to the minions rather than the boss themselves, that lets the minion jump in and take the hit or spell in place of the boss. It needs a limitation, though. In other words if they can intercept any attack against the boss don't make the minions infinite and just summon more when they run out. That just makes the fight an unwinnable slog if your players can only hit the boss when you allow them to. Even if they win such a fight they'll know that it's just because you stopped blocking and it won't feel earned. But you could use infinite minions if it was more limited like they could only intercept certain types of attacks or something like that. The players might also be able to use crowd control and forced movement to make some opportunities, even if they can't wipe out all the minions.
@@MannonMartin I wouldn't make minions take all the hits, just force the PCs to deal with them along with/at the same time as the boss, if possible. But I really hadn't thought of using doom points with the minions in a boss battle. That's something I WILL have to incorporate. As for numbers of minions: I don't like too many minions for the reason you stated before. I recently accidently had too many low-level bad guys in an area the PCs wanted to fight through and it took the entire session. While the players told me they were fine with that, I know it was a slog...at least for me. And if it's a slog for me, who has to do something every turn, I know it was a slog for them. (They're very polite with me. In several years I haven't been able to coax out any constructive criticism...and that's not a brag. It's a complaint. (But I love my players and my table as a whole.)) I definitely don't want to block all attacks against the BBEG. I want the PCs to make progress. I just don't want to have the BBEG killed before they have a chance to prove why they're the BBEG. I don't know a DM anywhere that hasn't experienced something like a surprise round or a poor initiative roll meant the BBEG was killed or nearly killed before they were able to do a single thing. I've got a big BBEG encounter coming up and I've easily spent the same amount of time on this as I would have for 3 regular sessions trying to deal with these five questions: 1) How to make the BBEG not die in the first one or two rounds? 2) How to make the BBEG scary? 3) How to not make the minions worth taking on rather than concentrating all firepower on the BBEG? 4) How to keep the fight from going on too long? 5) How not to accidentally cause a TPK due to all the enemy buffs/mods implemented to fulfill questions 1), 2), and 3)? Anything that can help me do that, and doom points look pretty good in this respect, is something I've got to try. Mike, if you're reading this, I hope you're okay with me turning this into a blog post. If not, let me know!
@@TheVTTDM I wasn't really thinking in terms of lots of minions so much as possibly having fresh waves of them on subsequent rounds which works much better than just throwing a massive number of enemies into the battle from the start. In practice I like the idea of having a handful of minions willing and able to sacrifice themselves in case someone throws something at the boss that breaks the encounter. The minion then takes the hit so it doesn't entirely negate the player's action, but the boss can continue the fight. Works best as a limited resource, say 3 cultists protecting the boss. For that matter you could even use them as the personification of the boss's legendary resistance instead of just the "nope" button.
@@MannonMartin I like that. Hmmm... I like that. I want to use it. How do you justify that rules-wise during combat? A held action on the part of the minion? That swap-places feature that goblin bosses, et al. have? Or would this be a use of a doom point?
To play devils advocate for WotC, some of the changes do make it easier for DMs to run the game. The new mechanics for surprise and exhaustion specifically come to mind
To me, the worst part about the "frustrating for DMs" comment is how it assumes we aren't on the same team as the players. When players get a victory, like Dazing an enemy that they really didn't want to kill and that works out, the DM should be celebrating that alongside the players. Insinuating that we get frustrated when we "lose" is just more adversarial DM talk, which shouldn't be encouraged, especially in an official context.
Exactly, I'm not a fan of it from either side.. The whole " best ways to punish the players" or "here's ways to trick your dm" paradigm. We're all on the same team, so why push that angle?
From my perspective it's not about opposing the players, but about just managing combat in general. As a DM I absolutely cheer for my players and want to see them win, but I also want to make it challenging. I want the game to be exciting, and mindless chains of complicated combos to kill monsters who would easily have been toppled anyway is not exciting. On top of making combat take even longer in a game that already has a notable problem with long-running combats, it also makes any attempt to build balanced encounters that much more of a headache during prep time. It is frustrating, but not because I'm concerned about "losing."
I cheer for my osr players when they over come a tough situation but I couldn't do it w 5e. They aren't accomplishing anything other than assembling a list of hero abilities. There was largely no thinking after the initial sweat over their character.
I understand this point, but I'd like to bring another perspective. True: the game should not be DM vs Players. However, the players these days are showing up with an expectation that the DM gives them a specific experience. This mindset drives the wedge between players and DMs and is the leading cause for DM burnout. These games are supposed to be collaborative. I think the best role players are team players and are there to bring as much to the table as they get. As far as frustrating the DMs: players want a certain amount of "drama". They want thr thrill of combat and the emotional experiences that this game can give Drama needs tension. DMs are having a harder and harder time creating tension, especially in combat, due to the power creep. I don't play against my players, but if I cannot give them something that will truly challenge them then the game gets boring incredibly quick.
To be fair, I also believe that the main reason why Revised 5e is bogging everything down with time-consuming mechanics, is so that people will use WotC's VTT, where things will probably be automated and much quicker, than if you played at the table - just a hunch though.
100% need a DM advocate at WOTC, and it's going to compound the lack of DMs problem. Starting with the Players Handbook revamp, instead of the deeply flawed Dungeon Master's Guide, tells me where WOTC's head is at going into these new books.
I really like where you're going with Doom points. I'm wondering if you envision them as a substitute for legendary resistance. So, rather than using legendary resistance the boss uses a Doom point. Mechanically, it's the same effect but the DM can use it for other purposes as well, making them more useful in that regard. I don't think I would use both Doom point and legendary resistance because my players would think that's a bit much, even for a major boss. I think they would get behind bosses having an expendable resource that gives them essentially legendary resistance plus some other powers, but they would feel (maybe correctly) that the scale has tipped too far over if the boss had both.
Completely agree with you about reviews. I really got snookered into running a reviewer-hyped campaign that didn't play so well. The best reviews are the ones from DMs who played the adventure multiple times. I'm there for any time Seth Skorkowski or Professor Dungeonmaster want to talk about a 35 year old old school adventure that they have played half a dozen times.
I think by "frustrate your DM" they were jokingly referring to when the DM goes "aww shucks" when the players beat the monsters and the DM is also happy to see everyone have fun.
Kind of related to the doom points in the boss fight arena, I’ve been toying with making legendary resistances work normally until bloodied, at which point they become legendary recoveries (which you’ve talked about before) - by letting the players know they get more (i.e., aren’t wasting spells) by holding back their save-or-suck abilities, I’m hoping to delay the deluge of win-the-game spells until they’ve had some back and forth - so, if they force cage right out the gate, the beholder can block (using up an LR but getting rather little), but if they wait until they’ve bloodied it, then the beholder has to start burning eye stalks to stay in the fight
Hi Mike, ideas on doom points. 1. Make them public, put the coins on the table in front of the monster, so they know this is an extra special monster. It also makes it clear when they are being used up. 2. A doom point should never just simply 'nope' an effect, we all hate counter spell as its a 'doesnt happen' effect. But in your example, Lord Soth spending a doom point and breaking the force cage (possibly spending an action), but it adds so much narrative weight to the action. 3. Doom points could be used for escaping. This I got from Fabula Ultima RPG. The villains have a fixed number of doom points which never refresh, but they can always spend one to escape this time. But the PC's know that in the future the villain will not have this again. On the 2024 weapon mastery: if it slows the game down I'm not having it, the games can run too slow right now. Also I bet the PC's will not be so happy if they meet 20 Bugbears with Mauls, continually knocking them down.
Just to add to the "Tipping your hand question", I always provide info in my descriptions and leave it at that. Using the 'Disintegrating item' example that Sly gave, when describing the room I would mention that 'you notice 3 neat piles of dust arrayed around the floating blade', then just let the players do what they will. If they clue on to that...great, its a game and it's meant to be fun. In the Pond example, you could add the line "you see deep grooves in the mud leading into the pond" and leave that with the players. Hope that helps :)
Thank you for introducing me to Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition. I've very using bits and pieces of it where I can, and I think I may try to find a group to run a full A5E campaign.
Let me just say I loved the brief, subtle detour into the lyrics for that song at about 12:55. I do this kind of silliness all the time for my own amusement... but I'm far less subtle about it.
I agree that topple is an issue. Most of the other masteries aren't too powerful and also are simple to implement and add tactical options. Topple is the one i have issues with because obv its powerful, which is why they had to add a saving throw. But saving throws on every attack slows down combat too much. The best idea ive seen to fix it is to remove the save and just have it happen if the attack hits hy more than 5. DC20 style. Depending on how powerful that turns out to be at your table, then raise or lower from 5 to the right number.
All this prone and knocking enemies back x feet stuff needs to have the added rule: "applies only to creatures up to one size larger than you" (and even then I'd have some large size creatures that are "immune to prone" when it makes sense for the creature--e.g., a gelatinous cube is immune to the prone condtition).
I think doom points make sense if the players give them to you. They get something, but the cost is you get a doom point. Maybe a resurrection or a wish provides a doom point. Maybe the plot has a timer attached. If they beat the timer, fine, but if they don’t, they acquire a doom point to keep the plot moving forward without adverse consequences. It is a way to build tension.
Regarding doom points / boss abilities, it seems to me it might be easier to piggyback on the existing Legendary Actions, but expand them. I'm imagining a Forge of Foes-style menu of special legendary actions that allow the monster to break through that force cage, bypass a counterspell or a resistance, a short teleport, or otherwise be able to turn the tables. This way it's not that difficult to explain to players - this monster just has loads of powerful legendary action options - but theres still a finite amount of Actions per turn! Maybe 5 instead of the typical 3 just to make those options usable.
Great show as always. I’m sure I’m not the first to point out that you might want to take a look at Fear tokens in Daggerheart for some mechanical implementation of Doom points. It’s about my favorite aspect of the system.
Doom Points seem like a cool retroactive way for a BBEG to 'prepare' to face the party. I'm thinking of combining it with the Intrigue System in Kingdoms and Warfare and rewarding the NPC a Doom Point for a successful Lore/Espionage check instead of buffing their armies.
6 or 8 attacks per round is the broken part. Back in 2e it was maxed at 5 melee attacks every 2 rounds, only for specialists fighters of 13th level or higher.
as a GM of 45+ years, I've gone to the rules minimalist approach. my campaign for this year has been a combination of AD&D + 3e + 5e ( 2e is redundant and 4e is power gaming). combined with a variety of optional rules, it's become a very unconventional form of D&D. rules we do differently; 1 - no initiative (I never say roll for initiative) 2 - no combat 'action economy' 3 - AC as damage reduction (AC is only armor value +dex bonus. not 10 + AC + dex) 4 - no to-hit roll, just roll damage and compare against targets AC. 4.1 - the roll is open ended. roll 1d6 and get a 6, roll again and add to total. 5 - use a modified spell points system that has a fatigue factor. 6 - no spell slots. ALL spells (arcane) or prayers (religion) are cast from scrolls, which dissolve upon casting. yes, a char with 50 scrolls can cast 50 spells in a day. however, the spell points/fatigue mechanism makes casting more difficult when using more points than originally available. 7 - no 'resting' recovering half or all HP. char only recovers 1HP + con mod per day of rest. (no strenuous activity for 24 hours. 8 - no death saves and no negative HP... 0 HP = dead. the focus of the game is an exploration role-play. yes, combat occurs. sometimes a character will die. but the combat is fast, dynamic and chaotic. everyone is constantly engaged because there is minimal waiting between opportunities to act. as far as game details and info given to the players. I am fortunate to have a decent miniatures collection. when I place things into the adventure area, I don't outright state what something is. the players must try and figure it out on their own. there are more things I do to keep players intrigued with a variety of props. on a side note - D&D beyond is a useless tool for my style of GMing. if WotC goes fully digital and expects micro-transactions as the future for this game, then I will only get older items that are not in my library.
