3 Noob DM Combat Mistakes You May Be Making - GM Tips
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- Опубликовано: 30 июн 2024
- We take a look at 3 mistakes you may be making as a DM when it comes to combat. We look at how you can ensure your combat works well, and is fun!
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Игры
To sum it up: "It's Roleplay, not Rollplay"
That could basically be Guy's motto
So don't let the rules and the dice suck the fun out of the game. Fun should be the focus of the game. The rules & dice should only be treated as guidelines, not rigid laws.
Brat me to it by a lot lol
I was going to say exactly the same thing. :)
DM: Excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt your negotiations with the merchant, but the village idiot has just gotten into a fight with a goose outside, so we'll have to take this round by round.
Fleem Q Swipes well I hope the dm at least tells me who won
@@chase7629 My money is on the goose. They're plucky.
DM: "I must consult with the Elder Gods."
Well, if it is packed into a story like an NPC bursting in telling about it and suddenly everyone runs out to bet on the outcome - why not?
Well, if there’s more than one player exploring the town, the DM should be taking it round by round anyways, right? I mean. That’s how the DMG has suggested the DM handle RP and exploration since BECMI, right?
Guy sounds like he is letting some personal frustration out lol. Great video. :)
Every D&D player has personal frustration with something in this video
Personal experience is an excellent teacher! Could be that GUY has faced these issues in person when playing a PC. You can learn a lot, even from "BAD GM's".
@@hobbyknight9962 As Buddha said: No one is useless. One can always serve as a bad example.
lol I get that feel with every video he posts
Travis Nelson - It is surprising that systems do not show the basics and are built to formal.
I had a massive NPCvsNPC battle... Which was off screen during the climactic battle with the elder evil. I know how it happened, didn't even describe it because they didn't even see it
I almost fell out of my chair after reading this hahahahahahahhaha omfg yes, i'm not the only completely batshit crazy DM out there hahahaha! Thank you for this!
I often spend hours playing with my world in ways that never even have any noticeable effect for my PCs, but it's fun for me haha
@@line6sg I treat my world as a living fantasy world. Besides the tiny amount of God chosen characters: none are above lvl 20, they have their own stories and their own battles. Helps me make the world feel not pc centric when the main story is focused on them. They are the heroes of this story but not the heroes of every story.
To all players: You don't have to build a combat focused character, but unless you are playing a no-combat game, you NEED to be able to do SOMETHING in combat. Imagine everyone built their PC as not being able to help in combat. The party would wipe at the first combat encounter. But you also need to be able to do something outside of combat.
Always remember this when making your character.
I however ran into an interesting conundrum in which, my older brother makes character to do literally nothing but combat, and makes overpowered characters completely designed for combat and no one else can do anything in combat.
@@lucidlucario710 I've also had had players who focus solely on combat and trying to make their characters into some undying beasts. That wouldn't be a problem, but most of the other players do not try to min-max or do it for ridiculous things such as climbing. So in Pathfinder 1E we have a character with AC 40 and next highest AC is 27. Had to have a talk with specific player about how combat oriented the campaign was.
@@lucidlucario710 A classic minmaxer, then.
@@lucidlucario710 I created a 0 combat character because one of my fellow players did this.
I would just try to make my own fun by wondering off, often triggering more bad guys lol.
My PCs work together to steer the the narrative to a point that two NPCs have to talk to each other then sit back and laugh at me talking to myself. Honestly it's the glue that hold the team together so I let it slide.
"Nobody cares, except - " "This little bra right here"
Sometimes ads can be really weird.
Mine was, "So you can decide which one of them... (In Portuguese) arrived from the United States..."
Mine was a mind training ad
DRAGON FORCE POWER METAL!
And it engaged all of the PC- XBox One startup sound.
"Buy new generation oven!..." in polish
I've definitely done rolling for every NPC and learned that beyond one or two NPCs it's really not worth it. If you don't have a planned outcome for this situation it's easier to just flip a coin to see which side has the upper hand and narrate it at the end of the initiative order.
I subverted expectations in the final battle. Had 6 allies role... Only to do 0 damage due to immunity on the bosses side. It was a last "your the only ones who can kill this" moment
I like a percentile, just to see how well one side did against the other.
chiepah2 I like the idea of a percentile roll. I might try that.
@@chiepah2 mine was a scripted battle. The winning side had 5 epic tier heroes, and 6 level 15 adventurers. This is one top of expert soldiers. The battle was gonna be won, it was more to get the players a happy ending and for their prebattle planning to have felt worth it whilr they hit the boss with a cannon stuffed wkth magic weapons
Aren't there rules for mass combat, anyway?
