Master illusionists HATE her (because Big Magic is anti-bread! it's a conspiracy! WAKE UP, PEOPLE!) 🥖 Thanks to Shadowland Games for sponsoring today's video: www.backerkit.com/c/projects/shadowlands-games-6d6f888f-51c5-4836-89ca-154f1ac76ef2/trickerion-the-roleplaying-game?ref=ginny
3:13 that thing is a custom made tool your dad made for one specific task that the other tools weren't fit for i'm going to guess it's for getting at something in his engine treasure the custom made tools, as they are the mark of the tool user's experience
There’s good dungeon masters, there’s amazing dungeon masters, and then there’s me, who’s ability to dm depends entirely on how much caffeine I’ve had that day.
"Okay," says me, "we're not meeting for 2 weeks, so I have 13 days to prep an awesome next session." "Wait, are we gaming tomorrow? Crap!" says me, 12 days later.
Don't forget the Grendel Option: as the heroes are patting themselves on the back for killing the big, scary monster, that monster's bigger, scarier MOTHER seeks revenge.
Had made a sidestory campaign in which heroes sabotaged a green dragon's lair where the end boss was an adult green dragon, but his mom was there too and she isn't too happy about the players insulting her by killing her assets.
More recent DM here. One of the most fun moments in the past session we had that's flipped the campaign around was how the party's ranger died. It was via insta-kill by a critical hit from an attack of opportunity. The barbarian raged for the first time, the warlock used spells the party didn't know she had access to, and they got out of there as fast as possible to find their mentor figure to do a makeshift necromancy "resurrection." The characters were having one of the worst days of their lives; the players were having a blast. And now the villain, who was only intending to knock them out and steal their stuff (he thinks he's more evil than he is), has to grapple with the fact that he killed someone who he doesn't believe deserved it. Was it intentional? Dear goodness no; I didn't think it was possible for him to deal 66 points of damage in a single blow. But now we get to do one of my favorite things: unpack consequences.
@@benscott4434 It was about our sixth session (and our sessions tend to be incredibly long). The player of the barbarian wanted to wait to rage until a satisfying moment in narrative, which she thought would be far later in the campaign. She was warned that refusing to rage could make combat much more difficult for her, but she stuck with it, and I like how it's playing out so far. The character also works a customer's service job at H&M (Heroes and Monsters).
@@Patch-lz9yi I honestly really think that’s a cool, if potentially hazardous, character choice! And the fact the PC works retail giving her more practice with holding back on raging is a *chef’s kiss* character detail.
Only raging when its narratively satisfying is my favourite way to play Barbarian. My Barbarian/Fighter multiclass was thrown out of the army for anger issues. They carry a huge (runic) greatsword on their back that they only use while raging. The rest of the time they fight with sledgehammer and heavy crossbow. Only when faced with a worthy opponent does he rage, draw the greatsword and have fun.
I used the bigger fish to great effect in my final battle. The enemy was a duo of a mummy lord and an evil paladin, and the setup was that the mummy lord was trying to summon their extradimensional patron to the material plane while the paladin protected them. I had a number of rounds required for the summoning ritual for the different power levels I had prepped. The party completely focused on the paladin, which was fair because he was doing a ton of damage to whoever he hit, but there was basically no effort to interrupt the summoning until the paladin was dead, which meant the mummy lord's patron appeared on the battlefield at the middle power level. I had him rip his way onto the material plane with a "Fine, I'll do it myself" monologue, then called session. The cliffhanger tension was delicious, and I was so happy it worked out. That fight will be remembered by my party for years
Honestly those "always checks Twitter first thing in the morning" and "oh no they're hot" tips may sound like a punchline, but those are absolute *gold* for the right campaign, whether modern, light-hearted, or whatever. I can guarantee you that I'm going to use the "oh no they're hot" one and see how fast my players' alignments shift.
I didn't even *mean* to do this and one of my players has OOC'ly made similar comments. ...It also inadvertently revealed that she's an abuse victim. So that's fun. (Yes, she's in therapy, yes, she's no longer with him, yes she's doing better.)
I think anothe important thing to consider is: What is the goal of combat? Usually, people don't just end people for funsies. A group of bandits does not want to end the party or get ended - all they want is to rush someone, take their stuff, and get away. They have no interest in ending the party if they can instead get their desired valuables. Likewise, once one of them is badly wounded, the rest will run, since none of them want to perish. A group of cultists might want to capture the party for sacrifice and actively try not to end them. However, being zealots, they might fight until their last breath. Or plan to but still flee in panic once one of them perishes. A bar fight will usually end when one side has shown superiority. Nobody wants to go to jail for ending someone. As such, once one side is wounded enough or out of breath, the other side wins and achieves all they wanted. Most fights should not be until one side is completely wiped out - only a handful of enemies should have the goal of ending the party for ending's sake. Also, most NPCs want to survive.
@@sfllaw Agreed. Better to have a good quality Crescent-type wrench instead of that gimmick. Best? A set of box and open-end wrenches. But that starts to get heavy, take up space, and costs $.
I love this advice. However, I would like to offer up the 'I didn't think you would get here so early ' tool. Your players have infiltrated the BBEG's lair and fought the minions arrive before BBEG, and it is a social encounter. BBEG is actually a middle level minion manager who was continuously promoted until they had to run the evil plan and they don't even want to be here.
Funny flumph story: the Dungeon Scrawlers ran a game for Extra Life a few years ago where it only cost $5 to add a flumph to their Tomb of Horrors game, which was at the end of their 24-hour marathon. By the time they got there, there were 56 flumphs waiting for them.
11:30 "The villain takes their glasses off and everyone realises they're hot." I have an upcoming Monsterhearts campaign, and I might steal that exact move....
When I first read this comment, I first thought that this was going to be an advice on preventing players from ganging up on enemies one by one (or taking out the leader before their minions): It's pretty wildly known that HP don't directly represent something physical (like how much blood is still inside your body), but more of a "willingness AND ability to pull through". If you are fighting a group, their morale wouldn't just get affected by how much damage each one individually took, but also by how well the battle is going for the group overall. This comment gave me the idea to implement that using an extra HP pool for the whole group of enemies. (which represents their "for the horde!" attitude.) While there's still hit points in the shared HP pool, damage to an enemy in the group goes to that pool, AND also to the individual that's been hit. Once the pool is empty, any damage to an individual is doubled. - And to compensate for the fact that all damage against that group is doubled you of course have to roughly double the total HP pool of the enemy party; something like putting half of the HP of each monster into the shared HP pool, and multiplying the HP of each monster by 1.5. Also, the shared pool running out would give you a good indicator for when to start considering having the enemy run.
Another great video. My favorite is the ol' "Fuck it, I'm out!." If the combat has dragged on several rounds too long, some of those wounded pirates are just gonna cheese it back to their spelljammer and fly away. Not every encounter needs to be a fight to death.
The title in the thumbnail is so perfectly timed: not 3 days ago, the party for whom I DM made it straight to the end of the encounter-series using a first-level spell. The Enchanter in the party pointed at the one guard in the room and said “Unionize.” The guard failed his save, walked outta the room and essentially led the party straight to the boss, where he walked right in and started complaining about the working conditions for the guards in the slave-labor mine. I was so proud of the player.
I saw Jeremy Crawford recommend that HP adjustment trick in a podcast on the D&D RUclips channel, it was eye opening. He even said it was intended by the designers! I've been using it ever since. It allowed me to let a new player get her first kill at a great moment in our game a couple weeks back, the results spoke for themselves :)
To rip off an old Presidents of the USA song... It's flumph, it's flumph, it's flumph, they're in my head... It's flumph, it's flumph, it's flumph, now the party's dead...
I'm old enough to remember the first home computer D&D-type text-only games. When you entered a dungeon room with a monster or group of monsters, the game always gave you the options "(F)ight, (R)un or (B)ribe?". Apparently even brainless undead like gold. Lots of lovely gold.
i played in one campaign that had us tracking down a dragon that had been terrorising the surrounding countryside. when we finally find it's lair, it seems there was some battle there recently. it had a big cult following it, and it looks like they had been fighting someone. turns out that before we arrived there was a massive uprising, and honestly? i think i was more intimidated fighting the people that *killed* the dragon than i would've been fighting the dragon itself aha
I like short, but intense combats. Last session, my party was fighting a basilisk, and they won in two rounds, but in those rounds, the basilisk still managed to petrify one of their NPC friends and reduce a PC to 1 HP. I’m still working on encounter building, and I think these tips will definitely come in handy, but I wanted to brag about last session’s success.