@Adramach believe it or not, those changes already existed as optional rules in AD&D DMG. even 5e has options for spell points instead of slots. all I did, was make these optional rules our primary rules. ultimately, the game world is Forgotten Realms, with the locations and personalities. the monsters and factions of the world still exist. so... yes, I still see this as D&D.
As a GM I've been disillusioned with 5e for some time now, and the 2024 update hasn't filled me with hope for making the game fun for me again. I'm exploring a rules light, narrative driven game like Dungeon World when my current 5e campaign wraps up soon.
I love Dungeon World, but my players didn't as much as me. As one to explore, keep Cypher System in mind! It's not nearly as lightweight as dungeon world, but it plays really cleanly.
If you're looking at Dungeon World, I'd like to shout out Chasing Adventure. It started as a DW hack, but evolved into its own thing and shaved off some of the vestigial DnD elements like ability scores. It also has expanded moves for social interaction. Also, it just had a successful kickstarter for a physical edition.
OSR TTRPG are pretty goods for rule light systems (or even the first version of D&D, like D&D B/X Moldvay). It's even mind-opening when that D&D became more complex or get more rules as it evolved.
More DM Advocates!!! I've never felt that WotC cared much about us DMs with 5e. It's like we're secondary to the superstars that are the Player Characters. As you said, we're the ones buying the books. I honestly don't remember if any of my players own the PHB, and still PCs get new sub-classes, spells, and species even though they only play one character (presumably) in each campaign. I really doubt that the updated monsters will be scaled enough to challenge the crazy power increase the new classes get. And it will slow the game.
Doom points adress the symptom instead of the cause. If characters weren't overpowered superheros in the first place, we wouldn't need to devise hand wavy tricks for monsters to use.
Without getting into all the details, in a TTRPG I've been designing and playtesting (have about 30 playtesters across 6 playtests so far) for about 1.5yrs now, players have a 5-20% chance of rolling a result that creates a GM resource called Threat, which works quite similarly to Doom. In every playtest I've done, players have consistently said that Threat as currency is really compelling, because: - it's narratively tied to previous player failures - it builds up in an ominous way - it acts as a kind of player buy-in to the GM doing something dramatic that harms the players
When I write my documents, I generally write in Markdown, then convert to HTML using Pandoc. Then when I use Scribus, I can Get Text and adjust my Text Frames so that they display the text as needed, leaving room for images. Then I can easily make my documents different sizes. Pandoc also then makes epubs or other pages.
When you talked about how we play video games vs ttrpgs, I took FOREVER to finish Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate I because I would move an invisible character close enough to see 1 monster, the rest of the party would form up just out of the monster's sight, aggro that one guy, kill him, pull back, rest and then repeat. I can just imagine how much a DM would love running my game.
Honestly, this is profoundly demoralizing. I loathe "gotcha DM!" mechanics like Silvery Barbs, and it feels like the D&D design team is doubling down on even more of that BS with these updates. I'm with you Mike - imma roll it back to 2014 rules, or find a less frustrating system.
Crunchy games like 5e work great on computers... which of course is exactly the direction WoTC wants to go. For reviews, ya gotta find someone who speaks plainly, is willing to be critical, and has similar taste than you. For me, Ten Foot Pole is pretty reliable. He has a very narrow idea of what is good, but he is transparent about that and it lines up well w my opinion.
Just got my hardcover of Return today! I already own a softcover copy, but bought the hardcover/PDF combo to give to a friend and bought another electronic copy for a second DM friend. I hope they find it as useful as I have!
“Gonzo” is the word I studiously avoided in my complaint on the ENWorld forums last week about feeling “left behind” by 5.24e. Separately, I worry about the action economy in play. I remember back in my Palladium days when it took 3 die rolls to resolve one attack, and every character got 4+ attacks per round. Slog doesn’t begin to cover it. It was horrible.
5e Combat is slow for casters. Playing a barbarian or fighter in 5e, my turn was done in 15 seconds. I roll to hit or grapple, and now I wait 10 minutes for the casters to fumble around with dozens of spells. Martials need more options to have fun in combat because attacking twice (and missing!) and then sitting there for a long time is miserable.
What you drscribe for your doom points sounds very close to how the gang at High Rollers use a homebrewed mechanic they call The Crucible of Fate. The whole crew including GM generate Fate points with D6 and then both sides of table have a pool of items they can spend fate on, very similar to the doom idea discussed.
This is a great bookend to the one ruleslawyer did a few days back about lack of care for gms. You really did a nice job of spotlighting why the failure to put any effort into spotlighting changes made for the GM experience. I don't want to go from the "just homebrew it" edition to "just ban all this trash *then* just homebrew it"
I think that the reason the WotC design team felt that they could add a lot more opportunities to impose conditions is that their overarching strategy is for games to be run online, with D&D Beyond. The bookkeeping for all of these things will likely be applied using the DDB Game Log, and will be applied by the choices of the player on their turn. The major VTTs will likely program the same. So unless you are purely paper and pencil, it should be manageable.
This is not an argument in favor of counterspell, but a counterargument to the argument that counterspell doesn't work against an enemy mage's arcane bolt because the enemy mage's arcane bolt is not a spell: It is a spell. Mechanically, it isn't handled as a spell. But, within the fictional reality we're imaginarily playing it, it is a spell.
I think that is similar for how to run superintelligent bosses. Give them some number of "They anticipated that" (were prepared for that, etc.) equal to their Int or Wis. That they have a complicating factor for XXXX. An example would be to dissuade druids from scouting shapechanged, they have a bunch of stray cats roaming around.
On the subject of Doom Points, I am currently homebrewing a system (aren't we all?) called Threat: a monster gets a number of Threat points to spend to make extra moves or attacks, get advantage on a saving throw, use a special ability like Dragon's Breath and so on. They get 1 at CR5, 2 at CR13 and 3 at CR21+. Threat points refresh every round. I came up with this system because I love creating my own monsters but could never be bothered to learn when monsters should get Legendary Actions and Resistances or not so I just gave them to everyone 😆 yet to playtest the system but I'm hopeful, especially since it kicks in at CR5, giving solo monsters a better chance of resisting a level 5 party! Cheers Mike, love your videos!
Re: asking questions to players, something like Pathfinder's exploration actions is really useful. Just have the players tell you the general attitude of their characters while they're exploring. Are they trying to go fast? Undetected? Inspecting their surroundings? This can help inform how much detail you should give them without them asking
Where is the game that feels thrilling and dangerous where all players get their moments without being a flock of dragon-stomping magical Marvel characters?
Hi Mike, fun show as usual. In regards to the discussion on boss monsters, I can understand the mindset of both sides of the table. When I'm a player, I want my character to succeed and it makes sense both in and out of roleplay that I'd target the scariest looking monster with my strongest abilities. When I'm a DM I also want the players to succeed, but I don't want it to be a cakewalk for them. Thus the DM has the harder job of walking the tightrope - generally wanting the players to be triumphant while also ensuring that the victory feels earned. I wonder if DM's could do something where you combine Doom Points for boss monsters with Legendary Resistances. It could be interesting to give monsters a set number of these points and let them use a point to either no sell a player's spell or ability, or use the point instead to let them something crazy to make the players sweat. I think the key here would be to both give the player clear cues that the boss has some kind of unique resource and give them clues that this resource is being expended over the fight. That way it feels less like DM fiat when you tell the player, "No the boss simply rips straight through your forcecage." If communicated ahead of time, I think I would also be receptive to this system as a player as well. While it doesn't feel great to be told your high level spell or other limited use ability didn't have its usual impact on a fight, as a player I'll feel better about it if I know that it also means there's one less Meteor Swarm the boss can cast at the party.
I'm using the Doom Point system in my games since the first Black Flag playtest, and I like it - when I not forget to use it at all. I homebrewed it - like if a PC rolls a critical failure, the enemies are receiving 1 Doom Point, or a monster receives advantage to a saving throw. It is a nice mechanic - but this is an N+1 thing to keep in mind and I'm often forgetting to use it.
In my own 5e spin off system I'm implementing Tension points as a GM resource. It's equivalent to GM Inspiration, and may be gained instead of granting a player a detriment/complication on weak succeses/failures. Spend to reroll a d20 or use certain monster abilities (I use it as a universal resource instead of tracking Monsters individual resources). I don't agree however with it being able to stop spell effects, as I'm firmly in the "play to find out" camp of RPGs, shutdowns without a save like wall of force/force cage need to be changed rather than have systems created to fix them.
I was really excited by some of the really playtest drafts, but by the time the kickstarter launched, some of the elegant ideas like combat zones and had been ditched, and some things seemed unnecessarily crunchy, like how much wind it takes to blow a piece of paper of of a table.
Just listened about the doom points. I want that so bad! Running Tyranny of Dragons and in final final battle. Luckily Tiamat can't be force caged. But the warlock used a save or suck spell/ability to suck my wizard minion. He's currently levitating mindlessly in the air unable to do anything for 1 min. Not for this battle since I didn't warn them, but I'm gonna work in these doom points. I'm wondering if they can be combined with the Legendary Resistances. LR's seem like they help the BBEG avoid save or suck for spells/abilities that use saving throws. Expanding to avoiding other abilities that don't use saving throws seems like a natural extension. Definitely something I'm gonna work in for my next campaign. Thanks Mike!
Awesome video. Thank you! For the player who asked about neurodivergent players, the Dungeon Dudes have a great video on running games for neurodivergent players!
on the "are you sure" question or do you do A or B question, my answer is normalise that question. I ask it more often than is necessary and that way after a few false alarms the party get used to me asking that question. so now when I ask it they are not naturally suspicious. How often you do this however, you need to decide
I'm glad someone is talking about this. If you are not concerned with the Fall 2024 player buffs, then you have never been a DM or you are one of the best DMs in the world or your players forget to use skills. Fingers crossed for the 2024 Monster Manual (which they should have sold DMs on first to potentially head-off these concerns).
I try to speed up combat. In that quest, one thing I tried was static monster damage. I never rolled damage and I used average damage for every hit. After about a year a player told me he misses the random damage because he can metagame his PC's actions because he knows exactly how much damage an attack will do. I've played with this player for about 18 years. He's an excellent DM and player. It made me reconsider if I was making the right changes in my quest for speed.