I remember when Critical Role had the Mighty Nein compete in a team-based (competitors vs. monsters) arena.
There was one commenter who actually thought Mercer had spent what would have probably been _a couple of days_ in a room by himself rolling out every combat between the NPC competitors and their monster adversaries. They just couldn't fathom that no competent GM would do this.
That commenter clearly never DMed in his entire life! As a veteran DM, I very rarely roll for anything that is NPC-NPC action. When you DM you already roll a LOT, not counting when you roll just to give your players the sensation that something's going on or you are letting the dice decide something.
@@Jake007123 Oh yeah. There's a huge section of the CR fanbase that has obviously never _played,_ never mind _run,_ a game of D&D.
@@nickwilliams8302 Even then, wouldn't they think that obviously rolling dice by yourself in your house instead of just deciding what happens is kinda nuts? Specially if you watch CR, where roleplaying is 100% more important than dice.
@@Jake007123 It's actually worse than that as Mercer dealt with the NPC contests _live on stream_ by pretty much the same method Guy advocates in the vid.
@@nickwilliams8302 What I usually do is just deciding what group would be more narrative-rich to win, either because they would be cooler encounters to put against the party or because the party can learn something interesting from it that enforces the feeling of the world and campaign. For example, in a campaign about a rebellion winning against a tyrannical government, the rebellious, less actually professional, probably enslaved gladiators would win and the party would have the opportunity to talk to them.
In one of my recent games the players detected a trap where some golem creatures guided a path. The spellcaster was able to avoid the trap and went on into exploring the other cave. There was another creature lurking by. The task was to break into a crypt and steal something. So the mage decided to lure the creature into the golems.
So while the mage broke into the crypt, there was this quite epic fight between some beefy creature and the golems going on. Because the other player where hiding away in a safe distant i gave every one of them the stats of the creature in this fight.
It was an amazing fight and my players enjoyed guest playing this teriffic monsters slauthering each other.
Honestly a smart solution AND a fun way to shake things up and have the players have fun on the side without strings attached, having them pilot the sides of an encounter they deliberately caused to happen but are not fighting in as PCs themselves.
If your players enjoyed themselves, you have done the right thing.
I did not feel particularly curious about how these NPCs butchered each other. Rather have the battle reduced to a couple of rolls.
3 Noob DM Combat Mistakes You May Be Making.
Alternate Title: Unbridled, emotional rant about the RPG version of PTSD.
I love salty Guy.
Rightfully salted, I might add.
"Rightfully Salted" sounds like a great rock album
I'll add one: No Tension.
Like combats specifically designed so a two year old blindly rushing in could explode the encounter with no effort.
I like to give my characters easy encounters right after they level up. It's a great chance for them to test new stuff out and show off their new abilities to the other players.
Tenseless combat turn into roleplay scenarios. You are not in need of maximizing your action's efficiency
This is why I like Matthew Colville's unit combat sytem. Units controlled by the pcs different types of units have different dice values. If they win the opposing unit drops by 1 until either one is reduced to 0. It makes it feel less rehearsed or npc focused as it is all in the dice while the pcs are dealing with their own combat at the same time.
Giving the players control over the allied NPCs in the battle definitely works for some tables, including my own. Been doing it since the AD&D days, giving the players absolute control over the actions and rolls of their hirelings and henchmen as well as any other NPCs on their side. Depending on how many allied NPCs there are, the players may even rotate controlling them each round. Makes for some dynamic NPC combat choices let me tell you what.
I tend to roll enemy vs ally (1 roll each with mods), while PC's perform actions (either BBEG related, Macguffin related, defensive, or offensive). PC's win the scenario add or negate 1 damage to the ally/enemy blocks. Eg: Party kills the general and his bodyguards, enemy gets no attack, allies do 1 damage plus what they can roll. Party fails and retreats from the general? or general escapes? Negate Allies damage that round.
Gonna date me here... BUT WAY WAY WAY back in the day, Nintendo published one of my all time favorite games. I occasionally still blow off the dust and play it again. I've only beaten it a couple times (out of thousands of attempts)... "Genghis Khan"... AND there was a unit-based system, from whence we evolved our own basic method for handling "underlings" in combat.
The Players get pretty free reign to determine sizes and types of units, and then each unit has an attack-based and a defense-based "Proficiency Number"... determined by training and other RP-related work with the PC's... AND the specifics of damage (type and amount) is based roughly on the books, (RAW) with tweaks for PC ideas, innovations, and further RP-related tasks in-game.
