Sorry for putting this here, but I've only been a DM for about 3 games now, but I want to return to it. But, i always struggle with the note taking and preparation part of it. Simply, I don't know how much I need to prepare, because if I can't find a good balance, I'll go overboard. and i hate making maps! If you could make a video to help discuss topics like that, that would be fantastic! if they exist on your channel already, could you point me there? Thank you in advance.
We used Minor Illusion to create an apparition of a sexy female goblin. We were supposed to save some hostages from some orcs and goblins, so we used that illusion to take out two of the goblins stealthily while another player used a disguise kit to look like a full female orc. We managed to actually take all of the four goblins and two orc guards by tricking them with sex and then all jumping on them 😂
My last campaign setting, there was a rumble that started in a tavern. Our high elf used the minor illusion cantrip to make a city watch wistle. One of the 5 Xanathar's gang member had a blade drawn, as soon as the recognizable pitch came across they withdrew their blade and were on edge to not be arrested. They soon withdrew the fight out of paranoia.
Had a campaign where I was a lvl 4 Paladin with the Oath of Vengeance. Was fighting against a horde of enemies I had sworn to destroy, but which was completely overwhelming the party. I didn't want to simply run away and let them live, but standing to fight would have been suicide, so we retreated and hoped to think of a solution. We were slowly retreating through a forest and running into a strong headwind with myself at the rear to protect from the pursuing horde, when I got an idea. As we neared to edge of the forest, I pulled out my sword and used a Searing Smite against a nearby tree with the intent of igniting it. I was told to roll to determine how effective this would be and got a natural 20, so the tree immediately burst into flames, and the strong wind then caused the fire to rapidly spread through the forest behind us, engulfing our pursuers, and about 40 miles worth of forestland beyond, so maybe a bit of overkill. But hey, "By Any Means Necessary" is one of the tenets of vengeance...
New spell suggestion --> FOREST FIRE Conjuration Cantrip Casting Time: 1 ACTION Range: 40 Miles Components: V (By Any Means Necessary!), S (Striking a downwind tree with a source of fire), M (Flaming thingy) Duration: About 3 days Player makes a skill check DC 5 versus INT to come up with crazy idea and hopes that the wind doesn't change direction. Flammable objects in the area catch fire in a strong wind. Over the course of an hour a raging inferno consumes the forest in front of you along with any living creature in its path. Immunities and Resistance to fire based attacks apply. DM rolls d20 to determine if a Bugbear/Ranger with a hat shows up to track down the heinous person responsible.
One of the best unique tactics I've ever seen was in a game I DM'd. The party was fighting a nasty hag coven and not doing well. The monk was banished, and everyone else was down at least 2/3s hit points; then the bard got knocked into a pool of acid. The bard stood up and didn't immediately run out, but instead used thunder wave to toss an enormous amount of acid onto one of the hags which killed her; ending the banishment on the monk (who was Pissed, had 21 AC, at full health, and full ki), and removing the expanded spell list the hags got from being in a cover. That was undoubtedly the biggest momentum swing I've seen in a fight, and it came from the bard turning the hag's liar against them.
I was once part of a siege on a city, so before the siege even started, I found the angriest, meanest, craziest squirrel I could find, cast dragon’s breath on it, and let it loose in the city. I did this a couple of times to weaken the city before the siege.
My favorite thing to do as a Wizard, is to find creative ways to use my spells in a way that maximizes their potential in one slot. I remember surprising my DM by casting Erupting earth on the CEILING of an underground dungeon. The spell itself is kind of lackluster in terms of damage, but the fact that I can use it to cause an instant cave-in over my enemies always keeps my DM on edge. And I mean, to the degree that he sighs with relief when he finds out I didn't prepare it for that encounter XD I also remember being in a very high level campaign, where our characters were facing down armies of giants. We found a large warband of Giants and orcs down in a northern valley. So what did we do? We stood on the ridge of a mountain and caused an avalanche to stop that army from advancing. Fun times.
One of my favorite moments playing my sorcerer: We were ambushed by a hag who killed two of our horses out from under us with an AoE spell, and I and the cleric were pretty close to making death saves. A couple of rounds later, we put enough damage on the hag to cause her to hop on her broom and start escaping. The bard missed with his crossbow, the cleric's spell was saved against. The hag was about 60 feet up and 60 feet away. I did a quick Pythagorean formula and told the fighter (who was next) to ready a grapple on the hag. He was confused by did so. I grabbed the fighter's belt, cast Thunderstep, and the fighter got a successful grapple on the hag as all three of us plummeted to the forest floor where we all went unconscious. - The bard applies a sword vigorously to the hag's neck and the cleric first aided the other two of us. The DM was honestly expecting to be able to use that hag one or two more times against us, but took it well and my sorcerer got an inspiration point.
My very first adventure with my current main character involved a flaming airship. It involved undead and impersonators in the crew as well, and there we were at first level with no real solutions at hand... except to set the airship on fire so it had no choice but to land and let us escape. This worked, but we got all the blame for contaminating the city's water supply when the wreck crashed in the reservoir, undead and all. (We jumped out before the actual crash, from about 30 feet above the water, near the shore. It hurt, but we survived.) The whole point had been to place us under some sort of debt that needed paying, so we'd go on adventures without needing to know the larger plot. Our solution, although far from the one the DM had imagined, still allowed him to steer the campaign in the desired direction. The larger plot was then revealed through the subsequent adventures, rather than being explained up front. That was all under Pathfinder rules. Then we decided we'd rather give 5e a run (we were spending far too much time just trying to wrap our heads around the 3.5e rules) and rebuilt our characters as similarly as we possibly could and continued from there. The in-game explanation was "Someone powerful wished these changes into existence, so just run with them. Your memories are not defective, and you have not gone insane. The world just instantly changed around you, and you changed to accommodate it." Since we had all agreed to the changes, and they were only made to accommodate 5e mechanics, nobody really needed any explanation at all, but it was nice to have some way to handle it in character.
Regarding equipment, I came across an encounter in an indoor building. Looking around, there were a two chimneys, little ventilation, and no windows since it was involved in illegal activity. Wiped out the entire encounter by Misty Stepping onto the roof, and blocking the chimneys with the sleeping bag and spare clothes I just got in my starting gear. Walked through the building casually, with all the enemies dead to CO poisoning
Just recently, my friends and I were running a campaign, and our DM set up a mimic encounter. The mimic had disguised itself as a wine barrel in a large wine-storage room, and once discovered, we started trying to take it out. However, it managed to turn back into a barrel and dive back into the barrels to hide. Like the smart (or not so smart) player that I was, I used my tinderbox and lit up the barrels. They practically exploded and ended up forcing the mimic out and trapping us in the room with it, as the door was covered by flames. After the room started getting smoky and raging fire, our party's Goliath Druid used Create or Destroy Water and managed to help the flames die down while we started beating up on the mimic. It was a lot of just trying to murder the thing, however I feel like those first few turns were a perfect example of creative battling.
It was classic Magnificent 7 situation, and we were fairly low level. Orc raiders against a helpless farming village that was willing to pay everything they had. We had one week to prepare. We put up a shitty looking palisade, and got 16 villagers lined up behind it. No armor, just pitchforks, clubs, handaxes, and a couple shortbows. After the orcs' initial volley, they ran. Half of them followed the cleric into the general store, the rest went with the bard into the smithy. That's when everything turned. We'd laced the town square with pitfalls and hunting traps. Then, our wizard, hidden in the belltower of the chapel triggered phase 2. We'd chosen those 2 buildings as fallback points because they both had big signboards on the roof, right over the front door. We piled logs and rocks behind them, and loosened the supports. The wizard used magic missile to take out the supports. Now the entrances were blocked with rubble, which crushed one orc outright (he took a crit from the bard's crossbow first). Inside the smithy, there were longspears, courtesy of our dwarf barbarian, which let the villagers attack from behind the barricade, and in the general store, there were vials of acid that the wizard had spent the week making. Of course, some of the orcs rushed the belltower to get the wizard, only to have a giant bell fall on their heads. Which brings us to phase 3. With half the attacking force injured by traps, the barbarian jumps out of the well in the middle of the village and does what barbarians do best, while the rogue comes out from behind the chimney on the roof of the tavern and starts sniping people. Between the raging dwarf, elf sniper, wizard artillery, and a handful of peasants buffed by support casters, we were able to bring down 20 orcs with no losses. I mean, a few peasants went down, but we stabilized them and healed up after.
A creative combat my party used in our very first combat together came from our bard. I had sent my raven familiar (my character was a warlock of the pact of the chain) ahead to scout for traps and spotted one. It was a rolling boulder trap and we decided to purposely trigger from a safe distance. We knew that some goblins would come around soon to check it out, so we all hid. Except our bard. He chose to play dead beside the boulder. When the goblins came to investigate and gathered around the bard's "corpse", he sprung back up exclaiming "I'M NOT DEAD..." before using Shatter. He nearly wiped out all the goblins with that single spell, hurting himself in the process but still standing, and the rest of us came out of hiding and finished off the remaining goblins in a single round. When combat finished, the bard bowed an finished his line "... yet". That line has become a running gag for his character and established our love for the bard.
My friends never played D&D before, so I was going to DM them through Curse of Strahd before starting my own campaign with them. Figured something familiar to me, and full of monsters they would probably recognize was a good place to start. They meet Morgantha in Barovia, and when they realize that the pies are basically DMT: The Pie (one of them ate it then and there), they combined their gold and bought a lot of pies. Later they end up in Death House, and to keep the session interesting, I random-encountered in a group of ravens who burst through the observatory window, so they'd have to fight the birds AND deal with the fog getting in. They took out the pies, and readied their actions to pie the ravens in the face, knocking them all out. They get out of the room, tie up the birds, and then interrogate them when they woke up, and I had to come up with the reason they were there on the *fly*. I made them nice, and because of the pies, they couldn't fly and needed to get to Urwin in Vallaki (where they were to become wereravens but...backwards? I dont know I made it up) but it required the players to carry around these birds they saved until they got to Vallaki. Needless to say, it worked out really well for me as the DM because those birds provided an excellent plot hook for basically anything, and being natives to Barovia, they also chimed in with useful information about the location and foreshadowed some of the NPC's behavioral quirks they'd meet along the way. One of them will even become an NPC ally for the players later on, because they "saved the bird from the fog" and they were more willing to follow along with whatever the birds suggested than any plot hook available in the book, because they knew that it was all THEIR choices. It was THEIR work and THEIR creativity that afforded them that opportunity, so whenever it gets brought up, to them, it feels like a workaround. tl;dr: Players enter Barovia, buy all of the Dream Pies from Morgantha, and then solve a problem by pieing everything in the face instead of directly fighting them. They pie a raven, who they interrogate who they form a bond with, protect, and carry halfway across the land to where he needs to go. Since they saved him, I'll have him save them later on, if they ever find themselves biting off more than they can chew. (something Barovia is known for.) and the game is that much better for it. My job got a lot easier because I let the players get creative with their solutions.
Last session I flanked a group of bandits by walking by a river that blocked my noise while my team talked to them. I then used sneak to get behind them and take them on with a surprise attack! I said something like "let's take everything they have" and the bandit leader without looking behind him yelled "yeah what he said!....wait" Killed two and the team killed the other two.
Gotta love misdirection. Personally, if there’s high ground I’ll use myself (the ranger) to draw the enemy’s attention and/or fire away from my buddies, leaving them free to press ahead and complete the objective unopposed, then catch up with them afterwards. If the ground is flat, I might try to convince an ally with a shield or defense barrier to do the same thing. Make them focus on one guy who can avoid or tank their attacks, everyone else slips by, do what needs doing, and bug out.