"I'll let you live" can be one of the trickier tools to implement without the players feeling like it's a cop out. I'd reframe it not as the villain CHOOSING to let the PCs live (either by capturing or letting them go for whatever reason), but as giving the villain a reason that they HAVE to leave, even though this fight isn't over. Have a lieutenant contact them in the middle of combat to say that they are needed for [insert next part of the evil plan], then have the villain turn to the party with an "I'll finish you off next time!" or "Seems luck is on your side today [evil laugh]," before teleporting away. You know, cartoon villain stuff. The other tool that can be tricky for similar reasons is being saved by an NPC. The most important thing when utilizing this tool is to do it in such a way that the PLAYERS still feel like they're the heroes of this story. My approach is to always keep in mind that when an NPC is going to assist, I need to make sure that they pass the baton back to the PCs when they're done. - If it's a big boss battle, and you've employed minions like in the earlier tip, you can have the NPC ally show up and start fighting the minions, telling the party that "I'll hold these ones off; you go finish the job!" - Or if there aren't any minions to clear off the board, you could have the boss react to getting hit with a magic arrow or a surprise cave-in or whatever, and when the PCs turn around they see their NPC ally holding the bow/scroll, who then says, "that should slow it down; now's your chance to strike!" - And if this isn't a boss battle, but instead a travel/dungeon encounter that's gotten out of hand, have the NPC ally show up via teleportation or maybe a Shadowfax-esque super/magic horse that runs impossibly fast, dealing a death blow to the monster, and saying to the PCs, "I'm glad I found you, because I need your help! Meet me at [adventure location] for [new plot hook]." And then they teleport/ride away, and the party now has something to do once they finish their current objective. * For bonus DM points, when the party goes to meet the NPC at [adventure location], have them learn that their friend has gone missing, so the PCs get to go save THEM. Now THAT'S passing the Baton of Heroism back to the players! Since learning about combat-tuning tools like these, it's really shaped the way that I think about designing encounters from the outset. Now when I'm putting any encounter together - in prep or on the fly at the table - I have it in my mind that I want to have at least one thing I can do to turn the heat up, and one thing I can do to turn the heat down. These don't have to be detailed; just knowing "there are minions in the next room" will make it so that when I describe the villain to the players, I can mention that there's a whistle hanging from his belt, or something. It's not an important detail, so it's just mentioned as one of the several details they see, but then if the villain blows that whistle and some minions show up ready to fight, the players are going to feel like this was your evil plan all along, and they will love you for it. But if you only mention the whistle once amongst other details, and don't make a big deal of it, they won't remember it after the fact if it never gets blown. People don't naturally notice foreshadowing until the thing actually happens, and then they gasp and go "ooohhhhhh". So often, I feel like the biggest trick to DMing is filling the world with little details that mean nothing until the players do something that makes them mean EVERYTHING.
Amazing advice. I hope you don't mind if I steal this, I'm a new-ish DM and I have so much anxiety when it comes to homebrewing or customizing other people's stuff. This will help soooo much! ❤😊
@@Rainbowboy-sv5fw That's awesome that you found it helpful. Yes, please feel free to steal, steal, steal, haha. We all do. I always like to say that life is a team sport. Happy gaming!
A key time when I had to do this was when players found a late-game optional encounter several levels early and dove into it. A CR 18 custom-built Colossal mecha-centipede with 6 ranged weapons and a burrow speed. They were stuck in the sand and getting shot down by excessive ranged firepower. I got this back on the right track by having a player notice that the centipede's weapon mounts were rusted out and potentially vulnerable. They jumped on this, and started stripping weapons off, reducing the damage dealt to manageable levels. One of them also asked if he could target the antennae, making it less accurate. No TPK, and I still got to use my custom centipede monster. ❤
The jokes per minute in this episode is insane. Your writing is so incredibly fun and snappy! Hope you’re getting 💵💵 for making ad reads people actually want to sit through.
I really like the idea of 'minimum' damage done and then calling it at a dramatic moment. Clearly the fight has been happening at least for a little while, then it's all upside. Totally gonna use this. Thank you, Ginny!
As an old school "grognard" I am personally of the mindset that all fights should be deadly, and that all parties involved in the game should be willing to embrace their failures. If your character dies to a random troll, then the rest of the party should look to avenge that player chasing that troll down. And the GM might want to make that troll into a BBEG because of their victory (i.e. Shadows of Mordors Nemesis System).
That could work really well in open-world sandbox style games where the narrative develops around what the players choose to do. However, I think this video’s advice comes from the mindset of there being a “story plot” that has to either be fulfilled or failed in a satisfying way. Dont get me wrong, I agree with you, and im not even a grognard(started with 5e), but I think this stuff is aimed at the crowd that wants to roleplay as Tiefling baristas.
@@Wesley_Youre_a_Rabbit It might be a bit of old man / old player mindset on this, but the advice also advocates a tiny bit of main character syndrome. The idea that the fight needs to be of signifigance when a character dies reflects that element (from personal interpretation).
@@Dlnqntt Yeah it’s certainly, at the very least, a “story arc”-driven mindset, which includes MC syndrome. Every big thing has to serve a predetermined plot. If you go into a game with that mindset/expectation, of course you’re gonna be dissatisfied when your character dies in a random encounter. It’s almost setting yourself up for disappointment unless the GM breaks their neck to keep the characters alive. 5e D&D, and Nuevo-game culture in general, places ALOT of expectation on GMs while also diminishing their power.
A couple of ones that I have used against my players, one of which they remember fondly, the other, they never worked out. 1) The (low-level) party was walking along a road through a forest, when they heard something crashing through the undergrowth coming towards them. They quickly position themselves with melee fighters at the front and ranged characters and spell casters to the rear. When the large bear came crashing out of the undergrowth, the prepared attacks had killed it before it even had chance to react. Then, as the archers had moved forward to retrieve their arrows, the large troll that had been chasing the bear comes crashing into them. 2) the party had been hunting down a lich, having spent several months taking out her minions and gathering information, and eventually they tracked her to her lair. The fight was vicious with several characters near death when the lich collapsed and turned to dust. A couple of weeks later, they heard that the lich had risen again. They track her down again and defeat her again, with her body, again turning to dust when she is defeated. This repeated a good half-a-dozen times. What the players never worked out was that the lich was fighting using an projected image (illusion) of herself, with a programmed illusion to create the dust effect when the illusion was defeated, and at that point the lich, who was hidden, just turned invisible and walked away. Under the system that we use, the protected image spell will make any spells that the caster uses appear to come from the illusion rather than the actual caster.
@@theosink2222 No, the players had leveled-up between each time they met the lich giving them more options, and the lich was in a different lair with different minions, plus the lich's casting level increased over time as well, giving her different spells. So where it was the same lich, the encounter was completely different each time.
One trick I pulled in my last session is what I call "going out with a bang". The bad guy revealed in their last turn that they were wearing a bomb-vest, and it's on a one-turn timer. (This was in Outgunned, an Action Movie TTRPG, but I'm sure you can adapt it to fantasy) It doesn't have to be a bomb, just any kind of failsafe that ensures the action doesn't end when the villain goes down. Maybe the lair starts collapsing, or it's flooded with lava. Or the villain's boss, the even greater villain is alerted, and is now on the way here.
Can also mix & match these - a fun combo to squeeze in once in a blue moon is the hybrid of "there's always a bigger fish" and "surprise ally" - the mutual enemy.
Don't forget the ever fun troupe, "wait was that a load bearing boss?" Where killing the boss is only the first half the encounter. The second half is escaping the structure the BBEG is in that was sustained by the BBEG's power and is now falling apart around the characters. Floating sky castle is now falling with the players inside. The planer portal to his realm is now closing threatening to trap the players inside. The mountain stronghold was really a volcano the whole time and now it's erupting... Or the good old Mario version of the castle falling apart over a pit of lava...
I want to add a tip: always have 1-3 “TPK scenarios” ready to go in the event of a TPK. The game isn’t over just cuz the party is at 0 hp. Here are some of my go-to scenarios: 1.) most obvious, the party wakes up tied up and in a prison made by the opponents. They want to question them, eat them, or both? 2.) the party enters the ethereal plane upon death and they are ghosts! Maybe a person stumbles upon their bodies and if the party can somehow communicate with them, they can manage to revive the party. 3.)a devil appears and makes a deal with them in exchange for a second chance at life. possibly leading to a side quest or later adventure. 4.) the party arrived in “heaven” or “hell” and there’s some sort of (literal) clerical error and “oh, you aren’t due here for another 10 days.” They get sent back to their bodies but know that something is supposed to kill then in 10 days….
