What I did for healing in the dark souls campaign I brewed a few years back was replace hit dice with estus flask, allowing every character to expend a hit dice as an action to heal equal to half your hit dice+your level in hp, and if this action was taken, you could use your move and/or bonus action to expend hit dice and heal more. This also meant, as far as I was concerned, that there was no need to retrict healing spells, especially since I also made characters "die" as soon as they reached 0 hp (we used a wierd base system that worked on a timer, which made going through the same enemies a bit easier to swallow).
Use the seamless co op mod, have a friend or friends roleplay the following class Warrior: 2 Handed heavy weapon, no status effects, so more tank based, able to absorb and gain agro, able to do high physical damage Cleric: Healing, can choose to be a dex or str based (able to use healing and range damaging abilities) Mage: Sorceries only (high dps and area of effect damage) Assassin: Able to parry, and can use statuses (High crit damage, and able to cause bleed, frost, rot and poison)
We’ve always used OSR style content with minimal rules for a “souls-like” feel. Completely exiled healing from our table and after a couple sessions the players LOVED the challenge. Really changed how we play and how satisfactory combat is
@@enterthedungeon I feel like it’s going that way. More systems are getting more popular and people are finding what they want! Whatever people enjoy they enjoy, but it’s always great to see niche games/systems being embraced steadily
one thing I'm confused on: more smaller dice would make crits hit even harder than a couple big dice. the example you used of 4d6 vs 2d12 the average damage of a 4d6 crit is 28 versus the average of a 2d12 crit of 26. and the minimum damage on the 4d6 is also much higher than the minimum damage of a 2d12
That is true but to answer this question we gotta get into some statistics. The more rolls of a die we make, the closer our data set comes to a normal distribution. So when we roll 4d6, our overall damage will be slightly higher but much more consistent. So if we score a critical hit with 4d6, our damage will be on average 2 points of damage higher. But, 2d12 has a far higher chance of doing 48 damage (max damage) and killing a player than 4d6 damage. The players are actually far safer when the monsters roll more smaller dice because we can keep away from those edge cases that can instantly kill players. Now of course you can roll four 6s in a row and get max damage. That's always a risk but it can be mitigated. As dungeon masters, we don't want TPKs or party wipes. Combats should be difficult without causing told defeat. I hope this helps!
@@enterthedungeon okay I see your reasoning for it now 🙏 I might still have some big dice attacks cause my party always consistently does a lot of damage and tanks alot too (almost everyone has very high con and 18 str) but I'm also not going for full elden ring feel just cool ideas for bosses that can withstand their assault. For better idea of their powerscaling they beat a young red dragon in a single turn at level 5, I've given them advantages in free feats at level 1, decent magic items, and some homebrew rules like reworking all of drunken master or having the rune knight operate under large creature rules (2d8 unarmed punches or 3d8 with his once per turn big hit) but I like balancing it for more grand scale combats to make them feel like epic fantasy heroes
I’m a somewhat new dm and I’m about to run a souls-like campaign. I have the world and lore down, thats not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about not running the game well, do you or anyone else in the comments have any additional advice for running general souls-like campaigns, anything I should do differently compared to regular DnD?
What boss from Elden Ring would you put into your D&D game? How would your players react?
Abyss watchers work really well, because of their background.
Other than that Hoara Loux
Ancestor Spirit sounds like it would make for an interesting boss to combat in Dnd
I'd find a better system to run something like this
What I did for healing in the dark souls campaign I brewed a few years back was replace hit dice with estus flask, allowing every character to expend a hit dice as an action to heal equal to half your hit dice+your level in hp, and if this action was taken, you could use your move and/or bonus action to expend hit dice and heal more. This also meant, as far as I was concerned, that there was no need to retrict healing spells, especially since I also made characters "die" as soon as they reached 0 hp (we used a wierd base system that worked on a timer, which made going through the same enemies a bit easier to swallow).
I also made most bosses attack in AoEs for most of their attacks, usually in radials around them.
Use the seamless co op mod, have a friend or friends roleplay the following class
Warrior: 2 Handed heavy weapon, no status effects, so more tank based, able to absorb and gain agro, able to do high physical damage
Cleric: Healing, can choose to be a dex or str based (able to use healing and range damaging abilities)
Mage: Sorceries only (high dps and area of effect damage)
Assassin: Able to parry, and can use statuses (High crit damage, and able to cause bleed, frost, rot and poison)
We’ve always used OSR style content with minimal rules for a “souls-like” feel. Completely exiled healing from our table and after a couple sessions the players LOVED the challenge. Really changed how we play and how satisfactory combat is
Yeah, so many people play Dungeons and Dragons when better systems exist for what they want. It's kind of sad.
@@BigRoyBad it’s a matter of players unfortunately. Many ttrpg players ONLY play DnD. But I would like to see the hobby branch out
@@enterthedungeon I feel like it’s going that way. More systems are getting more popular and people are finding what they want! Whatever people enjoy they enjoy, but it’s always great to see niche games/systems being embraced steadily
What is OSR?
@@specrtre Old School Revival/Renaissance! A movement for using some old school minimalist design principals etc. :)
great content. i was always in awe with the horse riding animation.
I'd love to pair this alongside Kobold Press' "Souls-like Roleplaying" supplement!
I really wanna create a World based on Norse mythology and the players are either based on the Draugr or the Einherjar
I like how you used brennan because his campaigns are as difficult and soul crushing as elden ring.
one thing I'm confused on: more smaller dice would make crits hit even harder than a couple big dice. the example you used of 4d6 vs 2d12 the average damage of a 4d6 crit is 28 versus the average of a 2d12 crit of 26. and the minimum damage on the 4d6 is also much higher than the minimum damage of a 2d12
That is true but to answer this question we gotta get into some statistics. The more rolls of a die we make, the closer our data set comes to a normal distribution. So when we roll 4d6, our overall damage will be slightly higher but much more consistent.
So if we score a critical hit with 4d6, our damage will be on average 2 points of damage higher. But, 2d12 has a far higher chance of doing 48 damage (max damage) and killing a player than 4d6 damage. The players are actually far safer when the monsters roll more smaller dice because we can keep away from those edge cases that can instantly kill players.
Now of course you can roll four 6s in a row and get max damage. That's always a risk but it can be mitigated.
As dungeon masters, we don't want TPKs or party wipes. Combats should be difficult without causing told defeat.
I hope this helps!
@@enterthedungeon okay I see your reasoning for it now 🙏 I might still have some big dice attacks cause my party always consistently does a lot of damage and tanks alot too (almost everyone has very high con and 18 str) but I'm also not going for full elden ring feel just cool ideas for bosses that can withstand their assault. For better idea of their powerscaling they beat a young red dragon in a single turn at level 5, I've given them advantages in free feats at level 1, decent magic items, and some homebrew rules like reworking all of drunken master or having the rune knight operate under large creature rules (2d8 unarmed punches or 3d8 with his once per turn big hit) but I like balancing it for more grand scale combats to make them feel like epic fantasy heroes
I’m a simple man, I see Brennan, I click
I’m a somewhat new dm and I’m about to run a souls-like campaign. I have the world and lore down, thats not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about not running the game well, do you or anyone else in the comments have any additional advice for running general souls-like campaigns, anything I should do differently compared to regular DnD?
those frames go crazy
Elden Ring has a TTRPG now.
There’s no way you played the entire game at 10fps 🤣🤣
Lol nope. But recording and running the game is a bit much for my PC