Have you ever ambushed your player characters? How did it go? Thanks so much to OnlyCrits for sponsoring this video! Visit www.onlycrits.com/supergeekmike and take advantage of their Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals!
All the time. Over 10 years of DMing ambushes have become a mainstay, to the point that in some adventures they become quite paranoid (as they should be in those dangerous locations). I think an important aspect of encounter design is motivation and goals. You say "My goal was not to kill the party." But that _is_ the goal of their enemies. And I think it's important not to make those enemies fools or incompetents to increase PC survivability. A hill giant might be dumb, but it has still lived long enough to get big enough to think it can squash most things. It should be canny as well as brutish, even if all that means is rolling its rocks to bowl over enemies instead of just chucking them. Every enemy should be acting like their life is on the line, because it is. Which of my ambushes went the best...There were some really good ones in the tomb of the 9 gods. On the beholder level it can shoot eye beams out of the walls randomly, and that paired with the flesh golems was a cool fight. An npc was turned to stone and so was a PC, they could only cure one of them... Another time I had them be ambushed on the road, and one of the PC's was a traitor working with the ambushers, that was a really dramatic and bloody fight. Horses were sent fleeing, men were mauled and hewed in twain, and the traitor was dashed upon the stony hillside and savaged by a Mabari war dog (this was in the Dragon Age ttrpg) all while it rained that road turned to mud and blood. Probably the most effective and terrible though was when I ambushed them with a dragon. They knew it was somewhere around, they were going into its lair, but they had become hasty after much planning and become confused, and so all rushed in. The dragon, a Black dragon, waited in the water as they crossed a bridge of stone deep below the earth. It cut the party in two with its breath, instantly killing the druid in her human form (played by my mother), and with its surprise round it slew two more NPC's, and then fled deeper into the lair. It was devastating. I felt bad, but the dragon wanted to live, and to protect her young. She was not going to play nice, and I had warned them how dangerous what they were doing was, many times. After collecting themselves, and no few tears, they chased her down and drove her from her lair. Later, she ambushed them on a river as they travelled back, and she was slain as she tore up the hull from beneath the water, the Dwarf Fighter stabbing her and cutting off her forelimb through the hole in the hull. Very dramatic. Finally the druid was avenged.
Yeah, the battlefield can make all the difference sometimes. Reminds me of one of the few times I got that right. The party was sent to check in on an alchemist who was running late to meet up with a caravan they were supposed to be guarding, and they arrived to find the place in shambles. A good perception check had them realize there was a zombie bear just inside the house, so instead an enclosed fight with a large foe, it was an easy ambush as one person lured it out the door and everyone wailed on it with opportunity attacks as it rushed past. Inside, they failed to note the level of damage to the floor of a large room with enemies, and once the fight broke out, someone got too close to the center of the room, and the floor buckled and collapsed, resulting in the party being out of position as the combat was now two tiered with basement zombies now being alerted. It was a fun time all around.
One of my players once asked me if they could transform into a dinosaur. I asked them context on where they'd encountered one, noted it down, said "are you sure?" They said yes, not seeming to fully understand why I asked. Two weeks later, they go to a similar environment as the druid had described finding dinosaurs, and I thanked the druid for the session idea. They stared at me confused and dumbfounded, until about an hour in, they realize what's going on, and start playfully swearing up a storm. The rest of the party asks why, and she explains what's dawned upon her. The consequence of her putting dinosaurs in the world was that.... Dinosaurs were in the world. The following "Dire T-Rex" encounter was absolutely wild and the players all loved it.
But, seriously, this is something done in video game design a bunch - Fights deliberately designed to counter specific strategies that players may have become used to using constantly. Not out of spite, but because if left to their own devices players will optimize the fun out of everything.
It's also done to try to avoid players falling into strategies that are easy and consistent, but don't improve and end up being suboptimal. Otherwise players may run into a challenge that is simply too powerful to be defeated without using all the mechanics, and players who have overly focused on a few, easy mechanics will hit a wall and not be able to progress.
I think I have a similar approach. I don't ban any material, instead I always design around it. It is always like a satisfying puzzle to solve. Plus, I don't like taking away options.