My two favourite clever combat moments both came from running the Starter Set/Lost Mines kit with a group of D&D newbies: - The first came when fighting the young green dragon. One of my players had previously procured a large quantity of illegal drugs, the strong kind, and when it came to fighting the dragon, when said character was hit with a bite attack, he used this opportunity to jump inside the mouth of the dragon, and essentially throw pure crack down its throat, causing it to spit him out and vomit out a load, also ruining its perception and constitution. - The second came in the final fight against Nezznar the Black Spider. Simply put, when he came down into the cavern, flanked by several other giant spiders and waving around his staff and monologing, the party interrupted and started bullying him harder than you can imagine. It was harsh. They called him names, made fun of his spiders, his dumb cape, it went on for a while. By the time they actually let him start fighting, his heart wasn't really in the right place
For the DM who loves putting Lava/Magma (depending on where you are) everywhere in their boss rooms. May I introduce you to, the 'Mold Earth' Cantrip. Lava/Magma is just super heated earth and also loose. Thus 10d10 fire damage done at none of the cost of a spell slot. Just have your fighter, Barbarian, and monk to push them within 5 feet of the Lava/Magma!
I had a Monk paladin who would stack his smite with a ki attack for 30 feet of knockback. While it also did a lot of damage, the knockback is mostly what killed the target. 30 feet of knockback when a wall is 5 feet behind you is causing some damage. Sending someone flying through a window off a 3rd story building is a ton of damage, and allow for really cool roll playing.
Regarding the character who's out there maximizing damage in a battle that's not necessarily a to the death struggle, it's worth noting that the big burly barbarian who's smashing his way through the enemy makes an excellent distraction for the rogue who's picking locks on the cells holding the planned sacrifices and the wizard who's trying to decode the ritual markings to find out what the BBEG was trying to accomplish. If you're an average guard, regardless of species, you're probably going to focus all your attention on the big ball of murder rather than looking for sneaky guys. Smart guards will spot the distraction for what it is, but if they're run of the mill orcs or gobs or undead or the like, probably not going to notice.
In this campaign i played in my friend the Druid picked Fog Cloud, and I was always like "that is never going to be useful" and then at one point he cast it, allowing me to run up while everything was disoriented and then warlock upcast burning hands and killing almost everything within it. I will never doubt a spell again unless it's true strike.
Playing a Bard who specialized in distraction tactics, I have 2 awesome encounters I was in. 1. We were going through a sewer, when I came face to face with a Troll peering through a hole at me. I cast Light onto its nose which blinded it long enough for us to rush by. 2. We needed to capture a villain, and our Neutral aligned Goblin Barbarian was about to slaughter him. So I rushed forward, splashed the enemy with oil, and threatened to light him up unless he surrendered.
I was a forge cleric and in my last encounter my group went up to this ruined looking building by the back entrance. I saw spiderwebs and heard scuttling. So I used searing smite on the web and burned the place down, knocking 2 giant spiders prone. After the session the DM said that was a really dangerous encounter and that there was actually 2 more spiders near the entrance but they ran away after i burned the place down. If i didnt do what I did my party would have likely been trapped in spiderweb against 4 giant spiders.
Two ideas, both related to what’s left of a carcass after the meat’s gone. One, use the guts to distract the wolf/bear/whatever and run while it’s busy eating. Two, string up the bones on a rope around the camp and make an alarm rattle a la Skyrim.
This is not a creative wway to carry the day in battle but more like a creative way to carry the day after failing in a battle that we were ambushed in. Once my party got captured by a group of ogres and then woke up in a pit. My half orc barbarian (outlander background) talked to the ogres about the fact that he was a hunter and that instead of eating them he could show them how to hunt things even bigger than the ogres. Luckily even though my character's persuasion was poor, he was able to convince the ogres to give the party back their weapons and lead the group to some large animals. That large animals that we were lead to was a large pack of dinosaurs. My barbarian managed to convey the plan of the ogres using huge flaming torches to scare the dinosaurs and to draw one to the party so that we could slay it. So while the ogres were busy distracting the rest of the dinosaurs our party quickly killed the sole dinosaur and then ran away from the group of ogres. Luckily enough time passed from when we started to flee that when the ogres noticed that we had run away they were unable to catch up to us.
I used my Loxodon’s trunk to breath fire. Elephants can hold up to 4 liters of fluid in their trunk. If you have oil on hand you can spew that over a torch.
I had a half-orc swashbuckler rogue who would collect every bone he could get his hands on. When ever possible, he would grind the bones down into smaller shards (not quite powdered but close) to use as a blinding powder. In a different campaign 3 level 7 characters were able to kill 6 stone giants using levitate and hallucinatory terrain. Made a large chasm that separated us from them appear as flat ground, while our wizard cast levitate on himself and our barbarian gave him a push while he "ran" over the chasm. Needless to say stone giants walked to their deaths
In one of my campaigns, the half-elf magus (homebrew) enjoys throwing enemies' dead bodies at still living enemies. One session, the battlemaster climbed a tree to take potshots, an orog attempted to cut the tree down... and it turned out to be a treant. Cue 3rd party trying to kill the players and the orcs. Then the orc shaman (stretched the rules) used command to make the treant focus only on the PCs. Fun was had.
One thing I do as a fighter is go 2 levels into the blade singer wizard and pick up magic stones so for my ranged attacks I fling magic stones at people no to mention there is a whole ton of ways spells can be super useful to a warrior
I used a charisma check once to convince an injured bandit to flee. Mechanically speaking, I probably could have killed him just as easily, but it fit my character to spare him. Plus, he could come back one day as a grateful ally or an asshole wanting revenge.
I remember a game where as a rogue I was setting up a trap for a horde of orks sleeping down a hallway. A bag of ball bearings, a couple flasks of oil, and a torch later, Barbecue breakfast. Ensuing battle didn’t last long for the Orks. I seem to have a tendency to hit a level of evil when I play rogues.
One time I climbed up in the rafters of a tavern, carrying a portable ram. I'd attached it to a rope, and secured the other end of the rope to the rafters so I could "Home Alone" the next creature entering the front door. Turned into a one shot kill that worked twice before their allies decided not to use that door. Which bottled them up for the rest of the party to deal with.
This reminds me of when Me and my party were about to lay siege on BBEG’s kingdom but they had a huge army of warforged so we decided to use glass flasks of oil then had a bunch of commoners from all the other kingdoms we had set free stay around the perimeter of the kingdom then had our pyrotechnic fire a bunch of makeshift fireworks into the kingdom and just kill anyone who tried to flee with the many archer towers We made and wheeled in avoiding all combat with the warforged but the BBEG had made a force Feild around the mane hold so we had to go in and stop him from preforming a ritual that would kill us all the fighter was about to attack but all the BBEG had to do is touch a magical stone to another magical stone and it would start so we all pushed him of the ledge (we knew his health was high enough to survive) then our wizard used fire bolt to shoot it out of his hand then the ranger pulled out his flintlock rifle and shot the BBEG in the head dealing maximum damage blowing his head straight Off I guess the BBEG really was just the commander not a warrior which The whole party liked and it made for a great end to the campaign
Here’s a strategy that I’ve devised, but you need to be prepared to fight multiple medium to small creatures, likely orcs. In the scenario of a raid of a building have the strongest character post up on the side of a door that pushes into the building. Then, after 1 orc walks in close the door, and team up against the one guy. It’s likely the door might be busted down, but it’s still a good bottleneck.
Explore a dungeon, find small dead-end rooms. Get an enemy's attention while the party hides near the dead-end room. Run like hell. Get into the room while the enemy is in chase. Meld Into Stone to the dead-end room's floor. Wait for the sound of the enemy running in, or allies calling out, preferably have allies trap said enemy inside the dead-end room with a door, other spell, or simply with their bodies. Cast Spirit Guardians while inside the floor. Spirit Guardians lasts for 10 minutes. If the little room is small enough, creates a little death-closet in the enemy's own dungeon with enough time to rot or burn them away.
My party ruined a hag in a horrible way. She was working with a large pot of boiling oil, the wizard rolled high on stealth and snuck up behind her, also beat her in initiative, so 2 attacks before she could go. First attack was a lightning bolt, nailed her hard, and also as lightning bolt does, lit the oil on fire. Second turn, ran up and shoved her face first into the pot, and rolled a nat20. She went up to her waist submerged, took a crap load of damaged, eyes burned out, and now covered in burning oil. She rolled around on the floor screaming in agony for a few rounds before she burned to death, wizard stood there and watched
I did basic bio warfare. I had to fight what I presume was some sort of orc holy warrior of Grumsch with a greathammer(2d8 bludgeoning) on the grounds of he'll raid local farms and shit if I don't, oh and I'm a dwarf so he hates me more. I previously got almost KO'd by a goblin so did not believe in my abilities. I took out a bucket that I had, got to a private spot and took a dump in it, sharpening my sword while doing so. I coated my sword in my dwarvish stool and pissed in the bucket, then walked to a small arena where we were to fight, bucket and sword in hand. At the start of the fight I threw the bucket of dirty tricks at the orc with a Nat 20. The bucket hooked on his nose and landed right on his head, coating him in foul play. I disarmed him with a maneuver after he got a hit or two in on me and he decked me and started praying. After he started chanting I dropped my sword, grabbed his hammer and started swinging and he summoned a divine warhammer. It was a close thing, with the damn greenskin succumbing to "poison damage" on the ground and me with 5 hp left. I lined up a swing and pulverized his head, coating me and my surroundings in blood and dwarven justice. I doubt I will be able to get away with that one again.
Good tips, dudes! I just created an new chapter in my tips for dungeon masters document, to write down all these ideas. "More than just fighting: additional goals that make combat more engaging..."
Some people don't like D&D resting system a cool down system could replace it.Although I like it better as is.18 chips for a long rest 10 for a short rest when any enemy escapes a battle you are duped by a puzzle or you loose respect in a cultural encounter one chip.two chips for sound outcomes.When the slot is full you may use it it does not over fill.
My DM was pretty cool about letting me do this but I had an open hand monk. I launched the character over a ditch with my flurry blows. I then ran to him while he was still in air and with my other flurry of blows knocked his flying body into the ditch lions barrage style. (Only allowed it because I called before the flurry of blows and succeeded on an acrobatics check cause I'm dexy baby. )
>Be Tabaxi Monk. >Be stealthy. >Really like Grappling. >Start kidnapping enemies for interrogation and thinning out numbers before the actual fight. >Profit.
One time my cleric (first time trying one) imploded a creature! In his head that's how it went anyway. The spell reflected back and imploded me, instead. My favorite way to die so far. Pay attention to your spell duration, this is what happens when you think Death Ward runs an hour a level instead of a minute lol
In one game we got caught more or less in a trash comactor with a real high ceiling, so my sorcerer flies the monk up and he used his shadow step ability to bypass the door and open it from the other side.
I dm most games and always made use of magic and terrain to full advantage. Once had a caster npc use sleet storm, summon skeleton archers in middle as well as grapple the players predictable full charge at her.... Tisk tisk did not end well for them
I know this is an older video and I may not get a response. What if the DM is over planning when you are having to clear everything with them and it starts to feel like the DM is just planning against you? What do you do then?
Old rules. Party was way outnumbered. Old style Bard did rock to mud and sunk everyone into a foot of mud then reversed the spell to turn mud to rock. The whole other party took massive damage.
Why is it taboo to look at creatures in the monsters manual? I get that some people may use the information to change strategy but if you are just looking to see what it looks like what it can do and stuff like that, I don’t get the issue
It's questionable while in an encounter when the DM is trying to let people feel out the situation. If you can say 'it's a BLAH, weak to THING, only has NUMBER stats,' that takes a lot of the excitement away.
@@Reepicheep-1 yeah I agree that if you look and then just straight up tell people everything about it that you are being an arse but I can know something about a creature and not act on it and if it’s something I think my character might know I’d ask the dm and if they say no then just go on as if I didn’t know
Oh, this guy has a pole arm! Guess I'll pepper them with arrows from a distance... *gets hit by Firebolt* ... NO ONE SAID THERE WERE ELDRITCH KNIGHTS WITH THE ENEMY! Sun Tsu: Know thyself, but not thy enemy, find victory and defeat in equal measure.
mold earth in combat? yeah..5 cubic feet of dirt is 125 sqft. 5 foot high, 25 foot long castle wall complete with murder slots for shorter casters and archers and ramparts up top. fighters guards the end. if you have time, you can make a triangle with you inside and shoot out.
