One topic we didn't cover here were the rules for Legendary Creatures! We'd love to cover these "boss" monsters in-depth in an upcoming video, so we would love to hear your questions, suggestions, and problems regarding using these special monsters!
How do you handle all of these special abilities, often huge array of spells, huge healthpools and several different attacks and avoid the game slowing to a crawl? Ofcourse knowing the spells and abilities are one thing but the amount of dice you need to role and calculating the amount of health the big baddy might not take long but when you have to do that. EVERY. SINGLE. ROUNG! how of you avoid it being boring for the PCs..without suddenly making an explosion happen ofcourse XD
@@bibbobella one thing i have found that speeds up combat considerably is rolling damage with the attack, that way dice are being rolled once. Have your players do this also. It may not seem like a big change but it has sped up my tables combat significantly. Also be sure your players know what they are going to do on their turn instead of waiting to figure it out untill its time for them to go. My players know they have about 45 seconds to tell me what they are doing or be skipped, might seem harsh but it works well for us, and my players requested that rule to police themselves.
I don't really mind the players themself slowing down the game a bit. They all seem to be on part with that since they use it to talk strategy and even though it is a bit out of character they seem to enjoy making plans and I wont take that aspect away from them when they enjoy it so much. But doing it for the villian might not be an awful idea but throwing it on my PC's would probably make them more annoyed than anything. If they role a really high damage but dont hit it would seriously sucj, also one of them is a Paladin and it would kinda ruin his Smite since he can add it after knowing rather or not he hits. That would mean he would either get to throw down his dice and see how much he hit for before adding the Smite or he would have to add the Smite damage with with the rest of the throw and that would mean a lot of dice being thrown maybe without him even hitting anyway.
@Colin Deal Thanks for the advice. I actually used that when I accidently threw my PC's into a VERY easy TPK encounter..(TBF they were the ones who choose to go on despite being badly damaged but I didn't really warn them enough about just how screwed they could be) The only reason they didn't all die and somehow managed to defeat them all was because the mage got way too cocky and wanted to see what his monsters could do without his help. Giving the monsters flaws actually make for better story telling as well.
Something that may be helpful for new DMs running those early monsters. Orcs, kobolds, goblins, etc all tend to have one special ability in addition to attacking and that ability kind of tells you how to use the monster. Orcs have "aggressive" which allows them to sprint at an enemy as a bonus action meaning they are going to be able to close to melee and get in the fight quickly. Goblins, on the other hand, can disengage as a bonus action meaning they are going to use hit and run tactics and not stick in melee long enough to get chopped up by the barbarian. This trend with monster abilities continues through the whole MM, but it can be harder to see with higher CR monsters that have several abilities.
I just ran my 1st session as a DM a few days ago and we were like 75% through the first combat with some goblins when I noticed that they could disengage as a bonus. I had my very wounded goblin move away from the group after attacking.
On the topic of movement speeds, I screwed up the first time around when my Wizard player got hold of the Fly spell, since I thought that movement speeds stacked they just went crazy with it. After I found out that it DOESN'T stack I had my players do a vote: keep it as is (for both players and monsters) or go with the standard rules. The vote was overwhelmingly "keep it as is" because by that point the Rogue had found an armor that gave him a swimming speed and the ability to breath underwater, so with Fly he's covering a good 150 feet per turn, and most of the other PCs are in the range of 80-100 feet of movement per turn as well. Well, okay, we played like that for about another two months, then I brought in their first major challenge: an Adult Blue Dragon, and this sucker can burrow, fly, AND run, so after it erupted from under them, ran to the cleric, kill him, then fly to the Wizard in the sky and kill her as well, everyone was like "uhhhhh... is it too late to change the movement speed rules?" So I put up the vote again, but lo and behold, it was an UNANIMOUS "keep it as it is" vote. Turns out everyone just enjoys the high-risk high-reward battles of the huge movement speeds.
A friend made a dungeon using all good aligned creatures, using their alignment as a hint that the person they were sent after isn't actually a bad guy, it was a very interesting dungeon crawl!
Great vid guys, you guys have helped me out so much, my 11 yr old son got me back into D&D last yr, I used to play & DM alot, but that was 30 yrs ago! Kelly & Monty have helped me alot in getting back into DMing for my son & friends, I'd forgotten how fun it is!! Thanks.
Thanks so much for going into how CR works. As a new DM in general, I was always afraid of setting encounters where the CR is too high due to the party being relatively low level (level 3) but, they seemed to waltz through most of the fights (of equal CR) without much issue. Now I think I'll be more confident to include tougher encounters that actually seem like a real challenge.
I just use CR as a guide to "which monster is less/more likely to kill my party than monster X". Matt Colville, another great RUclips D&D personality, has his own guide for CR. Kelly and Monty, keep up the great work!
I discover that my party CR 11 with 7 players can beat easily a monster CR 18. I give up the math, but with 7 players I can always do a CR plus 9 for a challenging encounter with no worries. I would love to have a table ou calculation for CR to groups above 4 players.
We are thinking about doing a more in-depth video about Challenge Rating specifically to address a few of these problems and concerns with solutions that are working well for us.
@@RaphaelLamour I feel like there are better game systems for that many players, tbh (like Savage Worlds, which is intended to scale to bigger sides). 7 players feels out of D&D's scope.
@@Eunostos I agreed. Its frustating dm for 5 to 7 players. The combat is too long and the CR is broken for this. 😔 but I cant kick my players off my group.
My DM last game put 4 chain devils (5 chain devils?) with 2 or 3 ice devils in front of our 7th level party of 5. He assumed we would flee, but he made the mistake of giving the chain devils hostages they were dragging off. Can't leave some poor folks to the devils! We attacked to free the hostages. Even with a surprise round, 4 crits from our rogue, emptying a wand of magic missiles and a staff of thunder and lightning we only succeeded in killing 2 devils. Some times you gotta let the good people get eaten it turns out!
Ben Richards I just started a campaign with my son and his friends. They’re level one and I had a plot trigger for the next section of the campaign where Baphomet (the horned king/demon prince of beasts) was hunting them and the town mage escorting them told them to run and attempted to save them. I described him in gruesome detail, and told them he looked so fearsome to them that they would most likely die instantly if they tried to fight him. Of course, they all said “omg no! We can’t let Moira the Mage die!!!” 🤦♂️ woops. Had to fudge a portal from Moira to teleport them away as they watched her die through the other side of the portal. I’m a horrible DM 😂
My biggest issue with combats is remembering legendary actions. I usually forget until the creature is almost dead or right before it's turn. Very frustrating!
This is such a helpful video & I think it’s my favourite so far. Honestly, I expected you to just give all the obvious info about, & simply read from, the monster manual; but all these hints & tips are fantastic! Way to put the effort in, & help create better DMs (like me)!
Great video guys! I'm glad to hear your sentiments on the wobbly nature of CR. I felt the same way since I looked through the 5e rules. 6 to 7 combat encounters a day seems ridiculously high unless you're running an old school module with foes literally behind every dungeon door. Besides bumping up monster hit points, I like to take a suggestion from a previous video and give monsters little minions. I've also been a fan of giving some monsters class levels (although I haven't tried this much in 5e yet). A simple goblin becomes much more dangerous when they have a level in barbarian and can rage, while their shaman has a few levels in druid.
Good show, as a relatively new DM (1 year) I throw cr completely out the window, and only use the stat block as a starting point for my game. I rarely if ever use the monster in the MM as printed. Ogre has 68 hp? nah mine need 134 hp. Goblins cant cast spells? this goblin was dipped in the sacred pool of Alamonor the wise and can now cast 4th level spells at will. To me game balance isn't important, but a memorable villain and interesting story is. Ive found that often op players/monsters/magic items are exactly what DnD is about. Cheers and happy gaming all!
@@connorschultz380 you make a fair point! I have now DM'ed for the most part for people that are entirely new to table top RPG's which means i have the luxury of their ignorance when it comes to their expectations of monsters. In regards to my more veteran players i make it crystal clear before they join the party my style of DMing and how i use monsters. As Jim wisely points out numerous times on this channel open and honest communication is %100 vital between you and your players. I have been blessed to have absolutely terrific players who give me lots of leeway when it comes to "a DM's prerogative" if that makes sense. Forgive my rant friend. Cheers!
Arbitrarily choosing HP from within the listed range instead of the static number is Rules as Written (so even a public Adventurer's League DM might do that)! And what you're doing is rules as intended, encouraged by the writers themselves! What's unusual to me about your anecdote is that you're willing to be so free with it so early, because the flow of encounters can be intimidating to manage if you venture too far from stat blocks.
@@Eunostos Ben you are correct it can be a lot to manage, and i have made a fair number of blunders. In response something i have started doing recently is running combat encounters with my players characters by myself against the monsters im planning on using. That way i have a pretty good idea of the monsters strength relative to the party, I realize that may be more of a time commitment than some people have but it has yielded good results so far.