Great advice, so many people just approach combat as "my hands are tied here" because a stat block says X and encounters are always fights to the death. This is a world of make believe, at best the rules (especially stat blocks) are more like recommendations. You have your whole imagination to play with! ❤
Yo, that Hit Point range thing is a great way to phrase it. That's basically what I already do but I've just been describing it as deciding when it's best for the villain to die and the way you put it makes it sound so much more reasonable to people who care about staying to the stats.
"No seriously, WTF is this???" The dad in me in spite of not being one "It's actually a really awesome "universal wrench", but it is a LITTLE big for a lot of household tasks IMO (but you're gonna need it if you ever need to deal with a plumbing fixture)... Keep that one in case anything big comes up, get a couple in smaller sizes, and you'll be able to do a LOT..... ALSO... Get a pair of vice grips, they're not ideal for tightening nuts or bolts, BUT they will work in a pinch and bridge the gaps affordable and easily... in addition.... Oh.... Sorry... I think I just figured out what "old man 'tism" looks like....
My first thought when I first saw the thumbnail was that the Minions from Despicable Me had unionised, which honestly would have been a better plot to the Minions movie than we got lmao
We have a group of modrones that act like a happy frenzied mob of minions. They get in impossible situations were they win battles just because of their numbers. Their batch produced a glitchling that acts like Mike Wizowsky. Hes the only modrone that speaks common. So the minions made him their leader. He tries to talk them out of their shenanigans. But most of the time they just hoist him up against better judgment and carry him off to go Pot-o-pon a red dragon or something.. Where he just watches in horror while the minions laugh and slaughter everthing in the way. Then he usually stands there afterwards saying "Well I'll be damned. They did it."
"Just let them die a little early." Honestly, this is the only thing from fourth edition that I truly loved. Minions in fourth just had one HP. You just had to hit them. You hit them, they die. It meant that they were threatening, because they still were full monsters and would do a lot of damage if they hit the players. It provided a huge action economy bonus to the enemies, and cost the players resources, but they never felt overwhelming. I still use this rule today, where it makes sense. This is phenomenal advice, and thank you for sharing it.
Good stuff, Ginny D! I’m glad to hear you suggest some of these things! I’ve thought some of them and I am glad to hear a D&D expert confirm that I’m on the right track. Especially with the HP thing!!
I mentioned this before but we had the "Gate" incident. Our rouge misses for months and this session back he is in a cage on the other wide of the gate infront of the mayors manor with guards. Cleric charges and attacks the gate. This was not a planed encounter for level 4s and it goes bad. Random arrow with a note land near the ranger so we know were to go after we escape. Again not planned so the EM gave us a option. But we got out...except the Paladin who was gone and quit due to a new job.
as a party we had a big encounter on the way. the room had one door. We had a homebrew tree token that would just spawn a tree anywhere. We used Tiny hut to seal the only exit airtight. We spawned a tree in the room and ignited it. It was epic hahah
Oh I can't believe I'm this early! I guess I'm taking this occasion as an opportunity to tell you how much you helped me grow, evolve and simply get more conscious as a DnD Player and DM - thanks for being awesome, Ginny!!!
One piece of advice with presenting the 'reveal a superpower' tool is to make the villain pissed off they have to do it. Not the smug anime "Until now I was only using 10% of my power" bullshit, a real "Dammit, do you know how hard I worked to keep this a secret!?" kind of response. The villain getting genuinely mad about something is often more than enough to balance out any frustration the players may have about the fight suddenly getting harder, and they often feel like they got a small win against a recurring villain because they've forced them to show their hand.
I love the allusions to the toolbox, cause this is the sort of video that I will bookmark and come back to time and time again whenever I want to review what I can do to make encounters cooler and feel more dynamic and impactful. 10/10
These are all great tips, I frequently make up new enemy abilities on the fly, I love to do a "phase change" in a fight, the boss realizes things aren't as easy as they expected, they tap into some other power, I add some environmental effects, make up a couple of new abilities on the fly, maybe summon a couple of minions, and no one knows that's not what I planned all along. Granted I also pre plan a lot of phase changes because I think they're fun, so people come to expect it at this point. My own tip is that I try to make most battles that I want to feel impactful a little harder than I feel like they need to be, as when we get into the fight, I can always just pull a few punches, fake a miss occasionally if I need to. I don't go overboard doing this but its easy to say an attack did a little less damage than it did, leaving a player with just a few HP instead of KOing them. On the flip side it would feel very bad to fudge things to increase damage and fake hits, which is why I'd rather make it a little harder, knowing I can tweak things in my players favor later if needed (though more then than not they do just fine anyway)
That's a lot of references to flumph-related TPKs....which sounds like a great backstory for an NPC. The last living survivor of the Great Flumphing of 1307. A lot of good-ish kobolds died that day.
The thingie is a self-adjusting wrench. It will tighten around any nut you use it on, provided you're torqueing it in the right direction, and will slip when you move it the other directions. Its the perfect wrench for dasmantling things when you can't anticipate what kind of wrench you'll need.
I Love ALL Ginny Di videos! I think that's a 'one size fits all' adjustable wrench. For when you don't know the size of the nut or bolt you're trying to loosen or tighten.
Watched this when it came out and coming back to report in. It became needed. I screwed up the CR calculation and was tearing my party to shreds with an elemental and a bunch of mephits. Decided to have the mephits start flying at the elemental and sacrafice themselves to heal it but secretly, they weren't giving it any health at all. The players were paniced like "WHAT? NO! YOU DON'T HEAL, *WE* HEAL" so the fight stayed super tense despite actually getting way easier. So thank you
I remember the "ill let you live" tool shows up in Curse of Strahd. Basically during a lot of the beginning where he's testing the party but doesn't want to kill them.
Your advice is usually so helpful. As a still-mostly-baby DM, thanks for helping me make small adjustments that have big impacts on my players' experience
Not quite D&D, but I did a lot of these when running a heavily modified STALKER campaign. I had enemies running away, activating their powered exoskeletons, learning player habits and working around them, an entire arena where they're trying to stop a giant robot from getting started up while robots are flooding in either fighting them or moving gear onto the giant robot (This was also the campaign I had to bring in a giant artillery tortoise robot because they couldn't shut off the giant robot and the artillery had to wipe the whole base)
I think one of the meanest sentences I've recently heard (not so mutch about combat but about initiating combat) DM "You walking throught the narrow winding alleyways of the grand bazaar - exotic spices, creatures, weapons, fabrics on every table, praised by the merchants selling them. Suddenly you feel a tug on your belt." Player "I grab my purse" DM *rolls* "There's 6 Gold pieces missing. And you can see a shady figure walking away..." Player "I attack the thieve!" DM "Very well. The thieve uses a legendary resistance. Now roll initiative!"
Introducing an extra few NPCs to reinforce mid-combat is always my preferred solution, both hostile and friendly; it's something integral to Lancer's base rules for adjusting the NPC difficulty. If things are going south as well, having an NPC step in to help can also be a great excuse for minions to become preoccupied and effectively removed from the battle as well, if you need to thin out the numbers slightly. And of course, support NPCs that can offer allies some buffs are also always welcome and won't usually steal the party's thunder. One technique that I don't think was mentioned was to use the environment as well. At the start of a round when things have been going bad, you can call out the unstable flooring or Red Explosive Barrel™ that are conveniently in a spot they can take advantage of but were too distracted to notice til now. Balance concerns can also be mitigated a little bit if the goal isn't to just defeat the enemies, but to accomplish some task: hold a zone by the end of a certain round, get an item, defeat a specific target, survive X rounds, etc.
Honestly i needed this, I'm about to run my first like mini boss/combat encounters in my Rp based campaign and the timing couldnt be better for this video
Love the advice of using the min and max HP to determine when an NPC has been defeated! That should help rein in the instinct to just let the party have the kill at the first thematically appropriate opportunity.
That’s basically what I was doing sometimes, in terms of tracking my baddies hp but also sort of using story to finish them off. But using the average HP is such a good idea. I love that.
This was one of the best videos. Solid approach, immediate examples, and practical. Going to be using some of these! I found the "upgrade" of a BBEG more intuitive before this, but always struggled with the "flumph tpk" by chance thing.
there's a neat trick you can borrow from other systems that will help make most of these changes feel legitimate: the "crisis" system. once an enemy reaches half their HP, they transform in a way that could be beneficial or detrimental. if you introduce this system early on, it then becomes way more believeable why the BBEG can suddenly summon buddies out of nowhere, or why they've got a new ability etc.
I loved Mythic Odysseys of Theros setting book. They had a fun system of two staged bosses! This was great in one of our playgroups, as they were very efficient players with powerful builds on their characters. If your players are struggling, I recommend finding ways to not necessarily do direct damage! We had a new group who were struggling to hit or deal damage to a monster - so I decided to have the monster "throw them around", changing the dynamic encounter, and breaking up the monotony. It ended up being a very memorable encounter, and they didn't feel bad for taking a ton of damage from the monster!