@RUBY DA CHERRY It wasn't the best but it did had that feeling of having a DnD player either using smart tactics, such as smoking out the ennemy in a cave, or trying to cheese the rules, "hey what happens if i trap an ennemy between two wall of force" and "hey lets link the gate scroll to the bottom of the sea, its like having instant high pressure water".
@@darienb1127 Oh yeah, factually/historically correct ninja weapon. Causes instantaneous blindness and respiratory damage. And most villages have a mill that the player can use to grind the glass into powder.
Speaking of ninjas, do you have any good sources on them? I've been wanting to learn more about them for a long time. And it would be fun to play a proper ninja character.
@@darienb1127 depends on what you mean by ninja if you mean the assasin types then look toward the chinese with jiang ke (i think thats how it's spelled) or if you mean what the hisorical role of ninja's then were talking about information gathering through espionage and deceit for a lord that you serve
Maybe the Treeless Forest is the ghostly remains of an ancient elven forest that was swallowed by the Shadowfell, and now all that remains are shadows without trees?
@@DungeonDudes That... would actually be creepy as hell, especially if all the sounds and motions of the trees and birds and the like remained, but only via their shadows
we had a party with two barbarians a while back. one of them kept a shield on his back that he never used with a metal step nailed into it. He'd charge in the enemies face, and at a word he'd take a knee, and the dwarf barbarian would run up, get a boost off his back, flip over the baddy, smack him in the face, and suddenly be behind him. It was a pretty good move.
I love that idea. It's great, I often wonder how to make things like that matter though, because, to get behind the baddie, the dwarf could easily just, run around him. This move only works if the dwarf for some reason is just a few feet short on movement. which is unlikely to be an issue, Flanking is always a flawless move, but again, whats the point of jumping over him like that when you could just walk around him on your turn. Other than it looks fucking cool. it things like that when we need to use the optional moral system in the dungeon masters guide, however, since its a rarely needed thing, its pointless to use for that one instance. So, its up to the DM to think of a creative bonus to give to you for executing such a maneuver, and i'd even say that, since it doesnt really add anything by doing it that you couldnt get by using normal movement, what i normally do is, i say roll acrobatics, and if you pass the check, your move was so flashy, you get a free follow up attack.
@@Kugrox By doing this, the baddie won't be able to hit the dwarf with an opportunity attack. But if he would just walk around him, he could. So it's actually a pretty good idea.
@@RileyGrove Walking around an enemy doesn't trigger opportunity attacks if I remember correctly. Only if you LEAVE his meelee range while walking around him.
while stealth is great, beware of the Colville Screw: you stealthed your way all the way into the heart of the dungeon/castle, but set off the alarm at the very end. Now instead of exploring the dungeon room by room, the entire dungeon comes to explore you.
The group I DM for did this the other night. Considering I knew the outcome I suggested and eventually pretty much moving from DM to complete OOC metagaming mode. "Are you 100% sure you are wanting to sneak up the chimney like fissure solo and attack the boss that has a dozen enemies surrounding him." After the player went and did it anyways the entire dungeon came alive as the 5 goblins chased him down the chimney and the bugbear and his posse of extras starting clearing rooms throughout the dungeon. I think my players now have a healthy fear of bugbears after that night of gameplay.
@@robertcox9871 it was, my players after all these sessions now understand this is not Skyrim. The monsters actually have the ability to think, and most of them have self preservation instincts. They now are afraid of dragons more then they are bugbears. I killed 3 of them 3 weeks back with Venomfang's breath attack. They completely ate of Venomfang's words and walked right into his lair with weapons down expecting parley. What happened was the dragon slithered around and managed to reposition himself to nail the entire group, effectively surprise round for 59 points of poison damage. 3 instant deaths. They now know don't trust the honeyed words of a green dragon.
@@GM_Ryu Just wondering, is there anything the players could have done to prevent being killed after they entered the lair and saw the dragon, or was it all a forgone conclusion? And how did those 3 players react to their characters dying in that way? Were they mad about it?
Funny you guys posted this, because I just had an argument with my DM and players because they said I was Metagaming when asking how a creature we were fighting looked. We had been hitting this guy for quite a while, had a few crits and cool moments, and they were still going strong. So I asked my DM how he was looking after all of that and my other players just started groaning saying that I need to stop meta gaming by asking questions about how you attacks are affecting them, so I'm glad to see I'm not crazy.
Your DM and fellow players have both fucking clue what meta gaming actually is. Sizing up your enemy after/during/before combat is an incredibly important bit of information.
I remember once that I was an Evoker and a pirate ship's captain, once some scurvy dogs tried to board us but we all hid beneath the deck, the ship looked like a ghost ship but the lights inside were lit and my animated skeletons were acting as corpses of this place's crew, it became a psychological horror movie for the enemies when everytime they came near a little flame that became a big, roaring and flaming dinosaur, the skeletons made noise and moved everytime they didn't look, and when tension was on it's peak, our bard did Major Image to make the appearance of a ghost and a terrifying noise, Those guys fled faster than a scared cheetah
Same scenario I played through, except my party were the pirates attacking the ship. As the ships came into proximity, our cleric began turning undead from the bow of our ship, with no effect. We slowly glided within range. It was all very tense, and none of us knew how we were going to manage this... In the long run, the other pirates revealed themselves and their rouse, and ultimately their Captain became my henchman, and the Ghostwood Pirates and their "haunted" flagship became part of our fleet.
Always pick up some bag of flour. You can use it to the ground to find invisible ennemies, use it to detect trapps or throw it to an ennemie for distraction
Flour can help find invisible enemies depending on how it's used, but you can't just throw a handful at an enemy because anything on the enemy's body *also* becomes invisible.
Most outrageous, devious weapon I've ever come across in D&D: You need a quantity of ballista bolts, magically shrunk down to the size of crossbow bolts. You fix a ring of Dispel Magic onto the end of a crossbow, so the bolts will pass through it when fired. You now have a hand-portable ballista.
As a DM if I allowed it I'd say that as the bolt leaves the ring the weight of the projectile would increase and in turn increase the momentum/speed as if fired from a full size ballista. Because that is an awesome idea and I like the Rule of Cool.
@@masterreaper115 Ohh I agree thats why I said if I allowed it, and I would also put a percentage chance of something going wrong and say that perhaps the bolt jams halfway through falling on the wielder of the crossbow and damaging /incapacitating them for so many rounds. I believe in everything having consequences good or bad.
In another system, where zombies were immune to bludgeoning damage, it was an equally fun tactic to load THEM into the catapults, and fire them over the walls. >;)
“Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.” ― Sun-tzu Thanks for the tips guys! Awesome, as always :)
I prefer: A true victory is ensuring that your enemy realizes it was wrong to oppose you in the first place. To force them to acknowledge your greatness. - Gul Dukat from ST:DS9
To be fair, I tend to ask a bunch of questions about the environment so I have a complete plan in mind when I ask my DM if that plan would work. What also ends up happening is the other players now have a better idea of what the area looks like. Are there barrels? Heavy tippable bookshelves? A chandelier to swing from? We didn’t know there was a giant tapestry on the wall until I asked, and we ended up trapping a Beholders eyestalks with it, which is probably why nobody went down in that battle. Five weeks into playing a Bugbear Barbarian, I have thrown enemies out of windows, knocked a huge bookshelf onto an evil wizard, later tossed the same wizard into the fire elemental he’d summoned, and thrown a tapestry over a Beholder and grapple-hugged it with its main eye against my chest as it spammed its antimagic field on my magic free warrior self. Meanwhile my comrades beat on it like a piñata. We ended up shoving dynamite into its mouth to finish it off. Her philosophy is “the best weapon against someone I don’t like is another person I don’t like.” She’ll pick up a goblin in each hand and use them like clubs against their other goblin friends. Best character I’ve ever played.
Well, look at the context, he's talking about non-unique monsters ofc, so for example, Great Old One won't fit, for example About the tarrasque, the way it is, he's a bad monster, if you play very under the rules There is some simple fixing to it anyways, but either you don't think on making a tarrasque a monster which will appear as an entity more than once on the world or if you use it more than once, it becomes very mundane and bad (the way he is written for now) It's an opinion ofc
@@Veio0000 twas a joke mate. I agree though in practice unique monsters should be special. For example if it appears twice it could be the bbeg (hopefully not a tarrasque)
One of the prominent gods in my world's pantheon is always the god of adventure whose bless permeates the world rewarding those who take unusual risks. Dropping that chandelier might do more damage than it probably should. Setting up a logswing trap to knock the 5-ton Golem into Lava might actually move him further than usual. Force feeding the prone giant in a tight tunnel a potion of growth might just knock him straight unconscious! The Changebringer rewards change :)
One of my favorite battle encounters came from when I was playing a low level paladin, and it was against a swarm of rats. In imagination, it seemed weird for her to use a sword or great axe against a swarm of tiny monsters, and we were in a house, so I used improvised weapons for a few rounds as I grabbed tables and chairs to smash them, and then they swarmed me so I asked the DM if I could just "stop, drop, and roll" as my attack. I used myself as an improvised weapon and it was hands down one of my favorite moments in D&D.
Diviner, Moon Druid, Swords Bard, Old one Tome Warlock. We were just about screwed when the beholder looked our way. Then, I remembered I had an Eversmoke bottle. No sight, no targeting; anti magic cone won't work on non magical smoke. The bite attack of the beholder is quite pitiful. The fire elemental punches are not.
Once had an Arcane Trickster take the catapult spell to improve the range and damage of his throwing knives. It's simple, creative, and worked wonderfully. It also added a need for him to conserve daggers, as catapult damages the thrown item as well. It also mean he could throw from multiple angles or re-use missed shots, as catapult doesn't require you to touch the object you throw.
Chris Wiet As a fellow Arcane Trickster, here’s a tip for you. Those daggers you always carry, just attach a rope to the end. Adjustable range, instant grappling hook, and a good way to choke out an enemy by piercing them and wrapping it around them like a noose.
I had a warforged wielding a fully stacked staff of the magi when the Tarrasque attacked us. It roared at us and forced us to roll fear check, I passed. I asked the DM if I could misty step into his mouth, he said yes. I asked if I could move down the throat using difficulty terrain as movement. He ok'd 10ft at most with my haste spell being active. Then I broke the staff for a retribution strike. Because this was "inside" the Tarrasque, the DM ruled that the damage would be the full 16x50=800 damage as if it had broken the staff itself. Good way to go.
I discovered in a dungeon that these Little Rock swarm creatures were attracted to light, I cast dancing lights about 60ft in front of the party and we had ourselves a vanguard. I would put the dancing lights inside someone and the swarm thought they ate the light and attacked them, using this we killed a mummy, magic sword and magic armour at level 2 using this trick
I was playing a grappler with a ton of HP but nearly no damage. I used my Necklace of Adaptation to grab their heavy armored damage dealer, and dropped us to the bottom of a large pool. A couple of rounds letting him beat me up underwater until he drowned.
It was the first big boss fight of our group, and we were fighting kobolds that had tons of armor and these Attack on Titan grappling hook gun things. I, the fire genasi barbarian, am shot, with the grappling hooks stuck through my abdomen. The kobolds laugh, thinking the barbarian is restrained. As I rage I scream "I am not stuck in here with you, you are stuck in here with me!". I proceed to grab the wires and swing one of the kobolds around the room like a flail, before flinging it into the corner, ripping the hooks out and charging the other, which I proceeded to suplex I believe.
Fine, you and all the party focus their melee, ranged and magic attacks on the Big Rat Man with the staff. *Rolls* Ok, the Big Rat Man falls to his knees, and drops his staff, loosing control of all the 15 swarms of rats that are surrounding you in the sewers. Now all of them are enraged, attack twice on their turn and deal an extra +2 damage on every attack.
Kugrox heh my necromancy school wizard would like to get info the *“traditional way”* so... tie em to a chair, arms strapped to the arms, legs to the legs, couple of nails, a simple hammer, pliers, couple of healing potions, spare the dying, etc. remove the boots and socks, fit a nail between the translucent nail and flesh, aim, WHACK, twist the nail, ask the dm how bad they hurting, heal as needed, rinse and repeat till info is obtained. Then for the finishing blow, caress the poor fuckers head, then cast inflict wounds (because magic initiate) and just turn their head into red, wet, pasty, sand. If tongue remains, cut it out and burn it, leave no trace.