Super job as always. It's a little real work to put those monster stats to memory and I've seen that those innate abilities are often what gives a particular creature it's "kick" so to speak. Also, it always makes sense when a monster's location really does work and fit. Environments you'd guess they'd live in and that sort of thing. I recently designed an old pyramid, much smaller than those in Egypt, and I paid particular attention to what I put at each level. Also, when using monsters, it's always good to describe as many senses apply. You might not see a gelatinous cube very easily unless it's fed recently but you might notice an acidic smell not unlike vinegar not to mention that stone surfaces may be unusually clean once it's passed by. You may also come upon what looks like acid-washed pieces of plate mail without any leather straps to hold it together. Little indirect hints and clues that make using a monster kind of fun. Awesome video guys (dudes)!
This is timely. A friend of mine is looking to run a game and isn't familiar with the 5e monsters. He's much more familiar with the 1st-ed AD&D stat blocks. He asked for some advice which I happily gave. Then I passed along the link to the video. Thanks, D&Dudes.
Nate L Your games must be boring as hell if they've never involved royalty or court intrigue or class divides or themes of marginalized groups of people, or a billion other things that could be construed as "political". Relax dude, D&D is about a lot of things so it's nice to be as inclusive as possible.
Nate L Holy shit dude he wore a shirt. He's not sitting at your table yelling about LGBT people. It's literally just a shirt showing support for a group of marginalized people. No need to get so offended.
I had my players fighting demons, and amongst them were vrocks. Our mage was fighting from behind the group, so I had the vrock leap over the group to get to the spell caster.
My party had a battle not long ago against a couple of manticore. After the first one was dead and the second was near death, it tried to fly away. Then our bard cast sleep and put it out mid escape flight.. so the DM described how the beast dropped to the ground and landed on its head, and snapped its neck. I've never seen a sleep spell be so fatal. Haha.
My favourite past time when I was younger reading Advanced D&D and even My favourite edition 3.5.. One encounter in our campaign was a troll wearing magical full plate armour and had fire brand so that it was only vulnerable to acid
I homebrew all my monsters stats. I use the Monster Manual as a guide only. I generally bump up damage and health, or even give them extra abilities. For instance I gave Merrow a good amount more health. Up'd their modifier for damage by 1 and chance to hit by 1. Up'd the damage a little bit. Gave them a new ability with their harpoon to utilize the chain they are always shown with in their hand. On hit the target must make a str save or be pulled 20ft towards the Merrow. The Merrow also has advantage on any athletics checks pulling on the harpoon chain. Also upon hit with the harpoon the target bleeds for 1d6+1 bleed damage each of their turns at the start of said turn until they make an athletics check to remove it as an action. ------ these changes resulted in me bumping Merrows up to a CR5.
You guys briefly touched on monsters using the environment to their advantage, and if anything the monster probably knows the environment better than the players. I’ve had a few instances of this kind of thinking in my games recently, and the party was awestruck. My party were fighting 4 ropers in their lair, the party was level 12 at the time and laughed them off, that is until the ropers retreated to an underground ravine. Moments later our ranger found himself off the cliff edge dangling from a roper who was using him as a shield. A good shot with an eldritch blast from our Warlock killed the creature sending it and the Ranger straight down into the ravine. The only reason the Ranger survived was his amazing death saves combined with quick thinking from our druid. Less interesting was their encounter with two storm giants and a roc at level 14, but it was still quite dangerous. The giants were fighting over access to a temple on the mountain top, the party intervened on behalf of the protector of the temple. Within two rounds the one giant was feeling it, so he began using the beautiful courtyard’s pillars as weapons, toppling and throwing them at the party. His mount, a raven-like roc swooped down and grabbed our paladin, ascending as high as it could go in a turn and then dropped him, repeating this to the warlock next turn. Needless to say, a pretty rough fight ensued, and the party still fondly looks back to it, even if some of them got kind of crippled.
This video made everything click for me. It's like struggling to understand a new language but then it finally clicks and it all makes sense. Thank you so much! You've spared me future headaches.
This was AWESOME! Both as an insightful, inspirational video for new DMs pull their monster-challenge-history together, as a very useful guide as well even for long time DMs who as any human can't remember all details from 500+ pages of every edition hahaha. Thanks very very very much for your work! (Also I want to thank you for your over the top eloquence and diction, as I have hearing-understanding dificulty -and am a brazilian- I often need subtitles to understand english speakers, but with you two speaking I don't, and that is lovely to hear it perfecfully :D )
You guys always do an excellent job! Even as a long-time player and DM, I still pick up several very usable strategies from your videos. Keep up the great work. Thanks.
Another element to consider is rewards or loot for specific enemies. Lamia’s are supposed to survey their territory through scrying so maybe have a mirror that gives advantage or negates disadvantage on that spell.
I remember the panic from my players when one of them got grabbed by an Ankheg and dragged underground and then the others had to try and crawl into the hole left behind to get line of sight and shot it in the ass before it goes too far. XD
one of my favorite tactics is to have kobolds or goblins armed with molotov cocktails when fighting in a dungeon setting with the floor covered with a flamable substance
Just to reiterate: You've got more room than you think. My first campaign (with 3 other players who had never played before) had to fight a bone devil (CR9) our 3rd/4th session ever. We were level 2 and one of our party members was fighting us under the bone devil's control. So 3 2nd level v CR9. Our DM did throw us a level 10 cleric as a helper (only because 2 of us went looking for one) but we still won that (long, difficult) fight. But yea, makes a great story for us, and we did manage. Before you blame the DM for giving us something too over powered, the fighter (the one under the bone devil's control) failed 12? 15? constitution STs in one night, which made the bone devil manifest. It was supposed to be a long arc of the campaign that lasted for several weeks in game time, while we were doing some dungeon crawling to help us level up and learn more.
Cool breakdown on monsters' stat blocks. It'll definitely help in my RP'ing monsters for the current arc my party is in, since they're crossing the south border from their PHB race dominant Empire, into the monster dominant wildlands. Also, I found it hilarious that you guys listed the monster types off the top of your heads when you _literally had the Monster Manual right in front of you!_ XD
If Kelly is the "Crit Fail" here (as in the opening name plates) - he's the kind of crit fail from that comic where the dude tries to intimidate an orc and ends up meeting his future orc husband!
Thanks guys, your videos have been a big help. I have been playing dnd for almost a year now (once or twice a month) and am working on my first dm session. I'm doing a harry potter themed one off and am worried about balancing enemies and running all these things at one time. Each of your videos helps me think of something in a different way or helps me add to my game (and future games).
At 20:35 they start to break down what CR (challenge rating) is. I didn't know about this prior to the video and hope that others find this information as useful as I did.
On the topic of CR: in the most recent session I ran, I stationed a CR5 gladiator outside a city as a guard who would not allow anyone unworthy (small) into the city, thinking that he and half of the party (two halflings and a gnome) would duke it out while the other three (a Dragonborn, and elf, and a human) would enter unopposed. But after being insulted by the gladiator, the short tempered gnome attacked on his own. The rest of the party used this as a diversion to enter the city. One Lv 5 gnome barbarian does not stand a chance against a CR5 Gladiator on his own. Safe to say he was not allowed to enter the city
Hey dudes. A very helpful video. Question : Do you guys play with minis ? Battlemats ? Theater of the mind ? I am going to start using minis and terrain.. any tips on DMing with minis ?
We play with full 3D terrain and miniatures when it's relevant and meaningful to do so -- check out our Twitter @dungeon_dudes where we share photos of some of our setups! However, we go full game sessions without needing them at all. Miniatures add a lot to the game, but many they just aren't needed. Start building a small collection based on what you need for a big encounter or adventure, you don't need to go out and spend a ton of money right away. Once you do have a modest collection, miniatures can inspire adventures all on their own. I often search through my collection and find a miniature I haven't used in a while and think of how I can build an adventure or encounter to use it!
for most natural beast and monsters (wolfs, dinosaurs, displacer beast, etc) i use a kind of moral system. if they take 25% of htey HP in dmg on one turn htey have a 50/50 change of deciding to flee. if they fall under 75% of their health they have a 25% chance to flee. if htey fall under 50% HP - 75% under 25% - they will flee ofc monster like undead and ohter stupid monsters or a monster that is just to slow to flee (e.g. Roper) or that may be cornered by the party will fight to the end.
CR is usually tied to parties of 4 players. So a CR 1 creature should be a normal challenge for a party of 4. A CR 2 monster would be difficult, and it gets generally more difficult as CR rises. You can add the crs of different monsters to make a big fight of multiple enemies which every DM should. Numbers is hard to fight against in 5th e.
A pit fiend might be a one to one battle if a dark wizard is able to summon the monster, however you also might only have to temporarily fight one of them if a portal was opened and 10,000 pit fiends entered though the portal and attacked and burned down some one horse town, mysteriously leaving only one hut untouched. You could still only face one monster in both situations for different reasons but the character who confronted 10,000 of them would really be in for it, especially at about level 2.