Recently I had a fleeing enemy spellcaster cast the (conveniently prepared on the spot) Conjure Elemental spell so a big Air Elemental could wreak havoc while he and his allies sprinted away. Seemed way more satisfying than just having him teleport to escape or something, because the party had to decide whether to pursue the fleeing enemies, or take out the immediate threat to a couple innocent elderly farmers. By their own request, the party spent the entire next session (which they pay me to run) RPing a wholesome house visit with elderly farmers they just saved. I'm so proud of them for making good life decisions.
With the thumbnail I can't help but imagine Ginny with glowing eyes and a flame like aura of power as her hair blows gracefully in a wind that did not exist mere seconds ago. (Goddess voice and turquoise lightning optional if in effects budget.)
I've absolutely used the "fewer buddies" tip to great effect in my game. The party was fairly low level (I think around 2-3) infiltrating the hideout of a small cult of Orcus, with the penultimate battle being against the cult's priestess and a horde of cultists, with a sacrificial altar and large summoning circle on the floor. Once combat started, it was an absolute mess. The paladin couldn't roll above an 8 on any attacks, the fighter was low rolling all their damage, and the only party member in this team of 5 able to consistently do anything was the warlock. After the first two rounds with no kills and a tank at death's door, I started having the priestess sacrifice the cultists to fuel her spells, and it worked perfectly. One turn to sacrifice and power up, the next turn was a big spell focused at the healthier party members in the back. In the end, it came down to a showdown between the priestess and the warlock, and I remember how excited everyone was to finally beat her.
The wrench at 3:14 is an adjustable multi wrench. You can use it to tighten or loosen hex nuts of different size by engaging the swiveling piece around the nut.
I had never once considered the idea of using the hit point range of min to max, what a fantastic idea. I've definitely had to adjust HP on the fly before (both up and down) and what a great benchmark for letting the creature feel like it's at the right level of toughness and even allowing for variation in HP without going overboard.
In 5E I'm learning more and more that enemies should have as many hit points as the encounter feels like it should. No one enjoys a slog that takes forever or a match the ends immediately. Wait until it's clear which way the battle is going and then introduce your twist or let it die. Otherwise, out come the cell phones and up go the dice towers.
Eh... it's one thing to switch to narrative mode or have the bad guys break and run if it's clear they are overmatched. But I'm definitely of the opinion that just deciding "Okay, that's enough, the combat is over" is badwrongfun. Because your players WILL realize you are doing this sooner or later, and once that happens, tension and excitement become impossible to maintain.
These are good ideas. I don't love the ones that make victory automatic, but the rest are very helpful. It doesn't hurt to run a major encounter by yourself first to make sure you are in the right ballpark. But the dice can throw a wrinkle in any best laid plan.
One tactic I use, especially for random encounters: not every battle has to be one to the death. I don't know about you, but if I'm seconds from dying I'm going to try to get out of there. Most NPCs I feel share this sentiment. Unless its the Big Bad, sometimes I just have some of them run away. Oh, and I still reward players with XP as if they killed them. Because, it was their actions which caused the beastie to run off.
I'm a huge fan of creatures that develop a new ability / attack as their hit points drop. Loved it in 4th Ed (and have ported into my 5E game things like Dragon Breath Weapon recharges automatically when they hit 1/2 HP). Easy enough to improvise in the middle of a boss battle, and my favourite planned version of this was a home brew Tur-Drake-n (literally changed forms as it got whittled down from giant turkey to wyrmling to a cockatrice)
For monster groups you can have the creatures use team attacks to both subtly increase or decrease damage. So the ogre picks the goblin up to swing them around and the attack uses up both of their turns, and maybe that attack does more damage than both of the ogre's and goblin's original attacks combined or maybe it does less damage. You could also have the monsters use the help action instead of their own attack if you want to reduce the risk of the front line fighter taking too many attacks, and instead of advantage the attack gains a +5 to hit since that is statistically the same but without double the crit chance.
i know the disclaimers before sponsored segments are tongue-in-cheek, but, genuinely, you have some of the most entertaining ad reads i've ever seen! i love piecing together who/what the sponsor is and how they relate to the skit
In the last session I ran the party handled the boss encounter without any issue, and I was absolutely kicking myself for not planning a second form or something. These are some great tips!!
Another thing you can do is to just end the combat. A TTRPG I played a long time ago had a rule for DMs that was essentially "combats should only last 3 rounds, unless something dramatic happens". This is to keep players from getting bored or settling into rotations with their characters. Many NPCs would surrender or run if they're failing, bosses would use a legendary action or reveal a new twist, and if the players are the ones losing, losing for more than a few rounds can feel positively awful. Every 3 rounds or so, combat needs to be shaken up by something, or find a way to end it so that it doesn't get stale or drag on.
I did #11 in a Phandelver campaign I did recently. The final villain is a drow sorcerer, so when he was about to go down, Llolth got pissed at his failure and transformed him into a spellcasting drider. It was planned beforehand since I deliberately gave players strong items and wanted to have a more epic finale. It was awesome
i have a unique combination of a few of these. i made a chronomancer villain, who if banished disappears to the plane of time, takes a long rest and is back a day in the past. then emerges from the shadows that he was waiting in the whole time. and if the fight is going badly, his future self emerges early, and banishes himself.
Thank you so much for making these videos you are saving my life!!!!!! My first session is in a week and im getting more confident because of your wonderful empathy and advice
Master illusionists HATE her (because Big Magic is anti-bread! it's a conspiracy! WAKE UP, PEOPLE!) 🥖
Thanks to Shadowland Games for sponsoring today's video: www.backerkit.com/c/projects/shadowlands-games-6d6f888f-51c5-4836-89ca-154f1ac76ef2/trickerion-the-roleplaying-game?ref=ginny
3:13
that thing is a custom made tool your dad made for one specific task that the other tools weren't fit for
i'm going to guess it's for getting at something in his engine
treasure the custom made tools, as they are the mark of the tool user's experience
Ginny Di cosplaying Zatanna is something I didn't know I needed
Ah the baker's burden, art is pain 😄
@@kooolainebulger8117 called a universal box wrench
They can't wake up - too many carbs! :)
There’s good dungeon masters, there’s amazing dungeon masters, and then there’s me, who’s ability to dm depends entirely on how much caffeine I’ve had that day.
I do always get good and caffeinated before a session! But keep that between us, I can’t spill all my secrets 👀
that's every dm
@@GinnyDiI caffeinate, take a short power nap, and then a short walk (especially if I spent time before the session prepping or tweaking things)
"Okay," says me, "we're not meeting for 2 weeks, so I have 13 days to prep an awesome next session."
"Wait, are we gaming tomorrow? Crap!" says me, 12 days later.
@@GinnyDi How much is too much?
Don't forget the Grendel Option: as the heroes are patting themselves on the back for killing the big, scary monster, that monster's bigger, scarier MOTHER seeks revenge.
If the villain running off to it’s mummy doesn’t work either… oh look, there’s a dragon now!
Thinking about it now… hang on, is Beowulf a DnD campaign?!??
@@kwest9747 the all powerful "definitely not vecna" lich running to their even scarier mom is very funny to me
@@atlasdwyer8220 The big bad was a troll! No, a sea hag!, No, a dragon! yeah!
Had made a sidestory campaign in which heroes sabotaged a green dragon's lair where the end boss was an adult green dragon, but his mom was there too and she isn't too happy about the players insulting her by killing her assets.
"No one wants to be TPK'd by flumphs..."
Words inscribed on my warlock's tombstone.
rip 🙏💀
** Presses F to pay respects. **
Hey, Flumphs are great!
The Balrog went down in 2 rounds, but the random encounter with giant slugs nearly TK'd the whole party. True story.
Hey! I was going to write that! 😆
More recent DM here. One of the most fun moments in the past session we had that's flipped the campaign around was how the party's ranger died. It was via insta-kill by a critical hit from an attack of opportunity.
The barbarian raged for the first time, the warlock used spells the party didn't know she had access to, and they got out of there as fast as possible to find their mentor figure to do a makeshift necromancy "resurrection." The characters were having one of the worst days of their lives; the players were having a blast. And now the villain, who was only intending to knock them out and steal their stuff (he thinks he's more evil than he is), has to grapple with the fact that he killed someone who he doesn't believe deserved it.
Was it intentional? Dear goodness no; I didn't think it was possible for him to deal 66 points of damage in a single blow. But now we get to do one of my favorite things: unpack consequences.
Was this in the first or second session? Otherwise why had the barbarian never raged before?
