What do you do to adjust encounters on the fly during combat? Nerdarchy's Out of the Box Encounters ▶▶ www.kickstarter.com/projects/nerdarchy/out-of-the-box-encounters-for-5th-edition PATREON BENEFITS ▶▶ www.patreon.com/thedmlair CHEAP D&D ADVENTURES I'VE CREATED ▶▶ www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/11812/Luke-Hart
If you're going to have an npc(s) save the day, set it up beforehand, make it a helms deep scenario Then instead of the players feeling like they failed and a cool npc came to rescue them, they feel like they succeeded by surviving long enough for the cavalry to arrive. If they do better than expected have the cavalry arrive too late to help, only to find the enemy unexpectedly vanquished
Actually, I use the "NPC rescuer" a bit creatively. Mainly by having low level NPCs show up from Town A (this is a rough example) because they heard the fighting. Most times these guys are just cannon fodder BUT it allows the players to not take hits and thus keep them in the fight longer. It's never "so and so shows up and just yeets your ass out of the fire" but more like "a group of concerned peasents have shown up to help you rid the village of its goblin problem". This isn't a perfect example but it's an example nonetheless. I even do a little back and forth too where the monsters may get a few reinforcements with waves of them coming and waves of peasants. Most of my players (who are fairly aytypical players) do like this because it gives them a sense of grandeur when they finally win across the bodies of the monsters and peasants.
If I use waves I mostly spread them out as I see fit instead of having a hard amount of rounds or an event that triggers them. Often it is enough to send the next wave one round earlier or later to get back to the desired difficulty. I also often use roleplaying to balance encounters and often even preplan that like a bunch of stupid hill giants would often defeat my players when they encounter them, but because they are stupid they use ineffective tactics or start arguing with each other or fall for fimple tricks and become much easier to defeat making the players feel even better about they victory as they used their better tactics to defeat somthing actually stornger than themselves. And I have to say that I use that NPC thing - but mostly as a plotpoint or storytelling device like the low level group of pcs is tasked with holding a part of the wall of a city. They barely manage to do so for some rounds and then the reinforcements arrive being lead by an important NPC who then can be used for roleplaying or to deliver plothooks.
DM: The six of you happen upon a pair of kobolds looting a wrecked cart on the side of the road ... Players: Only two? GET THEM CHARGE !!! *players get led on a foot race with the kobolds* DM: The kobolds dip into a vine and moss covered cave in the side of a hill. What do you do? Players: It's only kobolds. They might have treasure! Lone cautious player: Guys, we're still level 1 ... Other 5 Players: Nah we got this! They're weak creatures only 1/8th CR. Shinies here we come!!! *DM plays kobolds as pack tacticians. Secret passages to fire at players from across pit traps. Splashing oil onto the players burning torches. The entirety of the warrens has traps and dead ends. Kobolds attacking and retreating repeatedly. Players barely crawl out alive dragging half of them out unconscious. Might have killed a single kobold and wounded another. Left with no spells, no treasure, and no supplies* **12 levels later** DM: The six of you happen upon a pair of kobolds looting a wrecked cart on the side of the road ... Players: Have they noticed us yet? DM: *rolls* ... No they haven't Players: Okay we all back away slowly and go in a different direction ...
Just remember players tend to have a bad way of measuring combat difficulties if they've never DMed. Especially if they're new or haven't had a few tpks under their belt. I've had players say the same thing at the start of a campaign...and then a few sessions later commented that they were clearly wrong after a few brutal combats. Remember, if a player doesn't drop, it was easy. XD
If a player doesn't drop it was easy. LOL. There's some truth to this for sure. Like I have hard grueling combats 4 players drop save three or four times get healed and get back up. But if they don't even get close to dropping that it was not challenging at all. They got to be slivered or down on the ground bleeding or the combat wasn't very challenging. 😁
@@theDMLair my 'levels of difficulty' are easy, normal, challenged, and '***** **** ************ **** we're all going to die!!!!' Easy is if no one gets dropped or comes close. If the barb has one hit point at the end it may be normal, but if no one looks like Peter Griffon after the raccoon attack, it wasn't notable and was easy. Normal means someone dropped or came close. If the tank has 15 hp after popping pots and or cleric spells...this was normal. Challenged means that at least one player went down and most of the party is low on hp and or other resources. 'We are all gonna die' is when the players have a story they'll remember forever about the fight that they nearly lost. I.e. in a campaign I'm helping plan, the players will be fighting a level 20ish cr monster at around...oh level 8 or so. It's doable with some of the plot devices they'll get, but there is no room for error. I've done the math and the party either wins or loses in like 3.25 turns. No wiggle room. They can kill it in 3.25, it WILL kill them in 3.33 turns accounting for all resources usable. ;3 if they win...they'll have one hell of a story.