In combat, whoever is specified as "Officer in Charge" gets to roll for any specific units under his command, and I roll for "the enemy units" a single die per the "proficiency skills"... damage...etc...
On occasions when appropriate, we introduced a "morale mechanic" where success can breed success, adding bonuses for accumulating successful tactics and strategies in a given battle or along the movements of war... AND that adds a layer of theme in building or losing momentum as it were...
I'm only vaguely familiar with Coleville's personal recipe (prescription?) BUT I don't disagree completely with it. This is just how we handled it then and "Old habits and all that..." There are only occasional exceptions, when a particular Player has been extricated from the combat for some reason (extremely rare anymore) then I often default to that Player to help keep track of certain "enemy units" and kind of debate tactics with me behind the screen... It can be a double edged sword (and has more than once)... BUT... some things are best "shrugged off" rather than dwelt upon over some vindictive crap. ;o)
@@littlekong7685 Reminds me, vaguely, of the NPC morale systems used in old editions like AD&D 1st and 2nd Editions.
Can you link the video
Still remember when I had a DM that rolled initiative for 8 guards, 3 witches, 3 brooms of animating, 4 vampire spawn, 6 werewolves, and THEN the party. Three sessions of waiting 40-60 minutes for my turn. Why she thought it'd be fun? Who can say...
omg I used to do it when I`ve only started dm-ing because the DMG suggests it as one of the options for running groups of monsters. It`s a bad idea. Dear beginner GM, who might be reading this, please, just use the same initiative for all your 6 goblins. I promise this is so much easier and much more fun for you and your players.
@@loveoffthedamned Also, if you have multiple enemies all making multiple attacks on the same person, it can be smart to roll them all at once (best if using an online dice roller, but some people do have enough d20s to manage it with real rolls)
@@loveoffthedamned Mmmm...no. I preffer monsters to have their own initiative order, otherwise it is literally wave of monster attacks with no player roll in between, and that (in my humble opinion) screws with the action economy. Now what I WILL do, is when engaging with groups that large, I take a mini and say it represents 6 orcs, or a group of 10 zombies, etc. So if I have say, 30 zombies, I won't have 30 separate initiatives and whatnot. I will have 3. Or 6! Or whatever. Point being they still have separate initiatives in a way, they are just grouped in small hordes if you will.
My group tends to adopt NPCs. Usually I just give combat control to the player that spent most time with that NPC as a kind of reward for roleplaying. It's the thought of "They are most likely going to listen to you, so you decide."
I think it works quite well up until now.
"there is something seriously small about your person"... I LOVE the British phraseology!
What if the GM's a woman?
I'm sorry. At what point did I mention gender? Is "small about your person" a reference to something that I am unaware of?
@@timbuktu8069 I'm sorry, I assumed it was one of those stupid 'acting tough to compensate for a small penis' jokes that so many people trot out.
@@peytonmac1131 Its implied, but the message in those jokes anyway is implying a correlation between your stature or genitalia and your self-esteem. So even a woman can have "big-dick energy" or "small-dick energy" so to speak, and that's the point, not the physical descriptor.
The beautiful and refreshing sensation when you understand you did all of this in the correct way in your limited experience of GM-ing.
Luckily, otherwise I would be worried about Guy biting my nose in rage :)
Guy I love your videos and this is a good one as well, but who hurt you lol
Everyone that's not him. xD
Yeah, he seems to be a not very good GM. Advancement? Doesn't matter. Rules? Don't matter. Dice? Nope! Realism? Psh, whatever. Petty? You betcha!
Bad GM's hurt him. It is why he has such a vendetta against them!
@@joshuaperrine2019 He's first and foremost a storyteller that tries to make systems work for him. Guy, as a person, needs a narratively focused system.
Guy seems to be better suited for the roleplaying where people take turns typing a story at each other, since he distastes all aspects that make rpgs games.
Somebody has a case of boring NPC vs NPC combat PTSD. :)
Ya' know, Guy... It's rather refreshing to find you ranting about another particularly sensitive (to you at least) subject. You seem to adopt a certain energy about the emphasis of just how important the issues that can deteriorate the game into the abject horror of hanging out to be bored out of your tree.
I've been involved in Games with the GM primarily playing a perverted form of solitaire, too. I can't remember most of those, because I either left or fell asleep... I don't do boredom well. ;o)
Combat is one of my weakest points as a DM. I've recently shifted towards a more 'non violent' oriented problem solving in my games, but some of my players are demanding a little bit of action once again. Having my combat DMing skills rusted on top of a poor combat dming skillset, watching this video gave me some nice ideas and something to think about for not doing these awful mistakes.