Cool encounter design is always worth doing! One of the things that I find very annoying about a lot of modules or prewritten adventures is that they often default to the "big square obvious boss room" type design and don't include interesting terrain or mechanics. And in contrast, one of the things I *loved* about Baldur's Gate 3 is that just about every combat encounter had something unique to bring to the table. As far as banning spells, I am definitely in the camp that some spells are just poorly designed or poorly worded or have too much power for their level. Or that certain combinations of abilities just clearly weren't intended to be used together and break the game's math very hard. I think homebrewing obvious rule patches to these spells, or, in some cases, removing them from the game entirely, is perfectly fine, as long as you discuss it with your players and, if needed, allow them to rebuild their characters to some extent or other if their build was heavily reliant on those mechanics.
1:39 Now I'm picturing that trifle as the result of a critical failure on a cooking roll. "No, you were not supposed to put beef in the trifle. It did not taste good." (Also I remember watching the outtakes, it took them a LOT of takes to get through the "it tastes like feet!" line without everyone breaking down) 2:27 "Were" species besides Wolves don't seem to be used often and that should change. I want to GM one day but I'm worried I'd never have the time to make fights this tactical or interesting. Your inn fight had a great premise and built-in complications that, like you said, had nothing to do with the enemies. A situation where simply wiping the enemies out would be straightforward but doing that without collateral damage is... trickier. But also the phrase "two hobgoblin ninjas crash through the windows" is gold. As a side note, I just saw a thumbnail by another dungeontuber that gave incredible GM advice in four words: "Create problems, not solutions."
This reminds me of my 3.5 Eberron game from many years ago. I was overly generous with stackable magic items, especially items from 3rd party books my players owned, and I hadn't properly vetted. This resulted in a well-nigh, invulnerable Warforged fighter with (I think) a 31 AC? I was not able to even scratch him most game sessions. That was until the party was ambushed in a tavern by 6 rakshasas, each wielding a wand of magic missile! They opened up on the party, and it was like Sonny Corleone at the tollbooh! I actually managed to get the Warforged down to half his hit points before they were able to take out the fiendish catmen. I think about that fight often, partly because it's so over the top and cinematic, but also as a reminder that the DM doesn't have to say 'yes' every time a player wants to buy something.
I really enjoy your videos. You're a very different DM than myself, and it's refreshing to hear takes that I've never heard/thought of on how to run games!
Terrain is the spice of combat encounters. You can turn an encounter with 4 orcs in a dungeon room into something memorable just by throwing a table in there. Or having any kind of difference in height. Or making the walls in the corridor narrower than usual, so that everyone except the frontlines is forced to use ranged, or reach, attacks.
A good rule of thumb to keep in mind: if players leverage tactics against the enemies, ensure they have an answer for the consequences of those tactics. Fog Cloud granting Blindness to anyone inside should mean that you can't summon creatures, since the spell requires you to see where they appear. You can, of course, allow your players to summon the creatures if they give you a good reason. "Oh, the fog is floating above the floor, so being on the ground lets me see." Awesome! But now you're prone. The battle's tactics thus swing back and forth, giving more exciting moments for players or the DM to take advantage of
Encounters are my biggest weakness. I always say I want to do more interesting things but I don't know how to do it. All the advice seems to be like "if you want more interesting encounters, then make them more interesting!" and its like, yeah thank you. This is where playing a different than standard system (not dnd) really hurts me; there isn't a big pile of resources available for me. I can get 'ideas' but not mechanics from the usual good ones. And its the mechanics that I struggle with. For example; the players are about to enter a mine to take it back from darkspawn that have overrun it and get it cleared out for the new blacksmith that bought it because they want some special armour from her and this is part of the trade. I want there to be monsters to fight but also a mechanic where they are escorting a payload on a minecart to close off the hole where the mine had crossed into the deep roads inadvertently. There could be a thing about pushing the cart, maybe the cart getting stuck if they are too aggressive with it, or about protecting the payload and it going off prematurely if it takes too much or a certain kind of damage. But I don't know how to implement things like that as rules.