I remember using the "have a little extra HP" rule to make a barbarian suffer a full on attack of a Paladin before being KOed. It was a "Guys, I can't take another hit like that" moment for the, so far confindent, barbarian.
Great idea for a video! I've seen lots of in-depth videos about particular monster types but not a more general look at monsters and how to use them like this.
I was just in a session (level 5) where the DM put us up against a Manticore that happened to be flying next to a tower. My monk started the combat hidden from the monster, and the DM let me wall jump up to hit it with a melee attack with the understanding that I would provoke an opportunity attack as I fell back to the ground. That wound up being a mistake... I was able to use two handed swings from my quarterstaff to stun the poor Manticore mid-flight, causing it to take falling damage. I followed up with two unarmed strikes. Our fighter than used action surge to hit it four times, one of which was a crit. So yeah... The Manticore died before it could take a turn
You did a battle tactics vid and in this one you suggest fixing monster hits if the party are smart and focus damage. Most importantly the section on stats and the save section does not cover the most unexplained part of the stat block. Cr4 + gives a base save or skill modifier of +2, which increases by +1 for every extra 4 CR levels, base saves and skills are modified by the stat modifier ( + Or - )whereas if it is listed use that number.
Reading the lore and stat blocks of monsters has led to a potentially reoccurring side adventure/Character in a troll that has gained superior intelligence by consuming an exiled mind flayer. This troll has figured out that his kind can gain traits of the things they eat and is now in the process of hunting down monsters of all types to become stronger all the while building an army of followers. A throw away encounter in letting a smart troll live will lead to a problematic situation of the adventurers own creation.
I'm STILL not getting the AC. If a pit fiend's AC is 19 w/o armor, why would full plate be an advantage? You would have to choose between the two, correct? If full plate is an AC of 18, why would any sensible DM use it? Far better just kitting it out with a shield.
Paul Pinnock well, this is a super late response, but maybe other people with the same question will get answered. Honestly I think it was a little mess up on the dungeon dudes’ part. A better example would be giving a goblin (ac 12) plate armor (ac 18) would make the foe much more difficult
One thing that I used to do is give my players the options to take some of these creatures and become more or less friends. Like the dragon who is the underling of the BBEG saying I'll come work for you if you dont kill me :/. Makes for weird situations and by the end of it as they friendship is magic their way through the campaign lol
Nice video LOVE all in the playlist and yours other videos . Still i love multi-classing as a wizard (or ) sorcerer as a first class then taking cleric second class and then advancing as a Mystic Theurge Love Mystic Theurge class "Blurring the line between divine and arcane, mystic theurges draw power from divine sources and musty tomes alike. While most spellcasters choose one path to magical power, mystic theurges walk two roads at once. Mystic theurges have unparalleled diversity of spells. In time, a mystic theurge can cast almost any spell. Mystic theurges are often obsessed with magical lore, traveling to the ends of the earth to learn some new arcane secret or divine insight. Mystic theurges tend to be fascinated with magic in whatever form it takes. They’re always on the hunt for powerful magic items and new arcane spells. Those mystic theurges who worship a deity use the power of their spellcasting to further their deity’s agenda." Even though the mystic theurge class has spell slots, it does not have any spells of its own. Instead, it boosts the spellcasting progression of other classes its users have. When determining the number of spells you can prepare for a spellcasting class, you can prepare spells as if you were a spellcaster of a level equal to your actual level in that class plus your mystic theurge level. When determining the number of spells known (including cantrips) for a spellcasting class, you can know a number of spells equal to the number of spells you would know if you were a spellcaster of a level equal to your actual level in that class plus your mystic theurge level. For example, if you were a 3rd-level cleric, 4th-level sorcerer, and 2nd-level mystic theurge, you would prepare cleric spells as if you were a 5th-level cleric, and you would know 4 cleric cantrips, since that is the number of cantrips that a 5th-level cleric would know. You would also know 5 sorcerer cantrips and 7 sorcerer spells of 1st level or higher, since that is the number of spells that a 6th-level sorcerer would know. Starting from 2nd level, when you cast a cantrip that deals damage, you add your spellcasting ability modifier to the damage roll if you don't already. When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th level, you can increase one ability score of you choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can't increase an ability score above 20 using this feature. When you reach 6th level, choose one metamagic option available to the sorcerer. You can use that metamagic option once without expending sorcery points. You regain the ability to use this metamagic option in this manner when you complete a long rest. Starting from 10th level, when you use your action to cast a spell of 5th level or lower, you can use your bonus action to cast a second spell of 5th level or lower with a casting time of 1 action or 1 bonus action. One spell must be from the spell list of an arcane spellcasting class , and the other spell must be from the spell list of a divine spellcasting class, but it does not matter which spell is cast first. Once you use this class feature, you can't use it again until you complete a long rest.
I have an entire sect of devils, demons, undead, and other typically evil creatures that are all good aligned. They're actually important to the party in their campaign against a corrupted, evil Palor and his evil angels.
Most of the encounters I put the party through have been because a demon was trying to gain a foothold in the PM near where they have their base city. First mission was to determine why a town was being blighted (because a demon came through the farm land leaving behind an area of bought and decay) and they used a doppelganger, sight, and green bag to try and cause misery to the town. A member of the party that joined after was a spy for the demon... After many demonic ambushes it tried to kill them but failed, but that was only half of the story. What they don't know is a devil is also trying to do the same thing and they'll soon have to contend with her minions. Overall there have only been maybe 3 random encounters that were not tied to the story arc.
Hey Dudes. I like the emphasis you put on having a story for your monster. On that topic, do you have any favorite books for getting into the monster's head? For me, it's Grendel, by John Gardner, retelling Beowulf. The book practically does psychic damage.
The shirts were a fundraising effort by Wizards of the Coast for Lambert House. The fundraising drive is now closed, but it's likely a something WoTC will do again.
I made a dragon try to fly away while sending some flunkies to cover its retreat. The sorcerer ignored the flunkies and blasted the dragon out of the sky! It was awesome...but then the flunkies killed her, which actually led to some pretty awesome RP as everyone tried to figure out how to get her resurrected. It also gave me a chance to break out some lore stuff...someone willing to resurrect her if she'd make a deal. I wasn't expecting her to die, but the results were pretty fun...and fair...and epic...and all because I took your advice and had the monster run away and she wasn't having it.
So did you have the players play a quest while she was dead? How did that work? Was it less than a full session or did you come up with a way to get her involved somehow? I’m looking for advice on how to manage a similar thing in my own campaign
@@Faint366 She died right at the end of a session; which gave me time to figure out how to do this. I had some stuff planned for if someone died in this or one of a couple other battles, since I'm a new DM and this campaign is designed hard. That stuff didn't work out, but, between sessions, the player and I (mostly I) figured out something. The other players tried to start a quest to resurrect her, but she got herself revived by making a deal with a powerful entity who took notice of her skill and zeal and has distant connections to her clan (Dragonborn). I did a lot of RP with her disembodied soul between sessions so that everything was ready for her to rise from the dead about half-way through next session. It was just long enough for the other players to make their decisions on what to do about her being dead and for it to feel real. (Funny sidenote: they considered burying her and her player, listening, sent me a message "DON'T LET THEM BURY ME!!!!!!!!!!". I replied "you're being raised by something of god-like power; a little dirt ain't gonna stop that; chill"). It gave me an option to pull out some lore and drop some hints related to the plot (extra-planar stuff; not much of it [only the Material Plane and the Shadowfell are relevant to this campaign, but mostly MP with a little SF interference] and running her soul through the Shadowfell for a minute was a good way to drop that lore.). Also, long term ramifications were a big part of it. She had to multiclass into Warlock (Celestial, which was good anyway because nobody in the party could heal) and has a deal to uphold with her patron (a good creature, though lawful as opposed to the sorceress' chaotic, so it's not the evil patron/good character dynamic [which can be rough], but they don't see eye-to-eye, either). I'm not sure if it was the best way, but it's been fun so far. It kept the character in the game, gave me some fun options as the DM (with a patron and allies and enemies the character doesn't know), and kept the player from having to sit out for several sessions while the others went on a quest for her.
@@carlh7714 ok so does that mean you ran a bit of a session with her not active in it? That’s what it sounds like for the “don’t let them bury me” part (funny btw, I liked that). Basically in my campaign resurrection doesn’t work. The gods all signed a treaty to not allow resurrection because too many people used it and it caused a population crisis. So the players will have to physically travel to the underworld and escape with their friend in order to resurrect them. I’m just trying to figure out how to manage the friend during the time that they’re dead since it might take a full session for them to get to the underworld. I can have them just playing their dead character at the same time I suppose, acting out their part in the underworld until they all meet up.