@@benscott4434 It was about our sixth session (and our sessions tend to be incredibly long). The player of the barbarian wanted to wait to rage until a satisfying moment in narrative, which she thought would be far later in the campaign. She was warned that refusing to rage could make combat much more difficult for her, but she stuck with it, and I like how it's playing out so far. The character also works a customer's service job at H&M (Heroes and Monsters).
@@Patch-lz9yi I honestly really think that’s a cool, if potentially hazardous, character choice! And the fact the PC works retail giving her more practice with holding back on raging is a *chef’s kiss* character detail.
ah dnds second worst bbeg, consequences
Only raging when its narratively satisfying is my favourite way to play Barbarian.
My Barbarian/Fighter multiclass was thrown out of the army for anger issues. They carry a huge (runic) greatsword on their back that they only use while raging. The rest of the time they fight with sledgehammer and heavy crossbow. Only when faced with a worthy opponent does he rage, draw the greatsword and have fun.
I used the bigger fish to great effect in my final battle. The enemy was a duo of a mummy lord and an evil paladin, and the setup was that the mummy lord was trying to summon their extradimensional patron to the material plane while the paladin protected them. I had a number of rounds required for the summoning ritual for the different power levels I had prepped. The party completely focused on the paladin, which was fair because he was doing a ton of damage to whoever he hit, but there was basically no effort to interrupt the summoning until the paladin was dead, which meant the mummy lord's patron appeared on the battlefield at the middle power level. I had him rip his way onto the material plane with a "Fine, I'll do it myself" monologue, then called session. The cliffhanger tension was delicious, and I was so happy it worked out. That fight will be remembered by my party for years
Using this
@@natekyoken929 Me too.
Honestly those "always checks Twitter first thing in the morning" and "oh no they're hot" tips may sound like a punchline, but those are absolute *gold* for the right campaign, whether modern, light-hearted, or whatever. I can guarantee you that I'm going to use the "oh no they're hot" one and see how fast my players' alignments shift.
Also known as the, "oh no, the villain is hot, there goes my moral compass" problem.
Villain with tragic backstory and morally questionable coping: Eh
Villain with absolutely no logic, completely heinous, but hot: Oh no
I didn't even *mean* to do this and one of my players has OOC'ly made similar comments.
...It also inadvertently revealed that she's an abuse victim. So that's fun. (Yes, she's in therapy, yes, she's no longer with him, yes she's doing better.)
@@kasane1337*whispers* Combine them. . .
@@tiph3802 You just want more Astarions, don't you.
I think anothe important thing to consider is: What is the goal of combat?
Usually, people don't just end people for funsies. A group of bandits does not want to end the party or get ended - all they want is to rush someone, take their stuff, and get away. They have no interest in ending the party if they can instead get their desired valuables. Likewise, once one of them is badly wounded, the rest will run, since none of them want to perish.
A group of cultists might want to capture the party for sacrifice and actively try not to end them. However, being zealots, they might fight until their last breath. Or plan to but still flee in panic once one of them perishes.
A bar fight will usually end when one side has shown superiority. Nobody wants to go to jail for ending someone. As such, once one side is wounded enough or out of breath, the other side wins and achieves all they wanted.
Most fights should not be until one side is completely wiped out - only a handful of enemies should have the goal of ending the party for ending's sake. Also, most NPCs want to survive.
Partner joining in the fight later: "Honey I'm home from getting grocer- BY THE NINE HELLS?!?"
The dad in me is saying “One day you will need, well at least one of those wrenches.”
Great video these are excellent tools.
i misread that as wenches.
The Supa-Wrench at 3:14 is not very good, though.
@@sfllaw Agreed. Better to have a good quality Crescent-type wrench instead of that gimmick.
Best? A set of box and open-end wrenches. But that starts to get heavy, take up space, and costs $.
I love this advice. However, I would like to offer up the 'I didn't think you would get here so early ' tool. Your players have infiltrated the BBEG's lair and fought the minions arrive before BBEG, and it is a social encounter. BBEG is actually a middle level minion manager who was continuously promoted until they had to run the evil plan and they don't even want to be here.
Funny flumph story: the Dungeon Scrawlers ran a game for Extra Life a few years ago where it only cost $5 to add a flumph to their Tomb of Horrors game, which was at the end of their 24-hour marathon.
By the time they got there, there were 56 flumphs waiting for them.
*oh no*
11:30 "The villain takes their glasses off and everyone realises they're hot." I have an upcoming Monsterhearts campaign, and I might steal that exact move....
evil bard villain?
"Why Miss Circe ...
You're beautiful!"
The "whole HP pool" tip is genius! :O I'm going to use that! Thanks for the tips!
You're so welcome!
I was coming here to say the same thing. This is getting used immediately.
When I first read this comment, I first thought that this was going to be an advice on preventing players from ganging up on enemies one by one (or taking out the leader before their minions):
It's pretty wildly known that HP don't directly represent something physical (like how much blood is still inside your body), but more of a "willingness AND ability to pull through". If you are fighting a group, their morale wouldn't just get affected by how much damage each one individually took, but also by how well the battle is going for the group overall.
This comment gave me the idea to implement that using an extra HP pool for the whole group of enemies. (which represents their "for the horde!" attitude.) While there's still hit points in the shared HP pool, damage to an enemy in the group goes to that pool, AND also to the individual that's been hit. Once the pool is empty, any damage to an individual is doubled. - And to compensate for the fact that all damage against that group is doubled you of course have to roughly double the total HP pool of the enemy party; something like putting half of the HP of each monster into the shared HP pool, and multiplying the HP of each monster by 1.5.
Also, the shared pool running out would give you a good indicator for when to start considering having the enemy run.
Another great video. My favorite is the ol' "Fuck it, I'm out!." If the combat has dragged on several rounds too long, some of those wounded pirates are just gonna cheese it back to their spelljammer and fly away. Not every encounter needs to be a fight to death.
Aye, smart opponents should flee. Even wild animals should flee.
Make the fights where the enemy WILL NOT FLEE,all the more Impactful.
The title in the thumbnail is so perfectly timed: not 3 days ago, the party for whom I DM made it straight to the end of the encounter-series using a first-level spell. The Enchanter in the party pointed at the one guard in the room and said “Unionize.” The guard failed his save, walked outta the room and essentially led the party straight to the boss, where he walked right in and started complaining about the working conditions for the guards in the slave-labor mine. I was so proud of the player.
3:15 For those curious (like myself), the mystery tool is apparently an adjustable wrench, it's just you adjust it from the other way around
Thank you. I had to scroll a bit to find this answer.
I've been an aircraft mechanic for 11 years and had no clue wtf that was thank you lol
I've got a double ended one of these, it is neat, but a touch finicky to use. It adjusts sizes automatically, and it even ratchets,
I knew how to use it but couldn't remember the name.
thought it was a fancy bottle opener
I saw Jeremy Crawford recommend that HP adjustment trick in a podcast on the D&D RUclips channel, it was eye opening. He even said it was intended by the designers! I've been using it ever since. It allowed me to let a new player get her first kill at a great moment in our game a couple weeks back, the results spoke for themselves :)
Calling dibs on Brutally Massacred by Flumphs as a band name!
Dang I was gonna use that
I think we have the beginnings of a band right here 👀
To rip off an old Presidents of the USA song...
It's flumph, it's flumph, it's flumph, they're in my head...
It's flumph, it's flumph, it's flumph, now the party's dead...
Minions going on strike or otherwise betraying their leader is hilarious 😂
I'm old enough to remember the first home computer D&D-type text-only games. When you entered a dungeon room with a monster or group of monsters, the game always gave you the options "(F)ight, (R)un or (B)ribe?". Apparently even brainless undead like gold. Lots of lovely gold.
i played in one campaign that had us tracking down a dragon that had been terrorising the surrounding countryside. when we finally find it's lair, it seems there was some battle there recently. it had a big cult following it, and it looks like they had been fighting someone. turns out that before we arrived there was a massive uprising, and honestly? i think i was more intimidated fighting the people that *killed* the dragon than i would've been fighting the dragon itself aha
I like short, but intense combats. Last session, my party was fighting a basilisk, and they won in two rounds, but in those rounds, the basilisk still managed to petrify one of their NPC friends and reduce a PC to 1 HP. I’m still working on encounter building, and I think these tips will definitely come in handy, but I wanted to brag about last session’s success.
"I'll let you live" can be one of the trickier tools to implement without the players feeling like it's a cop out. I'd reframe it not as the villain CHOOSING to let the PCs live (either by capturing or letting them go for whatever reason), but as giving the villain a reason that they HAVE to leave, even though this fight isn't over. Have a lieutenant contact them in the middle of combat to say that they are needed for [insert next part of the evil plan], then have the villain turn to the party with an "I'll finish you off next time!" or "Seems luck is on your side today [evil laugh]," before teleporting away. You know, cartoon villain stuff.