I’d need to know the type of system your using but ho thresholds could be a way to show the severity of the cart and you can also make a risk reward factor were they have to decide to focus the enemies or getting the cart out of the way/ defending it maybe some enemies that make a burn effect that the have to take out in time or it ruins the cart and you could make it so it moves at a base speed but they can make checks to increase the speed that it moves at the risk it tips and falls which would take actions to get back up I’m just spitballing some ideas and I just don’t have enough context to say something specific
@@Finalslashes Thank you I really apprechaite the ideas. I didn't really expect someone out there to solve the problem nessissarily, more just demonstrating that I can sometimes come up with ideas and then have no idea what to do with them lol Its the 'Age' system which started with just Dragon age but they made a standalone Fantasy Age and then Modern Age. Basically 3d6 with one off colour die. any doubles cause Stuts and you can buy stunts with the amount of points on the off colour (even if its not the one that got the double)
Just write SOMETHING down early, and then anything you change about it will probably be an improvement but at least you'll have something to fall back on In D&D terms, for example: "the cart can be safely moved at half speed. If moved faster than that, roll a STR save to keep it on the rails at the end of turn. Also it has 60 hp and explodes (fireball) when dead." Done
My latest discovery is a book called Giffyglyph's Monster Maker, it's a supplement for D&D 5e. A lot better than any official book I've used so far for enemy/encounter design imo. There's still a few things I disagree with as a Game Designer myself but one of the joys of being a DM is figuring what works and what doesn't for you and your players specifically.
I really miss old healing spirit as a DM. It reduced how many long rests my players wanted to take because everyone was at full health, which meant that they would reach the point where my casters would be taxed on spell slots instead.
@@funnyman359 I mean, even without healing spirit, druid has fantastic out of combat healing in the form of goodberry and Aura of Vitality, and at least in my experience a dedicated healer isn't totally needed in DND.
One piece of advice I heard for keeping fights dynamic is that killing all the enemies shouldn't be the only goal. The last part of this story is a good example. The players didn't seem to realize it but the goal wasn't just kill the caster, it was resuce the hostage. You can do so much with just extra objectives. Defuse the bomb, close the demonic portal, turn off the bad guy's shield, survive the endless horde of enemies until the wizard NPC finishes his Teleportation Circle spell
I've been playing in my first campaign for just over a month now and it's been so much fun! We have 2 druids in our party including my character and we have yet to fight in a combat together, so I'm really looking forward to our next session which is going to start with a fight.
It feels like the best way to counter a "problematic" spell, class feature, item, etc. can often be boiled down to a logic puzzle of sorts. Like in this case where your players are really good at absolutely draining giant sacks of hit points because they flood the space with optimal close range targets, you can restrict the space available. As we saw it didn't stop them from using the spell, but they had to consider elements other than "attack rolls go brrrrr". Want to use a spell that creates stationary healing? Ok, them I need to prep a fight where both the terrain and the enemies make it difficult for you to safely carousel the party through it. Outside the great advice, I appreciate that you didn't go full in on the white guilt angle of Thanksgiving. I have a relative understanding of how much the European settlers screwed over the Native peoples here, and how a lot of elements have led to systemic issues passed down over hundreds of years have left them marginalized. But should that mean that I shouldn't celebrate a holiday that was specifically made a National holiday in the USA to try and bring families together and encourage a peaceful reminder to be thankful for everything and everyone? Next thing I know we'll be breaking out the pitchforks to yell at Catholics for all the terrible things the Church has done regarding wiping out native faiths across the world and co-opting major pagan holidays and turning them into Easter and Christmas...ahhh shit, I spoke it into existence didn't I?
12:40 Unless the Little Boy had blindsight, he shouldn't have been able to cast Conjure Animals *after* the Genasi cast Fog Cloud. CA, like most spells, requires you to be able to see where you're casting IIRC.
Glad to hear that you've finally gotten used to Bards not being prepared casters... right in time for 2024 5E where every class is technically a prepared caster even though some of them can only prepare new spells one spell at a time, on level-up.
I've "ambushed" my players with ghosts in a haunted house... They entered a room, triggered a Specter, ran out mid fight into another room which triggered another Specter, and the first one followed them through the walls, so they were fighting on 2 fronts. Panicking has consequences.
I actually just got those exact red and green sharp edge dice for my little brother for Christmas. They're his first pair and I do plan on giving them to him early (our last session of our current campaign is on Thursday and I just have to lmao). Pretty funny coincidence nonetheless
Question for the viewers: would it be disruptive to your experience of a game if a DM used the same exact layout for every tavern the party stayed in throughout a campaign so the DM could use the same map and save time describing it, if they took the time to make the NPCs staffing the place unique each time?