@@Faint366 Yeah. She was listening, but not playing for a bit; the first hour or so of the next session. Our sessions are only about 3 hours long or I might have stretched the time a little more, but I was happy with bringing her back in the next session; it worked out well. Your population crisis idea is great; I like that. I went with resurrection is possible, but it leaves the resurrected character with 4 levels of exhaustion, leaving them near useless for a couple days. You could have the dead character playing their part in the underworld, yes. I recommend finding a way to make it useful, too, to make it worth it. I gave my player a little lore and a few hints as to what is going on (part of the story is them trying to figure out who's good and who's evil, so I dropped a couple hints on that). You could do some lore or hints on the main plot or introduce/advance a sub-plot. Maybe the dead player meets an NPC to bring back with them for a quest. You're really only limited by what you're willing to do in your world. My only specific advice is to either make the RP in the underworld worth the time or don't do it; one or the other - don't half do it. It'll be as fun as you and the player make it.
@@carlh7714 part of the campaign is they have to collect a series of keys to get into a tower one of the villains is hiding in. One of those keys is kept in the underworld. So I was thinking my dead character could be looking for a way to find the key while the main party is trying to find a way into the underworld.
We had this encounter with an ochre jelly. We rolled stealth and averaged around 25 for our stealth checks. The jelly saw us anyway cause our DM said "blindsight". Is this how blindsight works? Tldr: Unbeatable perception
It's how I usually see it used, yes. That's a very dry way of expressing how primordial oozes perceive and interact, but probably would have felt better to you presented with a bit of flavour. If you look up the ability, there are mostly sensible patterns to what will ignore your stealth like that.
Great stuff, as usual. But again, I would take issue with the way you're describing movement breakup. If a pit fiend walks 15 feet, that is HALF their movement, giving them another 30 feet of flight or 15 feet of walking. Just because they can F:Y at 60' per round doesn't make their 30' per round walking speed faster!
Thanks Eric! To clarify though, your reading directly contradicts the example on Player's Handbook page 190, under "Using Different Speeds": "If you have a speed of 30 and a flying speed of 60 because a wizard cast the fly spell on you, you could fly 20 feet, then walk 10 feet, and then leap into the air to fly 30 feet more." A pit fiend that walks 15 feet could then fly 45 feet more, OR it could walk 15 feet more and then fly 30 feet more.
Hrmhpf.. Our DM had us (4 X lvl 12 characters - druid, monk, fighter, barbarian) fight a CR ~23 beefed up Shadow Demon. Perpetual darkness, 30ft radius 16d6 psychic "breath weapon" with tight cave, lair action disable one magic item every round (fighters managed to keep their weapons luckily), escape blocked by impenetrable shadow wall, all rolls public. Edit: forgot fear that disabled the fighter for 5 rounds. Managed to kill it with 1 player death, who ragequit shortly after for "too difficult encounter". At least I know what CR means now, thanks!
That sounds like a great encounter though..if it is only one death then it was most likely your own fault..a complete party whipe wouldnt have been but only one death seems well..fair..and at level 12 death should not really be much more than another state of being right?..
It was the monk that died. Luckily the demon never recovered the breath weapon (public rolls, remember). But the first time it hit, the druid fell and everyone else was nearly dead. The monk fell multiple times and eventually the demon killed him while he was down, because he was "annoying". It ended with the druid running after a fleeing shadow and showering it with sunbeam. It was a pretty epic end tbh, but we lost the monk player.
Hmm that's a tough one when it is 4 on 1 players can take on high CR well above their level but 23. We had the same discussion in my regular campaign which the DM won by simply reminding the player who was upset' "hey you won". I've become a fan of public rolling btw it protects the DM from falling to the temptation of fudging rolls.
I need to use the one-shot rule to challenge my players. They have stomped everything they have encountered even though I always aimed for 'hard' encounters.
Wouldn't the AC of a pit fiend in plate armor not change because the plate armor would be 18 because of no dex bonus so you would instead use the higher calculation using natural armor it already has?
This shirt was actually sold by Wizards of the Coast as part of a charity event to support Lambert House and LGBT youth. They will likely reprise the drive again, so keep an eye out.
In analyzing the Monster Manual, I don't understand how the authors came up with certain hit points for some creatures. For example, why do zombies have so many hit points compared to previous editions; so if a 0th level npc dies, he somehow gains 10+ hp when he becomes a zombie? In addition, why do skeletons have so few hit points compared to zombies? Does dead flesh give you 9 additional hp? Other editions seem to have had a direct correlation between the monster's hit dice and their difficulty . . . this edition just throws that out the window
I am currently trying to run a mercenary campaign as a new Dungeon Master. With them being hired after being on the run from the law in a small town to save towns girls taken by goblins to an overran new Dwarven mine. Since the mine is new I'm thinking about what I can do with it. I've got about 2 NPC so far. A Dwarf kept up in the mine and the guy who hired them. Pretty soon I'm gonna try and make the next part of the campaign a dungeon with an epic low level boss that the Goblins are serving the women they take to. It's gonna hopefully be something really cool and gory. After that I'll allow them to get into all kinds of mischief.
I'm a bit confused on saving throws in the stat block. So for monsters that don't have saves listed, its prof bonus (based on CR) + ability mod right? but for those with saves listed it's prof bonus + ability mod + the listed bonus for that specific save?
Because alignment has little mechanical value, the way my group plays moral alignment is that humanoids, giants, and similar creatures are capable of nuance, so they are all essentially unaligned. The only time I (as DM) attach alignment to them in a meaningful way (such that their alignment affects their roleplay more than the other way around) is when there is a supernatural reason for it. That elf is a cultist heavily influenced by a Demon Lord, or this wizard is in the process of becoming a lich, or the player character is a paladin with a code that promotes lawful neutrality. On the other hand, aberrations, fiends, fey, celestials, some constructs, some aberrations, dragons (generally), and elementals (genies, specifically), as well as intelligent undead to a certain extent, have little or no sense of nuance. They are a specific way because that's their very nature. For these creatures, their alignment IS important. Note that most the creatures where alignment matters in my game are also creatures effected by spells that denote evil and good. Generally, when it comes to apply alignment to the 'nuanced races', I tend to use the alignment they are listed as having as a stepping-off point for understanding their general culture. Not all Githzerai are strictly Lawful Neutral, but their culture is, being a people of monastic ascetics. Similarly, not all Githyanki are Lawful Evil, but their culture is a strict, militant society ruled by a tyrant who is in league with Tiamat, a dragon-devil-demon hybrid.
One topic we didn't cover here were the rules for Legendary Creatures! We'd love to cover these "boss" monsters in-depth in an upcoming video, so we would love to hear your questions, suggestions, and problems regarding using these special monsters!
How do you handle all of these special abilities, often huge array of spells, huge healthpools and several different attacks and avoid the game slowing to a crawl?
Ofcourse knowing the spells and abilities are one thing but the amount of dice you need to role and calculating the amount of health the big baddy might not take long but when you have to do that. EVERY. SINGLE. ROUNG! how of you avoid it being boring for the PCs..without suddenly making an explosion happen ofcourse XD
@@bibbobella one thing i have found that speeds up combat considerably is rolling damage with the attack, that way dice are being rolled once. Have your players do this also. It may not seem like a big change but it has sped up my tables combat significantly. Also be sure your players know what they are going to do on their turn instead of waiting to figure it out untill its time for them to go. My players know they have about 45 seconds to tell me what they are doing or be skipped, might seem harsh but it works well for us, and my players requested that rule to police themselves.
I don't really mind the players themself slowing down the game a bit.
They all seem to be on part with that since they use it to talk strategy and even though it is a bit out of character they seem to enjoy making plans and I wont take that aspect away from them when they enjoy it so much.
But doing it for the villian might not be an awful idea but throwing it on my PC's would probably make them more annoyed than anything.
If they role a really high damage but dont hit it would seriously sucj, also one of them is a Paladin and it would kinda ruin his Smite since he can add it after knowing rather or not he hits.
That would mean he would either get to throw down his dice and see how much he hit for before adding the Smite or he would have to add the Smite damage with with the rest of the throw and that would mean a lot of dice being thrown maybe without him even hitting anyway.
What city are you guys in?
@Colin Deal Thanks for the advice. I actually used that when I accidently threw my PC's into a VERY easy TPK encounter..(TBF they were the ones who choose to go on despite being badly damaged but I didn't really warn them enough about just how screwed they could be)
The only reason they didn't all die and somehow managed to defeat them all was because the mage got way too cocky and wanted to see what his monsters could do without his help.
Giving the monsters flaws actually make for better story telling as well.
Something that may be helpful for new DMs running those early monsters. Orcs, kobolds, goblins, etc all tend to have one special ability in addition to attacking and that ability kind of tells you how to use the monster. Orcs have "aggressive" which allows them to sprint at an enemy as a bonus action meaning they are going to be able to close to melee and get in the fight quickly. Goblins, on the other hand, can disengage as a bonus action meaning they are going to use hit and run tactics and not stick in melee long enough to get chopped up by the barbarian. This trend with monster abilities continues through the whole MM, but it can be harder to see with higher CR monsters that have several abilities.