@@DMHightower I haven’t had that issue, but if you have, consider rolling only part of the time, like on breath weapons, fall damage, improvised damage and attacks that might drop a PC - that may be why my players haven’t brought it up to me - either that or they’ve noticed and want to use it to their advantage
TL;DR: it pains me to say it, but I’m realizing D&D is a system designed to make people wait while someone else plays the game. I think there’s already too much to do in one turn, and adding more will only make it worse. As far as average damage is concerned, I’ve been using it for a while now without any problem, or at least no one at my table has mentioned it - I do roll some damage: big attacks from bosses like dragon breath weapons, fall damage, bonus damage from a weapon that gets lit on fire, an attack that might drop a PC - sprinkling those in may be why no one has questioned it at my table - I will point to DM Timothy’s video on the subject in which he notes that in over a year and hundreds of games, no one mentioned it to him - if only that guy mentioned how many games he played a year 😄 There’s a video by How to Be a Great GM that talks about the ruthless quest for speed at the cost of fun - I identify with the feeling, but when I look at players who sit bored awaiting their turn, I remember why I try to push the pace I, the DM, am rarely bored, because I have a part to play even during PC turns: adjudicating their actions, applying their damage to enemies, quickly narrating the results and the little add ins to keep players engaged - Chris, you watch your friend unleash a rapid succession of punches and kicks, fracturing the bone golem into its constituent pieces, but its collapse reveals two skeletons with bows trained on you! What are you doing? - keep it snappy; draw them in; maybe remind the next player they’re on deck - you know: help handoff the ball from one player to the next - but then Chris sits there pondering what he wants to do - “should I cast one of my spells or maybe perform a skill action or maybe just attack. Tho I could use a shove or grapple instead of a regular attack” - while Chris sits and thinks, justifiably wanting to take the most effective or impactful action, everyone waits Ok, end bloated preface: now I’m imagining asking, on top of that, which weapon mastery do you want to use and could you roll that up for me? - players seem to already have too many options to parse during their turn - I absolutely believe they should be “thinking about their turn ahead of time”, but meaningful changes to the battle happen with nearly every action, so it’s totally understandable why players would want to consider their options in light of those changes - and I don’t want to start dressing down my friends about how slow they are So do we start talking about timers - say a generous 2 minute timer - now we move along but the clock is kind of not very fun and people are ending turns early and it’s still 15 minutes a round with 5 players, enemy actions and math, which I simplify by rounding and adding up instead of subtracting down - maybe I’ll use electronic dice to roll and calculate all the various enemy attacks all together or even prerolling before the game to speed up initiative or breath weapon recharges or sleep spell HP or or or OR! OR!! OR!!! At some point I had to accept that the group is not the problem - it’s not my DMing - it’s not Chris taking his sweet time picking what to do - it’s the system - this game is designed to make people sit idle while someone else plays the game only to eventually have their turn - really, it’s worse than that, because the person debating their actions isn’t even playing the game - they’re thinking about how they want to play the game - we are all waiting for someone to finish waiting to figure out how they spend 6 in game seconds before they start waiting on the next guy - there’s too much waiting built into this game, and I believe a major factor is too much to do in a turn - too many actions to choose from - adding more to do on the player’s turn is only going to make that worse And don’t get me started on bonus actions
Agreed! Great insights as always. I do think we need more (and better!) options for weapon-focused characters, but I think it needs to be tied to a simpler mechanic. A flexible system like DCC’s “mighty deeds” but with better guidelines would be more useful than all these mastery properties and mapped-out combat maneuvers. They could even be tied to a limited resource, so they aren’t doable all the time. Also, the combat mechanic is already an abstraction, so why does the fighter have to roll 8x to attack 8 people? Why can’t a single attack roll represent 3 swings? Just me noodling a bit.
I use a variant mashup of Genisys’ dark side/light side points and Shadowdark’s luck tokens. At the beginning of a session a player rolls a d4 and the result is the number of luck tokens at the beginning of the session. Any PC can use them at anytime to re-roll a result. When the luck tokens run out, the GM gets a doom point to “break” the system but not immediately undo the PCs last luck result in their favor. The PCs reroll the d4 when the GM uses the doom to reset the luck tokens. The length to which the system can be broken should be understood in the group
Jaquaysing the dungeons = you give them multiple paths, each with its own challenges, but the paths usually lead to the same place. For the pond or lake it might have things that look like stepping stones or a slimy questionable of stability log or trees with vines that overhang it, etc. there could be a little piece of land stuck up in the middle somewhere with a lure to the players’ curiosity. The other options should present their own challenges. Going around one way the bramble and trees are thick and close together and parts of the forest are shrouded with darkness. Going the other way has rocky outcroppings and you can just barely distinguish a cave entrance. If you want to nudge the players across the lake, besides the lure, you can mention they don’t know if going around will lead them to the building across the lake. (Of course each will have its own terrain and monster challenges themed to its setting.)
I love the idea of DOOM Points as a replacement for legendary resistances. Instead of an automatic success though, I would like to make it a contest, so the player still has a *small* (25%?) chance to have the Indiana Jones moment.
I'd love to see your implementation of altered Doom Points that enhances bosses in ways you discuss in this video. The story behind a boss is usually better than players realize, this might be a great way to give that them without breaking anything. Please, Mike, may we have some more??
I think the easiest change to make to fix the boss monster getting disabled thing, is the simply allow legendary resistances to do stuff like rip open a force cage etc. The best part about Homebrew is that you don't need to be a lawyer and write it in such a way that it works how you want it. As long as the table agrees that the mechanic is going to be fun, all you need to understand is the intent of the mechanic you don't have to write some bulletproof phrasing.
What does the barbarian do at the ball? He hangs in the stables and guard barracks teaching a guard how to grapple and breaking broncos in the rodeo for the stablemaster, while making himself occasionally available for the fair maiden watching him, who later lures him into the labyrinth garden. After some tomfoolery, they eventually make their way to the fountain and he splashes her because it's funny. She laughs and he does it again, and again, because he has all STR ad no Rizz. Now her night is ruined as her dress is soaked. So her dad and guards show up to the commotion, think that she was missing. The miscommunication gets him throw him in the drunk tank for the rest of the night where he learns an ancient secret of his kin from an old ghost. The ghost knows a secret about the noble house. The young lady comes back and brings him a meal and an apology. The guard is passed out. She steals the key. They make love on the haypile. The ghost watches. No shame in separating your party when it isn't a dungeon.
I definitely hope that whatever comes out of the DMG and the Monster Manual show good DM tools. I haven’t seen anything that will change my 5e burnout, but we’ll see. I’ll keep a hopeful eye out with low expectations and continue to play PF2e and OSE and Shadowdark and others and hope 5e makes good choices.
The Feylock Paladin build I wrote a forum post on in the early days of 4E sounds similar to the Feylock they are making. Using Eyebite and the Paladin taunt was amazing control.
Without the other half of the books its difficult to judge with certainty. If you're worried about encounter balancing, even if you don't have the MM at this point, just remember you can always add condition immunities just like in 2014 5e to monsters to spice things up and challenge players. Hopefully the encounter designing part of the DMG gives better practical advice for challenging players. And if we're all allowed to make inferences based on single sentences within the playtest itself, let's not forget that all the, "You're attacks are considered magical weapons for the purposes of damage resistance/immunities" so maybe resistance will matter a lot more in the new MM and simply always be on rather than be conditionally turned off. If that's the case it'll be easier to both challenge players and use those resistances in play.
Great show Mike but kinda harsh on the professional gaming press there - specifically for Descent Into Avernus, I read a couple mainstream reviews that identified the problematic start. I then ran it as my first 5e campaign (because metal 🤘) but was able to go in eyes-open and apply 3rd party fixes so that it successfully ran over two years to a satisfying conclusion. Fixing it actually taught me a lot about running a game so it was a valuable experience to the point where I now run a homebrew campaign- guess wotc messed up after all 😂 your point definitely stands for ‘released last week material’ tho - keep up the good works!
Doom points, to my knowledge was added in the Mophidious Conan, adventures in an age undreamed of. Where the GM begins with Doom points equal to the number of fortune points of all the players. The GM could gain more doom, by Players voluntaring to failure to gain back a fortune point, would also add doom, a player critical failing etc. The GM can then spend doom to add complications from minor to Major coplications, storywise, Add dice for hostile NPC and monsters, give monsters extra reactions etc. Also summon reinforcements. Some monsters just added doom when they entered the combat (legendary scary monsters) I think Doom or something equivalent has alot of potential to add excitement to the game.
How about combining the Doom points with Legendary Actions? One Legendary Actions is to negate any (or all?) spell effect, status effect, condition, etc. Once that Legendary Action is used, it reduces the monsters # of Legendary Actions pool by one so they cannot just spam it every round. Just a thought, but I agree you would want to telegraph this is coming so it doesnt feel like cheating.
While i'm worried about the power creep (did rogue realy need to get relieble talent earlier?) i dont think the whole weapon masterie will be that bad, like the 1st circle and level arcane spell "grease" can also make 3 to 6 monters roll a saving throw or fall prone and it lasts 1 minute and creates dificult terrain. We will have to see how well or badly the various parts will connect in the end, as i said i'm worried about the power creep and how the classes seen to be even more front loaded with a lot of abilities and choices on the first 9 levels, me thinks high level play is still ganna be a pain in the ass to plan and DM..
"did rogue realy need to get relieble talent earlier?" - rogue isn't strong class, and it wasn't buffed as much as it needed to. Rogue is more fun now, but i as a DM don't fear rogue, or any new martial for that matter. Spells are still main problem, and they would generally be the same with some small nerfs. Polymorph now give THP instead of second HP pool - one problematic spell gone. Conjure X spells are gone. And even if some broken spells would remain untouched - game would be better than original 5e.
I have two thoughts. 1. The low number of subclasses in ToV will drive me to include subclasses from other sources. That second source will most likely be D&D '24. The complexity of a A5e character (i.e. many more character features) causes my players to miss character options. This will drive me to using the D&D '24 subclasses. The challenge will be, how do I combine ToV and D&D '24 characters in the same game. 2. Mike is correct in response regarding how to reveal traps or hidden encounters to players. It's recommended to be a fan of the characters, which I interpret as help tell the story of the character as the DM when and where appropriate. This results in me telling a player, "Your character has enough adventuring experience to know something dangerous probably lurks in the pond." Alternatively, for characters with a high enough passive Perception or Investigation I give similar information as the character approaches the encounter.
In our Khor setting, A Knight of Helukeun weilds a combination great maul-polearm. That Knight can only knock prone 1 enemy/turn. We saw this prone issue coming. Hence we werent knocked prone. 😂
My group is currently level 13 in the final battle of Curse of Strahd. Combat takes much longer at this level than it did at level 6, and I try hard to keep combat moving to prevent player boredom. We don't need to make combat even harder. And I hate keeping track of a bunch of status effects. I'm already keeping track of multiple monsters with legendary actions, lair actions, special features, multi-attacks and some status effects. The last thing I want to do is have even more status effects and player/monster features to track. Also, why would WOTC want to make something "frustrating for DMs"? DMs are the ones who buy more books and materials on average. That seems like a very odd way to market the 2024 books.
I have used a system like doom forever. I give special monsters 0-5 (usually one or two) malice and tie one of their key abilities to each malice. Whatever I feel i need to do for RP reasons i can do at the cost of that malice and that ability.