If the purpose of the tavern is a nice environment to look at during downtime? Not at all. If we regularly fight in taverns for whatever reason? After the 2nd time it'd probably become a "solved" problem and be more exciting to use something else. Maybe ambush on a different floor or something to create some changes in the dynamics of the battle
I dispute the Fog Cloud blindness thing making things a wash. I know that's how it works RAW, but logically to me that makes no sense. Two people being blind in a fight does not mean they just fight at their normal level of effectiveness. It means they both suffer. I rule everyone attacks at disadvantage. Sometimes I grant cover, or subtract from a creature's AC depending on context. I also make my players look away from the map (telling them to turn around in their chair or whatever) so they don't know where to move or where to target, they have to guess or try to suss out the location of the enemy. *I* know where they're standing, and I know where the bad guys are, but I make the bad guys roll perception to target and basically have to guess as much as they do. Fighting blind is really hard.
@@funnyman359 Oh sure, I've got lots of homebrew I throw in, and I run my players through it at the top. Though my interpretation is less far from RAW than you might think (RAI I cannot say for certain). "When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see." Technically you gain disadvantage when trying to hit something you cannot see. Full stop. You also have to guess the correct area you're attacking, even if you can hear or otherwise detect them (this is often described as a square, but I don't use grids and the rule just says location, grids being optional in 5e...in spite of every prewritten adventure using them) or else you auto miss (though the Dm doesn't need to tell you that there's nothing there, just that you missed). I rule both of those things as written, I just make blind targets not look at the map rather than have them RP it, because it's actually easier to simulate blindness that way for most of them. (It also means I don't have to pull up minis and pop them back down, and they can just decribe their attacks/actions in terms of direction, instead of locations they aren't supposed to be able to see.) The area where things a get a bit sticky is the whole "When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it." bit, which I feel like should only stay true when the first statement _isn't_ true. Basically, if something can't see you and you _can_ see it, you get advantage, but otherwise the first rule holds precedent which I think is a logical interpretation of the rule, but may not be RAI. The other stuff with cover or lowered AC is contextual: essentially is there stuff in the way, can the creature still dodge around and benefit from their dex? And yeah, the latter is further from RAW as I think there's no rule about being restrained or whatever causing you to lose your dex bonus to armour (the former not so much, as things like half cover etc are baked in, just often forgotten about). But I've never had a player not see it as reasonable in the given context.
It’s usually just better to ban spells if the players want a certain kind of campaign. Honestly just don’t play dnd and the problem goes away lol. Long live Cairn 2e!
player i drink my potion of fire breath and breathe on the devil DM it is immune Player damn DM but the room is not everyone else burning down the house
Have you ever ambushed your player characters? How did it go?
Thanks so much to OnlyCrits for sponsoring this video! Visit www.onlycrits.com/supergeekmike and take advantage of their Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals!
All the time. Over 10 years of DMing ambushes have become a mainstay, to the point that in some adventures they become quite paranoid (as they should be in those dangerous locations). I think an important aspect of encounter design is motivation and goals. You say "My goal was not to kill the party." But that _is_ the goal of their enemies. And I think it's important not to make those enemies fools or incompetents to increase PC survivability. A hill giant might be dumb, but it has still lived long enough to get big enough to think it can squash most things. It should be canny as well as brutish, even if all that means is rolling its rocks to bowl over enemies instead of just chucking them. Every enemy should be acting like their life is on the line, because it is.
Which of my ambushes went the best...There were some really good ones in the tomb of the 9 gods. On the beholder level it can shoot eye beams out of the walls randomly, and that paired with the flesh golems was a cool fight. An npc was turned to stone and so was a PC, they could only cure one of them...
Another time I had them be ambushed on the road, and one of the PC's was a traitor working with the ambushers, that was a really dramatic and bloody fight. Horses were sent fleeing, men were mauled and hewed in twain, and the traitor was dashed upon the stony hillside and savaged by a Mabari war dog (this was in the Dragon Age ttrpg) all while it rained that road turned to mud and blood.