The other tool that can be tricky for similar reasons is being saved by an NPC. The most important thing when utilizing this tool is to do it in such a way that the PLAYERS still feel like they're the heroes of this story. My approach is to always keep in mind that when an NPC is going to assist, I need to make sure that they pass the baton back to the PCs when they're done.
- If it's a big boss battle, and you've employed minions like in the earlier tip, you can have the NPC ally show up and start fighting the minions, telling the party that "I'll hold these ones off; you go finish the job!"
- Or if there aren't any minions to clear off the board, you could have the boss react to getting hit with a magic arrow or a surprise cave-in or whatever, and when the PCs turn around they see their NPC ally holding the bow/scroll, who then says, "that should slow it down; now's your chance to strike!"
- And if this isn't a boss battle, but instead a travel/dungeon encounter that's gotten out of hand, have the NPC ally show up via teleportation or maybe a Shadowfax-esque super/magic horse that runs impossibly fast, dealing a death blow to the monster, and saying to the PCs, "I'm glad I found you, because I need your help! Meet me at [adventure location] for [new plot hook]." And then they teleport/ride away, and the party now has something to do once they finish their current objective.
* For bonus DM points, when the party goes to meet the NPC at [adventure location], have them learn that their friend has gone missing, so the PCs get to go save THEM. Now THAT'S passing the Baton of Heroism back to the players!
Since learning about combat-tuning tools like these, it's really shaped the way that I think about designing encounters from the outset. Now when I'm putting any encounter together - in prep or on the fly at the table - I have it in my mind that I want to have at least one thing I can do to turn the heat up, and one thing I can do to turn the heat down. These don't have to be detailed; just knowing "there are minions in the next room" will make it so that when I describe the villain to the players, I can mention that there's a whistle hanging from his belt, or something. It's not an important detail, so it's just mentioned as one of the several details they see, but then if the villain blows that whistle and some minions show up ready to fight, the players are going to feel like this was your evil plan all along, and they will love you for it. But if you only mention the whistle once amongst other details, and don't make a big deal of it, they won't remember it after the fact if it never gets blown. People don't naturally notice foreshadowing until the thing actually happens, and then they gasp and go "ooohhhhhh".
So often, I feel like the biggest trick to DMing is filling the world with little details that mean nothing until the players do something that makes them mean EVERYTHING.
Amazing advice. I hope you don't mind if I steal this, I'm a new-ish DM and I have so much anxiety when it comes to homebrewing or customizing other people's stuff. This will help soooo much! ❤😊
@@Rainbowboy-sv5fw That's awesome that you found it helpful. Yes, please feel free to steal, steal, steal, haha. We all do.
I always like to say that life is a team sport. Happy gaming!
@@GregMcNeish Thank you! I feel much the same.
I get the feeling that the Flumpf Incident isn't a hypothetical, but a traumatic memory....
Did someone say Flumph?! 👀
Always trust a Flumpf... to TPK. 😮
I've only just now realized that flumph isn't just another word for minion like flunky 😂
A key time when I had to do this was when players found a late-game optional encounter several levels early and dove into it.
A CR 18 custom-built Colossal mecha-centipede with 6 ranged weapons and a burrow speed. They were stuck in the sand and getting shot down by excessive ranged firepower.
I got this back on the right track by having a player notice that the centipede's weapon mounts were rusted out and potentially vulnerable.
They jumped on this, and started stripping weapons off, reducing the damage dealt to manageable levels.
One of them also asked if he could target the antennae, making it less accurate.
No TPK, and I still got to use my custom centipede monster. ❤
“…although at least it saves you from a shopping session” 😂
man, I was hoping someone would empathize with that 🙌
@@GinnyDi Always. 🤣🤣😅
@@GinnyDi I let others shop and I grab a nap 😂
@@meredithsalt8397damned elf! 😂
I have nearly wiped 2 parties with randomly rolled packs of wolves...
Watching the video when Ginny's commercial was ironically interrupted by a RUclips commercial.
Yep, the timing was perfect.
The jokes per minute in this episode is insane. Your writing is so incredibly fun and snappy! Hope you’re getting 💵💵 for making ad reads people actually want to sit through.
Agreed, the first bread pun actually made me laugh so I had to keep watching
A well written pun will work on me every time lol
I really like the idea of 'minimum' damage done and then calling it at a dramatic moment. Clearly the fight has been happening at least for a little while, then it's all upside. Totally gonna use this. Thank you, Ginny!
As an old school "grognard" I am personally of the mindset that all fights should be deadly, and that all parties involved in the game should be willing to embrace their failures. If your character dies to a random troll, then the rest of the party should look to avenge that player chasing that troll down. And the GM might want to make that troll into a BBEG because of their victory (i.e. Shadows of Mordors Nemesis System).
That could work really well in open-world sandbox style games where the narrative develops around what the players choose to do. However, I think this video’s advice comes from the mindset of there being a “story plot” that has to either be fulfilled or failed in a satisfying way. Dont get me wrong, I agree with you, and im not even a grognard(started with 5e), but I think this stuff is aimed at the crowd that wants to roleplay as Tiefling baristas.
@@Wesley_Youre_a_Rabbit It might be a bit of old man / old player mindset on this, but the advice also advocates a tiny bit of main character syndrome. The idea that the fight needs to be of signifigance when a character dies reflects that element (from personal interpretation).
@@Dlnqntt Yeah it’s certainly, at the very least, a “story arc”-driven mindset, which includes MC syndrome. Every big thing has to serve a predetermined plot. If you go into a game with that mindset/expectation, of course you’re gonna be dissatisfied when your character dies in a random encounter. It’s almost setting yourself up for disappointment unless the GM breaks their neck to keep the characters alive. 5e D&D, and Nuevo-game culture in general, places ALOT of expectation on GMs while also diminishing their power.
A couple of ones that I have used against my players, one of which they remember fondly, the other, they never worked out.
1) The (low-level) party was walking along a road through a forest, when they heard something crashing through the undergrowth coming towards them. They quickly position themselves with melee fighters at the front and ranged characters and spell casters to the rear. When the large bear came crashing out of the undergrowth, the prepared attacks had killed it before it even had chance to react. Then, as the archers had moved forward to retrieve their arrows, the large troll that had been chasing the bear comes crashing into them.
2) the party had been hunting down a lich, having spent several months taking out her minions and gathering information, and eventually they tracked her to her lair. The fight was vicious with several characters near death when the lich collapsed and turned to dust. A couple of weeks later, they heard that the lich had risen again. They track her down again and defeat her again, with her body, again turning to dust when she is defeated. This repeated a good half-a-dozen times. What the players never worked out was that the lich was fighting using an projected image (illusion) of herself, with a programmed illusion to create the dust effect when the illusion was defeated, and at that point the lich, who was hidden, just turned invisible and walked away. Under the system that we use, the protected image spell will make any spells that the caster uses appear to come from the illusion rather than the actual caster.
Wait so you did the same encounter 8 times? Did it get stale?
@@theosink2222 No, the players had leveled-up between each time they met the lich giving them more options, and the lich was in a different lair with different minions, plus the lich's casting level increased over time as well, giving her different spells. So where it was the same lich, the encounter was completely different each time.
One trick I pulled in my last session is what I call "going out with a bang".
The bad guy revealed in their last turn that they were wearing a bomb-vest, and it's on a one-turn timer. (This was in Outgunned, an Action Movie TTRPG, but I'm sure you can adapt it to fantasy)
It doesn't have to be a bomb, just any kind of failsafe that ensures the action doesn't end when the villain goes down. Maybe the lair starts collapsing, or it's flooded with lava. Or the villain's boss, the even greater villain is alerted, and is now on the way here.
This is so cinematic! I love it
Oooo! I really love the "using the hit point total and saving thier death for a dramatic moment"! That's brillant and I've never heard of that before!
Can also mix & match these - a fun combo to squeeze in once in a blue moon is the hybrid of "there's always a bigger fish" and "surprise ally" - the mutual enemy.
Don't forget the ever fun troupe, "wait was that a load bearing boss?" Where killing the boss is only the first half the encounter. The second half is escaping the structure the BBEG is in that was sustained by the BBEG's power and is now falling apart around the characters. Floating sky castle is now falling with the players inside. The planer portal to his realm is now closing threatening to trap the players inside. The mountain stronghold was really a volcano the whole time and now it's erupting... Or the good old Mario version of the castle falling apart over a pit of lava...