Of course, the NPC v NPC stuff is just AWFUL. It was so tough to imagine the situation
I tend to run campaigns light on combat, with (if I remember right) max number of pacifist sessions in row being 6. BUT, that doesn't mean there weren't any chances for fighting, my players just wanted to handle dangerous situations with stealth, skills checks or just purely roleplaying through the encounter.
I would also say I have hard time balancing combats in certain RPGs, while in others I have no problem. It's just something that comes with time or when the game clicks with you.
@@Eemi_Seppala haha I have the opposite problem. My party just wants to kill the bad things. Last session I had a massive fortress that I planned on them sneaking into, gave them every reason to sneak in. What do they do? Walk right up to the front gate and go hey! let us in or we will kill you all. I was dumbstruck that after debating if they should sneak in, they decided to try and walk in the main gate. So now tomorrow we get to see how it plays out.
The opening skit here was perfect! It gave the main theme of the video, was entertaining, but also didn't drag on for to long. Yes! More of this please!
Yeah sometimes Guy gets into minute-long skit and it's a tad annoying, not gonna lie. I like the current length, maybe a lil less.
Wow, Guy is MAD. I'm just imagining how it wast in the table he played before this
Haha! What kind of maniac rolls for NPCs that aren't there?
I used to... Then I got better.
Someone who fell way too in love with their OCs.
”At that point you're just playing with yourself, and nobody wants to see that."
What if it's an ERP?
I've been there and done ALL the mistakes as a novice DM. Now, I know and have learned the hard way all the lessons taught in this video. It might be too late for me, but I shared this video in my group, hoping new DMs to learn and avoid doing the same mistakes.
Man, the last time I was this early I was running away from a Smilodon.
Our gm prerolls all the important npc rolls before the session. It has led to amazing upsets of what we thought would happen. But saving the rolls so pcs can interact with the fight is a good way too.
Ourgm will also have us the players roll for both sides of NPCs
Great video with great advice! This is a 30 year veteran DM here that just came across this video during a time that I , as DM, have 6 pcs , 20 NPCs, going up against a very old Red Wrym, I I found this advice absolutely fantastic! Great job Guy!
When I had NPC fights, duels or battles as a backdrop I rolled beforehand, wrote down the general effects and described the progress of the combat in every in-game round.
Example: The PCs were going through a jungle, and could scry on a duel of two NPCs who crash landed an airship on a ruin in the middle of a dense jungle. I used the descrpition of the duel as a tool to buiuld pressure - as the NPC they were trying to save took yet another and another blow and the PCs decided "he cant have much HP left" so they used stuff they saved from the previous sessions to burn through the last part of the jungle , and used a Protect Form Fire spell to walk through the burning scenery and then a few other items to swoop in and save the NPC (3 rounds before he'd get killed by the way).
If you wanna roll for everything even though the players are not directly involved - do so beforehand, and during the session only describe the effects.
Still seems like a lot of work though.
🤣 I have to share this to SOOOOO many GM’s!! Thank you for this video!
Onus! Great word! Just getting into D&D and your videos are helping a lot!
I am somewhat guilty of over-rolling myself but that is because I never wanted my PCs to feel like oh yeah so he just wants this guy to win no matter what if we don't intervene. But what you said makes a lot of sense, all it does is waste time, especially in the mass combat department because I just freakin' love city assaults :D
Literally was the game I'm playing in on Sunday. Almost every mistake you list was committed (except maybe NPCs ignoring PCs to attack other NPCs). What made it even more frustrating was the DM's smug "You guys are just not thinking tactically and solving my combat puzzle" attitude the entire time. So tempted to send the DM this video, no matter how passive aggressive it might be. :P
Do it but include your comment
Howzit from Cape Town, as a new DM I was recommended your channel by a mate and have been binging ever since ^^ great stuff
A little tidbit I learned for NPC vs. NPC: As a GM, you spend your whole time adapting to how the players roll, how they approach scenarios, etc. NPC vs. NPC is literally the 1 time as a DM where you can predetermine the outcome of the encounter without undermining the fun of anybody at the table, where you can contrive whatever dramatic resolution you want, and you are going to give up THAT for rolling every action round by round?
Great video! A couple of notes from my own experience:
1. Keep the number of monsters/villains restricted. Make them more powerful and less in numbers. More monsters means more actions. If, due to any reason, you need to have a lot of NPCs (like in a battlefield) make sure to use mass combat techniques in handling the battle. Another good thing is to use minions (1HP, low AC, etc.)