Probably the most effective and terrible though was when I ambushed them with a dragon. They knew it was somewhere around, they were going into its lair, but they had become hasty after much planning and become confused, and so all rushed in. The dragon, a Black dragon, waited in the water as they crossed a bridge of stone deep below the earth. It cut the party in two with its breath, instantly killing the druid in her human form (played by my mother), and with its surprise round it slew two more NPC's, and then fled deeper into the lair. It was devastating. I felt bad, but the dragon wanted to live, and to protect her young. She was not going to play nice, and I had warned them how dangerous what they were doing was, many times. After collecting themselves, and no few tears, they chased her down and drove her from her lair. Later, she ambushed them on a river as they travelled back, and she was slain as she tore up the hull from beneath the water, the Dwarf Fighter stabbing her and cutting off her forelimb through the hole in the hull. Very dramatic. Finally the druid was avenged.
I restarted the video a few times, I couldn't focus on what you were saying with that pupper in the background
Put on subtitles. Blocks it out almost completely.
Yeah, the battlefield can make all the difference sometimes. Reminds me of one of the few times I got that right. The party was sent to check in on an alchemist who was running late to meet up with a caravan they were supposed to be guarding, and they arrived to find the place in shambles. A good perception check had them realize there was a zombie bear just inside the house, so instead an enclosed fight with a large foe, it was an easy ambush as one person lured it out the door and everyone wailed on it with opportunity attacks as it rushed past. Inside, they failed to note the level of damage to the floor of a large room with enemies, and once the fight broke out, someone got too close to the center of the room, and the floor buckled and collapsed, resulting in the party being out of position as the combat was now two tiered with basement zombies now being alerted. It was a fun time all around.
One of my players once asked me if they could transform into a dinosaur. I asked them context on where they'd encountered one, noted it down, said "are you sure?" They said yes, not seeming to fully understand why I asked.
Two weeks later, they go to a similar environment as the druid had described finding dinosaurs, and I thanked the druid for the session idea. They stared at me confused and dumbfounded, until about an hour in, they realize what's going on, and start playfully swearing up a storm. The rest of the party asks why, and she explains what's dawned upon her. The consequence of her putting dinosaurs in the world was that.... Dinosaurs were in the world. The following "Dire T-Rex" encounter was absolutely wild and the players all loved it.
I’m sorry, I didn’t pay any attention because DOGGY!! 😍
I'd posit that your Tavern Ambush party just lost that fight. Murdering your attackers doesn't always mean you've won.
But, seriously, this is something done in video game design a bunch - Fights deliberately designed to counter specific strategies that players may have become used to using constantly. Not out of spite, but because if left to their own devices players will optimize the fun out of everything.
It's also done to try to avoid players falling into strategies that are easy and consistent, but don't improve and end up being suboptimal. Otherwise players may run into a challenge that is simply too powerful to be defeated without using all the mechanics, and players who have overly focused on a few, easy mechanics will hit a wall and not be able to progress.
I’m kind of in love with the idea of an oops all Druids campaign! Sounds immensely stressful but I can imagine it being really enticing
Agree! Druids are my favorite 5e class, and Circle of Dreams is an unappreciated gem of a subclass!
We are thankful for you, your family, and your amazing content.
You’re such an unbelievably wholesome dude. Always a delight when you post a new video
PUPPER
...Sorry was there other content in this video?
Hop!
I think I have a similar approach. I don't ban any material, instead I always design around it. It is always like a satisfying puzzle to solve. Plus, I don't like taking away options.
This is a good channel. I like Mike.
Spent the first minute just watching the little pupper
Cool encounter design is always worth doing! One of the things that I find very annoying about a lot of modules or prewritten adventures is that they often default to the "big square obvious boss room" type design and don't include interesting terrain or mechanics. And in contrast, one of the things I *loved* about Baldur's Gate 3 is that just about every combat encounter had something unique to bring to the table.
As far as banning spells, I am definitely in the camp that some spells are just poorly designed or poorly worded or have too much power for their level. Or that certain combinations of abilities just clearly weren't intended to be used together and break the game's math very hard. I think homebrewing obvious rule patches to these spells, or, in some cases, removing them from the game entirely, is perfectly fine, as long as you discuss it with your players and, if needed, allow them to rebuild their characters to some extent or other if their build was heavily reliant on those mechanics.