“Set up a Monty Python reference: trust me, they’ll take the bait!”
Can confirm this one. Works EVERYTIME
I want to add a tip: always have 1-3 “TPK scenarios” ready to go in the event of a TPK. The game isn’t over just cuz the party is at 0 hp. Here are some of my go-to scenarios:
1.) most obvious, the party wakes up tied up and in a prison made by the opponents. They want to question them, eat them, or both?
2.) the party enters the ethereal plane upon death and they are ghosts! Maybe a person stumbles upon their bodies and if the party can somehow communicate with them, they can manage to revive the party.
3.)a devil appears and makes a deal with them in exchange for a second chance at life. possibly leading to a side quest or later adventure.
4.) the party arrived in “heaven” or “hell” and there’s some sort of (literal) clerical error and “oh, you aren’t due here for another 10 days.” They get sent back to their bodies but know that something is supposed to kill then in 10 days….
Great advice, so many people just approach combat as "my hands are tied here" because a stat block says X and encounters are always fights to the death.
This is a world of make believe, at best the rules (especially stat blocks) are more like recommendations. You have your whole imagination to play with! ❤
A bread magician isn't something one considers when thinking about funny skits, but this one does put a smile on my face lmao
That appears to be a self adjusting wrench
Yo, that Hit Point range thing is a great way to phrase it. That's basically what I already do but I've just been describing it as deciding when it's best for the villain to die and the way you put it makes it sound so much more reasonable to people who care about staying to the stats.
I appreciate it when creators flat-out say that they're being paid by their sponsors. It always make me giggle.
"No seriously, WTF is this???"
The dad in me in spite of not being one "It's actually a really awesome "universal wrench", but it is a LITTLE big for a lot of household tasks IMO (but you're gonna need it if you ever need to deal with a plumbing fixture)... Keep that one in case anything big comes up, get a couple in smaller sizes, and you'll be able to do a LOT..... ALSO... Get a pair of vice grips, they're not ideal for tightening nuts or bolts, BUT they will work in a pinch and bridge the gaps affordable and easily... in addition.... Oh.... Sorry... I think I just figured out what "old man 'tism" looks like....
I legit guffawed at the unexpected "rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain!"
Bread magician is everything I have ever wanted in the world.
My first thought when I first saw the thumbnail was that the Minions from Despicable Me had unionised, which honestly would have been a better plot to the Minions movie than we got lmao
That's actually next week's video! 💀
@@GinnyDi YAY 🥳🎉!!!
When this video was recommended to me, it was right under Cinema Therapy's video on Despicable Me. I didn't even notice at first.
I wish I had those earrings so bad, and my ears aren't even pierced
Time to get them pierced. Fantasy earrings are so fun to wear
We have a group of modrones that act like a happy frenzied mob of minions. They get in impossible situations were they win battles just because of their numbers. Their batch produced a glitchling that acts like Mike Wizowsky. Hes the only modrone that speaks common. So the minions made him their leader. He tries to talk them out of their shenanigans. But most of the time they just hoist him up against better judgment and carry him off to go Pot-o-pon a red dragon or something.. Where he just watches in horror while the minions laugh and slaughter everthing in the way. Then he usually stands there afterwards saying "Well I'll be damned. They did it."
3:15 I had to know so I did an image search. It’s a universal or multi wrench. Don’t have to worry if you need metric or imperial wrenches.
"Just let them die a little early." Honestly, this is the only thing from fourth edition that I truly loved. Minions in fourth just had one HP. You just had to hit them. You hit them, they die. It meant that they were threatening, because they still were full monsters and would do a lot of damage if they hit the players. It provided a huge action economy bonus to the enemies, and cost the players resources, but they never felt overwhelming. I still use this rule today, where it makes sense. This is phenomenal advice, and thank you for sharing it.
Good stuff, Ginny D! I’m glad to hear you suggest some of these things! I’ve thought some of them and I am glad to hear a D&D expert confirm that I’m on the right track. Especially with the HP thing!!
I mentioned this before but we had the "Gate" incident. Our rouge misses for months and this session back he is in a cage on the other wide of the gate infront of the mayors manor with guards. Cleric charges and attacks the gate. This was not a planed encounter for level 4s and it goes bad. Random arrow with a note land near the ranger so we know were to go after we escape. Again not planned so the EM gave us a option. But we got out...except the Paladin who was gone and quit due to a new job.
It's an adjustable wrench, particularly useful for stripped or partially-stripped nuts and bolts.
as a party we had a big encounter on the way.
the room had one door.
We had a homebrew tree token that would just spawn a tree anywhere.
We used Tiny hut to seal the only exit airtight. We spawned a tree in the room and ignited it.
It was epic hahah
Oh I can't believe I'm this early! I guess I'm taking this occasion as an opportunity to tell you how much you helped me grow, evolve and simply get more conscious as a DnD Player and DM - thanks for being awesome, Ginny!!!
Welcome! And thank you for the kind words 🥰
One piece of advice with presenting the 'reveal a superpower' tool is to make the villain pissed off they have to do it. Not the smug anime "Until now I was only using 10% of my power" bullshit, a real "Dammit, do you know how hard I worked to keep this a secret!?" kind of response. The villain getting genuinely mad about something is often more than enough to balance out any frustration the players may have about the fight suddenly getting harder, and they often feel like they got a small win against a recurring villain because they've forced them to show their hand.
I love the allusions to the toolbox, cause this is the sort of video that I will bookmark and come back to time and time again whenever I want to review what I can do to make encounters cooler and feel more dynamic and impactful. 10/10
These are all great tips, I frequently make up new enemy abilities on the fly, I love to do a "phase change" in a fight, the boss realizes things aren't as easy as they expected, they tap into some other power, I add some environmental effects, make up a couple of new abilities on the fly, maybe summon a couple of minions, and no one knows that's not what I planned all along. Granted I also pre plan a lot of phase changes because I think they're fun, so people come to expect it at this point.
My own tip is that I try to make most battles that I want to feel impactful a little harder than I feel like they need to be, as when we get into the fight, I can always just pull a few punches, fake a miss occasionally if I need to. I don't go overboard doing this but its easy to say an attack did a little less damage than it did, leaving a player with just a few HP instead of KOing them. On the flip side it would feel very bad to fudge things to increase damage and fake hits, which is why I'd rather make it a little harder, knowing I can tweak things in my players favor later if needed (though more then than not they do just fine anyway)
That's a lot of references to flumph-related TPKs....which sounds like a great backstory for an NPC. The last living survivor of the Great Flumphing of 1307. A lot of good-ish kobolds died that day.
The thingie is a self-adjusting wrench. It will tighten around any nut you use it on, provided you're torqueing it in the right direction, and will slip when you move it the other directions. Its the perfect wrench for dasmantling things when you can't anticipate what kind of wrench you'll need.
I Love ALL Ginny Di videos! I think that's a 'one size fits all' adjustable wrench. For when you don't know the size of the nut or bolt you're trying to loosen or tighten.
You can’t stress this enough: „selling without telling“ maybe is the most important talent a great GM can have. - thank you for the video.
Watched this when it came out and coming back to report in. It became needed. I screwed up the CR calculation and was tearing my party to shreds with an elemental and a bunch of mephits. Decided to have the mephits start flying at the elemental and sacrafice themselves to heal it but secretly, they weren't giving it any health at all. The players were paniced like "WHAT? NO! YOU DON'T HEAL, *WE* HEAL" so the fight stayed super tense despite actually getting way easier. So thank you
I remember the "ill let you live" tool shows up in Curse of Strahd. Basically during a lot of the beginning where he's testing the party but doesn't want to kill them.
Great video, I love the hair color choice, very vibrant! Sick earrings too.
Elegantly avoiding a TPK is truly an art form.
The Matt's are never wrong.
Your advice is usually so helpful. As a still-mostly-baby DM, thanks for helping me make small adjustments that have big impacts on my players' experience
Not quite D&D, but I did a lot of these when running a heavily modified STALKER campaign.
I had enemies running away, activating their powered exoskeletons, learning player habits and working around them, an entire arena where they're trying to stop a giant robot from getting started up while robots are flooding in either fighting them or moving gear onto the giant robot (This was also the campaign I had to bring in a giant artillery tortoise robot because they couldn't shut off the giant robot and the artillery had to wipe the whole base)
I think one of the meanest sentences I've recently heard (not so mutch about combat but about initiating combat)
DM "You walking throught the narrow winding alleyways of the grand bazaar - exotic spices, creatures, weapons, fabrics on every table, praised by the merchants selling them.
Suddenly you feel a tug on your belt."
Player "I grab my purse"
DM *rolls* "There's 6 Gold pieces missing. And you can see a shady figure walking away..."