2. If the battlefield is vast and PCs need to engage in different parts which are far enough, run each group of PCs separately.
3. If you are a grid-based GM, use it only for small and medium-sized combats. Large combats need a lot of prep and mostly, due to numerous amounts of stuff that GM should do, the gaming experience quality will decline.
4. In general, prioritize the tasks, remember and think about what will happen and how it should be handled. If your PC's are going to engage in a battle/fight, you better know why NPCs will engage in the fight, how they engage and when they engage.
Thanks for putting this out there, had no idea I'd done some of these.
Great Statement and Tips! I wish I saw this a few weeks earlier! Then I probably would have handled my final siege encounter of the campaign way differently. When you are doing something like this for the first time you sometimes don't think about it as being boring or frustratingly uninteresting. Thanks for all the advice! Next time I'll hopefully do better!
I know your feeling so well.
The first big encounter I planned for my players, it was this epic naval battle they kinda "dropped into", so their ship got entered by sea-monsters and as a finally, they barely should been saved from a bigger ship (for story-reasons).
What I didn't anticipated was, that I overdesigned the big monster by life, but not damage (his big bad frost attack did literally nothing on most of them because of high resistence) and that my players rolled tremendously bad, so that whole epic "cannonfire all around you"-battle took a whole fucking hour, even with me reducing health and giving them help.
So when they won and that bigger ship appeared and tried to ram them, there was zero tension. It was more like "oh...right! There was this naval battle going on!"
I haven't started dming yet but this has fixed a few of the things I planned on doing in my games. I liked this and most of your videos. They are very helpful and for the most part straight to the point.
Such wonderful energy to start the day. Thank you Sir.
I'm a new DM and I needed to hear this. Thanks!
I'd like to suggest something in the cases where the party is split and action takes place.
Depending on the encounter, you might want to let the players who aren't in combat yet control an enemy, and if you're playing a game like Fate or Pathfinder where there are meta resources you can spend (Fate Points and Hero Points respectively), let them spend it to make the enemies more incompetent in some way - or if you can really trust the maturity of your players, also reward the group (or maybe just the adversely affected players, whatever you prefer obviously) with more of those resources if the "monster wranglers" play the monsters especially well as a threat.
Yes, this idea was inspired by Matt Colville's monster wrangler video.
I love the fire in this video keep it up!
For NPC vs NPC i usually roll 1 dice to decide who will win (unless one has or will win anyway) and then a roll to decide how many rounds the combat will take. The rest is description.
For description I like to use rolls and then describe what happened in the entire round before starting the next.
Since everything is happening at once in teory, I prefer waiting for some action to pile up before describing: a miss can be a counterattack if the opponent hits for example.
Nice opening skit, thank you! - - - Point 1; a,b,c) it took me a while to get comfortable with just rolling once for each side of non-party-engaged "side" and summarizing what happens, and dropping a few words of description of what the PC's can see going on while they are busy. I had a MASSIVE battle last spring where the party was contributing to the defense of a city gates against an army of nearly a thousand demons. The combat lasted for about 6 hours of game time with five players over two sessions, but if I had done that battle a decade or two ago, it would have taken 30-40 hours across a dozen sessions and nobody would have come out the other side bored. - - Point 2; a, b, c) I use one or two party NPC's in my game, so that the players have a person available to give them local lore (sometimes wrong!) and who can contribute to decisions and guard duties (sometimes poorly) but I never let them have strong enough personality to be a leader, and their combat is usually roll-stimated (estimated based on a roll and my knowledge of the combat system). The NPC vs NPC fight that ignores players is something we used to call, in LARPing, "monsterbating" and it was ALWAYS bad. - - Point 3; a,b,c) These are common mistakes for new GM's that I have made as well. I have learned, from observing payers, listening to their feedback and contributions, and from being a player. And now I do a lot better.
You passion is delicious!
I'm honestly pretty good by the seems of it but watched the whole video anyway ;) keep it up dude!
I was actually looking up into making a huge backdrop battle for the end of a chapter in my campaign really soon, this will help a lot for not making it seem as a boring roll-focused session, thanks a lot
You have just given me a great idea on how to start tomorrow's session 😀 thanks Guy
Thanks again Guy!
When it comes to Npc vs Npc I just roll my dice, nod my head satisfactorily and continue on with what I had planned regardless. If the players aren't involved the world continues on without them.
I imagine Guy’s neighbors are very concerned sometimes when he records these videos. Thanks for the great content! Getting ready to run my first game as a GM and I’ve been watching every video I can.