I made a dungeon once where the acolytes prayers would drastically heal the big bad. Therefore trying to switch things up and make my players go for the minions first for once lol
"Ha ha, we have slain your evil leader!" "You -- you ... do-gooders! We will have our revenge!" "Sure, just one question first. Who's paying your salary now?" "Oh. Um. Hmm..."
I've thought of an idea for a boss fight where the players have to fight a powerful golem, but none of their attacks can hurt it. Instead, they have to use the traps and hazards in the environment to defeat it.
I would be careful about that. Don't get me wrong it isn't nessesarily a bad idea but completly removing a plausibe way for the PCs to win and restrict them usually only comes off as railroady. I would suggest you just make it super resistant towards a fair bit of things but the solution of killing it with their weapons or their spells as they are used to is still plausible just annoying as all hell. I mean what if every single trap had already been disarmed by your PCs so they didn't have to worry about them when fighting the boss beforehand? or what if non of them had prepared spells that could damaged the roof so it would collaps on the monster? Having only 1 solution to a problem very rarely end well. It will usually just end with annoyed PCs that find it to be bullshit that nothing they are trying are working.
How about have the Golem itself be invulnerable (or very resistant) but have some other things that the players can attack that harm the Golem when they are destroyed. Like maybe 5 lesser constructs. When one of the lesser constructs is destroyed make it clear to the players that the Golem has been hurt (it staggers or whatever). Once all the lesser constructs are destroyed then the main Golem can be harmed far more easily. Environmental attacks and traps are cool but should be an option rather than the only way to win. The players spend a lot of time designing their characters and choosing cool abilities and spells. Encounters where you cannot use those abilities are often frustrating for the players.
You could reason that the Golem is adaptable and can only be harmed by something once. Once the players realize this after doing all their normal attacks they will have to resort to the environment.
My regular gaming group naturally fell into the strategies you have mentioned. We used to joke about how the DM would have enemies take a step to the left as the group as a whole would focus fire on enemies from our left to the right unless there was a spell caster. After the first 2 or 3 years of gaming together the DM / GM would always have the big bad boss appear to the far right of the party so they would not get focused down too fast on a big encounter. Obviously the big bad had heard of us and had learned that we tend to kill from our left to the right when attacked. Thank you for this Good Stuff.
My favorite tactic to this day: We were in an arena, fighting a roc. As it banked around, my wizard flew up into its flight path, seemingly about to meet the monster head-on with her sword. And then... Casts wall of force right in front of her. The roc slammed into the wall like a bird hitting a window and died from the impact.
Let the players describe any action they want a long as it can be resolved within the rules. And sometimes, give them a bonus if the idea deserves the rule of cool.
Someone once described a long series of action in a Dungeon Dude video and a viewer responded as to how you could actually do it. Run up the monster's back = Acrobatics check and difficult terrain modifiers. Hit the monster = attacks as normal. Flip off his back = Another Acrobatics check followed by a Dash action (the PC was a Rogue using their Cunning Action). And, most importantly, it looked cool as hell!
Grease + Campfire= flash fire 10ft square. Grease + Stairs + Gust= effective pushing down stairs. Grease + Cold effect= frictionless patch of land that gets more dangerous as it thaws until it is 100% "liquid" again. I love the Grease spell and have spent hours on thinking up how best to use it. Immovable rods work best horizontally in a vertical space all you need are 2 or 3 and you can "fly" also.
Grease the big apes in the treetops so they fall to their deaths. Grease the area in front of the door the enemy is trying to break through, they can forget that. Grease love!
hey you should try the control flames and create bonfire cantrips with grease.I find that the best way to cause forest fires to take out entire armys chasing you. For example this one campaign (homebrew) the party "accidentally" assasinated the kings son in a snowball fight (I was The rougue and had a dagger in my sleeve which flew out and killed him) and the king wanted us dead and our mage created a forest fire to kill half the kings pursuing army.
"Communicate your intent". THIS. I've had players specify an action and then when I adjudicate it, they say something like "Aww, I was hoping it would cause *** to happen". Well if you would have told me your intention, I would have had that happen, or given it some sort of chance, or changed the DC to determine if it happened. Sometimes I get the idea that they want a certain affect, and will ask what they are intending, but I'd prefer they tell me what they want to achieve or to happen. I want to see that cool stuff happen too.
My group is full of creative thinkers and we just try stuff dont really ask just kinda do. Like i used minor illusion to calm an agressive opponent by using his own voice in his ear telling him to calm down that we where not there to kill him we havent even drawn weapons
Captured by PIrates, my evil Bard convinced them he had a massive score planned and would cut them in on it if they freed us and helped us pull it off. They were heading to a Slaver's palace to sell us and my plan was we sell the whole crew into slavery then rob the place from the inside. I convinced them our party needed to be on the outside since we knew the secret way in. We arrived, sold the crew, sold the ship, and left with a very healthy profit. Unfortunately, after that not even the party ever trusted another one of my characters again.
That's a shame, because you played an evil PC perfectly: not fucking over the party, just for shits and giggles. The characters may not trust yours, but the players should trust you, in my opinion.
In our original game, our DM placed us in a situation where we sould have only been able to retreat. 20ish goblins all gathered at 1 spot with bows drawn ready to annihilate our 2nd level party. There were pots of hot soup scattered throughout the room. I had my rogue sneak around the corner, shoot a pot of hot soup, spilling it on all the goblins, distracting them enough so that our sorcerer could come in and burning hands them all, wiping out most of them and allowing us to actually fight and win rather than run. We referenced it later as an inside joke as "the soup thing"
One time, our party was being chased through some dwarven ruins by some drow. Our fighters were able to lift a portcullis for us to get through, then i cast invisibility on the portcullis, causing the drow to run right into it. We ended up escaping up a well, and when the first drow head appeared, our fighter ran towards the well and holding his shield in front of him, belly flopped on the well, sending the drow back down the well. In one game at a Con, all our elves were charmed to kill the rest of us, so i used my Eversmoking bottle with a hose connected to a nozzle in the right sleeve of my robe. I used the Eversmoking bottle slow down the combat while one of the others opened doors in the room to set off the dispel magic spell. Most DM's will allow you to know about a monster, if you make a relevant knowledge check and one of my DM's will allow you read the MM entry, if you make a good enough knowledge check!
The invisible portcullis reminds me of a grievance I have with the Invisibility spell. In my opinion it SHOULD have provisions for also making "objects" invisible (limited to a certain size and nature of course) but if you are to take the 'Rules As Written' there is ONLY an allowance to turn a creature invisible - no objects. There are means of achieving this with creative uses of much higher level spells but it seems like such a waste of a higher spell slot to achieve something that (in my opinion) should be achievable with the Invisibility spell. If I were DMing a game I would home-brew it to allow it to apply to objects but I'd still love to see this tweaked in a Player's Hand Book errata somewhere down the track.
Our druid dropped a spoon infront of a gelatinous cube which absorbed it. He then cast heat metal on the spoon and cooked the cube from the inside out.
I remember I was roleplaying a gladiator stage fighter who longed for a fair fight so I decided to throw my weapon down and roll persuasion to get a decently powered enemy to throw his weapons down and “fight me like a man”
My lvl 5 friends decided to shrink a boulder to a pocket size pebble, used a raven companion to fly above the miniboss I prepared for them, drop the stone, unshrink it and deal massive dmg... well, the raven rolled nat 20 on the drop... hit the poor boss right on the head with a 1 ton boulder xD they just had to fight the confused minions XD
@@justajarro Nah, Reduce only shrinks the dimensions by half and the weight by 1/8. That laden swallow's airspeed velocity would be zero. -_^ That said, I must have remembered this tactic, somewhere in my subconscious. I forgot asking this question but, a few months ago, we were fighting a band of powerful zealots, trying to call a dark god in from another dimension. My character (an owl beastfolk, capable of flight) happened to own a Daern's Instant Fortress. Apparently, a 20x20x30 adamant tower falling out of the sky makes it hard to maintain spell concentration... or breathing.
What are some of the creative ways you've used the environment, equipment, or enemy psychology to carry the day in battle?
I've made a contraption in which the players had to roll a barrel down a hill donkey kong style to defeat some skeletons.
Sorry for putting this here, but I've only been a DM for about 3 games now, but I want to return to it. But, i always struggle with the note taking and preparation part of it. Simply, I don't know how much I need to prepare, because if I can't find a good balance, I'll go overboard. and i hate making maps! If you could make a video to help discuss topics like that, that would be fantastic! if they exist on your channel already, could you point me there? Thank you in advance.
We used Minor Illusion to create an apparition of a sexy female goblin. We were supposed to save some hostages from some orcs and goblins, so we used that illusion to take out two of the goblins stealthily while another player used a disguise kit to look like a full female orc. We managed to actually take all of the four goblins and two orc guards by tricking them with sex and then all jumping on them 😂
The best and worst part about this, is this is the standard for how illusion magic is used. For me, it's the best part!
My last campaign setting, there was a rumble that started in a tavern. Our high elf used the minor illusion cantrip to make a city watch wistle. One of the 5 Xanathar's gang member had a blade drawn, as soon as the recognizable pitch came across they withdrew their blade and were on edge to not be arrested. They soon withdrew the fight out of paranoia.
Had a campaign where I was a lvl 4 Paladin with the Oath of Vengeance. Was fighting against a horde of enemies I had sworn to destroy, but which was completely overwhelming the party. I didn't want to simply run away and let them live, but standing to fight would have been suicide, so we retreated and hoped to think of a solution. We were slowly retreating through a forest and running into a strong headwind with myself at the rear to protect from the pursuing horde, when I got an idea. As we neared to edge of the forest, I pulled out my sword and used a Searing Smite against a nearby tree with the intent of igniting it. I was told to roll to determine how effective this would be and got a natural 20, so the tree immediately burst into flames, and the strong wind then caused the fire to rapidly spread through the forest behind us, engulfing our pursuers, and about 40 miles worth of forestland beyond, so maybe a bit of overkill. But hey, "By Any Means Necessary" is one of the tenets of vengeance...
New spell suggestion -->
FOREST FIRE
Conjuration Cantrip
Casting Time: 1 ACTION
Range: 40 Miles
Components: V (By Any Means Necessary!), S (Striking a downwind tree with a source of fire), M (Flaming thingy)
Duration: About 3 days
Player makes a skill check DC 5 versus INT to come up with crazy idea and hopes that the wind doesn't change direction. Flammable objects in the area catch fire in a strong wind. Over the course of an hour a raging inferno consumes the forest in front of you along with any living creature in its path. Immunities and Resistance to fire based attacks apply. DM rolls d20 to determine if a Bugbear/Ranger with a hat shows up to track down the heinous person responsible.
There is no overkill. Only open fire and time to reload
-70 maxims for maximally effective mercenaries
“That bandit...in the jungle...did you find him?”
“yes.”
“how?”
“We burned the forest down.”
And at the moment you gain an vengeful fey spirit as your enemy. That bear smites those who don't prevent forest fires
pretty sure running away doesn't count as revenge lmao
One of the best unique tactics I've ever seen was in a game I DM'd. The party was fighting a nasty hag coven and not doing well. The monk was banished, and everyone else was down at least 2/3s hit points; then the bard got knocked into a pool of acid. The bard stood up and didn't immediately run out, but instead used thunder wave to toss an enormous amount of acid onto one of the hags which killed her; ending the banishment on the monk (who was Pissed, had 21 AC, at full health, and full ki), and removing the expanded spell list the hags got from being in a cover. That was undoubtedly the biggest momentum swing I've seen in a fight, and it came from the bard turning the hag's liar against them.
That is just badass
Awesome.
"Don't you know? Too much bard ruins the brew, Hag"
I hope he nailed the one liner potential.
Hags? Reminds me of the suplex a player did in a dnd i was watching lol
@@SuperGamefreak18 Could it have been the story from xp to level 3 with his curse of Strhad game?