I think an important note is: Even if the fighting encounter seems a bit too hard. Think why it is first. Is it your fault? Or is their fault because they wanted to just take a pointless artefact just to piss off that friendly dragon.
And if it is because they roll very bad, maybe give them a chance to escape. They shouldn't always win, but a tpk because of bad rolls is a shame. It takes courage to say when you're defeated, especially in a ttrpg. Not every fight should be for the end of the world if they lose. Let them catch their breath, make a new strategy and get back in the fight.
@@mennograafmans1595 What I was saying that they should be punished by their stupidity for their stupidity And if they are having a normal fight and lose because of bad rolls I let it happen and let the enviroment get them out, or a NPC, or I let them get captured. If they are still low level and get rekt by goblins I maybe let a owlbear come and attack the goblins, or the goblins capture them. Leading to a great escape scenario, or maybe like a slavery arc, if they get sold
One of the most interesting NPC rescuers I've heard of came from one of my friend's games. He was a player in it, and they were fighting an adult red dragon. The players were losing pretty badly, but the dragon was on its last legs. Knowing that the dragon was about to cause a TPK with its breath weapon, the DM had a valiant hero jump down onto the dragon's head and finish it off. He then looked up to an old timey camera crew and asked if they got it on tape. He was a huge douche to the players themselves, thanking them for softening it up, and expecting them to thank him for saving their lives. The players hated him, so they went on an entire mini adventure just to find the guy and kill him. Turns out he was only a level 4 Champion fighter, who did it to get fame. Needless to say he didn't walk away from the battle against 5 level 9 PCs. My suggestion is, if you make an NPC save them, make them hate their savior, it can go a long way, and makes for a lot of roleplay and plot ability.
Nearly TPK'd a level 9 group of 5, with a single Banshee. 4 of them failed the ST on the Wail. All dropped to 0 HP. Only the Wizard saved his throw. And it was close
The wizard chucked a potion of superior healing down the clerics throat. The cleric used his turn to healing word one and gave a potion of healing to the other. All survived. They beat the banshee but I haven't used one since
My wife taunts me almost every game one way or another. I don't mind giving her a few extra damage for it cause it's literally the only time EVER that id be able to do that without being a complete scumbag 😆😆😆
Hey Luke, absolutely on your side with everything, especially: If the players are doing everything right and you as DM are the one to blame, you can't punish the players but must punish yourself! I adjust monsters before the session: more or less HP, AC, DMG, different special abilities, weapons or tactics, but not completly randomly; a Goblin is a still a goblin and not a dragon, so CR should always be aproximate the same as written in the MM.
@@theDMLair True, but for example if you do the kobolds on lvl 1 and then on level 5 and just scale them up, the players loose the feeling for challenge in encounters (sorry just lacking the right words to express what I mean)... than rather put 400 kobolds level 1 there and the players know: This will be freaking awsome, but hard as hell XD
Some would call me a murder-DM, but I do tend to go kinda easy on first timers ...kinda. I shun unearned success myself, and generally DM as though the players are of like mind. As a player, I'd rather die than survive via rule bending. But first timers kinda lack the seasoned perspective of how starting over can be fun too. I like to DM gently on early levels, and ramp things up over time. I couldn't fudge a crit for a newbie because i roll combat outside the screen, but I share your 'feels' on that situation.
I tend to make my monster encounters just a smidge too powerful. Once the enemy comes into combat, it doesnt immediately start dealing damage or using crazy abilities. My monsters will sometimes ease into a situation like its a cold pool. That way if the PCs are going nutso on them, they can act in kind and defend themselves.