I love when Guy gets so passionate he drops "fuck" without a thought. Never change, Guy. Your passion makes the videos better.
Great video, loved the intensity :)
I love the emotional roller-coaster that can result from the PCs doing REALLY well in a largescale battle, yet the battle still goes against them (usually because of some more general large contested rolls). That's a pretty consistent historical experience, where someone can be succeeding in their portion of a greater conflict, but it's not enough.
Thank you so much, most of my progress as a DM has been almost entirely from your videos. My players have noticed a significant difference
Starting a session with 9 on Sunday (yes.. 9) so combat in that is going to be very, very interesting.
The solution I’ve got at the moment is giving enemies different roles, for example I’ll have 2 blockers, a damage dealer and maybe a rogue to sneak up on the ranged pc’s
Good luck!!!
Thank you this video was great. I have been trying to figure out how I would make large scale battles not feel tedious. This helped me out alot :)
Nice video. Good analysis.
for mass combat use MAtt Colville's stronghold's and followers. I usually run such a large scale before the session. then narrate it as background during the session.
I had a firbolg ranger running around town. circling around the outskirts to the tavern. where the rest of the group was fighting against devils. protecting priests during their ritual. improvised how the firbolg could alarm and help warn and evacuate people as he ran around town. or when the party split up. three went into the woods hunting down orc stragglers. after they had defended against an orc raid. the other half stayed in town to shop and heal up. having relatively little to do. I felt bad for that half of the group.
This was very helpful for me. I'm a noob dm and was making a few of these mistakes
I like the "Pirates" approach (Sid Meier's computer game). If you do well, your troops are motivated and are also lucky in their fight.
Dude, your American accent is perfect when you do that "tool" character, lol. Maybe you know that, but if not - perfection!
Short skits are great Guy. Well done. Love the video as well. I was happy to learn I don't make those mistakes but sad to learn nothing new. Love ya buddy
Check out Seth Skorkowsky's channel
Needed this :) I'm really new and thought I was doing a bad for not simulating more. My players walked away from certain backgrounds conflicts feeling wary but entertained but I felt bad for essentially giving them an interactive cutscene. But now I know, THAT'S PREFERRED :)
Always great information. I don't play d&d but this all makes sense.
Thanks. I needed that.
It hasn't really inspired me to re-examine it per-se, but it has given me inspiration as to how I can run such a scenario... which is good, considering I am a first-time DM with plans for a fairly early Mass-Combat battle. (Assuming those plans aren't derailed, of course)
Great video. I definitely realized some things I need to improve. I have only ever run 1 NPC v. NPC combat. A joust the PCs could bet gold on or interfere with because there were pros/cons to either joust contestant losing. They chose to not interfere because they bet gp on one.
But I have definitely spent too much time rolling on occasion. I'll be streamlining things a bit with your help. I'm sure my players would thank you if they could see behind the curtain.
Thanks. Your videos are wonderful.
Thank you so much!
Great topic and fab vid!
I love this. I've been trying to get into pnp a long time but the huge amount of combat rules makes it always a tough read.
So I've had this thought about 'just ignore it and be more straight forward', but then been like 'no no'. But here I feel like " _YES_ ".
One of my best sessions ever broke about 60% of these rules, and is still one my players reference as their favorite. The key is really the last one, making sure everyone has something meaningful and fun to be doing,
The context was a raid on a noble villa. Several factions they'd met had also been scoping the villa out, so when they when in to get the Mcguffen, so did strike teams from these other factions. At that point fighting broke out all through the compound, with factions A, B and C fighting the guards and each other. The players were on a high speed chase to get the the item and escape... sometimes aiding in one combat, or holding doors shut, blocking others, so other team members could run through.
Even the NPCs vs NPCs battles were interesting to the players, because the players were making plans... "If the guards win there we can... oh... oh, no... the gaurds are falling. Should we help or go around the back... wait, faction B is there... can we get them to let us pass?"
Thanks, Guy another great video with good advice. Had a little story to tell but changed my mind because it is rather long and isn’t exactly about melee combat, more about diplomatic combat if you will. Again thanks for what you do.
Early in my current campaign (based on Fantasy Flight's excellent End of the World system), I had a group of maybe a dozen bandits invade a village festival. While nearby bandits engaged with the PCs, the rest started pairing off against random townspeople. I handled this by rolling two d6s at once: one white and one black. The white die determined who "won" that round (even for the townsperson, odd for the bandit), and the black die determined the strength of their attack. No modifiers, no fancy combat actions, and none of them moved unless their opponent died or the PCs got involved.