@@warwerewolf777 I wasn't talking about that for one the guy I was talking about was a half-orc
Setting up things like ball bearings and caltrops is pretty huge too
Poisoned caltrops is even better
@@blazingshadow2669 I gotta try that now!
oiled ball bearings are better than normal ones,and if someone falls
fire
I was once part of a siege on a city, so before the siege even started, I found the angriest, meanest, craziest squirrel I could find, cast dragon’s breath on it, and let it loose in the city. I did this a couple of times to weaken the city before the siege.
My favorite thing to do as a Wizard, is to find creative ways to use my spells in a way that maximizes their potential in one slot. I remember surprising my DM by casting Erupting earth on the CEILING of an underground dungeon. The spell itself is kind of lackluster in terms of damage, but the fact that I can use it to cause an instant cave-in over my enemies always keeps my DM on edge. And I mean, to the degree that he sighs with relief when he finds out I didn't prepare it for that encounter XD
I also remember being in a very high level campaign, where our characters were facing down armies of giants. We found a large warband of Giants and orcs down in a northern valley. So what did we do? We stood on the ridge of a mountain and caused an avalanche to stop that army from advancing.
Fun times.
One of my favorite moments playing my sorcerer:
We were ambushed by a hag who killed two of our horses out from under us with an AoE spell, and I and the cleric were pretty close to making death saves.
A couple of rounds later, we put enough damage on the hag to cause her to hop on her broom and start escaping.
The bard missed with his crossbow, the cleric's spell was saved against.
The hag was about 60 feet up and 60 feet away. I did a quick Pythagorean formula and told the fighter (who was next) to ready a grapple on the hag. He was confused by did so.
I grabbed the fighter's belt, cast Thunderstep, and the fighter got a successful grapple on the hag as all three of us plummeted to the forest floor where we all went unconscious.
-
The bard applies a sword vigorously to the hag's neck and the cleric first aided the other two of us.
The DM was honestly expecting to be able to use that hag one or two more times against us, but took it well and my sorcerer got an inspiration point.
My very first adventure with my current main character involved a flaming airship. It involved undead and impersonators in the crew as well, and there we were at first level with no real solutions at hand... except to set the airship on fire so it had no choice but to land and let us escape. This worked, but we got all the blame for contaminating the city's water supply when the wreck crashed in the reservoir, undead and all. (We jumped out before the actual crash, from about 30 feet above the water, near the shore. It hurt, but we survived.)
The whole point had been to place us under some sort of debt that needed paying, so we'd go on adventures without needing to know the larger plot. Our solution, although far from the one the DM had imagined, still allowed him to steer the campaign in the desired direction. The larger plot was then revealed through the subsequent adventures, rather than being explained up front.
That was all under Pathfinder rules. Then we decided we'd rather give 5e a run (we were spending far too much time just trying to wrap our heads around the 3.5e rules) and rebuilt our characters as similarly as we possibly could and continued from there. The in-game explanation was "Someone powerful wished these changes into existence, so just run with them. Your memories are not defective, and you have not gone insane. The world just instantly changed around you, and you changed to accommodate it." Since we had all agreed to the changes, and they were only made to accommodate 5e mechanics, nobody really needed any explanation at all, but it was nice to have some way to handle it in character.
Regarding equipment, I came across an encounter in an indoor building. Looking around, there were a two chimneys, little ventilation, and no windows since it was involved in illegal activity. Wiped out the entire encounter by Misty Stepping onto the roof, and blocking the chimneys with the sleeping bag and spare clothes I just got in my starting gear. Walked through the building casually, with all the enemies dead to CO poisoning
Just recently, my friends and I were running a campaign, and our DM set up a mimic encounter. The mimic had disguised itself as a wine barrel in a large wine-storage room, and once discovered, we started trying to take it out. However, it managed to turn back into a barrel and dive back into the barrels to hide. Like the smart (or not so smart) player that I was, I used my tinderbox and lit up the barrels. They practically exploded and ended up forcing the mimic out and trapping us in the room with it, as the door was covered by flames. After the room started getting smoky and raging fire, our party's Goliath Druid used Create or Destroy Water and managed to help the flames die down while we started beating up on the mimic. It was a lot of just trying to murder the thing, however I feel like those first few turns were a perfect example of creative battling.
It was classic Magnificent 7 situation, and we were fairly low level. Orc raiders against a helpless farming village that was willing to pay everything they had. We had one week to prepare. We put up a shitty looking palisade, and got 16 villagers lined up behind it. No armor, just pitchforks, clubs, handaxes, and a couple shortbows. After the orcs' initial volley, they ran. Half of them followed the cleric into the general store, the rest went with the bard into the smithy. That's when everything turned. We'd laced the town square with pitfalls and hunting traps. Then, our wizard, hidden in the belltower of the chapel triggered phase 2.
We'd chosen those 2 buildings as fallback points because they both had big signboards on the roof, right over the front door. We piled logs and rocks behind them, and loosened the supports. The wizard used magic missile to take out the supports. Now the entrances were blocked with rubble, which crushed one orc outright (he took a crit from the bard's crossbow first). Inside the smithy, there were longspears, courtesy of our dwarf barbarian, which let the villagers attack from behind the barricade, and in the general store, there were vials of acid that the wizard had spent the week making.
Of course, some of the orcs rushed the belltower to get the wizard, only to have a giant bell fall on their heads. Which brings us to phase 3.
With half the attacking force injured by traps, the barbarian jumps out of the well in the middle of the village and does what barbarians do best, while the rogue comes out from behind the chimney on the roof of the tavern and starts sniping people.
Between the raging dwarf, elf sniper, wizard artillery, and a handful of peasants buffed by support casters, we were able to bring down 20 orcs with no losses. I mean, a few peasants went down, but we stabilized them and healed up after.
A creative combat my party used in our very first combat together came from our bard. I had sent my raven familiar (my character was a warlock of the pact of the chain) ahead to scout for traps and spotted one. It was a rolling boulder trap and we decided to purposely trigger from a safe distance. We knew that some goblins would come around soon to check it out, so we all hid. Except our bard. He chose to play dead beside the boulder. When the goblins came to investigate and gathered around the bard's "corpse", he sprung back up exclaiming "I'M NOT DEAD..." before using Shatter. He nearly wiped out all the goblins with that single spell, hurting himself in the process but still standing, and the rest of us came out of hiding and finished off the remaining goblins in a single round. When combat finished, the bard bowed an finished his line "... yet". That line has become a running gag for his character and established our love for the bard.
10:15 the dungeon dudes predicted the ant man meme
My friends never played D&D before, so I was going to DM them through Curse of Strahd before starting my own campaign with them. Figured something familiar to me, and full of monsters they would probably recognize was a good place to start. They meet Morgantha in Barovia, and when they realize that the pies are basically DMT: The Pie (one of them ate it then and there), they combined their gold and bought a lot of pies. Later they end up in Death House, and to keep the session interesting, I random-encountered in a group of ravens who burst through the observatory window, so they'd have to fight the birds AND deal with the fog getting in. They took out the pies, and readied their actions to pie the ravens in the face, knocking them all out. They get out of the room, tie up the birds, and then interrogate them when they woke up, and I had to come up with the reason they were there on the *fly*. I made them nice, and because of the pies, they couldn't fly and needed to get to Urwin in Vallaki (where they were to become wereravens but...backwards? I dont know I made it up) but it required the players to carry around these birds they saved until they got to Vallaki. Needless to say, it worked out really well for me as the DM because those birds provided an excellent plot hook for basically anything, and being natives to Barovia, they also chimed in with useful information about the location and foreshadowed some of the NPC's behavioral quirks they'd meet along the way. One of them will even become an NPC ally for the players later on, because they "saved the bird from the fog" and they were more willing to follow along with whatever the birds suggested than any plot hook available in the book, because they knew that it was all THEIR choices. It was THEIR work and THEIR creativity that afforded them that opportunity, so whenever it gets brought up, to them, it feels like a workaround.
tl;dr: Players enter Barovia, buy all of the Dream Pies from Morgantha, and then solve a problem by pieing everything in the face instead of directly fighting them. They pie a raven, who they interrogate who they form a bond with, protect, and carry halfway across the land to where he needs to go. Since they saved him, I'll have him save them later on, if they ever find themselves biting off more than they can chew. (something Barovia is known for.) and the game is that much better for it. My job got a lot easier because I let the players get creative with their solutions.
Last session I flanked a group of bandits by walking by a river that blocked my noise while my team talked to them. I then used sneak to get behind them and take them on with a surprise attack! I said something like "let's take everything they have" and the bandit leader without looking behind him yelled "yeah what he said!....wait" Killed two and the team killed the other two.
olearris that is perfect
Gotta love misdirection. Personally, if there’s high ground I’ll use myself (the ranger) to draw the enemy’s attention and/or fire away from my buddies, leaving them free to press ahead and complete the objective unopposed, then catch up with them afterwards. If the ground is flat, I might try to convince an ally with a shield or defense barrier to do the same thing. Make them focus on one guy who can avoid or tank their attacks, everyone else slips by, do what needs doing, and bug out.
My two favourite clever combat moments both came from running the Starter Set/Lost Mines kit with a group of D&D newbies:
- The first came when fighting the young green dragon. One of my players had previously procured a large quantity of illegal drugs, the strong kind, and when it came to fighting the dragon, when said character was hit with a bite attack, he used this opportunity to jump inside the mouth of the dragon, and essentially throw pure crack down its throat, causing it to spit him out and vomit out a load, also ruining its perception and constitution.
- The second came in the final fight against Nezznar the Black Spider. Simply put, when he came down into the cavern, flanked by several other giant spiders and waving around his staff and monologing, the party interrupted and started bullying him harder than you can imagine. It was harsh. They called him names, made fun of his spiders, his dumb cape, it went on for a while. By the time they actually let him start fighting, his heart wasn't really in the right place
For the DM who loves putting Lava/Magma (depending on where you are) everywhere in their boss rooms. May I introduce you to, the 'Mold Earth' Cantrip. Lava/Magma is just super heated earth and also loose. Thus 10d10 fire damage done at none of the cost of a spell slot. Just have your fighter, Barbarian, and monk to push them within 5 feet of the Lava/Magma!
I had a Monk paladin who would stack his smite with a ki attack for 30 feet of knockback. While it also did a lot of damage, the knockback is mostly what killed the target. 30 feet of knockback when a wall is 5 feet behind you is causing some damage. Sending someone flying through a window off a 3rd story building is a ton of damage, and allow for really cool roll playing.
Regarding the character who's out there maximizing damage in a battle that's not necessarily a to the death struggle, it's worth noting that the big burly barbarian who's smashing his way through the enemy makes an excellent distraction for the rogue who's picking locks on the cells holding the planned sacrifices and the wizard who's trying to decode the ritual markings to find out what the BBEG was trying to accomplish. If you're an average guard, regardless of species, you're probably going to focus all your attention on the big ball of murder rather than looking for sneaky guys.
Smart guards will spot the distraction for what it is, but if they're run of the mill orcs or gobs or undead or the like, probably not going to notice.
In this campaign i played in my friend the Druid picked Fog Cloud, and I was always like "that is never going to be useful" and then at one point he cast it, allowing me to run up while everything was disoriented and then warlock upcast burning hands and killing almost everything within it. I will never doubt a spell again unless it's true strike.
Playing a Bard who specialized in distraction tactics, I have 2 awesome encounters I was in.
1. We were going through a sewer, when I came face to face with a Troll peering through a hole at me. I cast Light onto its nose which blinded it long enough for us to rush by.
2. We needed to capture a villain, and our Neutral aligned Goblin Barbarian was about to slaughter him. So I rushed forward, splashed the enemy with oil, and threatened to light him up unless he surrendered.
I was a forge cleric and in my last encounter my group went up to this ruined looking building by the back entrance. I saw spiderwebs and heard scuttling. So I used searing smite on the web and burned the place down, knocking 2 giant spiders prone. After the session the DM said that was a really dangerous encounter and that there was actually 2 more spiders near the entrance but they ran away after i burned the place down. If i didnt do what I did my party would have likely been trapped in spiderweb against 4 giant spiders.