I think that line about "frustrating for [dm's] but fantastic for parties" isn't necessarily about frustration for dm's. It's about people who want to promote and perpetuate adversarial behaviors between the dm and the adventuring players. I'm not an adversarial dm but I've definitely played with people who couldn't seem to grasp that I was not their adversary. They would even do things in game or during sessions to try to promote an adversarial relationship, but that was not ever something I could get into. So I hate that line in the devious strikes description, but for a different reason.
To me the problem with 5e isn't cheeky spells like silvery barbs or some other super strong player ability that makes balancing more difficult, its that wizards has *barely* provided any support for DMs in 5e. There are barebones guides for balancing encounters (CR system doesn't work anyways), building magic items, and other things. Its pathetic and really annoying. Paizo can somehow do this with way less of a budget. Its really inexcusable.
Not wanting to give things away but asking for more clarification: I basically just start slowly narrating in the way I interpret ie walking through the lake. Then if they really didn’t want to they would correct me at the start and if it is a bad thing I try to give them outs during my narration for them to interact to get out of it. For example you feel compelled to pick up the item make a wisdom saving throw
For Nathan: I did 4th ed D&D encounters for children and played in games where the DM's kids were playing. One good thing to dow is to put it in terms they can understand. For instance, in the D&D encounters I ran at Gen Con a young child's character was charmed by a Dryad (he failed his save) and I told him that he liked/loved the Dryad than his mother, so he realized that's not a good thing. Secondly, one daughter's father, playing a dwarf died, she became slightly distraught, so I asked, who played DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) and both children raised their hands, so I told them a sould token floated above the dwarf and if you retrieved it you could save him. She was very happy about it and worked toward getting the soul token. Also, when running adventures for young folks, try and gauge their maturity level and you can make it real fun. When I played with the children in the party, we visited an ecenttric wizard that experimented with food, and we had to fight off a stromboli golem/ Crazy, right? But we all still had fun. Everything doesn't have to be super serious, but it does need to engage the children and grab their attention. I hope that helps. I hope your campaign goes good.
I wish WotC ported over the Condition Track they designed for Star Wars Saga Edition into D&D. Having a stacking penalty rather than a one-turn total shut down is more fun for everyone.
The problem with the condition track is that WotC would not be able to help themselves by designing abilities to manipulate the track, which is mega unfun for player and DMs.
26:09 Funny, but i suddenly realized, I don't think I care about how Tales of the Valiant is different from 2024. I'm really curious what it adds or lacks in comparison to Level Up A5E....
I abandoned 5e because of the extra work I had to do as a DM compared to other systems. Sadly 5.5 hasn’t addressed any of my concerns and has even made them worse. So it won’t be bringing me ‘back’ unfortunately. ‘Frustrating for DMs’ would be a good label for my experience of the design and priorities of new version overall.
Thanks Mike for taking the question about running games for young players and/or neurodivergent players. I run games for my autistic son (10) and other children. It takes effort and compassion, but this hobby can create great environments that foster teamwork and inclusivity in wonderful ways.
I’d be a little worried about doing something like busting out of a forcecage; that’s probably going to suck for the player who burned what’s probably their only 7th level spell slot.
The golfbag fighter is exactly what I want from fighter. The problem is they haven't said what there is to help monsters and DMs. The fighter should be the guy who has a weapon for every situation. But it shouldnt be that the weapon instantly invalidates an enemy. Its force cage. There's counter tactics and then there's "Nope" buttons.
Im running A5e. What i told my player when they picked martial classes is that i haven't gone over every maneuver, so if something comes up i may change it. If i do, they can change it out for something else. I love A5e so far. It is very rapidly replacing dnd14 as my favourite system
I feel like all of these discussions about “do these rule changes make life easier or harder for DMs” just hammer home over and over, the advantages in having a bit of software deal with the mechanical trivial for conditions, saves, other knock on effects, conditions that go away in 5 rounds, etc. Maybe the problem isn’t new features, it is the fact that DM tools are stuck in the 70s. Let’s just start with the elephant in the room. What changes can we make (with software assistance) to let the players all take their turns concurrently, so nobody is waiting?
I ran a sesh using most of the new 5e 2024 rules and class options last night, my players Paladin critted 3 times in a combat and the fact that they all hovered around 45 points of damage at level 10 instead of the usual 60-70 points was such a relief, soo much less swing for this 6 person party
A lot of these comments are about the pc/dm adverserial relationship. It's not that the dm is opposite the player, it's that the players usually go for spells and abilities that remove a monster's and conversely the dm's ability to act. It's no fun to play a game when you are constantly have your hands tied or are prevented from playing. It's the prone condition every tirn, it's the 10 turn sleep spell, it's the force cage and polymorph and banishment, etc ..... They're no better than the dm casting mind control spells constantly on pc's. The designers don't realize this l.
Wow the discussion about doom points hits hard! Loved the analogy with the force cage. My group already uses homebrew “hero coins” (like luck) for PCs, but it could be very cool to use a version of that for monsters. Fear in Daggerheart is on the right track as well, but I’d need to simplify it.
Right? Lots of potential there.
Hi Bob! I'll have to look at Fear.
I was just about to post about Fear in DH and read your comment. I also agree, DH was what I was hoping for mechanics and story blended well, but not as well as I imagined.
Duality dice system is a trip. The major difference from PBTA is that the default to hit isn't 10+ (or whatever the high end of 2d12 would be), the GM gets to arbitrate the DC based on the circumstance like in 4e/5e. On the other hand, while you start w same base chance to roll fear vs hope, it's way more in hope's favor since you have a 1/12 chance to crit succeed (and gain hope) which really pushes the game in the player's favor.
I think to balance that, the power level on fear moves feels high
Given that, the feedback I got from two very veteran 5e players was that seeing how much Fear I was stocking up gave them a ton of anxiety cause they didn't feel like they could do anything to mitigate it, other than not roll dice. 😅
I was immediately thinking of Daggerheart. I think I like the way Daggerheart works a bit better, because it's more proactive, and it does involve the players. The doom points are a bit passive and bland like legendary resistances, where fear gives the GM things their monsters can do. In other words most of the things doom points do is just make PC's worse. Making PC's worse is just going to feel bad. I'd rather make the monsters better, and I really like the idea of having a boss interject a reaction in response to player actions. I might have a think of some sort of system like that for boss fights where directly attacking the boss provokes additional actions from them.
Saying "frustrating for Dungeon Masters" is the tabletop equivalent of saying "The game lags constantly & crashed often"
Indeed.
But some players protest about the mods that patch the system.
They've already committed to that by releasing the PHB first. I mean, what's the game going to look like between this release, and the new DMG/MM? We don't have monsters that have been designed to challenge these new PCs, and we have no (presumably better, fingers crossed) encounter design guidelines to account for them either. They've power-crept the martials - reasonably so, I don't think it's a bad idea to bring them more in line with caster performance - but even if the PC balance is now better, the power-level of the average party has gone up.
Now, most experienced GMs have been ignoring the DMG guidelines for ages - we either make our own, or use Forge of Foes, A5E or Flee, Mortals! But even those might now be off, given the new options in the 2024 PHB. They're re-releasing a game without the crucial tools needed to run it.
@@strandedstarfish Interestingly of all the full editions 4e is the only one to release as a complete set of books at the same time (3.5 also did but was an updated version of 3e).
Speaking as someone who didn’t get the 1e “Big 3” all at once, I can tell you what we did.
We pulled what we needed from our OD&D, Holmes, or Moldvay boxed sets and used the new rules as supplemental material.
That’s been the history of the hobby since the start. And it’s also why both the 3e and 5e PHBs included all the rules for running the game, plus a small monster section.
I expect 2024 will hold to that.
It's the equivalent of saying this game runs on Windows 18. Windows 18 where do I get that? You don't. Good luck playing that game son
Im just kind of tired of the "hahaha i did this ridiculous thing to frustrate my dm and throw their whole plans off kilter" humor that is so pervasive in dnd and espicially 5e. That shows up so much in peoples storytelling or build goals. And i dont know how to feel about the designers themselves leaning into that as well like, feels a bit like kicking down. Dms already have to do a lot for this game, without them there is no game, why perpetuate a humor and playstyle thats very on the dms expense.
Yeah, it's not fun. I tend to find many of these players online and it's exhausting. It almost made me quit DnD because I just decided that most D&D players want different things than me.
As someone who got into PF2e last year, it really is opposite-town over there. I haven't had to fix a thing; every encounter was just as difficult as the guidelines predicted; I've never had a spell with a bullshit absolute effect circumvent my scenario design; my blood pressure's way down, and my hair is thicker (OK, I jest). On the other hand, I've seen plenty of players coming from 5e complain that everything in PF2e is too rigorous, measured, balanced, defined, how every spell has limitations or countermeasures, how they feel like they can't get away with anything, how they can't stack the deck during character creation... It breaks my heart; GM-friendly design should not be perceived as hostile. When I'm a player, I don't play to breeze through challenges, feel untouchable, and solve every problem with a flick of the wrist.
Players who do that shouldn’t be at your table, they are jerks through and through. I don’t do all the prep work and effort I put into the game to have them try to purposely ruin my game!
If I’m playing with people I haven’t played with before, I definitely let people know my expectations before starting a game with them.
The “gotcha” mentality is not exclusive to players. DM’s do it, too. In those cases, it’s not a problem with the game system, it’s because the players and the DM don’t trust in each other. No rules system is going to fix that.
I relate and feel this so much. Took the words right out of my mouth!
Theres nothing* wrong with giving players new toys as long as DMs are provided with equivalent ways of challenging them but yeah thats always been the most broken part of 5e and theyre not showing any signs of wanting to solve that. This sucks
People keep saying we haven't seen the monster manual. Maybe monsters will get some cool stuff. I mean, I'm not holding my breath...
@taejaskudva2543 The people saying this were promised DM materials being playtested. So we can guess based on the reality of that why they feel like the game won't have tolls for DMs
@@taejaskudva2543 Doubt it. Wotc seems to think cool stuff means monsters can cast spells. We haven't seen anything innovating in the last couple books.
David's Question at the end @1:12:00 I do like PDF's on my big Tablet. The only thing I want is for some of the publishers to use some of the features that are built into the PDF. For instance the the books from LootTavern (Heliana's and Ryoko's) not only have the Table of Contents linked to the pages so you can jump to a subject, but also, ALL THE PAGE NUMBERS on Every Page are connected back to the Table of Contents so you can move faster, you don't have to scroll back to the beginning.
“Optimizing your way out of fun” is a good way of putting it. I really like Treantmonk’s perspective: Builds should be A or B tier, not S tier. I also strongly agree that certain tricks can and do become incredibly boring if they get used all the time, and making things more annoying for the DM is not a good thing.
Doom is very much a component of the Modiphius house system 2d20 (which is not a d20 type game but a die pool game). It works great for cinematic action type games like Star Trek. They also use it as a way to have players generate it by pushing their luck.
I think this all makes sense if the aim is force everyone to have the VTT figure it out for them, and eventually an AI DM.
BINGO
New edition feels like power creep. Everyone complained 5E parties are too powerful, so they made them more powerful.
Certainly. How else are you going to get those subscriptions? Players have to be able to tell intuitively that their 2014 PC will be left in the dust to tap into that sweet, sweet, "under monetized" FOMO revenue.
@@jarrettperdue3328 I really hope this backfires, because DMs are just tired of optimizing monsters and just continue playing 5e.