I completely agree with where you are coming from in regards to having a PC have to catch up to join a fight.however I would argue that it is a wonderful way to teach players they should limit the amount of time they spend away from the whole party. Separating can be very dangerous. thank you for these incredible tips. They've been helping me on my journey to become a game master that I can be proud of
So inspiering! Thank u!
I've seen an instance where npc vs npc was done well, it was a tournament fight but our dm just rolled a single die as he narrated the fight to make the tournament outcome feel more random. Did a hit land kind of deal, a certain number of hits and their fights were over. It was actually nice.
Came dangerously close to this in my campaign finale. The big bad was essentially unassailable. It was his ritual they needed to disrupt, and they just had to do that and tip the power balance in the battle to win. They had also turned one of his lieutenants that could have been a miniboss fight on his own. So I made sure in the opening round the bad guys focused on the PCs, second round they wasted killing the defector so A: my players could regroup and make a better plan and B: I could wax this OP NPC so he wouldn't make them look bad.
They had sent a call for aid to some allies, and when they came in I handed each player a card with stats for a retainer to run on their turn. So they had a combat NPC about 2/3 their strength with simple actions (attack or breath weapon if recharged) to throw at the lich, dragon, and minions while their PC did more interesting things.
Eventually they did make the Ritual impossible to complete, told the big bad there was more cavalry coming, downed the lich, and released a powerful NPC. "Ok, he knows he's beat, and he's not interested in going toe to toe with an avenging angel to try to wipe out the party. He vanishes in a flash of dark energy and mist. Well done, heroes"
So I guess what I'm saying is that a noob GM, I ended up with too many NPCs in the epic final battle but fixed it by letting them run the weak NPCs as if everyone has a pet or summon, and either quickly eliminating powerful NPCs or using the PCs decision to put them on the board as essentially a winning condition that *they* achieved.
I have a notebook for my players to refer to (from watching your videos, I took 20 pages of notes, at least), and now I'm taking DM notes. It just makes me laugh to hear you go "take out your pen." Yes sensei, I'm prepared for your lesson!
As far as NPC battles where the PCs are not in involved is concerned, I usually run it in one of two ways:
If there's multiple NPCs, I usually just decide how I want it to go and come up with a house rule relating to that. Like if multiple NPCs are holding back a monster, the monster gets to roll against each of them and it KO's any NPC it gets say a nat 12 or higher against. Something like that.
If it involves a select couple individuals or the fight is intended to be able to go either way, than I usually try to make the fight relate to the PCs in some sort of way. Like one battle involved two dragons fighting and they would throw each other around, fire off breath weapons, block off paths, could hit the PCs with their tails, that sort of thing. That way the fight was more akin to a set of obstacles they had to get passed/survive.
Hi, thanks for another great video :)
Can you please make one about making good descriptions of npcs, enviroment, rooms etc. to the players?
Think of the senses. What do they look like, talk like, smell like. Same for environments. What do they see, hear and smell. Is the air static. Does the person have a strong aura, striking fear into the players or they're calmed by the calm look of a leader
This is great information! I have a friend who I role-play with and to make battles more interesting I have added NPC's to help him and have fallen into this issue without even thinking about it... This is definitely something I'll have to take into account in the future. It will also speed up battles exponentially. On another note I was playing as a bard in another GM's campaign and battles as a "support character" got very boring because I spent the whole battle "singing" and not being musically inclined myself well I didn't add actual song to the campaign... The party of player characters (5 in that battle) were in a goblin lair and we were getting swarmed by them through two enterances we were using as bottlenecks. I stood off in a corner out of sight of either door chanting the whole battle long to provide a buff for the party... I wasn't allowed to do anything else without breaking the chant. At the end of the session I was voted MVP of the session as the chant allowed multiple critical hits that would not have been had I not been chanting the whole battle long. However it felt very hollow to me and I felt cheated out of participation in the session. Dexterity rolls etc would have been a way of allowing me to participate even if it cost the party a critical hit or two...
On another note that same bard had a disadvantage of being a heavy sleeper... So to engage my character in battle when he was still waking up I would roll initiative just the same and every time my turn came around I would tell people to shut up they were making too much noise or the one instance that the enemies were gasts and I was choking on their stench I was telling the groups barbarian to stop passing gas. Which added a comedy aspect and got me recognition for role-play based experience bonuses.
You can make a more powerful NPC than your party and do it successfully.