Two ideas, both related to what’s left of a carcass after the meat’s gone. One, use the guts to distract the wolf/bear/whatever and run while it’s busy eating. Two, string up the bones on a rope around the camp and make an alarm rattle a la Skyrim.
This is not a creative wway to carry the day in battle but more like a creative way to carry the day after failing in a battle that we were ambushed in.
Once my party got captured by a group of ogres and then woke up in a pit. My half orc barbarian (outlander background) talked to the ogres about the fact that he was a hunter and that instead of eating them he could show them how to hunt things even bigger than the ogres. Luckily even though my character's persuasion was poor, he was able to convince the ogres to give the party back their weapons and lead the group to some large animals. That large animals that we were lead to was a large pack of dinosaurs. My barbarian managed to convey the plan of the ogres using huge flaming torches to scare the dinosaurs and to draw one to the party so that we could slay it.
So while the ogres were busy distracting the rest of the dinosaurs our party quickly killed the sole dinosaur and then ran away from the group of ogres. Luckily enough time passed from when we started to flee that when the ogres noticed that we had run away they were unable to catch up to us.
I used my Loxodon’s trunk to breath fire. Elephants can hold up to 4 liters of fluid in their trunk. If you have oil on hand you can spew that over a torch.
I had a half-orc swashbuckler rogue who would collect every bone he could get his hands on. When ever possible, he would grind the bones down into smaller shards (not quite powdered but close) to use as a blinding powder.
In a different campaign 3 level 7 characters were able to kill 6 stone giants using levitate and hallucinatory terrain. Made a large chasm that separated us from them appear as flat ground, while our wizard cast levitate on himself and our barbarian gave him a push while he "ran" over the chasm. Needless to say stone giants walked to their deaths
In one of my campaigns, the half-elf magus (homebrew) enjoys throwing enemies' dead bodies at still living enemies. One session, the battlemaster climbed a tree to take potshots, an orog attempted to cut the tree down... and it turned out to be a treant. Cue 3rd party trying to kill the players and the orcs. Then the orc shaman (stretched the rules) used command to make the treant focus only on the PCs. Fun was had.
One thing I do as a fighter is go 2 levels into the blade singer wizard and pick up magic stones so for my ranged attacks I fling magic stones at people no to mention there is a whole ton of ways spells can be super useful to a warrior
I used a charisma check once to convince an injured bandit to flee. Mechanically speaking, I probably could have killed him just as easily, but it fit my character to spare him. Plus, he could come back one day as a grateful ally or an asshole wanting revenge.
I remember a game where as a rogue I was setting up a trap for a horde of orks sleeping down a hallway. A bag of ball bearings, a couple flasks of oil, and a torch later, Barbecue breakfast. Ensuing battle didn’t last long for the Orks. I seem to have a tendency to hit a level of evil when I play rogues.
One time I climbed up in the rafters of a tavern, carrying a portable ram. I'd attached it to a rope, and secured the other end of the rope to the rafters so I could "Home Alone" the next creature entering the front door. Turned into a one shot kill that worked twice before their allies decided not to use that door. Which bottled them up for the rest of the party to deal with.
I used a crow bar as an improvised weapon and I’m a rogue and I was within 5ft of an ally so I got sneak attack. It was so cool!
This reminds me of when Me and my party were about to lay siege on BBEG’s kingdom but they had a huge army of warforged so we decided to use glass flasks of oil then had a bunch of commoners from all the other kingdoms we had set free stay around the perimeter of the kingdom then had our pyrotechnic fire a bunch of makeshift fireworks into the kingdom and just kill anyone who tried to flee with the many archer towers We made and wheeled in avoiding all combat with the warforged but the BBEG had made a force Feild around the mane hold so we had to go in and stop him from preforming a ritual that would kill us all the fighter was about to attack but all the BBEG had to do is touch a magical stone to another magical stone and it would start so we all pushed him of the ledge (we knew his health was high enough to survive) then our wizard used fire bolt to shoot it out of his hand then the ranger pulled out his flintlock rifle and shot the BBEG in the head dealing maximum damage blowing his head straight Off I guess the BBEG really was just the commander not a warrior which The whole party liked and it made for a great end to the campaign
Here’s a strategy that I’ve devised, but you need to be prepared to fight multiple medium to small creatures, likely orcs. In the scenario of a raid of a building have the strongest character post up on the side of a door that pushes into the building. Then, after 1 orc walks in close the door, and team up against the one guy. It’s likely the door might be busted down, but it’s still a good bottleneck.
Explore a dungeon, find small dead-end rooms. Get an enemy's attention while the party hides near the dead-end room. Run like hell. Get into the room while the enemy is in chase. Meld Into Stone to the dead-end room's floor. Wait for the sound of the enemy running in, or allies calling out, preferably have allies trap said enemy inside the dead-end room with a door, other spell, or simply with their bodies. Cast Spirit Guardians while inside the floor. Spirit Guardians lasts for 10 minutes. If the little room is small enough, creates a little death-closet in the enemy's own dungeon with enough time to rot or burn them away.
My party ruined a hag in a horrible way. She was working with a large pot of boiling oil, the wizard rolled high on stealth and snuck up behind her, also beat her in initiative, so 2 attacks before she could go. First attack was a lightning bolt, nailed her hard, and also as lightning bolt does, lit the oil on fire. Second turn, ran up and shoved her face first into the pot, and rolled a nat20. She went up to her waist submerged, took a crap load of damaged, eyes burned out, and now covered in burning oil. She rolled around on the floor screaming in agony for a few rounds before she burned to death, wizard stood there and watched
I did basic bio warfare. I had to fight what I presume was some sort of orc holy warrior of Grumsch
with a greathammer(2d8 bludgeoning) on the grounds of he'll raid local farms and shit if I don't, oh and I'm a dwarf so he hates me more. I previously got almost KO'd by a goblin so did not believe in my abilities.
I took out a bucket that I had, got to a private spot and took a dump in it, sharpening my sword while doing so. I coated my sword in my dwarvish stool and pissed in the bucket, then walked to a small arena where we were to fight, bucket and sword in hand.
At the start of the fight I threw the bucket of dirty tricks at the orc with a Nat 20. The bucket hooked on his nose and landed right on his head, coating him in foul play. I disarmed him with a maneuver after he got a hit or two in on me and he decked me and started praying. After he started chanting I dropped my sword, grabbed his hammer and started swinging and he summoned a divine warhammer.
It was a close thing, with the damn greenskin succumbing to "poison damage" on the ground and me with 5 hp left. I lined up a swing and pulverized his head, coating me and my surroundings in blood and dwarven justice.
I doubt I will be able to get away with that one again.
Bag of flour + Arrow(or hard impact) + fire bolt or arrow = BOOM! Look up flour bombs. Scary stuff.
I'm running a pirate game the party has now realized shatter can make holes in the deck of a ship and well it makes ship boarding easier
Good tips, dudes!
I just created an new chapter in my tips for dungeon masters document, to write down all these ideas.
"More than just fighting: additional goals that make combat more engaging..."
Some people don't like D&D resting system a cool down system could replace it.Although I like it better as is.18 chips for a long rest 10 for a short rest when any enemy escapes a battle you are duped by a puzzle or you loose respect in a cultural encounter one chip.two chips for sound outcomes.When the slot is full you may use it it does not over fill.
A: Is it a tro- "don't worry about it"
B: "If the players face a troll they will know to use fire against it next time"
Well...
My DM was pretty cool about letting me do this but I had an open hand monk. I launched the character over a ditch with my flurry blows. I then ran to him while he was still in air and with my other flurry of blows knocked his flying body into the ditch lions barrage style. (Only allowed it because I called before the flurry of blows and succeeded on an acrobatics check cause I'm dexy baby. )
I one time poisoned a lych with psychedelic drugs
>Be Tabaxi Monk.
>Be stealthy.
>Really like Grappling.
>Start kidnapping enemies for interrogation and thinning out numbers before the actual fight.
>Profit.
Snake, but he's a cat
One time my cleric (first time trying one) imploded a creature!
In his head that's how it went anyway. The spell reflected back and imploded me, instead.
My favorite way to die so far.
Pay attention to your spell duration, this is what happens when you think Death Ward runs an hour a level instead of a minute lol
In one game we got caught more or less in a trash comactor with a real high ceiling, so my sorcerer flies the monk up and he used his shadow step ability to bypass the door and open it from the other side.
I dm most games and always made use of magic and terrain to full advantage. Once had a caster npc use sleet storm, summon skeleton archers in middle as well as grapple the players predictable full charge at her.... Tisk tisk did not end well for them
I know this is an older video and I may not get a response. What if the DM is over planning when you are having to clear everything with them and it starts to feel like the DM is just planning against you? What do you do then?
Go Owlbears!!!!!!!
Old rules. Party was way outnumbered. Old style Bard did rock to mud and sunk everyone into a foot of mud then reversed the spell to turn mud to rock. The whole other party took massive damage.
Last session, I convinced an ogre to smash all his orc companions. Then he joined our party.
Why is it taboo to look at creatures in the monsters manual?
I get that some people may use the information to change strategy but if you are just looking to see what it looks like what it can do and stuff like that, I don’t get the issue
It's questionable while in an encounter when the DM is trying to let people feel out the situation. If you can say 'it's a BLAH, weak to THING, only has NUMBER stats,' that takes a lot of the excitement away.
@@Reepicheep-1 yeah I agree that if you look and then just straight up tell people everything about it that you are being an arse but I can know something about a creature and not act on it and if it’s something I think my character might know I’d ask the dm and if they say no then just go on as if I didn’t know
3:48 monty martin slaps the mic
Oh, this guy has a pole arm! Guess I'll pepper them with arrows from a distance...
*gets hit by Firebolt*
... NO ONE SAID THERE WERE ELDRITCH KNIGHTS WITH THE ENEMY!
Sun Tsu: Know thyself, but not thy enemy, find victory and defeat in equal measure.
I once ground up glass and threw it into the eyes of enemies. Probably the worst thing you can do.
Create bonfire is a cantrip with infinite Utility
I had vivid critical role flashbacks at 13:45.
is there a way you can set up paying for patreon 6mo or a yr at a time?
Try to grab sand and throw in the eyes of the opponent. Try to impose disadvantage for a single turn.
mold earth in combat? yeah..5 cubic feet of dirt is 125 sqft. 5 foot high, 25 foot long castle wall complete with murder slots for shorter casters and archers and ramparts up top. fighters guards the end.
if you have time, you can make a triangle with you inside and shoot out.
Creativity is a weapon. Those who lack it are the first to die.
- Goblin Slayer
... Now I want o go watch Goblin Slayer again... for the third time...
RUBY DA CHERRY I do not agree with your opinion, but thus you are still entitled to your opinion and so I respect it.
Which is funny because all of the other people at his rank don't do anything but blindly swing lol
@RUBY DA CHERRY It wasn't the best but it did had that feeling of having a DnD player either using smart tactics, such as smoking out the ennemy in a cave, or trying to cheese the rules, "hey what happens if i trap an ennemy between two wall of force" and "hey lets link the gate scroll to the bottom of the sea, its like having instant high pressure water".
Mr_Dragon right? Murder hobos the guild XD
Never underestimate the power of pocket sand. Never.
Pulverized glass is even deadlier.
I never though of that. Ow.
@@darienb1127
Oh yeah, factually/historically correct ninja weapon. Causes instantaneous blindness and respiratory damage.
And most villages have a mill that the player can use to grind the glass into powder.
Speaking of ninjas, do you have any good sources on them? I've been wanting to learn more about them for a long time. And it would be fun to play a proper ninja character.
@@darienb1127 depends on what you mean by ninja if you mean the assasin types then look toward the chinese with jiang ke (i think thats how it's spelled) or if you mean what the hisorical role of ninja's then were talking about information gathering through espionage and deceit for a lord that you serve
11:02 “only in a forest where there’s trees”
Oh no I seem to have found myself in one of those treeless forests
I totally noticed that when I edited this episode, gotta watch out for those treeless forests.... they are the most dangerous.