I just ran my 1st session as a DM a few days ago and we were like 75% through the first combat with some goblins when I noticed that they could disengage as a bonus. I had my very wounded goblin move away from the group after attacking.
The amount of nodding kelly does is actually incredible
he's harnessing his rainbow power
Lmaoooo hahahaha I thought I was the only one that noticed it hahaha
On the topic of movement speeds, I screwed up the first time around when my Wizard player got hold of the Fly spell, since I thought that movement speeds stacked they just went crazy with it. After I found out that it DOESN'T stack I had my players do a vote: keep it as is (for both players and monsters) or go with the standard rules. The vote was overwhelmingly "keep it as is" because by that point the Rogue had found an armor that gave him a swimming speed and the ability to breath underwater, so with Fly he's covering a good 150 feet per turn, and most of the other PCs are in the range of 80-100 feet of movement per turn as well. Well, okay, we played like that for about another two months, then I brought in their first major challenge: an Adult Blue Dragon, and this sucker can burrow, fly, AND run, so after it erupted from under them, ran to the cleric, kill him, then fly to the Wizard in the sky and kill her as well, everyone was like "uhhhhh... is it too late to change the movement speed rules?" So I put up the vote again, but lo and behold, it was an UNANIMOUS "keep it as it is" vote. Turns out everyone just enjoys the high-risk high-reward battles of the huge movement speeds.
First I want to say THANK YOU, I know how much work goes into making videos like this when done as well as you guys do it.
A friend made a dungeon using all good aligned creatures, using their alignment as a hint that the person they were sent after isn't actually a bad guy, it was a very interesting dungeon crawl!
Great vid guys, you guys have helped me out so much, my 11 yr old son got me back into D&D last yr, I used to play & DM alot, but that was 30 yrs ago! Kelly & Monty have helped me alot in getting back into DMing for my son & friends, I'd forgotten how fun it is!! Thanks.
Just when I think I know the game, I watch one of your videos and realize what a total amateur I am. Great information!
Thanks so much for going into how CR works. As a new DM in general, I was always afraid of setting encounters where the CR is too high due to the party being relatively low level (level 3) but, they seemed to waltz through most of the fights (of equal CR) without much issue. Now I think I'll be more confident to include tougher encounters that actually seem like a real challenge.
I just use CR as a guide to "which monster is less/more likely to kill my party than monster X". Matt Colville, another great RUclips D&D personality, has his own guide for CR. Kelly and Monty, keep up the great work!
I discover that my party CR 11 with 7 players can beat easily a monster CR 18. I give up the math, but with 7 players I can always do a CR plus 9 for a challenging encounter with no worries.
I would love to have a table ou calculation for CR to groups above 4 players.
We are thinking about doing a more in-depth video about Challenge Rating specifically to address a few of these problems and concerns with solutions that are working well for us.
@@RaphaelLamour I feel like there are better game systems for that many players, tbh (like Savage Worlds, which is intended to scale to bigger sides). 7 players feels out of D&D's scope.
@@Eunostos I agreed. Its frustating dm for 5 to 7 players. The combat is too long and the CR is broken for this. 😔 but I cant kick my players off my group.
My DM last game put 4 chain devils (5 chain devils?) with 2 or 3 ice devils in front of our 7th level party of 5. He assumed we would flee, but he made the mistake of giving the chain devils hostages they were dragging off. Can't leave some poor folks to the devils! We attacked to free the hostages. Even with a surprise round, 4 crits from our rogue, emptying a wand of magic missiles and a staff of thunder and lightning we only succeeded in killing 2 devils. Some times you gotta let the good people get eaten it turns out!
PCs never seem to flee. No matter how much they should, lol.
Best part, if weren't in hell, they are not even dead
PCs who don’t flee choose to be captured or choose new character sheets
I feel like pc's will only flee if prompted to by an npc of authority like a guide, general, lord, experienced warrior,...
Ben Richards I just started a campaign with my son and his friends. They’re level one and I had a plot trigger for the next section of the campaign where Baphomet (the horned king/demon prince of beasts) was hunting them and the town mage escorting them told them to run and attempted to save them. I described him in gruesome detail, and told them he looked so fearsome to them that they would most likely die instantly if they tried to fight him. Of course, they all said “omg no! We can’t let Moira the Mage die!!!” 🤦♂️ woops. Had to fudge a portal from Moira to teleport them away as they watched her die through the other side of the portal. I’m a horrible DM 😂
My biggest issue with combats is remembering legendary actions. I usually forget until the creature is almost dead or right before it's turn. Very frustrating!
We've got a whole video coming soon on Legendary creatures. Be sure to check it out!
I'm so very proud to see you in that shirt! I love both you guys keep up the great work and the great hair!
Which shirt. I would say both.
Are they a couple or is he just representing the community? I’m down for either :)
This is such a helpful video & I think it’s my favourite so far. Honestly, I expected you to just give all the obvious info about, & simply read from, the monster manual; but all these hints & tips are fantastic! Way to put the effort in, & help create better DMs (like me)!
Something happened? the sound, image and Kelly's hair are amazing! upgraded the studio?
This was our first test of some new equipment!
Great video guys! I'm glad to hear your sentiments on the wobbly nature of CR. I felt the same way since I looked through the 5e rules. 6 to 7 combat encounters a day seems ridiculously high unless you're running an old school module with foes literally behind every dungeon door. Besides bumping up monster hit points, I like to take a suggestion from a previous video and give monsters little minions. I've also been a fan of giving some monsters class levels (although I haven't tried this much in 5e yet). A simple goblin becomes much more dangerous when they have a level in barbarian and can rage, while their shaman has a few levels in druid.
Good show, as a relatively new DM (1 year) I throw cr completely out the window, and only use the stat block as a starting point for my game. I rarely if ever use the monster in the MM as printed. Ogre has 68 hp? nah mine need 134 hp. Goblins cant cast spells? this goblin was dipped in the sacred pool of Alamonor the wise and can now cast 4th level spells at will. To me game balance isn't important, but a memorable villain and interesting story is. Ive found that often op players/monsters/magic items are exactly what DnD is about.
Cheers and happy gaming all!
The real problem with that is finding new players that aren't use to that that have still played DnD before to join your party.
@@connorschultz380 you make a fair point!
I have now DM'ed for the most part for people that are entirely new to table top RPG's which means i have the luxury of their ignorance when it comes to their expectations of monsters. In regards to my more veteran players i make it crystal clear before they join the party my style of DMing and how i use monsters. As Jim wisely points out numerous times on this channel open and honest communication is %100 vital between you and your players. I have been blessed to have absolutely terrific players who give me lots of leeway when it comes to "a DM's prerogative" if that makes sense. Forgive my rant friend. Cheers!
Arbitrarily choosing HP from within the listed range instead of the static number is Rules as Written (so even a public Adventurer's League DM might do that)! And what you're doing is rules as intended, encouraged by the writers themselves!
What's unusual to me about your anecdote is that you're willing to be so free with it so early, because the flow of encounters can be intimidating to manage if you venture too far from stat blocks.
@@Eunostos Ben you are correct it can be a lot to manage, and i have made a fair number of blunders. In response something i have started doing recently is running combat encounters with my players characters by myself against the monsters im planning on using. That way i have a pretty good idea of the monsters strength relative to the party, I realize that may be more of a time commitment than some people have but it has yielded good results so far.
EXACTLY
Im always pissed as I how low HP in the sheet are, I always need to double it
Super job as always. It's a little real work to put those monster stats to memory and I've seen that those innate abilities are often what gives a particular creature it's "kick" so to speak. Also, it always makes sense when a monster's location really does work and fit. Environments you'd guess they'd live in and that sort of thing. I recently designed an old pyramid, much smaller than those in Egypt, and I paid particular attention to what I put at each level. Also, when using monsters, it's always good to describe as many senses apply. You might not see a gelatinous cube very easily unless it's fed recently but you might notice an acidic smell not unlike vinegar not to mention that stone surfaces may be unusually clean once it's passed by. You may also come upon what looks like acid-washed pieces of plate mail without any leather straps to hold it together. Little indirect hints and clues that make using a monster kind of fun. Awesome video guys (dudes)!
Very insightful. Like how you guys brake-down how stat bloks work and clues that can inform ways to roll play a critter...
This is timely. A friend of mine is looking to run a game and isn't familiar with the 5e monsters. He's much more familiar with the 1st-ed AD&D stat blocks.
He asked for some advice which I happily gave. Then I passed along the link to the video.
Thanks, D&Dudes.
Happy to help :)
The shirt that Kelley's wearing is pretty dope.
Yep bringing politics into a non political game is really "dope." I sure hope my five players all bring up their pollical opinions in my next session!
Nate L Your games must be boring as hell if they've never involved royalty or court intrigue or class divides or themes of marginalized groups of people, or a billion other things that could be construed as "political". Relax dude, D&D is about a lot of things so it's nice to be as inclusive as possible.