When my players got stranded in Asgard they were only level 4 or so. I had them meet a level 10 fighter named Lars, he was a battle master, who, for every maneuver I chose one of the ones that allowed him to help another character, (Commanders strike, Maneuvering attack, distracting strike, rally) and he used them as often as possible, and spread that help around to every player. It worked, the pc's loved him, he stuck around for 4 sessions and eventually became a quest giver when they made it back to town, once they completed those quests they were in a "Defend the town" situation, where Lars took a fatal blow from a troll. His death had a huge impact and it was heart wrenching when the Valkyrie PC had to take him to Valhalla. They talk about Lars to this day, 4 years later.
The key to playing npc's in combat and to make them loved, is to not play them like PC's, have them spend the majority of the time helping the PC's be awesome, and only have NPC allies stick around for a few sessions. Do it right and your players will look forward to every new NPC companion they have.
Just love your rants Guy xD
Another solid video!
I know what you mean about running. As a player recently I spent two entire sessions running.
The first week, we were leading a battle, and I realised my men and I were on the wrong side of the city as the attack was stronger on the side we'd not defended well, so I led my men across the city, spending rounds and round running, and missed the entire battle.
The next week, we teleported into the chamber of a demon, and I rolled badly and appeared on the far side of the chamber. So spent rounds and round running towards the demon, and got to roll one single attack as I got there at the end of the battle, and I rolled a 1.
A intro that lasted less than 30 seconds?
He's listening!
Between sessions I've been rolling encounters for a group of NPCs, mostly so I can hammer out the problems with my combat.
Dude, I remember when I was just starting as a DM and I watched a lot of your videos, super paranoid that I was gonna suck and the players would leave the campaign midway. Now that I have a bit more experience, I come back and watch this video and I'm like "Do people actually do this? This is insane, lol. Why woudn't you let your players actually play and have fun?" Thanks, the advice was nice and I felt I grew somewhat as a DM now.
I’ve been guilty of this many times. Thank you for the reality check. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
In mass combat settings or settings where the PCs have several NPC allies the closest I get to rolling for NPC vs NPC is rolling a D100. I pick a baseline 40 or lower = bad, 50 or lower = bad or something like that. Just enough to add a level of randomness to make it feel like the battle is not scripted. With simple rolls, it adds just enough randomness that it can add those clincher moments for the PCs. Anything more than that is just playing with yourself.
I have been known to throw erroneous die into the throw that I don't count, just to watch my players eyes widen as they hear handfuls of dice rolling. Always makes things interesting.
In the rare occasion that I have a NPC vs NPC combat, I'll have the players run/roll one side.
The worst mistakes I ever made as a DM all stemmed from the same place, if a player asked me a question about character options (Usually homebrew) or custom rules on the fly, and myself answering on them before allowing myself to be able to adequately think on them, before coming up with a solution. Mid-game this can be hard, but often I will flip between players and switch perspectives if a player asks a question I need time on, such as "Hey player, great idea, let's look at what this player is doing and get back to this in a minute" and then try and think about it as best as I can
After having first-time-DM'd 3 of my brothers through 7 sessions of LMoP and most of the Redbrand hideout at this point, I thank all the various people and channels, specifically including this channel and it's creator, for their tips.
I apparently managed to avoid most of these errors.
Let me just highlight whoever it was I heard the tip of rolling once for initiative for a group of enemies.
I don't always use it, especially if the opponents are diverse, but it's quite effective at speeding things up.
THANK YOU!
I sat in on a game once where the DM had a few characters in the game as well and I swear there was about an hours worth of the session where he was just talking to himself, and a good portion of the rest was him talking to his wife's character! I was really upset by that session too!
16:35 This makes me think of the Palladium system, I feel like that system has WAY TOO MANY things to roll for, especially in combat! Palladium games have great story but the mechanics are SEVERELY lacking in my opinion!!!
The clever use of "NPC vs. NPC" can really save you some trouble.
For example I had a session were my players had to fight against a monster that guarded a treasure in a lake next to a small city. There were two monsters, one for my PCs, one for the city.
Why the second one? Because the city was filled with adventureres, mages and soldiers. So if I only had one monster attack, it would have been really weird why no one was helping my PCs defend the city. But with the second monster fighting all those people out of sight, this plothole was fixed easily.
And no, obviously I never rolled once for that NPC-battle, because the outcome was pre-determined: The city defenders won. But they only won after my players finished their fight.
I have an NPC that I didn't expect to join my players party, and when we got around to combat I let my players play out the NPC so I wasn't having NPC vs NPC combat where I was fighting myself. They actually used the NPCs skill set in a way I hadn't expected and they seemed to have more fun that way.