Dungeon Dudes what if the trees are all mimics and that’s why it’s called the treeless forest
Maybe the Treeless Forest is the ghostly remains of an ancient elven forest that was swallowed by the Shadowfell, and now all that remains are shadows without trees?
@@DungeonDudes Gentlemen. I am a fantasy author, and I will credit the 2 of you with that when I use that locale in my fantasy world.
@@DungeonDudes That... would actually be creepy as hell, especially if all the sounds and motions of the trees and birds and the like remained, but only via their shadows
we had a party with two barbarians a while back. one of them kept a shield on his back that he never used with a metal step nailed into it. He'd charge in the enemies face, and at a word he'd take a knee, and the dwarf barbarian would run up, get a boost off his back, flip over the baddy, smack him in the face, and suddenly be behind him. It was a pretty good move.
I love that idea. It's great, I often wonder how to make things like that matter though, because, to get behind the baddie, the dwarf could easily just, run around him. This move only works if the dwarf for some reason is just a few feet short on movement. which is unlikely to be an issue, Flanking is always a flawless move, but again, whats the point of jumping over him like that when you could just walk around him on your turn. Other than it looks fucking cool. it things like that when we need to use the optional moral system in the dungeon masters guide, however, since its a rarely needed thing, its pointless to use for that one instance. So, its up to the DM to think of a creative bonus to give to you for executing such a maneuver, and i'd even say that, since it doesnt really add anything by doing it that you couldnt get by using normal movement, what i normally do is, i say roll acrobatics, and if you pass the check, your move was so flashy, you get a free follow up attack.
@@Kugrox By doing this, the baddie won't be able to hit the dwarf with an opportunity attack. But if he would just walk around him, he could. So it's actually a pretty good idea.
@@RileyGrove Walking around an enemy doesn't trigger opportunity attacks if I remember correctly. Only if you LEAVE his meelee range while walking around him.
@@Kugrox It looks cool, nothing else is needed
Does this require an athletics roll on the part of the dwarf ?
while stealth is great, beware of the Colville Screw: you stealthed your way all the way into the heart of the dungeon/castle, but set off the alarm at the very end. Now instead of exploring the dungeon room by room, the entire dungeon comes to explore you.
The group I DM for did this the other night. Considering I knew the outcome I suggested and eventually pretty much moving from DM to complete OOC metagaming mode. "Are you 100% sure you are wanting to sneak up the chimney like fissure solo and attack the boss that has a dozen enemies surrounding him." After the player went and did it anyways the entire dungeon came alive as the 5 goblins chased him down the chimney and the bugbear and his posse of extras starting clearing rooms throughout the dungeon. I think my players now have a healthy fear of bugbears after that night of gameplay.
@@GM_Ryu The best part of being a DM is to traumatize the players when they do something stupid.
@@GM_Ryu Was that mines of phandelever and the cragmore hideout battle, by any chance?
@@robertcox9871 it was, my players after all these sessions now understand this is not Skyrim. The monsters actually have the ability to think, and most of them have self preservation instincts. They now are afraid of dragons more then they are bugbears. I killed 3 of them 3 weeks back with Venomfang's breath attack.
They completely ate of Venomfang's words and walked right into his lair with weapons down expecting parley. What happened was the dragon slithered around and managed to reposition himself to nail the entire group, effectively surprise round for 59 points of poison damage. 3 instant deaths.
They now know don't trust the honeyed words of a green dragon.
@@GM_Ryu Just wondering, is there anything the players could have done to prevent being killed after they entered the lair and saw the dragon, or was it all a forgone conclusion? And how did those 3 players react to their characters dying in that way? Were they mad about it?
Funny you guys posted this, because I just had an argument with my DM and players because they said I was Metagaming when asking how a creature we were fighting looked. We had been hitting this guy for quite a while, had a few crits and cool moments, and they were still going strong. So I asked my DM how he was looking after all of that and my other players just started groaning saying that I need to stop meta gaming by asking questions about how you attacks are affecting them, so I'm glad to see I'm not crazy.
I do not see how asking what your character is seeing and how the attack is affecting the creature is meta gaming.
I had no idea it was considered metagaming to use your eyes in-game. Lol.
What were you guys even fighting?
Your DM and fellow players have both fucking clue what meta gaming actually is.
Sizing up your enemy after/during/before combat is an incredibly important bit of information.
Xan4591 some custom made giant psychic space werewolf. He was pretty cool. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t resisting our damage or anything
I remember once that I was an Evoker and a pirate ship's captain, once some scurvy dogs tried to board us but we all hid beneath the deck, the ship looked like a ghost ship but the lights inside were lit and my animated skeletons were acting as corpses of this place's crew, it became a psychological horror movie for the enemies when everytime they came near a little flame that became a big, roaring and flaming dinosaur, the skeletons made noise and moved everytime they didn't look, and when tension was on it's peak, our bard did Major Image to make the appearance of a ghost and a terrifying noise,
Those guys fled faster than a scared cheetah
Brilliant! You sir are brilliant!
epic
Same scenario I played through, except my party were the pirates attacking the ship. As the ships came into proximity, our cleric began turning undead from the bow of our ship, with no effect. We slowly glided within range. It was all very tense, and none of us knew how we were going to manage this... In the long run, the other pirates revealed themselves and their rouse, and ultimately their Captain became my henchman, and the Ghostwood Pirates and their "haunted" flagship became part of our fleet.
Took "skeleton crew" a bit literally, huh?
Always pick up some bag of flour. You can use it to the ground to find invisible ennemies, use it to detect trapps or throw it to an ennemie for distraction
Flour can help find invisible enemies depending on how it's used, but you can't just throw a handful at an enemy because anything on the enemy's body *also* becomes invisible.
Flour is also explosive, which is great for improvising fiery traps!
Drew Teter You could slice it open and poor some onto the floor, waiting for them to come close (If they use melee)
Absolutely, I just said you had to be careful about how you did it.
Also a good improvised fireball if you can get it dispersed finely in the air, then cast a firebolt into it. Good times.
I often use shatter to bring the roof down on enemies.... it’s a lifesaver
I am right now in a underground dungeon and hope to use shatter on some supports
ToFastNinj how'd it go?
Isn’t a cave in a bad idea in a cave you are in?
Rocks fall, everyone dies has new meaning once the player does it, doesn’t it?
the description I found for shatter is it's just a loud noise. Does it shake the roof apart or something
Most outrageous, devious weapon I've ever come across in D&D:
You need a quantity of ballista bolts, magically shrunk down to the size of crossbow bolts.
You fix a ring of Dispel Magic onto the end of a crossbow, so the bolts will pass through it when fired.
You now have a hand-portable ballista.
depends on if your DM ignores physics with momentum or not...
As a DM if I allowed it I'd say that as the bolt leaves the ring the weight of the projectile would increase and in turn increase the momentum/speed as if fired from a full size ballista. Because that is an awesome idea and I like the Rule of Cool.
@@brianbaxley5921 the issue is it would very quickly become pretty op
@@masterreaper115 Ohh I agree thats why I said if I allowed it, and I would also put a percentage chance of something going wrong and say that perhaps the bolt jams halfway through falling on the wielder of the crossbow and damaging /incapacitating them for so many rounds. I believe in everything having consequences good or bad.
Increase its crit fail rate to nat 3’s and below... then roll a 50% to see if it breaks the ring
Barrels of holy water from a catapult into an undead horde was a lot of fun.
In another system, where zombies were immune to bludgeoning damage, it was an equally fun tactic to load THEM into the catapults, and fire them over the walls. >;)
That's effective
I bless the rain!
“Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.”
― Sun-tzu
Thanks for the tips guys! Awesome, as always :)
I prefer: A true victory is ensuring that your enemy realizes it was wrong to oppose you in the first place. To force them to acknowledge your greatness. - Gul Dukat from ST:DS9
I think we all know what's best. To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of the women.
To be fair, I tend to ask a bunch of questions about the environment so I have a complete plan in mind when I ask my DM if that plan would work. What also ends up happening is the other players now have a better idea of what the area looks like.
Are there barrels? Heavy tippable bookshelves? A chandelier to swing from? We didn’t know there was a giant tapestry on the wall until I asked, and we ended up trapping a Beholders eyestalks with it, which is probably why nobody went down in that battle.
Five weeks into playing a Bugbear Barbarian, I have thrown enemies out of windows, knocked a huge bookshelf onto an evil wizard, later tossed the same wizard into the fire elemental he’d summoned, and thrown a tapestry over a Beholder and grapple-hugged it with its main eye against my chest as it spammed its antimagic field on my magic free warrior self. Meanwhile my comrades beat on it like a piñata. We ended up shoving dynamite into its mouth to finish it off.
Her philosophy is “the best weapon against someone I don’t like is another person I don’t like.” She’ll pick up a goblin in each hand and use them like clubs against their other goblin friends.
Best character I’ve ever played.
Haha, that's amazing :D
Personally, I play a hobgoblin barbarian that wouldn't mind being used as a club.
Grievous harm with a body? Never a bad idea.
Awesome
That's so cool!
- Any monster worth using once is worth using twice.
- Giggles in tarrasque
Wait-
-giggles in Titan
-giggles in great old ones
*thought I'd provide a few more snickers to your fun!
Well, look at the context, he's talking about non-unique monsters ofc, so for example, Great Old One won't fit, for example
About the tarrasque, the way it is, he's a bad monster, if you play very under the rules
There is some simple fixing to it anyways, but either you don't think on making a tarrasque a monster which will appear as an entity more than once on the world or if you use it more than once, it becomes very mundane and bad (the way he is written for now)
It's an opinion ofc
@@Veio0000 twas a joke mate. I agree though in practice unique monsters should be special. For example if it appears twice it could be the bbeg (hopefully not a tarrasque)
One of the prominent gods in my world's pantheon is always the god of adventure whose bless permeates the world rewarding those who take unusual risks. Dropping that chandelier might do more damage than it probably should. Setting up a logswing trap to knock the 5-ton Golem into Lava might actually move him further than usual. Force feeding the prone giant in a tight tunnel a potion of growth might just knock him straight unconscious! The Changebringer rewards change :)
That's a beautiful way for a DM to set up a universe that rewards creativity. If I ever DM, I might give the players this bit of lore.
A DnD Tzeentch?
One of my favorite battle encounters came from when I was playing a low level paladin, and it was against a swarm of rats. In imagination, it seemed weird for her to use a sword or great axe against a swarm of tiny monsters, and we were in a house, so I used improvised weapons for a few rounds as I grabbed tables and chairs to smash them, and then they swarmed me so I asked the DM if I could just "stop, drop, and roll" as my attack. I used myself as an improvised weapon and it was hands down one of my favorite moments in D&D.
That's awesome!
"look at the environment"... i think my character spent more time smashing walls than people.
His mantra is "When in doubt, Demolition"
I once used a grappling hook to pull a beholder closer to us so I can hit it, a polearm fighter I had no range hahaha
Thats incredible.
GET OVER HERE!
Diviner, Moon Druid, Swords Bard, Old one Tome Warlock.
We were just about screwed when the beholder looked our way.
Then, I remembered I had an Eversmoke bottle. No sight, no targeting; anti magic cone won't work on non magical smoke.
The bite attack of the beholder is quite pitiful. The fire elemental punches are not.
Batclaw
Once had an Arcane Trickster take the catapult spell to improve the range and damage of his throwing knives. It's simple, creative, and worked wonderfully. It also added a need for him to conserve daggers, as catapult damages the thrown item as well. It also mean he could throw from multiple angles or re-use missed shots, as catapult doesn't require you to touch the object you throw.
Chris Wiet
As a fellow Arcane Trickster, here’s a tip for you. Those daggers you always carry, just attach a rope to the end. Adjustable range, instant grappling hook, and a good way to choke out an enemy by piercing them and wrapping it around them like a noose.
@@n-signia1087 A rope sounds kinda heavy for that, wouldn't string work better? I guess it might be a DMs-may-vary thing.