The 2d20 Conan (other 2d20 games have the same basic mechanic but call it different) has a Doom Pool. The fun thing is the players can buy extra dice for a roll by giving the gm more Doom. Then the gm can do stuff buy spending it adding dice to his rolls, adding npc's, just making things a bit more difficult for the players. It was a fun mechanic and players agonized over giving me more Doom to make sure they had a good roll on something. I generally never used even half of it, but they'd get nervous seeing how big the pile was lol.
To those frustrated by 5e but want a well supported dnd alternative try Old School Essentials. Tons of adventures and modules and so much easier and its the dnd we had before 2nd edition.
Mike, as mostly a GM, currently running A5E, there are really frustrating maneuvers. There is a stunning maneuver that one of my players uses as a two weapon fighter. Five potential stuns each round for very low cost in points. I hate it. There are also other maneuvers where you can use a skill roll against the monsters AC to do debilitating attacks. I find it does not scale correctly and I hate them. Granted my players are 16th level but this has been an ongoing issue for me as a GM.
These maneuvers is why, despite having backed and own A5E, I still haven't played it. It is daunting as a GM to go over all that stuffs and also requires a lot of brainpower from my players which are also busy with their lives.
@@philippemarcil2004 Truth be told, I gave up trying to learn it myself. I just let my veteran players tell me all the shenanigans they can do. I roll my eyes, curse the poor design decisions, and just go with it.
The player facing content in A5E is all over the place: sometimes overcomplicated, sometimes worded in ways that don't make sense, sometimes way over or underpowered.
Maybe add some lightening rods to the encounters. Could also be time to think about wrapping up the campaign soon and maybe talking to your players about not running A5E in the next one.
@@MannonMartin We're actually trying to get to 20 before we wrap. But yeah, I have switched things up. I've been using more groups of monsters for combat encounters. And adding more non-combat challenges for story arc purposes.
They are definitely not designing for GMs. This has been clearly apparent in every thing they have published since Waterdeep Dragon Heist.
For asking clarifying questions I try to keep my party on their toes by asking clarifying questions at random times. For example, once a session I'll ask a question like "how do you open the door", "do you walk near the wall", or "are you sneaking" irregardless to any actual danger, that way when I do have something they don't know if I'm bluffing. Also, it adds tension when there is no danger, which is kind of fun, it is surprising how much relief they get when they realize there is no danger or they think they avoided danger.
Embrace the unpredictability. As a GM of an old school type game myself, I love the randomness of not knowing what's going to happen next. It's like the GM is playing the game with the players as well. Not just GM'ing.
Yeah, my big issue with the maul thing is adding an extra dice roll to every attack; it's an alternating dice roll too so each roll switches player priority, and attacks can't be batched together at all.
All this said, I think this sort of slower, crunchier power fantasy experience is something that appeals to a lot of 5e players, at least in principle. Even if people have less fun ultimately, they won't blame D&D for it. People would be incensed if 5e tried to slim down to the level where combat became genuinely fast and easy to run. Also, I feel like the people who consciously want an OSR experience move very easily away from 5e, while those who want a more complex experience tend to stick with it and add thing on.
Make no mistake and mark my words. WOTC is looking to maximize returns. The smallest group of players are DMs. So this is the rub... WOTC is going to keep changing the game until it's no longer dependent on a DM at all. Every player will have to purchase their own gear to play and DMs will not be required to play (much like a board game or MTG). Get the DMs out of the way and market directly to the player base. I don't think it'll be successful, but that's going to be what WOTC shoots for until they realize how bad of an idea it is. I may be wrong, but I don't think so and most DMs I talk to are already feeling the crunch.
I got the DM screen in addition to the books for ToV because I've found screens give the best quick overview of major rules. I was delighted when I saw doom points on there. I can't wait to try them out in my 5e campaign.
I HATE when the boss dies in one round, often not getting to do a single action. I already give all bosses legendary actions, including modding or homebrewing some to be more like Matt Colville's "villain actions". I also buff them with more HP and higher AC. I also give them special features based on countering--but not eliminating--some of the more devastating or over-optimized actions of the PCs.
And then there's making the minions have stronger attacks (while still being low HP) just to force the PCs to deal with them up front.
All this to make boss fights more challenging and epic.
That's a lot of work, but I'm glad to have another tool in the toolbox to help this endeavor.
Go doom points!!
God, that was a lot of words to say I like the idea of doom points.
I like the idea, but not sold on the implementation. One thing I like the idea of is to actually add a special reaction to the minions rather than the boss themselves, that lets the minion jump in and take the hit or spell in place of the boss. It needs a limitation, though. In other words if they can intercept any attack against the boss don't make the minions infinite and just summon more when they run out. That just makes the fight an unwinnable slog if your players can only hit the boss when you allow them to. Even if they win such a fight they'll know that it's just because you stopped blocking and it won't feel earned. But you could use infinite minions if it was more limited like they could only intercept certain types of attacks or something like that. The players might also be able to use crowd control and forced movement to make some opportunities, even if they can't wipe out all the minions.
@@MannonMartin I wouldn't make minions take all the hits, just force the PCs to deal with them along with/at the same time as the boss, if possible. But I really hadn't thought of using doom points with the minions in a boss battle. That's something I WILL have to incorporate.
As for numbers of minions: I don't like too many minions for the reason you stated before. I recently accidently had too many low-level bad guys in an area the PCs wanted to fight through and it took the entire session. While the players told me they were fine with that, I know it was a slog...at least for me. And if it's a slog for me, who has to do something every turn, I know it was a slog for them. (They're very polite with me. In several years I haven't been able to coax out any constructive criticism...and that's not a brag. It's a complaint. (But I love my players and my table as a whole.))
I definitely don't want to block all attacks against the BBEG. I want the PCs to make progress. I just don't want to have the BBEG killed before they have a chance to prove why they're the BBEG. I don't know a DM anywhere that hasn't experienced something like a surprise round or a poor initiative roll meant the BBEG was killed or nearly killed before they were able to do a single thing.
I've got a big BBEG encounter coming up and I've easily spent the same amount of time on this as I would have for 3 regular sessions trying to deal with these five questions:
1) How to make the BBEG not die in the first one or two rounds?
2) How to make the BBEG scary?
3) How to not make the minions worth taking on rather than concentrating all firepower on the BBEG?
4) How to keep the fight from going on too long?
5) How not to accidentally cause a TPK due to all the enemy buffs/mods implemented to fulfill questions 1), 2), and 3)?
Anything that can help me do that, and doom points look pretty good in this respect, is something I've got to try.
Mike, if you're reading this, I hope you're okay with me turning this into a blog post. If not, let me know!
@@TheVTTDM I wasn't really thinking in terms of lots of minions so much as possibly having fresh waves of them on subsequent rounds which works much better than just throwing a massive number of enemies into the battle from the start.
In practice I like the idea of having a handful of minions willing and able to sacrifice themselves in case someone throws something at the boss that breaks the encounter. The minion then takes the hit so it doesn't entirely negate the player's action, but the boss can continue the fight. Works best as a limited resource, say 3 cultists protecting the boss. For that matter you could even use them as the personification of the boss's legendary resistance instead of just the "nope" button.
@@MannonMartin I like that. Hmmm... I like that. I want to use it.
How do you justify that rules-wise during combat? A held action on the part of the minion? That swap-places feature that goblin bosses, et al. have?
Or would this be a use of a doom point?
To play devils advocate for WotC, some of the changes do make it easier for DMs to run the game. The new mechanics for surprise and exhaustion specifically come to mind
Absolutely.
I’ve been running exhaustion (-1 d20 tests) since RotFM came out. It really adds a level of grittiness that’s been missing. And it’s easier to run
@@toddgrx We are using the new exhaustion mechanic in two parties since the UA came out. It is much more simpler.
Mike did say he saw good things! He also said that this really got his goat.
To me, the worst part about the "frustrating for DMs" comment is how it assumes we aren't on the same team as the players. When players get a victory, like Dazing an enemy that they really didn't want to kill and that works out, the DM should be celebrating that alongside the players. Insinuating that we get frustrated when we "lose" is just more adversarial DM talk, which shouldn't be encouraged, especially in an official context.
Exactly, I'm not a fan of it from either side.. The whole " best ways to punish the players" or "here's ways to trick your dm" paradigm.
We're all on the same team, so why push that angle?
From my perspective it's not about opposing the players, but about just managing combat in general. As a DM I absolutely cheer for my players and want to see them win, but I also want to make it challenging. I want the game to be exciting, and mindless chains of complicated combos to kill monsters who would easily have been toppled anyway is not exciting. On top of making combat take even longer in a game that already has a notable problem with long-running combats, it also makes any attempt to build balanced encounters that much more of a headache during prep time.
It is frustrating, but not because I'm concerned about "losing."
I cheer for my osr players when they over come a tough situation but I couldn't do it w 5e. They aren't accomplishing anything other than assembling a list of hero abilities. There was largely no thinking after the initial sweat over their character.
I understand this point, but I'd like to bring another perspective.
True: the game should not be DM vs Players.
However, the players these days are showing up with an expectation that the DM gives them a specific experience. This mindset drives the wedge between players and DMs and is the leading cause for DM burnout.
These games are supposed to be collaborative. I think the best role players are team players and are there to bring as much to the table as they get.
As far as frustrating the DMs: players want a certain amount of "drama". They want thr thrill of combat and the emotional experiences that this game can give
Drama needs tension. DMs are having a harder and harder time creating tension, especially in combat, due to the power creep.
I don't play against my players, but if I cannot give them something that will truly challenge them then the game gets boring incredibly quick.
To be fair, I also believe that the main reason why Revised 5e is bogging everything down with time-consuming mechanics, is so that people will use WotC's VTT, where things will probably be automated and much quicker, than if you played at the table - just a hunch though.
100% need a DM advocate at WOTC, and it's going to compound the lack of DMs problem. Starting with the Players Handbook revamp, instead of the deeply flawed Dungeon Master's Guide, tells me where WOTC's head is at going into these new books.
I really like where you're going with Doom points. I'm wondering if you envision them as a substitute for legendary resistance. So, rather than using legendary resistance the boss uses a Doom point. Mechanically, it's the same effect but the DM can use it for other purposes as well, making them more useful in that regard.
I don't think I would use both Doom point and legendary resistance because my players would think that's a bit much, even for a major boss. I think they would get behind bosses having an expendable resource that gives them essentially legendary resistance plus some other powers, but they would feel (maybe correctly) that the scale has tipped too far over if the boss had both.
Completely agree with you about reviews. I really got snookered into running a reviewer-hyped campaign that didn't play so well. The best reviews are the ones from DMs who played the adventure multiple times. I'm there for any time Seth Skorkowski or Professor Dungeonmaster want to talk about a 35 year old old school adventure that they have played half a dozen times.
I think by "frustrate your DM" they were jokingly referring to when the DM goes "aww shucks" when the players beat the monsters and the DM is also happy to see everyone have fun.
That sure does happen a lot in 5e.
@nickcalifano2170 I go oh shucks but only because it was fun to "play" combat even though I'm impartial.
I'd believe that if it weren't for the fact that WotC has been toying with the idea of replacing DMs with AI.