1:39 Now I'm picturing that trifle as the result of a critical failure on a cooking roll. "No, you were not supposed to put beef in the trifle. It did not taste good." (Also I remember watching the outtakes, it took them a LOT of takes to get through the "it tastes like feet!" line without everyone breaking down)
2:27 "Were" species besides Wolves don't seem to be used often and that should change.
I want to GM one day but I'm worried I'd never have the time to make fights this tactical or interesting. Your inn fight had a great premise and built-in complications that, like you said, had nothing to do with the enemies. A situation where simply wiping the enemies out would be straightforward but doing that without collateral damage is... trickier.
But also the phrase "two hobgoblin ninjas crash through the windows" is gold.
As a side note, I just saw a thumbnail by another dungeontuber that gave incredible GM advice in four words: "Create problems, not solutions."
That encounter sounds like a blast! Also, love the idea of all Druid, Bard, etc. parties. Thanks for the stories.
This reminds me of my 3.5 Eberron game from many years ago. I was overly generous with stackable magic items, especially items from 3rd party books my players owned, and I hadn't properly vetted. This resulted in a well-nigh, invulnerable Warforged fighter with (I think) a 31 AC? I was not able to even scratch him most game sessions.
That was until the party was ambushed in a tavern by 6 rakshasas, each wielding a wand of magic missile! They opened up on the party, and it was like Sonny Corleone at the tollbooh! I actually managed to get the Warforged down to half his hit points before they were able to take out the fiendish catmen.
I think about that fight often, partly because it's so over the top and cinematic, but also as a reminder that the DM doesn't have to say 'yes' every time a player wants to buy something.
I really enjoy your videos. You're a very different DM than myself, and it's refreshing to hear takes that I've never heard/thought of on how to run games!
Terrain is the spice of combat encounters. You can turn an encounter with 4 orcs in a dungeon room into something memorable just by throwing a table in there. Or having any kind of difference in height. Or making the walls in the corridor narrower than usual, so that everyone except the frontlines is forced to use ranged, or reach, attacks.
A good rule of thumb to keep in mind: if players leverage tactics against the enemies, ensure they have an answer for the consequences of those tactics. Fog Cloud granting Blindness to anyone inside should mean that you can't summon creatures, since the spell requires you to see where they appear. You can, of course, allow your players to summon the creatures if they give you a good reason. "Oh, the fog is floating above the floor, so being on the ground lets me see." Awesome! But now you're prone. The battle's tactics thus swing back and forth, giving more exciting moments for players or the DM to take advantage of
Can't wait for the video on the book youre hinting at at the end of this video. One of the best ways I've spiced up my encounters.
Encounters are my biggest weakness. I always say I want to do more interesting things but I don't know how to do it. All the advice seems to be like "if you want more interesting encounters, then make them more interesting!" and its like, yeah thank you. This is where playing a different than standard system (not dnd) really hurts me; there isn't a big pile of resources available for me. I can get 'ideas' but not mechanics from the usual good ones. And its the mechanics that I struggle with. For example; the players are about to enter a mine to take it back from darkspawn that have overrun it and get it cleared out for the new blacksmith that bought it because they want some special armour from her and this is part of the trade. I want there to be monsters to fight but also a mechanic where they are escorting a payload on a minecart to close off the hole where the mine had crossed into the deep roads inadvertently. There could be a thing about pushing the cart, maybe the cart getting stuck if they are too aggressive with it, or about protecting the payload and it going off prematurely if it takes too much or a certain kind of damage. But I don't know how to implement things like that as rules.