I had a warforged wielding a fully stacked staff of the magi when the Tarrasque attacked us. It roared at us and forced us to roll fear check, I passed. I asked the DM if I could misty step into his mouth, he said yes. I asked if I could move down the throat using difficulty terrain as movement. He ok'd 10ft at most with my haste spell being active. Then I broke the staff for a retribution strike. Because this was "inside" the Tarrasque, the DM ruled that the damage would be the full 16x50=800 damage as if it had broken the staff itself. Good way to go.
well, one way to overkill a terrasque
Your sacrifice has been noted. I shall place a fountain in a village dedicated to your selfless act.
@@mojoschmee9320 There'll be pigeons crapping on a statue of you in town for the rest of eternity.
I discovered in a dungeon that these Little Rock swarm creatures were attracted to light, I cast dancing lights about 60ft in front of the party and we had ourselves a vanguard. I would put the dancing lights inside someone and the swarm thought they ate the light and attacked them, using this we killed a mummy, magic sword and magic armour at level 2 using this trick
I was playing a grappler with a ton of HP but nearly no damage. I used my Necklace of Adaptation to grab their heavy armored damage dealer, and dropped us to the bottom of a large pool. A couple of rounds letting him beat me up underwater until he drowned.
In a war of attrition the more durable subject is the one that survives
It was the first big boss fight of our group, and we were fighting kobolds that had tons of armor and these Attack on Titan grappling hook gun things. I, the fire genasi barbarian, am shot, with the grappling hooks stuck through my abdomen. The kobolds laugh, thinking the barbarian is restrained. As I rage I scream "I am not stuck in here with you, you are stuck in here with me!". I proceed to grab the wires and swing one of the kobolds around the room like a flail, before flinging it into the corner, ripping the hooks out and charging the other, which I proceeded to suplex I believe.
fishisyum cool bro, which barbarian subclass you were and do you recommend me to play as a barbarian
@@bosnjodobri8260 I was playing a totem barbarian, but storm herald is also pretty cool, and I totally recommend playing Barbarian.
kobold flails!
Always kill the leader first and see how the underlings react
Fine, you and all the party focus their melee, ranged and magic attacks on the Big Rat Man with the staff.
*Rolls*
Ok, the Big Rat Man falls to his knees, and drops his staff, loosing control of all the 15 swarms of rats that are surrounding you in the sewers. Now all of them are enraged, attack twice on their turn and deal an extra +2 damage on every attack.
@Witchfinder Nielsen Sleep and then tie them all up and guess who has expertise in Torture tools, my Death Knight.
Kugrox heh my necromancy school wizard would like to get info the *“traditional way”* so... tie em to a chair, arms strapped to the arms, legs to the legs, couple of nails, a simple hammer, pliers, couple of healing potions, spare the dying, etc. remove the boots and socks, fit a nail between the translucent nail and flesh, aim, WHACK, twist the nail, ask the dm how bad they hurting, heal as needed, rinse and repeat till info is obtained. Then for the finishing blow, caress the poor fuckers head, then cast inflict wounds (because magic initiate) and just turn their head into red, wet, pasty, sand. If tongue remains, cut it out and burn it, leave no trace.
I made a dungeon once where the acolytes prayers would drastically heal the big bad. Therefore trying to switch things up and make my players go for the minions first for once lol
"Ha ha, we have slain your evil leader!"
"You -- you ... do-gooders! We will have our revenge!"
"Sure, just one question first. Who's paying your salary now?"
"Oh. Um. Hmm..."
I've thought of an idea for a boss fight where the players have to fight a powerful golem, but none of their attacks can hurt it. Instead, they have to use the traps and hazards in the environment to defeat it.
I would be careful about that.
Don't get me wrong it isn't nessesarily a bad idea but completly removing a plausibe way for the PCs to win and restrict them usually only comes off as railroady. I would suggest you just make it super resistant towards a fair bit of things but the solution of killing it with their weapons or their spells as they are used to is still plausible just annoying as all hell.
I mean what if every single trap had already been disarmed by your PCs so they didn't have to worry about them when fighting the boss beforehand?
or what if non of them had prepared spells that could damaged the roof so it would collaps on the monster?
Having only 1 solution to a problem very rarely end well. It will usually just end with annoyed PCs that find it to be bullshit that nothing they are trying are working.
How about have the Golem itself be invulnerable (or very resistant) but have some other things that the players can attack that harm the Golem when they are destroyed. Like maybe 5 lesser constructs. When one of the lesser constructs is destroyed make it clear to the players that the Golem has been hurt (it staggers or whatever). Once all the lesser constructs are destroyed then the main Golem can be harmed far more easily. Environmental attacks and traps are cool but should be an option rather than the only way to win. The players spend a lot of time designing their characters and choosing cool abilities and spells. Encounters where you cannot use those abilities are often frustrating for the players.
...you’ll still have an idiot that wants to clang n bang with it instead.....
Definitely make sure everyone's on board with that first.
You could reason that the Golem is adaptable and can only be harmed by something once. Once the players realize this after doing all their normal attacks they will have to resort to the environment.
My regular gaming group naturally fell into the strategies you have mentioned. We used to joke about how the DM would have enemies take a step to the left as the group as a whole would focus fire on enemies from our left to the right unless there was a spell caster. After the first 2 or 3 years of gaming together the DM / GM would always have the big bad boss appear to the far right of the party so they would not get focused down too fast on a big encounter. Obviously the big bad had heard of us and had learned that we tend to kill from our left to the right when attacked.
Thank you for this Good Stuff.
My favorite tactic to this day:
We were in an arena, fighting a roc. As it banked around, my wizard flew up into its flight path, seemingly about to meet the monster head-on with her sword. And then...
Casts wall of force right in front of her. The roc slammed into the wall like a bird hitting a window and died from the impact.
I need friend's who like to discuss tactics.
Let the players describe any action they want a long as it can be resolved within the rules.
And sometimes, give them a bonus if the idea deserves the rule of cool.
Someone once described a long series of action in a Dungeon Dude video and a viewer responded as to how you could actually do it. Run up the monster's back = Acrobatics check and difficult terrain modifiers. Hit the monster = attacks as normal. Flip off his back = Another Acrobatics check followed by a Dash action (the PC was a Rogue using their Cunning Action). And, most importantly, it looked cool as hell!
Grease + Campfire= flash fire 10ft square.
Grease + Stairs + Gust= effective pushing down stairs.
Grease + Cold effect= frictionless patch of land that gets more dangerous as it thaws until it is 100% "liquid" again.
I love the Grease spell and have spent hours on thinking up how best to use it.
Immovable rods work best horizontally in a vertical space all you need are 2 or 3 and you can "fly" also.
Grease the big apes in the treetops so they fall to their deaths. Grease the area in front of the door the enemy is trying to break through, they can forget that.
Grease love!
Why not Grease+ sloping mountain trail? My players did that to a mad stone giant wandering the Underdark
Just had a combat session where we made very good use of Grease + fire vs a gaggle of trolls
grease and fireball..... you try to dodge the fire--- you slip,,,
hey you should try the control flames and create bonfire cantrips with grease.I find that the best way to cause forest fires to take out entire armys chasing you. For example this one campaign (homebrew) the party "accidentally" assasinated the kings son in a snowball fight (I was The rougue and had a dagger in my sleeve which flew out and killed him) and the king wanted us dead and our mage created a forest fire to kill half the kings pursuing army.
"Communicate your intent". THIS. I've had players specify an action and then when I adjudicate it, they say something like "Aww, I was hoping it would cause *** to happen". Well if you would have told me your intention, I would have had that happen, or given it some sort of chance, or changed the DC to determine if it happened. Sometimes I get the idea that they want a certain affect, and will ask what they are intending, but I'd prefer they tell me what they want to achieve or to happen. I want to see that cool stuff happen too.
My group is full of creative thinkers and we just try stuff dont really ask just kinda do. Like i used minor illusion to calm an agressive opponent by using his own voice in his ear telling him to calm down that we where not there to kill him we havent even drawn weapons
Captured by PIrates, my evil Bard convinced them he had a massive score planned and would cut them in on it if they freed us and helped us pull it off. They were heading to a Slaver's palace to sell us and my plan was we sell the whole crew into slavery then rob the place from the inside. I convinced them our party needed to be on the outside since we knew the secret way in. We arrived, sold the crew, sold the ship, and left with a very healthy profit.
Unfortunately, after that not even the party ever trusted another one of my characters again.
That's a shame, because you played an evil PC perfectly: not fucking over the party, just for shits and giggles. The characters may not trust yours, but the players should trust you, in my opinion.
In our original game, our DM placed us in a situation where we sould have only been able to retreat. 20ish goblins all gathered at 1 spot with bows drawn ready to annihilate our 2nd level party. There were pots of hot soup scattered throughout the room. I had my rogue sneak around the corner, shoot a pot of hot soup, spilling it on all the goblins, distracting them enough so that our sorcerer could come in and burning hands them all, wiping out most of them and allowing us to actually fight and win rather than run. We referenced it later as an inside joke as "the soup thing"
Did you roll for initiative?
@@tvrdy3 i rolled sleight of hand for my rogue and beat them out and got ott the shot from around the corner without being seen.
One time, our party was being chased through some dwarven ruins by some drow. Our fighters were able to lift a portcullis for us to get through, then i cast invisibility on the portcullis, causing the drow to run right into it. We ended up escaping up a well, and when the first drow head appeared, our fighter ran towards the well and holding his shield in front of him, belly flopped on the well, sending the drow back down the well.
In one game at a Con, all our elves were charmed to kill the rest of us, so i used my Eversmoking bottle with a hose connected to a nozzle in the right sleeve of my robe. I used the Eversmoking bottle slow down the combat while one of the others opened doors in the room to set off the dispel magic spell.
Most DM's will allow you to know about a monster, if you make a relevant knowledge check and one of my DM's will allow you read the MM entry, if you make a good enough knowledge check!
The invisible portcullis reminds me of a grievance I have with the Invisibility spell. In my opinion it SHOULD have provisions for also making "objects" invisible (limited to a certain size and nature of course) but if you are to take the 'Rules As Written' there is ONLY an allowance to turn a creature invisible - no objects. There are means of achieving this with creative uses of much higher level spells but it seems like such a waste of a higher spell slot to achieve something that (in my opinion) should be achievable with the Invisibility spell. If I were DMing a game I would home-brew it to allow it to apply to objects but I'd still love to see this tweaked in a Player's Hand Book errata somewhere down the track.
Having one party member shot an arrow or throw a knife into an enemy then casting heat metal on it, that's a good one
Our druid dropped a spoon infront of a gelatinous cube which absorbed it. He then cast heat metal on the spoon and cooked the cube from the inside out.
A knife might work, but heat metal requires you to see the metal. The arrow head would be well out of sight.
@@AdrianParsons It is unusual, but you can have a shaft out of metal.
@@peterhacke6317 So the key is prep work?
I remember I was roleplaying a gladiator stage fighter who longed for a fair fight so I decided to throw my weapon down and roll persuasion to get a decently powered enemy to throw his weapons down and “fight me like a man”
I respect creative solutions, but there's always a certain high I get when landing a really good fireball...
My lvl 5 friends decided to shrink a boulder to a pocket size pebble, used a raven companion to fly above the miniboss I prepared for them, drop the stone, unshrink it and deal massive dmg... well, the raven rolled nat 20 on the drop... hit the poor boss right on the head with a 1 ton boulder xD they just had to fight the confused minions XD
Nicely done! Out of curiosity, what spell/effect did they use to shrink the boulder?
@@adreabrooks11 Reduce/Enlarge spell, ig.
@@justajarro Nah, Reduce only shrinks the dimensions by half and the weight by 1/8. That laden swallow's airspeed velocity would be zero. -_^
That said, I must have remembered this tactic, somewhere in my subconscious. I forgot asking this question but, a few months ago, we were fighting a band of powerful zealots, trying to call a dark god in from another dimension. My character (an owl beastfolk, capable of flight) happened to own a Daern's Instant Fortress. Apparently, a 20x20x30 adamant tower falling out of the sky makes it hard to maintain spell concentration... or breathing.