Kind of related to the doom points in the boss fight arena, I’ve been toying with making legendary resistances work normally until bloodied, at which point they become legendary recoveries (which you’ve talked about before) - by letting the players know they get more (i.e., aren’t wasting spells) by holding back their save-or-suck abilities, I’m hoping to delay the deluge of win-the-game spells until they’ve had some back and forth - so, if they force cage right out the gate, the beholder can block (using up an LR but getting rather little), but if they wait until they’ve bloodied it, then the beholder has to start burning eye stalks to stay in the fight
Hi Mike, ideas on doom points.
1. Make them public, put the coins on the table in front of the monster, so they know this is an extra special monster. It also makes it clear when they are being used up.
2. A doom point should never just simply 'nope' an effect, we all hate counter spell as its a 'doesnt happen' effect. But in your example, Lord Soth spending a doom point and breaking the force cage (possibly spending an action), but it adds so much narrative weight to the action.
3. Doom points could be used for escaping. This I got from Fabula Ultima RPG. The villains have a fixed number of doom points which never refresh, but they can always spend one to escape this time. But the PC's know that in the future the villain will not have this again.
On the 2024 weapon mastery: if it slows the game down I'm not having it, the games can run too slow right now.
Also I bet the PC's will not be so happy if they meet 20 Bugbears with Mauls, continually knocking them down.
Just to add to the "Tipping your hand question", I always provide info in my descriptions and leave it at that. Using the 'Disintegrating item' example that Sly gave, when describing the room I would mention that 'you notice 3 neat piles of dust arrayed around the floating blade', then just let the players do what they will. If they clue on to that...great, its a game and it's meant to be fun. In the Pond example, you could add the line "you see deep grooves in the mud leading into the pond" and leave that with the players. Hope that helps :)
Thank you for introducing me to Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition. I've very using bits and pieces of it where I can, and I think I may try to find a group to run a full A5E campaign.
Let me just say I loved the brief, subtle detour into the lyrics for that song at about 12:55. I do this kind of silliness all the time for my own amusement... but I'm far less subtle about it.
I agree that topple is an issue. Most of the other masteries aren't too powerful and also are simple to implement and add tactical options.
Topple is the one i have issues with because obv its powerful, which is why they had to add a saving throw. But saving throws on every attack slows down combat too much.
The best idea ive seen to fix it is to remove the save and just have it happen if the attack hits hy more than 5. DC20 style. Depending on how powerful that turns out to be at your table, then raise or lower from 5 to the right number.
All this prone and knocking enemies back x feet stuff needs to have the added rule: "applies only to creatures up to one size larger than you" (and even then I'd have some large size creatures that are "immune to prone" when it makes sense for the creature--e.g., a gelatinous cube is immune to the prone condtition).
I think doom points make sense if the players give them to you. They get something, but the cost is you get a doom point. Maybe a resurrection or a wish provides a doom point. Maybe the plot has a timer attached. If they beat the timer, fine, but if they don’t, they acquire a doom point to keep the plot moving forward without adverse consequences. It is a way to build tension.
Regarding doom points / boss abilities, it seems to me it might be easier to piggyback on the existing Legendary Actions, but expand them. I'm imagining a Forge of Foes-style menu of special legendary actions that allow the monster to break through that force cage, bypass a counterspell or a resistance, a short teleport, or otherwise be able to turn the tables. This way it's not that difficult to explain to players - this monster just has loads of powerful legendary action options - but theres still a finite amount of Actions per turn! Maybe 5 instead of the typical 3 just to make those options usable.
Great show as always. I’m sure I’m not the first to point out that you might want to take a look at Fear tokens in Daggerheart for some mechanical implementation of Doom points. It’s about my favorite aspect of the system.
Doom Points seem like a cool retroactive way for a BBEG to 'prepare' to face the party.
I'm thinking of combining it with the Intrigue System in Kingdoms and Warfare and rewarding the NPC a Doom Point for a successful Lore/Espionage check instead of buffing their armies.
6 or 8 attacks per round is the broken part. Back in 2e it was maxed at 5 melee attacks every 2 rounds, only for specialists fighters of 13th level or higher.
as a GM of 45+ years, I've gone to the rules minimalist approach.
my campaign for this year has been a combination of AD&D + 3e + 5e ( 2e is redundant and 4e is power gaming). combined with a variety of optional rules, it's become a very unconventional form of D&D.
rules we do differently;
1 - no initiative (I never say roll for initiative)
2 - no combat 'action economy'
3 - AC as damage reduction
(AC is only armor value +dex bonus. not 10 + AC + dex)
4 - no to-hit roll, just roll damage and compare against targets AC.
4.1 - the roll is open ended. roll 1d6 and get a 6, roll again and add to total.
5 - use a modified spell points system that has a fatigue factor.
6 - no spell slots. ALL spells (arcane) or prayers (religion) are cast from scrolls, which dissolve upon casting. yes, a char with 50 scrolls can cast 50 spells in a day. however, the spell points/fatigue mechanism makes casting more difficult when using more points than originally available.
7 - no 'resting' recovering half or all HP. char only recovers 1HP + con mod per day of rest. (no strenuous activity for 24 hours.
8 - no death saves and no negative HP... 0 HP = dead.
the focus of the game is an exploration role-play. yes, combat occurs. sometimes a character will die. but the combat is fast, dynamic and chaotic. everyone is constantly engaged because there is minimal waiting between opportunities to act.
as far as game details and info given to the players. I am fortunate to have a decent miniatures collection. when I place things into the adventure area, I don't outright state what something is. the players must try and figure it out on their own.
there are more things I do to keep players intrigued with a variety of props.
on a side note - D&D beyond is a useless tool for my style of GMing. if WotC goes fully digital and expects micro-transactions as the future for this game, then I will only get older items that are not in my library.
Looking at all your changes... Do you think you are still playing D&D? Or you just created new system, because D&D is a non-functional pile of trash?
@Adramach
believe it or not, those changes already existed as optional rules in AD&D DMG. even 5e has options for spell points instead of slots. all I did, was make these optional rules our primary rules.
ultimately, the game world is Forgotten Realms, with the locations and personalities. the monsters and factions of the world still exist.
so... yes, I still see this as D&D.
As a GM I've been disillusioned with 5e for some time now, and the 2024 update hasn't filled me with hope for making the game fun for me again. I'm exploring a rules light, narrative driven game like Dungeon World when my current 5e campaign wraps up soon.
I love Dungeon World, but my players didn't as much as me. As one to explore, keep Cypher System in mind! It's not nearly as lightweight as dungeon world, but it plays really cleanly.
If you're looking at Dungeon World, I'd like to shout out Chasing Adventure. It started as a DW hack, but evolved into its own thing and shaved off some of the vestigial DnD elements like ability scores. It also has expanded moves for social interaction.
Also, it just had a successful kickstarter for a physical edition.
OSR TTRPG are pretty goods for rule light systems (or even the first version of D&D, like D&D B/X Moldvay).
It's even mind-opening when that D&D became more complex or get more rules as it evolved.
I personally like City of Mist for that.
More DM Advocates!!! I've never felt that WotC cared much about us DMs with 5e. It's like we're secondary to the superstars that are the Player Characters. As you said, we're the ones buying the books. I honestly don't remember if any of my players own the PHB, and still PCs get new sub-classes, spells, and species even though they only play one character (presumably) in each campaign.
I really doubt that the updated monsters will be scaled enough to challenge the crazy power increase the new classes get. And it will slow the game.
Doom points adress the symptom instead of the cause. If characters weren't overpowered superheros in the first place, we wouldn't need to devise hand wavy tricks for monsters to use.
Without getting into all the details, in a TTRPG I've been designing and playtesting (have about 30 playtesters across 6 playtests so far) for about 1.5yrs now, players have a 5-20% chance of rolling a result that creates a GM resource called Threat, which works quite similarly to Doom. In every playtest I've done, players have consistently said that Threat as currency is really compelling, because:
- it's narratively tied to previous player failures
- it builds up in an ominous way
- it acts as a kind of player buy-in to the GM doing something dramatic that harms the players
When I write my documents, I generally write in Markdown, then convert to HTML using Pandoc. Then when I use Scribus, I can Get Text and adjust my Text Frames so that they display the text as needed, leaving room for images. Then I can easily make my documents different sizes. Pandoc also then makes epubs or other pages.
When you talked about how we play video games vs ttrpgs, I took FOREVER to finish Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate I because I would move an invisible character close enough to see 1 monster, the rest of the party would form up just out of the monster's sight, aggro that one guy, kill him, pull back, rest and then repeat. I can just imagine how much a DM would love running my game.
That... that's way to slow. Take out a group at a time! *Shakes Head*
Honestly, this is profoundly demoralizing. I loathe "gotcha DM!" mechanics like Silvery Barbs, and it feels like the D&D design team is doubling down on even more of that BS with these updates.
I'm with you Mike - imma roll it back to 2014 rules, or find a less frustrating system.
I think the intent is to make D&D “family friendly” now.
2014 have a lot of bad rules, bad classes and etc. as a dm I can say that was pretty hard a lot of times.
Crunchy games like 5e work great on computers... which of course is exactly the direction WoTC wants to go.
For reviews, ya gotta find someone who speaks plainly, is willing to be critical, and has similar taste than you. For me, Ten Foot Pole is pretty reliable. He has a very narrow idea of what is good, but he is transparent about that and it lines up well w my opinion.
1:10:20 I’m amused that Mike talks about how reviewers didn’t talk about the problem with V:EoR and then himself also didn’t talk about it :P
Just got my hardcover of Return today! I already own a softcover copy, but bought the hardcover/PDF combo to give to a friend and bought another electronic copy for a second DM friend. I hope they find it as useful as I have!
Awesome! Thank you!
“Gonzo” style of play is exactly how 2024 is looking. Granted I haven’t DM’d any playtest stuff but reading it over it sure feels like it
“Gonzo” is the word I studiously avoided in my complaint on the ENWorld forums last week about feeling “left behind” by 5.24e.
Separately, I worry about the action economy in play. I remember back in my Palladium days when it took 3 die rolls to resolve one attack, and every character got 4+ attacks per round.
Slog doesn’t begin to cover it. It was horrible.
5e Combat is slow for casters. Playing a barbarian or fighter in 5e, my turn was done in 15 seconds. I roll to hit or grapple, and now I wait 10 minutes for the casters to fumble around with dozens of spells. Martials need more options to have fun in combat because attacking twice (and missing!) and then sitting there for a long time is miserable.
Yeah, Shadowdark fixes that problem
What you drscribe for your doom points sounds very close to how the gang at High Rollers use a homebrewed mechanic they call The Crucible of Fate. The whole crew including GM generate Fate points with D6 and then both sides of table have a pool of items they can spend fate on, very similar to the doom idea discussed.
This is a great bookend to the one ruleslawyer did a few days back about lack of care for gms. You really did a nice job of spotlighting why the failure to put any effort into spotlighting changes made for the GM experience. I don't want to go from the "just homebrew it" edition to "just ban all this trash *then* just homebrew it"
I think that the reason the WotC design team felt that they could add a lot more opportunities to impose conditions is that their overarching strategy is for games to be run online, with D&D Beyond. The bookkeeping for all of these things will likely be applied using the DDB Game Log, and will be applied by the choices of the player on their turn. The major VTTs will likely program the same. So unless you are purely paper and pencil, it should be manageable.