I’d need to know the type of system your using but ho thresholds could be a way to show the severity of the cart and you can also make a risk reward factor were they have to decide to focus the enemies or getting the cart out of the way/ defending it maybe some enemies that make a burn effect that the have to take out in time or it ruins the cart and you could make it so it moves at a base speed but they can make checks to increase the speed that it moves at the risk it tips and falls which would take actions to get back up I’m just spitballing some ideas and I just don’t have enough context to say something specific
@@Finalslashes Thank you I really apprechaite the ideas. I didn't really expect someone out there to solve the problem nessissarily, more just demonstrating that I can sometimes come up with ideas and then have no idea what to do with them lol
Its the 'Age' system which started with just Dragon age but they made a standalone Fantasy Age and then Modern Age. Basically 3d6 with one off colour die. any doubles cause Stuts and you can buy stunts with the amount of points on the off colour (even if its not the one that got the double)
Just write SOMETHING down early, and then anything you change about it will probably be an improvement but at least you'll have something to fall back on
In D&D terms, for example: "the cart can be safely moved at half speed. If moved faster than that, roll a STR save to keep it on the rails at the end of turn. Also it has 60 hp and explodes (fireball) when dead." Done
My latest discovery is a book called Giffyglyph's Monster Maker, it's a supplement for D&D 5e. A lot better than any official book I've used so far for enemy/encounter design imo. There's still a few things I disagree with as a Game Designer myself but one of the joys of being a DM is figuring what works and what doesn't for you and your players specifically.
Excellent video as always Mike, and oh man is it nice to see you linking to Some More News
Thank you for creating Mike, I appreciate your videos a lot!
I really miss old healing spirit as a DM. It reduced how many long rests my players wanted to take because everyone was at full health, which meant that they would reach the point where my casters would be taxed on spell slots instead.
Exactly!
The only solution for that is a celestial warlock or some other warlock with a dss/cleric dip so they can heal the party
@@funnyman359
I mean, even without healing spirit, druid has fantastic out of combat healing in the form of goodberry and Aura of Vitality, and at least in my experience a dedicated healer isn't totally needed in DND.
@@Cthulhuftagniaia I meant for massive healing that isn't long rest dependant. But yeah life berries for example cover that need exceptionally well
One piece of advice I heard for keeping fights dynamic is that killing all the enemies shouldn't be the only goal.
The last part of this story is a good example. The players didn't seem to realize it but the goal wasn't just kill the caster, it was resuce the hostage.
You can do so much with just extra objectives. Defuse the bomb, close the demonic portal, turn off the bad guy's shield, survive the endless horde of enemies until the wizard NPC finishes his Teleportation Circle spell
I've been playing in my first campaign for just over a month now and it's been so much fun! We have 2 druids in our party including my character and we have yet to fight in a combat together, so I'm really looking forward to our next session which is going to start with a fight.
It feels like the best way to counter a "problematic" spell, class feature, item, etc. can often be boiled down to a logic puzzle of sorts. Like in this case where your players are really good at absolutely draining giant sacks of hit points because they flood the space with optimal close range targets, you can restrict the space available. As we saw it didn't stop them from using the spell, but they had to consider elements other than "attack rolls go brrrrr". Want to use a spell that creates stationary healing? Ok, them I need to prep a fight where both the terrain and the enemies make it difficult for you to safely carousel the party through it.
Outside the great advice, I appreciate that you didn't go full in on the white guilt angle of Thanksgiving. I have a relative understanding of how much the European settlers screwed over the Native peoples here, and how a lot of elements have led to systemic issues passed down over hundreds of years have left them marginalized. But should that mean that I shouldn't celebrate a holiday that was specifically made a National holiday in the USA to try and bring families together and encourage a peaceful reminder to be thankful for everything and everyone? Next thing I know we'll be breaking out the pitchforks to yell at Catholics for all the terrible things the Church has done regarding wiping out native faiths across the world and co-opting major pagan holidays and turning them into Easter and Christmas...ahhh shit, I spoke it into existence didn't I?
12:40
Unless the Little Boy had blindsight, he shouldn't have been able to cast Conjure Animals *after* the Genasi cast Fog Cloud. CA, like most spells, requires you to be able to see where you're casting IIRC.
I lost both of my dogs over this passed year and got very distracted at the start of this video. 😭
"C'mon, you could NOT summon dinosaurs in any other game."
Spoken like a Colvillain. You are a river to your people.
Glad to hear that you've finally gotten used to Bards not being prepared casters... right in time for 2024 5E where every class is technically a prepared caster even though some of them can only prepare new spells one spell at a time, on level-up.
And to make up for the lack of terrain and goals, the rules writers add more and more powers and immunities and stuff to their monster stat blocks.