These are some great suggestions including some I hadn't thought of doing! Stuff like having some of the monsters just leave/flee; maybe the big bad leaves the party to his cronies because he is disgusted that it's too easy also... One I used recently was just let the boss battle play out easier than I had planned it to be, and then justify it in RP afterwards... I had my party of five level 3s face off against a young copper dragon, mistakenly thinking CR7 would be enough for a boss battle and underestimating the fact some of the characters had proning abilities... But since I had already planned on this copper dragon being a scheming agent of pure chaotic neutrality, I just worked it in that HE had underestimated the party and was utilizing the Clone spell to make himself younger and less intimidating than his nearly-ancient true self and was now even more impressed with this party he had taken a liking to... 😁
My most influential past DM(who really helped me develop my style) was always a firm believer in the "war-gamer/rule-of-cool" play-style. He was an old-school war-gamer prior and an army veteran, so he really knew how to hammer people tacitly. An in-group joke amongst us(since DBZ Abridged was a thing at that time) was that he majored in Dynamic Storytelling, with a minor in Educational Beat-downs... We pulled some crazy-shit, which he then sometimes used on us later. Never tried to out-right TPK us, but made it damn near impossible to hate him for it. I miss my 1st group...
Sometimes I also create special abilities on the fly, but they always have to be "thematic". For example, in one fight against an ettin, the paladin moved away and took the opportunity attack, to let the squishier character to leave. Thus, the sorceress thought she was free to move away from the ettin, but she also took the opportunity attack... due to the second head of the ettin, and the player said: "Oh God, how did I not imagine this?" ;)
Had a final boss encounter planned for a short campaign. Players burned through his health in 2-3 rounds while taking little damage in return. I could see disappointment on the faces of my players. When the final hit landed on the boss, I had it resurrect in an explosion, dealing some damage to all of them and give him some slight buffs. Turned into a grueling deathmatch with the last attack of the wizard (last player standing) managing to take it out, and having 1 player die, which then became a dramatic ending to rush the body to a temple of Heironeous for a revive. Pure gold. On the NPC rescue part, would you not even consider it even if the players have had positive interactions with that NPC and rather than the NPC taking the spotlight, have it support the players?
That's a really cool way to turn that boss fight into a fun battle for your players. I had a boss once that went down in one round to a Paladin's smites. And that same Paladin commented that the fight was disappointing. I think I would just never use an NPC rescuer. I just don't like the idea. Like if other people want to do it like I'm not going to you know crap on them because everyone can run and play the game they enjoy playing. I just personally don't like it. And I feel like players are smart enough to understand when they've been rescued by the dungeon master. And I think that cheapens the game experience. That's just my opinion on it.
Nice video. Yes, all those things - especially the enemy combat tactics and the use of reinforcements. Another little trick I picked up somewhere (this isn't mine) was the idea of partitioning a boss-monster's HP into pools - so rather than having, say, 30 HP it might have 3 x 10 HP pools and damage to one pool doesn't bleed over into another. So, having reduced it to 1 + 10 + 10 HP the next hit, even a critical, is only going to do a max of 1 HP of damage to it. Also, you can trigger a special action or new behaviour when a pool is depleted; it goes invisible, gets an additional attack, takes to the aiir and only does ranged attacks, uses an auto-recharge breath weapon, etc.
NPC rescuers can work if it feels like the PCs earned the support of the NPC. If that wizard that they worked so hard to win over shows up to bail then out, that works a lot better than just a random NPC or someone who liked them without any effort. Pretty much, make it look like their diplomacy and roleplay got them the support rather than it just being a DM bail out.
@@theDMLair that depends on the situation. A spell-caster might have happened to be scrying on their allies, or someone may have recieved a vision from a god, or they may have been aware of the coming fight and only been able to show up at that point, or they may have just been in the area. The players will know you bailed them out, but that doesn't always matter. It can't be done too often (probably once per campaign at most), and really should only be used if the players really worked to earn an NPC's trust, and are on the verge of a TPK, but it can make for some memorable and epic moments. It might not work with every group, and it certainly does not work in every scenario, but I have been at tables where this has been done and not negatively impacted the game.
I tend to prefer the "NPC shows up to help escape" over the "NPC kills the bad guys" approach. Especially if they're in an area where they have connections, it could be a situation of an ally not daring to get into the fight and having waited for the more powerful PCs to deal with the danger, only to then realise the party isn't going to make it and "over here!" to either distract the enemy so the party can get away, or grabbing a friend's hand and starting to pull them towards a secret entrance to a hideout the enemy won't follow.