Player "I attack the thieve!"
DM "Very well. The thieve uses a legendary resistance. Now roll initiative!"
Introducing an extra few NPCs to reinforce mid-combat is always my preferred solution, both hostile and friendly; it's something integral to Lancer's base rules for adjusting the NPC difficulty. If things are going south as well, having an NPC step in to help can also be a great excuse for minions to become preoccupied and effectively removed from the battle as well, if you need to thin out the numbers slightly. And of course, support NPCs that can offer allies some buffs are also always welcome and won't usually steal the party's thunder.
One technique that I don't think was mentioned was to use the environment as well. At the start of a round when things have been going bad, you can call out the unstable flooring or Red Explosive Barrel™ that are conveniently in a spot they can take advantage of but were too distracted to notice til now.
Balance concerns can also be mitigated a little bit if the goal isn't to just defeat the enemies, but to accomplish some task: hold a zone by the end of a certain round, get an item, defeat a specific target, survive X rounds, etc.
Yay new video :D
Also I love it when Ginny just pulls some random object into the screen like a sword or wrench lmao
Honestly i needed this, I'm about to run my first like mini boss/combat encounters in my Rp based campaign and the timing couldnt be better for this video
Love the advice of using the min and max HP to determine when an NPC has been defeated! That should help rein in the instinct to just let the party have the kill at the first thematically appropriate opportunity.
That’s basically what I was doing sometimes, in terms of tracking my baddies hp but also sort of using story to finish them off. But using the average HP is such a good idea. I love that.
This was one of the best videos. Solid approach, immediate examples, and practical. Going to be using some of these!
I found the "upgrade" of a BBEG more intuitive before this, but always struggled with the "flumph tpk" by chance thing.
using the top and bottom ends of an enemy's hp pool to help create a memorable kill is so clever!! absolutely stealing that
there's a neat trick you can borrow from other systems that will help make most of these changes feel legitimate: the "crisis" system. once an enemy reaches half their HP, they transform in a way that could be beneficial or detrimental. if you introduce this system early on, it then becomes way more believeable why the BBEG can suddenly summon buddies out of nowhere, or why they've got a new ability etc.
The HP range method is ingenious - I'll definitely be using this going forward. Thanks for the content!!
Oh I completely understand 5:15 🥐🥯🍞🥖🥨🥞
I loved Mythic Odysseys of Theros setting book. They had a fun system of two staged bosses! This was great in one of our playgroups, as they were very efficient players with powerful builds on their characters.
If your players are struggling, I recommend finding ways to not necessarily do direct damage! We had a new group who were struggling to hit or deal damage to a monster - so I decided to have the monster "throw them around", changing the dynamic encounter, and breaking up the monotony. It ended up being a very memorable encounter, and they didn't feel bad for taking a ton of damage from the monster!
3:17 it's an adjustable wrench. The nut goes in the loopy part. :)
Recently I had a fleeing enemy spellcaster cast the (conveniently prepared on the spot) Conjure Elemental spell so a big Air Elemental could wreak havoc while he and his allies sprinted away. Seemed way more satisfying than just having him teleport to escape or something, because the party had to decide whether to pursue the fleeing enemies, or take out the immediate threat to a couple innocent elderly farmers. By their own request, the party spent the entire next session (which they pay me to run) RPing a wholesome house visit with elderly farmers they just saved. I'm so proud of them for making good life decisions.
With the thumbnail I can't help but imagine Ginny with glowing eyes and a flame like aura of power as her hair blows gracefully in a wind that did not exist mere seconds ago.
(Goddess voice and turquoise lightning optional if in effects budget.)
I've absolutely used the "fewer buddies" tip to great effect in my game. The party was fairly low level (I think around 2-3) infiltrating the hideout of a small cult of Orcus, with the penultimate battle being against the cult's priestess and a horde of cultists, with a sacrificial altar and large summoning circle on the floor. Once combat started, it was an absolute mess. The paladin couldn't roll above an 8 on any attacks, the fighter was low rolling all their damage, and the only party member in this team of 5 able to consistently do anything was the warlock. After the first two rounds with no kills and a tank at death's door, I started having the priestess sacrifice the cultists to fuel her spells, and it worked perfectly. One turn to sacrifice and power up, the next turn was a big spell focused at the healthier party members in the back. In the end, it came down to a showdown between the priestess and the warlock, and I remember how excited everyone was to finally beat her.
The wrench at 3:14 is an adjustable multi wrench. You can use it to tighten or loosen hex nuts of different size by engaging the swiveling piece around the nut.
I had never once considered the idea of using the hit point range of min to max, what a fantastic idea. I've definitely had to adjust HP on the fly before (both up and down) and what a great benchmark for letting the creature feel like it's at the right level of toughness and even allowing for variation in HP without going overboard.
I love your earrings. I was fascinated by the one lock of hair spiraling around the one sword earring.
In 5E I'm learning more and more that enemies should have as many hit points as the encounter feels like it should. No one enjoys a slog that takes forever or a match the ends immediately. Wait until it's clear which way the battle is going and then introduce your twist or let it die. Otherwise, out come the cell phones and up go the dice towers.
Eh... it's one thing to switch to narrative mode or have the bad guys break and run if it's clear they are overmatched. But I'm definitely of the opinion that just deciding "Okay, that's enough, the combat is over" is badwrongfun. Because your players WILL realize you are doing this sooner or later, and once that happens, tension and excitement become impossible to maintain.
These are good ideas. I don't love the ones that make victory automatic, but the rest are very helpful. It doesn't hurt to run a major encounter by yourself first to make sure you are in the right ballpark. But the dice can throw a wrinkle in any best laid plan.
“Some of them still choose death.” Made me chortle.
One tactic I use, especially for random encounters: not every battle has to be one to the death. I don't know about you, but if I'm seconds from dying I'm going to try to get out of there. Most NPCs I feel share this sentiment. Unless its the Big Bad, sometimes I just have some of them run away. Oh, and I still reward players with XP as if they killed them. Because, it was their actions which caused the beastie to run off.
Having had such a strange tpk very recently this video speaks to me a lot. I wish some DMs would be a little more flexible in tough situations.
I'm a huge fan of creatures that develop a new ability / attack as their hit points drop. Loved it in 4th Ed (and have ported into my 5E game things like Dragon Breath Weapon recharges automatically when they hit 1/2 HP). Easy enough to improvise in the middle of a boss battle, and my favourite planned version of this was a home brew Tur-Drake-n (literally changed forms as it got whittled down from giant turkey to wyrmling to a cockatrice)
For monster groups you can have the creatures use team attacks to both subtly increase or decrease damage. So the ogre picks the goblin up to swing them around and the attack uses up both of their turns, and maybe that attack does more damage than both of the ogre's and goblin's original attacks combined or maybe it does less damage. You could also have the monsters use the help action instead of their own attack if you want to reduce the risk of the front line fighter taking too many attacks, and instead of advantage the attack gains a +5 to hit since that is statistically the same but without double the crit chance.
i know the disclaimers before sponsored segments are tongue-in-cheek, but, genuinely, you have some of the most entertaining ad reads i've ever seen! i love piecing together who/what the sponsor is and how they relate to the skit
In the last session I ran the party handled the boss encounter without any issue, and I was absolutely kicking myself for not planning a second form or something. These are some great tips!!
Another thing you can do is to just end the combat. A TTRPG I played a long time ago had a rule for DMs that was essentially "combats should only last 3 rounds, unless something dramatic happens". This is to keep players from getting bored or settling into rotations with their characters. Many NPCs would surrender or run if they're failing, bosses would use a legendary action or reveal a new twist, and if the players are the ones losing, losing for more than a few rounds can feel positively awful. Every 3 rounds or so, combat needs to be shaken up by something, or find a way to end it so that it doesn't get stale or drag on.
I did #11 in a Phandelver campaign I did recently. The final villain is a drow sorcerer, so when he was about to go down, Llolth got pissed at his failure and transformed him into a spellcasting drider. It was planned beforehand since I deliberately gave players strong items and wanted to have a more epic finale. It was awesome
Regarding "this isn't even my final form," mythic actions from the Theros rulebook are basically that. They're neat.
I've altered HP before, but I really like your idea of the min and max range. Never thought of having an HP range. Thanks!
i have a unique combination of a few of these. i made a chronomancer villain, who if banished disappears to the plane of time, takes a long rest and is back a day in the past. then emerges from the shadows that he was waiting in the whole time. and if the fight is going badly, his future self emerges early, and banishes himself.
Thank you so much for making these videos you are saving my life!!!!!! My first session is in a week and im getting more confident because of your wonderful empathy and advice