Nate L I dunno if I'd call being accepting as "politics"
Spencerrades Yep I'm clearly not be inclusive, and I need to relax.
Nate L Holy shit dude he wore a shirt. He's not sitting at your table yelling about LGBT people. It's literally just a shirt showing support for a group of marginalized people. No need to get so offended.
I had my players fighting demons, and amongst them were vrocks. Our mage was fighting from behind the group, so I had the vrock leap over the group to get to the spell caster.
I've always had to use trial and error for combat economy so I really appreciate this video. People like me need this sort of thing spelled out :P
Love the rainbow &. D&D has come such a long way. Very proud of this community.
My party had a battle not long ago against a couple of manticore. After the first one was dead and the second was near death, it tried to fly away. Then our bard cast sleep and put it out mid escape flight.. so the DM described how the beast dropped to the ground and landed on its head, and snapped its neck.
I've never seen a sleep spell be so fatal. Haha.
My favourite past time when I was younger reading Advanced D&D and even My favourite edition 3.5.. One encounter in our campaign was a troll wearing magical full plate armour and had fire brand so that it was only vulnerable to acid
I homebrew all my monsters stats. I use the Monster Manual as a guide only. I generally bump up damage and health, or even give them extra abilities.
For instance I gave Merrow a good amount more health. Up'd their modifier for damage by 1 and chance to hit by 1. Up'd the damage a little bit. Gave them a new ability with their harpoon to utilize the chain they are always shown with in their hand. On hit the target must make a str save or be pulled 20ft towards the Merrow. The Merrow also has advantage on any athletics checks pulling on the harpoon chain. Also upon hit with the harpoon the target bleeds for 1d6+1 bleed damage each of their turns at the start of said turn until they make an athletics check to remove it as an action. ------ these changes resulted in me bumping Merrows up to a CR5.
You guys briefly touched on monsters using the environment to their advantage, and if anything the monster probably knows the environment better than the players. I’ve had a few instances of this kind of thinking in my games recently, and the party was awestruck.
My party were fighting 4 ropers in their lair, the party was level 12 at the time and laughed them off, that is until the ropers retreated to an underground ravine. Moments later our ranger found himself off the cliff edge dangling from a roper who was using him as a shield. A good shot with an eldritch blast from our Warlock killed the creature sending it and the Ranger straight down into the ravine. The only reason the Ranger survived was his amazing death saves combined with quick thinking from our druid.
Less interesting was their encounter with two storm giants and a roc at level 14, but it was still quite dangerous. The giants were fighting over access to a temple on the mountain top, the party intervened on behalf of the protector of the temple. Within two rounds the one giant was feeling it, so he began using the beautiful courtyard’s pillars as weapons, toppling and throwing them at the party. His mount, a raven-like roc swooped down and grabbed our paladin, ascending as high as it could go in a turn and then dropped him, repeating this to the warlock next turn. Needless to say, a pretty rough fight ensued, and the party still fondly looks back to it, even if some of them got kind of crippled.
This video made everything click for me. It's like struggling to understand a new language but then it finally clicks and it all makes sense. Thank you so much! You've spared me future headaches.
HOW did you forget undead? :p I'm so glad they remembered. Their reaction was priceless.
They forgot fey too!!!
This was AWESOME! Both as an insightful, inspirational video for new DMs pull their monster-challenge-history together, as a very useful guide as well even for long time DMs who as any human can't remember all details from 500+ pages of every edition hahaha.
Thanks very very very much for your work!
(Also I want to thank you for your over the top eloquence and diction, as I have hearing-understanding dificulty -and am a brazilian- I often need subtitles to understand english speakers, but with you two speaking I don't, and that is lovely to hear it perfecfully :D )
You guys always do an excellent job! Even as a long-time player and DM, I still pick up several very usable strategies from your videos. Keep up the great work. Thanks.
I really appreciate how every video of y'all's I've seen so far does a good job of explaining everything for someone like me who knows nothing.
Another element to consider is rewards or loot for specific enemies. Lamia’s are supposed to survey their territory through scrying so maybe have a mirror that gives advantage or negates disadvantage on that spell.
Both of your shirts make me proud
I remember the panic from my players when one of them got grabbed by an Ankheg and dragged underground and then the others had to try and crawl into the hole left behind to get line of sight and shot it in the ass before it goes too far. XD
one of my favorite tactics is to have kobolds or goblins armed with molotov cocktails when fighting in a dungeon setting with the floor covered with a flamable substance
Amazingly good exploration of stat blocks. A great reference, a great explanation and a great lesson in how to make them come to life.
This is one of the most useful videos I've ever watched as a DM. Monsters and encounters have always been a weak point of mine.
Just to reiterate: You've got more room than you think. My first campaign (with 3 other players who had never played before) had to fight a bone devil (CR9) our 3rd/4th session ever. We were level 2 and one of our party members was fighting us under the bone devil's control. So 3 2nd level v CR9. Our DM did throw us a level 10 cleric as a helper (only because 2 of us went looking for one) but we still won that (long, difficult) fight. But yea, makes a great story for us, and we did manage.
Before you blame the DM for giving us something too over powered, the fighter (the one under the bone devil's control) failed 12? 15? constitution STs in one night, which made the bone devil manifest. It was supposed to be a long arc of the campaign that lasted for several weeks in game time, while we were doing some dungeon crawling to help us level up and learn more.
Cool breakdown on monsters' stat blocks. It'll definitely help in my RP'ing monsters for the current arc my party is in, since they're crossing the south border from their PHB race dominant Empire, into the monster dominant wildlands.
Also, I found it hilarious that you guys listed the monster types off the top of your heads when you _literally had the Monster Manual right in front of you!_ XD
You guys have done an outstanding job of breaking down the stat blocks here!
Holy shit that last sound sting needed to be volume levelled to the rest of the video. That was painfully LOUD.
If Kelly is the "Crit Fail" here (as in the opening name plates) - he's the kind of crit fail from that comic where the dude tries to intimidate an orc and ends up meeting his future orc husband!
Thanks guys, your videos have been a big help. I have been playing dnd for almost a year now (once or twice a month) and am working on my first dm session. I'm doing a harry potter themed one off and am worried about balancing enemies and running all these things at one time. Each of your videos helps me think of something in a different way or helps me add to my game (and future games).
At 20:35 they start to break down what CR (challenge rating) is. I didn't know about this prior to the video and hope that others find this information as useful as I did.
Great video, I liked how you both touched on everything listed in the stats and also did it in an organized way
On the topic of CR: in the most recent session I ran, I stationed a CR5 gladiator outside a city as a guard who would not allow anyone unworthy (small) into the city, thinking that he and half of the party (two halflings and a gnome) would duke it out while the other three (a Dragonborn, and elf, and a human) would enter unopposed. But after being insulted by the gladiator, the short tempered gnome attacked on his own. The rest of the party used this as a diversion to enter the city. One Lv 5 gnome barbarian does not stand a chance against a CR5 Gladiator on his own. Safe to say he was not allowed to enter the city
Thank you for doing these guides, Dudes, they are fun, informative and well made :D
Hey dudes. A very helpful video. Question : Do you guys play with minis ? Battlemats ? Theater of the mind ? I am going to start using minis and terrain.. any tips on DMing with minis ?
We play with full 3D terrain and miniatures when it's relevant and meaningful to do so -- check out our Twitter @dungeon_dudes where we share photos of some of our setups! However, we go full game sessions without needing them at all.
Miniatures add a lot to the game, but many they just aren't needed. Start building a small collection based on what you need for a big encounter or adventure, you don't need to go out and spend a ton of money right away.
Once you do have a modest collection, miniatures can inspire adventures all on their own. I often search through my collection and find a miniature I haven't used in a while and think of how I can build an adventure or encounter to use it!
Awesome shirt, Kelly. :)
I came here for the shirt, stayed for the stat blocks
ghey
for most natural beast and monsters (wolfs, dinosaurs, displacer beast, etc) i use a kind of moral system.
if they take 25% of htey HP in dmg on one turn htey have a 50/50 change of deciding to flee.
if they fall under 75% of their health they have a 25% chance to flee.
if htey fall under 50% HP - 75%
under 25% - they will flee
ofc monster like undead and ohter stupid monsters or a monster that is just to slow to flee (e.g. Roper) or that may be cornered by the party will fight to the end.
Thank you for another great vid. I always feel like I am getting a D&D lesson from Liev Schreiber.
Any chance of a video to guide DM's on creating the right level of challenge for players. What does CR for monsters mean? Hints and tips please :)
Sorry, should have said for smaller party size (3, 2 or solo).
CR is usually tied to parties of 4 players. So a CR 1 creature should be a normal challenge for a party of 4. A CR 2 monster would be difficult, and it gets generally more difficult as CR rises. You can add the crs of different monsters to make a big fight of multiple enemies which every DM should. Numbers is hard to fight against in 5th e.