This is not an argument in favor of counterspell, but a counterargument to the argument that counterspell doesn't work against an enemy mage's arcane bolt because the enemy mage's arcane bolt is not a spell:
It is a spell. Mechanically, it isn't handled as a spell. But, within the fictional reality we're imaginarily playing it, it is a spell.
5e has always worked best when you slap bandages on the bullet holes lol
I think that is similar for how to run superintelligent bosses. Give them some number of "They anticipated that" (were prepared for that, etc.) equal to their Int or Wis. That they have a complicating factor for XXXX. An example would be to dissuade druids from scouting shapechanged, they have a bunch of stray cats roaming around.
On the subject of Doom Points, I am currently homebrewing a system (aren't we all?) called Threat: a monster gets a number of Threat points to spend to make extra moves or attacks, get advantage on a saving throw, use a special ability like Dragon's Breath and so on. They get 1 at CR5, 2 at CR13 and 3 at CR21+. Threat points refresh every round.
I came up with this system because I love creating my own monsters but could never be bothered to learn when monsters should get Legendary Actions and Resistances or not so I just gave them to everyone 😆 yet to playtest the system but I'm hopeful, especially since it kicks in at CR5, giving solo monsters a better chance of resisting a level 5 party!
Cheers Mike, love your videos!
Re: asking questions to players, something like Pathfinder's exploration actions is really useful. Just have the players tell you the general attitude of their characters while they're exploring. Are they trying to go fast? Undetected? Inspecting their surroundings? This can help inform how much detail you should give them without them asking
You aren't wrong about the Dungeon Master becoming frustrated. D&D 2024 is secret code for D&D 4E. I will just have to fix everything.
Where is the game that feels thrilling and dangerous where all players get their moments without being a flock of dragon-stomping magical Marvel characters?
It's called TSR Dungeons & Dragons. It was destroyed by wotc when they replaced it with their Marvel superhero TTRPG they call D&D.
Hi Mike, fun show as usual. In regards to the discussion on boss monsters, I can understand the mindset of both sides of the table. When I'm a player, I want my character to succeed and it makes sense both in and out of roleplay that I'd target the scariest looking monster with my strongest abilities. When I'm a DM I also want the players to succeed, but I don't want it to be a cakewalk for them. Thus the DM has the harder job of walking the tightrope - generally wanting the players to be triumphant while also ensuring that the victory feels earned.
I wonder if DM's could do something where you combine Doom Points for boss monsters with Legendary Resistances. It could be interesting to give monsters a set number of these points and let them use a point to either no sell a player's spell or ability, or use the point instead to let them something crazy to make the players sweat. I think the key here would be to both give the player clear cues that the boss has some kind of unique resource and give them clues that this resource is being expended over the fight.
That way it feels less like DM fiat when you tell the player, "No the boss simply rips straight through your forcecage." If communicated ahead of time, I think I would also be receptive to this system as a player as well. While it doesn't feel great to be told your high level spell or other limited use ability didn't have its usual impact on a fight, as a player I'll feel better about it if I know that it also means there's one less Meteor Swarm the boss can cast at the party.
I'm using the Doom Point system in my games since the first Black Flag playtest, and I like it - when I not forget to use it at all. I homebrewed it - like if a PC rolls a critical failure, the enemies are receiving 1 Doom Point, or a monster receives advantage to a saving throw. It is a nice mechanic - but this is an N+1 thing to keep in mind and I'm often forgetting to use it.
In my own 5e spin off system I'm implementing Tension points as a GM resource. It's equivalent to GM Inspiration, and may be gained instead of granting a player a detriment/complication on weak succeses/failures. Spend to reroll a d20 or use certain monster abilities (I use it as a universal resource instead of tracking Monsters individual resources).
I don't agree however with it being able to stop spell effects, as I'm firmly in the "play to find out" camp of RPGs, shutdowns without a save like wall of force/force cage need to be changed rather than have systems created to fix them.
i'm just gonna run weird wizard for my next campaign
Having run two campaigns with Shadow of the Demon Lord, you're making an excellent choice.
I was really excited by some of the really playtest drafts, but by the time the kickstarter launched, some of the elegant ideas like combat zones and had been ditched, and some things seemed unnecessarily crunchy, like how much wind it takes to blow a piece of paper of of a table.
Just listened about the doom points. I want that so bad! Running Tyranny of Dragons and in final final battle. Luckily Tiamat can't be force caged. But the warlock used a save or suck spell/ability to suck my wizard minion. He's currently levitating mindlessly in the air unable to do anything for 1 min. Not for this battle since I didn't warn them, but I'm gonna work in these doom points. I'm wondering if they can be combined with the Legendary Resistances. LR's seem like they help the BBEG avoid save or suck for spells/abilities that use saving throws. Expanding to avoiding other abilities that don't use saving throws seems like a natural extension. Definitely something I'm gonna work in for my next campaign. Thanks Mike!
Awesome video. Thank you! For the player who asked about neurodivergent players, the Dungeon Dudes have a great video on running games for neurodivergent players!
on the "are you sure" question or do you do A or B question, my answer is normalise that question.
I ask it more often than is necessary and that way after a few false alarms the party get used to me asking that question.
so now when I ask it they are not naturally suspicious. How often you do this however, you need to decide
I'm glad someone is talking about this. If you are not concerned with the Fall 2024 player buffs, then you have never been a DM or you are one of the best DMs in the world or your players forget to use skills. Fingers crossed for the 2024 Monster Manual (which they should have sold DMs on first to potentially head-off these concerns).
I’m always pondering how to speed up combat, and I’m very concerned this is going to slow it down even further 🤦🏿♀️
I try to speed up combat. In that quest, one thing I tried was static monster damage. I never rolled damage and I used average damage for every hit. After about a year a player told me he misses the random damage because he can metagame his PC's actions because he knows exactly how much damage an attack will do.
I've played with this player for about 18 years. He's an excellent DM and player. It made me reconsider if I was making the right changes in my quest for speed.
@@DMHightower I haven’t had that issue, but if you have, consider rolling only part of the time, like on breath weapons, fall damage, improvised damage and attacks that might drop a PC - that may be why my players haven’t brought it up to me - either that or they’ve noticed and want to use it to their advantage
TL;DR: it pains me to say it, but I’m realizing D&D is a system designed to make people wait while someone else plays the game. I think there’s already too much to do in one turn, and adding more will only make it worse.
As far as average damage is concerned, I’ve been using it for a while now without any problem, or at least no one at my table has mentioned it - I do roll some damage: big attacks from bosses like dragon breath weapons, fall damage, bonus damage from a weapon that gets lit on fire, an attack that might drop a PC - sprinkling those in may be why no one has questioned it at my table - I will point to DM Timothy’s video on the subject in which he notes that in over a year and hundreds of games, no one mentioned it to him - if only that guy mentioned how many games he played a year 😄
There’s a video by How to Be a Great GM that talks about the ruthless quest for speed at the cost of fun - I identify with the feeling, but when I look at players who sit bored awaiting their turn, I remember why I try to push the pace
I, the DM, am rarely bored, because I have a part to play even during PC turns: adjudicating their actions, applying their damage to enemies, quickly narrating the results and the little add ins to keep players engaged - Chris, you watch your friend unleash a rapid succession of punches and kicks, fracturing the bone golem into its constituent pieces, but its collapse reveals two skeletons with bows trained on you! What are you doing? - keep it snappy; draw them in; maybe remind the next player they’re on deck - you know: help handoff the ball from one player to the next - but then Chris sits there pondering what he wants to do - “should I cast one of my spells or maybe perform a skill action or maybe just attack. Tho I could use a shove or grapple instead of a regular attack” - while Chris sits and thinks, justifiably wanting to take the most effective or impactful action, everyone waits
Ok, end bloated preface: now I’m imagining asking, on top of that, which weapon mastery do you want to use and could you roll that up for me? - players seem to already have too many options to parse during their turn - I absolutely believe they should be “thinking about their turn ahead of time”, but meaningful changes to the battle happen with nearly every action, so it’s totally understandable why players would want to consider their options in light of those changes - and I don’t want to start dressing down my friends about how slow they are
So do we start talking about timers - say a generous 2 minute timer - now we move along but the clock is kind of not very fun and people are ending turns early and it’s still 15 minutes a round with 5 players, enemy actions and math, which I simplify by rounding and adding up instead of subtracting down - maybe I’ll use electronic dice to roll and calculate all the various enemy attacks all together or even prerolling before the game to speed up initiative or breath weapon recharges or sleep spell HP or or or OR! OR!! OR!!!
At some point I had to accept that the group is not the problem - it’s not my DMing - it’s not Chris taking his sweet time picking what to do - it’s the system - this game is designed to make people sit idle while someone else plays the game only to eventually have their turn - really, it’s worse than that, because the person debating their actions isn’t even playing the game - they’re thinking about how they want to play the game - we are all waiting for someone to finish waiting to figure out how they spend 6 in game seconds before they start waiting on the next guy - there’s too much waiting built into this game, and I believe a major factor is too much to do in a turn - too many actions to choose from - adding more to do on the player’s turn is only going to make that worse
And don’t get me started on bonus actions
Agreed! Great insights as always.
I do think we need more (and better!) options for weapon-focused characters, but I think it needs to be tied to a simpler mechanic.
A flexible system like DCC’s “mighty deeds” but with better guidelines would be more useful than all these mastery properties and mapped-out combat maneuvers. They could even be tied to a limited resource, so they aren’t doable all the time.
Also, the combat mechanic is already an abstraction, so why does the fighter have to roll 8x to attack 8 people? Why can’t a single attack roll represent 3 swings?
Just me noodling a bit.
I use a variant mashup of Genisys’ dark side/light side points and Shadowdark’s luck tokens. At the beginning of a session a player rolls a d4 and the result is the number of luck tokens at the beginning of the session. Any PC can use them at anytime to re-roll a result. When the luck tokens run out, the GM gets a doom point to “break” the system but not immediately undo the PCs last luck result in their favor. The PCs reroll the d4 when the GM uses the doom to reset the luck tokens. The length to which the system can be broken should be understood in the group
Jaquaysing the dungeons = you give them multiple paths, each with its own challenges, but the paths usually lead to the same place. For the pond or lake it might have things that look like stepping stones or a slimy questionable of stability log or trees with vines that overhang it, etc. there could be a little piece of land stuck up in the middle somewhere with a lure to the players’ curiosity. The other options should present their own challenges. Going around one way the bramble and trees are thick and close together and parts of the forest are shrouded with darkness. Going the other way has rocky outcroppings and you can just barely distinguish a cave entrance. If you want to nudge the players across the lake, besides the lure, you can mention they don’t know if going around will lead them to the building across the lake. (Of course each will have its own terrain and monster challenges themed to its setting.)
I love the idea of DOOM Points as a replacement for legendary resistances. Instead of an automatic success though, I would like to make it a contest, so the player still has a *small* (25%?) chance to have the Indiana Jones moment.
I'd love to see your implementation of altered Doom Points that enhances bosses in ways you discuss in this video. The story behind a boss is usually better than players realize, this might be a great way to give that them without breaking anything. Please, Mike, may we have some more??