... Darn, I think you're right about summoning/turning into dinosaurs. I'll have to find a way to put them in front of my player's Druid now
Just prepare yourself… if they’re a circle of the moon druid, they’ll be turning into a T-Rex before you know it!
@@SupergeekMike TRex is CR8 iirc, so theyd need to be level 24 (or use polymorph instead of wildshape)
Oh shoot, yes that’s right, it was an Allosaurus, not a T-Rex.
I've "ambushed" my players with ghosts in a haunted house... They entered a room, triggered a Specter, ran out mid fight into another room which triggered another Specter, and the first one followed them through the walls, so they were fighting on 2 fronts. Panicking has consequences.
Looking forward to your strategy book
I actually just got those exact red and green sharp edge dice for my little brother for Christmas. They're his first pair and I do plan on giving them to him early (our last session of our current campaign is on Thursday and I just have to lmao). Pretty funny coincidence nonetheless
Question for the viewers: would it be disruptive to your experience of a game if a DM used the same exact layout for every tavern the party stayed in throughout a campaign so the DM could use the same map and save time describing it, if they took the time to make the NPCs staffing the place unique each time?
If the purpose of the tavern is a nice environment to look at during downtime? Not at all. If we regularly fight in taverns for whatever reason? After the 2nd time it'd probably become a "solved" problem and be more exciting to use something else. Maybe ambush on a different floor or something to create some changes in the dynamics of the battle
Nothing wrong with having a fantasy franchise.
This thumbnail lowkey hard
Yay TMKWTD hint!
Hey man, when I roll to attack with 8 wolves all with pack tactics I make sure to be quick about it… most of the time
There's a dog! *v* How do you expect me to listen?
I dispute the Fog Cloud blindness thing making things a wash. I know that's how it works RAW, but logically to me that makes no sense. Two people being blind in a fight does not mean they just fight at their normal level of effectiveness. It means they both suffer. I rule everyone attacks at disadvantage. Sometimes I grant cover, or subtract from a creature's AC depending on context. I also make my players look away from the map (telling them to turn around in their chair or whatever) so they don't know where to move or where to target, they have to guess or try to suss out the location of the enemy. *I* know where they're standing, and I know where the bad guys are, but I make the bad guys roll perception to target and basically have to guess as much as they do. Fighting blind is really hard.
You're not running close to RAW or RAI then. Which is perfectly fine, but should be communicated ahead of time and not sprung on the table on the spot
@@funnyman359 Oh sure, I've got lots of homebrew I throw in, and I run my players through it at the top. Though my interpretation is less far from RAW than you might think (RAI I cannot say for certain).
"When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see."
Technically you gain disadvantage when trying to hit something you cannot see. Full stop. You also have to guess the correct area you're attacking, even if you can hear or otherwise detect them (this is often described as a square, but I don't use grids and the rule just says location, grids being optional in 5e...in spite of every prewritten adventure using them) or else you auto miss (though the Dm doesn't need to tell you that there's nothing there, just that you missed). I rule both of those things as written, I just make blind targets not look at the map rather than have them RP it, because it's actually easier to simulate blindness that way for most of them. (It also means I don't have to pull up minis and pop them back down, and they can just decribe their attacks/actions in terms of direction, instead of locations they aren't supposed to be able to see.)
The area where things a get a bit sticky is the whole "When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it." bit, which I feel like should only stay true when the first statement _isn't_ true. Basically, if something can't see you and you _can_ see it, you get advantage, but otherwise the first rule holds precedent which I think is a logical interpretation of the rule, but may not be RAI.
The other stuff with cover or lowered AC is contextual: essentially is there stuff in the way, can the creature still dodge around and benefit from their dex? And yeah, the latter is further from RAW as I think there's no rule about being restrained or whatever causing you to lose your dex bonus to armour (the former not so much, as things like half cover etc are baked in, just often forgotten about). But I've never had a player not see it as reasonable in the given context.
ezren spotted
It’s usually just better to ban spells if the players want a certain kind of campaign. Honestly just don’t play dnd and the problem goes away lol. Long live Cairn 2e!
Nice ad transition 😅
I came here for DnD. Can we leave the political stuff for news channels. That would be great.
player i drink my potion of fire breath and breathe on the devil
DM it is immune
Player damn
DM but the room is not
everyone else burning down the house