A pit fiend might be a one to one battle if a dark wizard is able to summon the monster, however you also might only have to temporarily fight one of them if a portal was opened and 10,000 pit fiends entered though the portal and attacked and burned down some one horse town, mysteriously leaving only one hut untouched. You could still only face one monster in both situations for different reasons but the character who confronted 10,000 of them would really be in for it, especially at about level 2.
I remember using the "have a little extra HP" rule to make a barbarian suffer a full on attack of a Paladin before being KOed.
It was a "Guys, I can't take another hit like that" moment for the, so far confindent, barbarian.
This video's subtitle should have been "Monster Statistics ..." with the main title being about Kelly's awesome shirt.
You guys just made me realize what ive been doing wrong and now im super excited for my next session!
Great idea for a video! I've seen lots of in-depth videos about particular monster types but not a more general look at monsters and how to use them like this.
We do want to cover specific monsters, but we thought it was a good idea to go over the general mechanics and principles. Thanks for watching!
Awesome, I look forward to those!
I was just in a session (level 5) where the DM put us up against a Manticore that happened to be flying next to a tower. My monk started the combat hidden from the monster, and the DM let me wall jump up to hit it with a melee attack with the understanding that I would provoke an opportunity attack as I fell back to the ground.
That wound up being a mistake... I was able to use two handed swings from my quarterstaff to stun the poor Manticore mid-flight, causing it to take falling damage. I followed up with two unarmed strikes. Our fighter than used action surge to hit it four times, one of which was a crit.
So yeah... The Manticore died before it could take a turn
I played a Lawful Good Goblin Wizard named Zogg who disguise himself as a half-ling. Long back story. Named "Zogg" because that's goblin for "zounds!"
I continue to enjoy these presentations
You did a battle tactics vid and in this one you suggest fixing monster hits if the party are smart and focus damage. Most importantly the section on stats and the save section does not cover the most unexplained part of the stat block. Cr4 + gives a base save or skill modifier of +2, which increases by +1 for every extra 4 CR levels, base saves and skills are modified by the stat modifier ( + Or - )whereas if it is listed use that number.
What about being committed to the AC, and Hit bonus?
I’ve had some creatures that seem to have absolutely no way of hitting a player
Thank you, Including monsters are one of my biggest difficulty DMing. Plus I really want that shirt, but with Kelly in it lol
Yo where did Kelly get that shirt? I need that in my life
Stoneskull I’m getting one for my buddy now
ghey
Reading the lore and stat blocks of monsters has led to a potentially reoccurring side adventure/Character in a troll that has gained superior intelligence by consuming an exiled mind flayer. This troll has figured out that his kind can gain traits of the things they eat and is now in the process of hunting down monsters of all types to become stronger all the while building an army of followers. A throw away encounter in letting a smart troll live will lead to a problematic situation of the adventurers own creation.
excellent videos guys. I'm now a subscriber. looking forward to more advice and deep dives.
Thank you!
I'm STILL not getting the AC. If a pit fiend's AC is 19 w/o armor, why would full plate be an advantage? You would have to choose between the two, correct? If full plate is an AC of 18, why would any sensible DM use it? Far better just kitting it out with a shield.
Paul Pinnock well, this is a super late response, but maybe other people with the same question will get answered.
Honestly I think it was a little mess up on the dungeon dudes’ part.
A better example would be giving a goblin (ac 12) plate armor (ac 18) would make the foe much more difficult
Wait, wouldn’t a pit fiend in full plate have a lower AC since plate is 18 and pit fiend natural armor is 19?
One thing that I used to do is give my players the options to take some of these creatures and become more or less friends. Like the dragon who is the underling of the BBEG saying I'll come work for you if you dont kill me :/. Makes for weird situations and by the end of it as they friendship is magic their way through the campaign lol
In addition to maxing/increasing HP, I also ensure that monsters that are supposed to be challenging, have a nice, high initiative roll.
Awesome video as always
The only reason for alignment is as a general guide to role playing. It helps source pc or npc intentions and motivations. That’s about it
I'm gonna put a Beholder on a T rex body.....
Beholdasaurus Rex!
Nice video LOVE all in the playlist and yours other videos .
Still i love multi-classing as a wizard (or ) sorcerer as a first class then taking cleric second class and then advancing as a Mystic Theurge
Love Mystic Theurge class
"Blurring the line between divine and arcane, mystic theurges draw power from divine sources and musty tomes alike. While most spellcasters choose one path to magical power, mystic theurges walk two roads at once.
Mystic theurges have unparalleled diversity of spells. In time, a mystic theurge can cast almost any spell. Mystic theurges are often obsessed with magical lore, traveling to the ends of the earth to learn some new arcane secret or divine insight.
Mystic theurges tend to be fascinated with magic in whatever form it takes. They’re always on the hunt for powerful magic items and new arcane spells. Those mystic theurges who worship a deity use the power of their spellcasting to further their deity’s agenda."
Even though the mystic theurge class has spell slots, it does not have any spells of its own. Instead, it boosts the spellcasting progression of other classes its users have. When determining the number of spells you can prepare for a spellcasting class, you can prepare spells as if you were a spellcaster of a level equal to your actual level in that class plus your mystic theurge level. When determining the number of spells known (including cantrips) for a spellcasting class, you can know a number of spells equal to the number of spells you would know if you were a spellcaster of a level equal to your actual level in that class plus your mystic theurge level.
For example, if you were a 3rd-level cleric, 4th-level sorcerer, and 2nd-level mystic theurge, you would prepare cleric spells as if you were a 5th-level cleric, and you would know 4 cleric cantrips, since that is the number of cantrips that a 5th-level cleric would know. You would also know 5 sorcerer cantrips and 7 sorcerer spells of 1st level or higher, since that is the number of spells that a 6th-level sorcerer would know.
Starting from 2nd level, when you cast a cantrip that deals damage, you add your spellcasting ability modifier to the damage roll if you don't already.
When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th level, you can increase one ability score of you choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can't increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.
When you reach 6th level, choose one metamagic option available to the sorcerer. You can use that metamagic option once without expending sorcery points. You regain the ability to use this metamagic option in this manner when you complete a long rest.
Starting from 10th level, when you use your action to cast a spell of 5th level or lower, you can use your bonus action to cast a second spell of 5th level or lower with a casting time of 1 action or 1 bonus action. One spell must be from the spell list of an arcane spellcasting class , and the other spell must be from the spell list of a divine spellcasting class, but it does not matter which spell is cast first. Once you use this class feature, you can't use it again until you complete a long rest.
I have an entire sect of devils, demons, undead, and other typically evil creatures that are all good aligned. They're actually important to the party in their campaign against a corrupted, evil Palor and his evil angels.
Most of the encounters I put the party through have been because a demon was trying to gain a foothold in the PM near where they have their base city. First mission was to determine why a town was being blighted (because a demon came through the farm land leaving behind an area of bought and decay) and they used a doppelganger, sight, and green bag to try and cause misery to the town. A member of the party that joined after was a spy for the demon... After many demonic ambushes it tried to kill them but failed, but that was only half of the story. What they don't know is a devil is also trying to do the same thing and they'll soon have to contend with her minions. Overall there have only been maybe 3 random encounters that were not tied to the story arc.
Great video guys :) I have found your videos on these things make my game much more enjoyable :)
thank you that was very very helpful
Hey Dudes. I like the emphasis you put on having a story for your monster. On that topic, do you have any favorite books for getting into the monster's head? For me, it's Grendel, by John Gardner, retelling Beowulf. The book practically does psychic damage.
Where can I get Kellys shirt?
The shirts were a fundraising effort by Wizards of the Coast for Lambert House. The fundraising drive is now closed, but it's likely a something WoTC will do again.
at the princess palace
And this is a review of what is like to live with someone who plays D&D
I made a dragon try to fly away while sending some flunkies to cover its retreat. The sorcerer ignored the flunkies and blasted the dragon out of the sky! It was awesome...but then the flunkies killed her, which actually led to some pretty awesome RP as everyone tried to figure out how to get her resurrected. It also gave me a chance to break out some lore stuff...someone willing to resurrect her if she'd make a deal.
I wasn't expecting her to die, but the results were pretty fun...and fair...and epic...and all because I took your advice and had the monster run away and she wasn't having it.
So did you have the players play a quest while she was dead? How did that work? Was it less than a full session or did you come up with a way to get her involved somehow? I’m looking for advice on how to manage a similar thing in my own campaign
@@Faint366 She died right at the end of a session; which gave me time to figure out how to do this. I had some stuff planned for if someone died in this or one of a couple other battles, since I'm a new DM and this campaign is designed hard. That stuff didn't work out, but, between sessions, the player and I (mostly I) figured out something.