I think the easiest change to make to fix the boss monster getting disabled thing, is the simply allow legendary resistances to do stuff like rip open a force cage etc.
The best part about Homebrew is that you don't need to be a lawyer and write it in such a way that it works how you want it. As long as the table agrees that the mechanic is going to be fun, all you need to understand is the intent of the mechanic you don't have to write some bulletproof phrasing.
What does the barbarian do at the ball?
He hangs in the stables and guard barracks teaching a guard how to grapple and breaking broncos in the rodeo for the stablemaster, while making himself occasionally available for the fair maiden watching him, who later lures him into the labyrinth garden. After some tomfoolery, they eventually make their way to the fountain and he splashes her because it's funny. She laughs and he does it again, and again, because he has all STR ad no Rizz. Now her night is ruined as her dress is soaked. So her dad and guards show up to the commotion, think that she was missing. The miscommunication gets him throw him in the drunk tank for the rest of the night where he learns an ancient secret of his kin from an old ghost. The ghost knows a secret about the noble house. The young lady comes back and brings him a meal and an apology. The guard is passed out. She steals the key. They make love on the haypile. The ghost watches.
No shame in separating your party when it isn't a dungeon.
I definitely hope that whatever comes out of the DMG and the Monster Manual show good DM tools. I haven’t seen anything that will change my 5e burnout, but we’ll see. I’ll keep a hopeful eye out with low expectations and continue to play PF2e and OSE and Shadowdark and others and hope 5e makes good choices.
The Feylock Paladin build I wrote a forum post on in the early days of 4E sounds similar to the Feylock they are making. Using Eyebite and the Paladin taunt was amazing control.
Without the other half of the books its difficult to judge with certainty. If you're worried about encounter balancing, even if you don't have the MM at this point, just remember you can always add condition immunities just like in 2014 5e to monsters to spice things up and challenge players. Hopefully the encounter designing part of the DMG gives better practical advice for challenging players. And if we're all allowed to make inferences based on single sentences within the playtest itself, let's not forget that all the, "You're attacks are considered magical weapons for the purposes of damage resistance/immunities" so maybe resistance will matter a lot more in the new MM and simply always be on rather than be conditionally turned off. If that's the case it'll be easier to both challenge players and use those resistances in play.
Great show Mike but kinda harsh on the professional gaming press there - specifically for Descent Into Avernus, I read a couple mainstream reviews that identified the problematic start. I then ran it as my first 5e campaign (because metal 🤘) but was able to go in eyes-open and apply 3rd party fixes so that it successfully ran over two years to a satisfying conclusion. Fixing it actually taught me a lot about running a game so it was a valuable experience to the point where I now run a homebrew campaign- guess wotc messed up after all 😂 your point definitely stands for ‘released last week material’ tho - keep up the good works!
Doom points, to my knowledge was added in the Mophidious Conan, adventures in an age undreamed of. Where the GM begins with Doom points equal to the number of fortune points of all the players. The GM could gain more doom, by Players voluntaring to failure to gain back a fortune point, would also add doom, a player critical failing etc.
The GM can then spend doom to add complications from minor to Major coplications, storywise, Add dice for hostile NPC and monsters, give monsters extra reactions etc. Also summon reinforcements. Some monsters just added doom when they entered the combat (legendary scary monsters)
I think Doom or something equivalent has alot of potential to add excitement to the game.
How about combining the Doom points with Legendary Actions?
One Legendary Actions is to negate any (or all?) spell effect, status effect, condition, etc. Once that Legendary Action is used, it reduces the monsters # of Legendary Actions pool by one so they cannot just spam it every round.
Just a thought, but I agree you would want to telegraph this is coming so it doesnt feel like cheating.
56:58 I don't want to fight bad guys that can do cool things that I'll never be able to do, but we're both supposedly mages.
While i'm worried about the power creep (did rogue realy need to get relieble talent earlier?) i dont think the whole weapon masterie will be that bad, like the 1st circle and level arcane spell "grease" can also make 3 to 6 monters roll a saving throw or fall prone and it lasts 1 minute and creates dificult terrain.
We will have to see how well or badly the various parts will connect in the end, as i said i'm worried about the power creep and how the classes seen to be even more front loaded with a lot of abilities and choices on the first 9 levels, me thinks high level play is still ganna be a pain in the ass to plan and DM..
"did rogue realy need to get relieble talent earlier?" - rogue isn't strong class, and it wasn't buffed as much as it needed to. Rogue is more fun now, but i as a DM don't fear rogue, or any new martial for that matter. Spells are still main problem, and they would generally be the same with some small nerfs. Polymorph now give THP instead of second HP pool - one problematic spell gone. Conjure X spells are gone. And even if some broken spells would remain untouched - game would be better than original 5e.
I have two thoughts. 1. The low number of subclasses in ToV will drive me to include subclasses from other sources. That second source will most likely be D&D '24. The complexity of a A5e character (i.e. many more character features) causes my players to miss character options. This will drive me to using the D&D '24 subclasses. The challenge will be, how do I combine ToV and D&D '24 characters in the same game.
2. Mike is correct in response regarding how to reveal traps or hidden encounters to players. It's recommended to be a fan of the characters, which I interpret as help tell the story of the character as the DM when and where appropriate. This results in me telling a player, "Your character has enough adventuring experience to know something dangerous probably lurks in the pond." Alternatively, for characters with a high enough passive Perception or Investigation I give similar information as the character approaches the encounter.
Ugh, so much stuff I need to get now. And at such great prices. Darn you, Mike Shae, darn you for making me aware of all these great deals! 😅
In our Khor setting, A Knight of Helukeun weilds a combination great maul-polearm. That Knight can only knock prone 1 enemy/turn. We saw this prone issue coming. Hence we werent knocked prone. 😂
My group is currently level 13 in the final battle of Curse of Strahd. Combat takes much longer at this level than it did at level 6, and I try hard to keep combat moving to prevent player boredom. We don't need to make combat even harder. And I hate keeping track of a bunch of status effects. I'm already keeping track of multiple monsters with legendary actions, lair actions, special features, multi-attacks and some status effects. The last thing I want to do is have even more status effects and player/monster features to track. Also, why would WOTC want to make something "frustrating for DMs"? DMs are the ones who buy more books and materials on average. That seems like a very odd way to market the 2024 books.
I have used a system like doom forever. I give special monsters 0-5 (usually one or two) malice and tie one of their key abilities to each malice. Whatever I feel i need to do for RP reasons i can do at the cost of that malice and that ability.
I think that line about "frustrating for [dm's] but fantastic for parties" isn't necessarily about frustration for dm's. It's about people who want to promote and perpetuate adversarial behaviors between the dm and the adventuring players. I'm not an adversarial dm but I've definitely played with people who couldn't seem to grasp that I was not their adversary. They would even do things in game or during sessions to try to promote an adversarial relationship, but that was not ever something I could get into. So I hate that line in the devious strikes description, but for a different reason.
I think the line is a joke that is getting amplified way out of proportion.
To me the problem with 5e isn't cheeky spells like silvery barbs or some other super strong player ability that makes balancing more difficult, its that wizards has *barely* provided any support for DMs in 5e. There are barebones guides for balancing encounters (CR system doesn't work anyways), building magic items, and other things. Its pathetic and really annoying. Paizo can somehow do this with way less of a budget. Its really inexcusable.
Not wanting to give things away but asking for more clarification:
I basically just start slowly narrating in the way I interpret ie walking through the lake. Then if they really didn’t want to they would correct me at the start and if it is a bad thing I try to give them outs during my narration for them to interact to get out of it. For example you feel compelled to pick up the item make a wisdom saving throw
For Nathan: I did 4th ed D&D encounters for children and played in games where the DM's kids were playing. One good thing to dow is to put it in terms they can understand. For instance, in the D&D encounters I ran at Gen Con a young child's character was charmed by a Dryad (he failed his save) and I told him that he liked/loved the Dryad than his mother, so he realized that's not a good thing. Secondly, one daughter's father, playing a dwarf died, she became slightly distraught, so I asked, who played DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) and both children raised their hands, so I told them a sould token floated above the dwarf and if you retrieved it you could save him. She was very happy about it and worked toward getting the soul token. Also, when running adventures for young folks, try and gauge their maturity level and you can make it real fun. When I played with the children in the party, we visited an ecenttric wizard that experimented with food, and we had to fight off a stromboli golem/ Crazy, right? But we all still had fun. Everything doesn't have to be super serious, but it does need to engage the children and grab their attention. I hope that helps. I hope your campaign goes good.
I wish WotC ported over the Condition Track they designed for Star Wars Saga Edition into D&D. Having a stacking penalty rather than a one-turn total shut down is more fun for everyone.
The problem with the condition track is that WotC would not be able to help themselves by designing abilities to manipulate the track, which is mega unfun for player and DMs.
26:09 Funny, but i suddenly realized, I don't think I care about how Tales of the Valiant is different from 2024. I'm really curious what it adds or lacks in comparison to Level Up A5E....
I abandoned 5e because of the extra work I had to do as a DM compared to other systems. Sadly 5.5 hasn’t addressed any of my concerns and has even made them worse. So it won’t be bringing me ‘back’ unfortunately. ‘Frustrating for DMs’ would be a good label for my experience of the design and priorities of new version overall.
Thanks Mike for taking the question about running games for young players and/or neurodivergent players. I run games for my autistic son (10) and other children. It takes effort and compassion, but this hobby can create great environments that foster teamwork and inclusivity in wonderful ways.
I’d be a little worried about doing something like busting out of a forcecage; that’s probably going to suck for the player who burned what’s probably their only 7th level spell slot.
The golfbag fighter is exactly what I want from fighter. The problem is they haven't said what there is to help monsters and DMs. The fighter should be the guy who has a weapon for every situation. But it shouldnt be that the weapon instantly invalidates an enemy.
Its force cage. There's counter tactics and then there's "Nope" buttons.
Im running A5e. What i told my player when they picked martial classes is that i haven't gone over every maneuver, so if something comes up i may change it. If i do, they can change it out for something else.
I love A5e so far. It is very rapidly replacing dnd14 as my favourite system
I feel like all of these discussions about “do these rule changes make life easier or harder for DMs” just hammer home over and over, the advantages in having a bit of software deal with the mechanical trivial for conditions, saves, other knock on effects, conditions that go away in 5 rounds, etc. Maybe the problem isn’t new features, it is the fact that DM tools are stuck in the 70s.
Let’s just start with the elephant in the room. What changes can we make (with software assistance) to let the players all take their turns concurrently, so nobody is waiting?
I ran a sesh using most of the new 5e 2024 rules and class options last night, my players Paladin critted 3 times in a combat and the fact that they all hovered around 45 points of damage at level 10 instead of the usual 60-70 points was such a relief, soo much less swing for this 6 person party
A lot of these comments are about the pc/dm adverserial relationship.
It's not that the dm is opposite the player, it's that the players usually go for spells and abilities that remove a monster's and conversely the dm's ability to act.
It's no fun to play a game when you are constantly have your hands tied or are prevented from playing.
It's the prone condition every tirn, it's the 10 turn sleep spell, it's the force cage and polymorph and banishment, etc .....
They're no better than the dm casting mind control spells constantly on pc's.
The designers don't realize this l.