The other players tried to start a quest to resurrect her, but she got herself revived by making a deal with a powerful entity who took notice of her skill and zeal and has distant connections to her clan (Dragonborn). I did a lot of RP with her disembodied soul between sessions so that everything was ready for her to rise from the dead about half-way through next session. It was just long enough for the other players to make their decisions on what to do about her being dead and for it to feel real. (Funny sidenote: they considered burying her and her player, listening, sent me a message "DON'T LET THEM BURY ME!!!!!!!!!!". I replied "you're being raised by something of god-like power; a little dirt ain't gonna stop that; chill").
It gave me an option to pull out some lore and drop some hints related to the plot (extra-planar stuff; not much of it [only the Material Plane and the Shadowfell are relevant to this campaign, but mostly MP with a little SF interference] and running her soul through the Shadowfell for a minute was a good way to drop that lore.).
Also, long term ramifications were a big part of it. She had to multiclass into Warlock (Celestial, which was good anyway because nobody in the party could heal) and has a deal to uphold with her patron (a good creature, though lawful as opposed to the sorceress' chaotic, so it's not the evil patron/good character dynamic [which can be rough], but they don't see eye-to-eye, either).
I'm not sure if it was the best way, but it's been fun so far. It kept the character in the game, gave me some fun options as the DM (with a patron and allies and enemies the character doesn't know), and kept the player from having to sit out for several sessions while the others went on a quest for her.
@@carlh7714 ok so does that mean you ran a bit of a session with her not active in it? That’s what it sounds like for the “don’t let them bury me” part (funny btw, I liked that). Basically in my campaign resurrection doesn’t work. The gods all signed a treaty to not allow resurrection because too many people used it and it caused a population crisis. So the players will have to physically travel to the underworld and escape with their friend in order to resurrect them. I’m just trying to figure out how to manage the friend during the time that they’re dead since it might take a full session for them to get to the underworld. I can have them just playing their dead character at the same time I suppose, acting out their part in the underworld until they all meet up.
@@Faint366 Yeah. She was listening, but not playing for a bit; the first hour or so of the next session. Our sessions are only about 3 hours long or I might have stretched the time a little more, but I was happy with bringing her back in the next session; it worked out well.
Your population crisis idea is great; I like that. I went with resurrection is possible, but it leaves the resurrected character with 4 levels of exhaustion, leaving them near useless for a couple days.
You could have the dead character playing their part in the underworld, yes. I recommend finding a way to make it useful, too, to make it worth it. I gave my player a little lore and a few hints as to what is going on (part of the story is them trying to figure out who's good and who's evil, so I dropped a couple hints on that). You could do some lore or hints on the main plot or introduce/advance a sub-plot. Maybe the dead player meets an NPC to bring back with them for a quest. You're really only limited by what you're willing to do in your world.
My only specific advice is to either make the RP in the underworld worth the time or don't do it; one or the other - don't half do it. It'll be as fun as you and the player make it.
@@carlh7714 part of the campaign is they have to collect a series of keys to get into a tower one of the villains is hiding in. One of those keys is kept in the underworld. So I was thinking my dead character could be looking for a way to find the key while the main party is trying to find a way into the underworld.
We had this encounter with an ochre jelly. We rolled stealth and averaged around 25 for our stealth checks. The jelly saw us anyway cause our DM said "blindsight". Is this how blindsight works? Tldr: Unbeatable perception
It's how I usually see it used, yes. That's a very dry way of expressing how primordial oozes perceive and interact, but probably would have felt better to you presented with a bit of flavour.
If you look up the ability, there are mostly sensible patterns to what will ignore your stealth like that.
Great stuff, as usual. But again, I would take issue with the way you're describing movement breakup. If a pit fiend walks 15 feet, that is HALF their movement, giving them another 30 feet of flight or 15 feet of walking. Just because they can F:Y at 60' per round doesn't make their 30' per round walking speed faster!
Thanks Eric! To clarify though, your reading directly contradicts the example on Player's Handbook page 190, under "Using Different Speeds":
"If you have a speed of 30 and a flying speed of 60 because a wizard cast the fly spell on you, you could fly 20 feet, then walk 10 feet, and then leap into the air to fly 30 feet more."
A pit fiend that walks 15 feet could then fly 45 feet more, OR it could walk 15 feet more and then fly 30 feet more.
Thanks for your videos as they are awesome and love the t-shirt Kelly is wearing
Cheers guys
Hrmhpf.. Our DM had us (4 X lvl 12 characters - druid, monk, fighter, barbarian) fight a CR ~23 beefed up Shadow Demon.
Perpetual darkness,
30ft radius 16d6 psychic "breath weapon" with tight cave,
lair action disable one magic item every round (fighters managed to keep their weapons luckily),
escape blocked by impenetrable shadow wall,
all rolls public.
Edit: forgot fear that disabled the fighter for 5 rounds.
Managed to kill it with 1 player death, who ragequit shortly after for "too difficult encounter".
At least I know what CR means now, thanks!
Who died? I can't imagine the Barbarian even had fun with the Psychic damage😅
That sounds like a great encounter though..if it is only one death then it was most likely your own fault..a complete party whipe wouldnt have been but only one death seems well..fair..and at level 12 death should not really be much more than another state of being right?..
It was the monk that died. Luckily the demon never recovered the breath weapon (public rolls, remember). But the first time it hit, the druid fell and everyone else was nearly dead.
The monk fell multiple times and eventually the demon killed him while he was down, because he was "annoying".
It ended with the druid running after a fleeing shadow and showering it with sunbeam. It was a pretty epic end tbh, but we lost the monk player.
Hmm that's a tough one when it is 4 on 1 players can take on high CR well above their level but 23. We had the same discussion in my regular campaign which the DM won by simply reminding the player who was upset' "hey you won". I've become a fan of public rolling btw it protects the DM from falling to the temptation of fudging rolls.
Awesome video
Thanks for the great clear explanations. Good work.
I see that Cypher chest back there! Have you guys played Cypher yet? I'd love a video (series?) on it! It's my current obsession.
I need to use the one-shot rule to challenge my players. They have stomped everything they have encountered even though I always aimed for 'hard' encounters.
Wouldn't the AC of a pit fiend in plate armor not change because the plate armor would be 18 because of no dex bonus so you would instead use the higher calculation using natural armor it already has?
As an LGBT D&D player, Kelly, I need your shirt. You guys should totally sell it.
This shirt was actually sold by Wizards of the Coast as part of a charity event to support Lambert House and LGBT youth. They will likely reprise the drive again, so keep an eye out.
"Many monsters might be using manufactured weapons..."
Holy alliteration Batman!
That is a great shirt.
For the next session there is going to be 20 bugbears for 3 level 7 players. Let's see where this goes.
In analyzing the Monster Manual, I don't understand how the authors came up with certain hit points for some creatures. For example, why do zombies have so many hit points compared to previous editions; so if a 0th level npc dies, he somehow gains 10+ hp when he becomes a zombie? In addition, why do skeletons have so few hit points compared to zombies? Does dead flesh give you 9 additional hp? Other editions seem to have had a direct correlation between the monster's hit dice and their difficulty . . . this edition just throws that out the window
I am currently trying to run a mercenary campaign as a new Dungeon Master. With them being hired after being on the run from the law in a small town to save towns girls taken by goblins to an overran new Dwarven mine. Since the mine is new I'm thinking about what I can do with it. I've got about 2 NPC so far. A Dwarf kept up in the mine and the guy who hired them. Pretty soon I'm gonna try and make the next part of the campaign a dungeon with an epic low level boss that the Goblins are serving the women they take to. It's gonna hopefully be something really cool and gory. After that I'll allow them to get into all kinds of mischief.
I'm a bit confused on saving throws in the stat block. So for monsters that don't have saves listed, its prof bonus (based on CR) + ability mod right?
but for those with saves listed it's prof bonus + ability mod + the listed bonus for that specific save?
Because alignment has little mechanical value, the way my group plays moral alignment is that humanoids, giants, and similar creatures are capable of nuance, so they are all essentially unaligned. The only time I (as DM) attach alignment to them in a meaningful way (such that their alignment affects their roleplay more than the other way around) is when there is a supernatural reason for it. That elf is a cultist heavily influenced by a Demon Lord, or this wizard is in the process of becoming a lich, or the player character is a paladin with a code that promotes lawful neutrality.
On the other hand, aberrations, fiends, fey, celestials, some constructs, some aberrations, dragons (generally), and elementals (genies, specifically), as well as intelligent undead to a certain extent, have little or no sense of nuance. They are a specific way because that's their very nature. For these creatures, their alignment IS important. Note that most the creatures where alignment matters in my game are also creatures effected by spells that denote evil and good.
Generally, when it comes to apply alignment to the 'nuanced races', I tend to use the alignment they are listed as having as a stepping-off point for understanding their general culture. Not all Githzerai are strictly Lawful Neutral, but their culture is, being a people of monastic ascetics. Similarly, not all Githyanki are Lawful Evil, but their culture is a strict, militant society ruled by a tyrant who is in league with Tiamat, a dragon-devil-demon hybrid.