I had an encounter recently where I was so proud of my players for making the fight easier for them, but near the end I had to take some creative liberties to keep them from dying. I was running Dragon of Icespire Peak, and the players had just stormed and taken over an enemy base in a run down mansion. They were pretty tired. However, there were sentries outside og the manse that they never defeated, and the book states that they ambush the players when the players try to leave. The enemies in the encounter are said sentries (which were these pretty scary half orc cultists with Lightning Bolt), and a bunch of Needle Blights. Here is where my players brilliance shined through. They used an immovable rod to bar the door shut, and heard the half orcs issue commands to the needle blights to flank around and go through the back, while the half orcs tried breaking down the door. The players dropped caltrops and ball bearings in front of the main entrance, waited two turns so the needle blights wouldn't just come back immediately, and deactivated the immovable rod. The half orcs came in and were slowed and damaged by the traps they laid, while the blights were still going around the house. One of the players was even shooting them from upstairs with a bow, so if the half orcs wanted to close in on him, they had to make dexterity check to jump over a hole in the stairs that led to a bed of wooden spikes (Which is actually how the first cultist died). One of the half orcs was still alive by the time the blights got inside. One of the players distracted the blights while the other players killed the half orc. However, due to some unfortunate dice rolls, it took longer to finish that orc than expected, so the one player was getting ganged up on pretty hard. They finally killed the half orc, and each player had less than 10 hp by that point, so I said that the blights were no longer compelled to fight after their masters were dead. It doesn't say this anywhere in the book, but I told the players that the blights were magically enslaved by the cultists, and killing the cultist they were tied to broke the magic. So they simply stopped fighting and walked away into the woods. Definitely one the more interesting encounters that campaign.
I have had to learn alot of this on the fly. Mostly because I made the PC's to powerful early. Some great techniques here. Never thought of legendary actions tho.
Honestly, I do a lot of these already, such as adjusting hit points, changing enemy tactics or making the enemies flee. I recall one time I had 5 silver dragons attacking my party's air ship and I almost killed one of them with one move, having the dragons attacking in the most intelligent way. After that, I decided not to have them do multi-attack for the rest of the encounter. I have added abilities on the fly as well as enemy equipment. My players wanted to read one of my NPCs thoughts and I didn't want them to know what the NPC was thinking, so right then and there I gave that NPC an item that blocked spells of that nature. I've also added entire extra boss fights that I hadn't planned on having when my players beat my encounter, but it seemed in retrospect like it wasn't challenging enough. Now, I have at one point added in rescue NPCs, but I quickly realized that mistake and created an encounter as stated which immediately removed those NPCs to fight the players with the knowledge that they had nobody else to rely on at that point. That way they not only had the dread of facing something that just removed their powerful NPC allies all by themselves, but when they beat it they had the knowledge that they were now the saviors of these NPCs, thus making them feel more important. Sometimes, though, I don't make the enemies tougher or weaker. In cases where the players had a brilliant idea that I never considered which makes the combat way too easy, I let them have it. Also, when they have had an easy time and now the boss fight is a struggle for them, I usually let it be what it is and hope they can come up with something clever like they tend to do. At least a couple of my players are too smart for these encounters, so I like to throw situations at them which forces them to come up with a way to cheap-shot the thing or die. They always think of a way.
If the party is wrecking my boss and are a round from taking him down, I subtly add a phase 2 to the fight. His special abilities recharge, he can do new things that were not part of his stat block (cause quakes to echo throughout the cave and send stalactites hurdling towards the players), and his health increases and maybe a certain damage resistance. I also sprinkle phase two bosses throughout my game so it isn't as noticeable when I make it up though. That's a one and done though, you don't want a three phase fight unless he really is the BBEG and you planned it.
I have found the biggest factor that makes a fight challenging or not is how the DM plays it. This past weekend, our party of 4 level 15 characters killed a CR 17 and a CR 12 at the same time with little sweat. We then proceeded to fight a CR 20 without a rest, and while it was tough, only one character came close to being unconscious. The next day, I had to scale back the difficulty of an encounter with 3 yuan-ti to prevent several character deaths in a 10th-level party. Why? Because I played the yuan-ti to use HEAVY battlefield control abilities, essentially locking down several party members.
Gotta be honest and vent for a second (it ends on a good note). I really like doing things on the fly, but to give an example on how it usually ends: "You see the creature disappear in a puff of smoke and appear right next to you. It attacks you." I was using Cape of the Mountebank and Action Surge. Player: "Misty Step doesn't have that much distance." Me: "Correct." Player: *pulling up his eyebrows and having a "Uh huh, sure, whatever"-face* "Mh-hm. Well then." This passive aggressiveness really pisses me off, to the point where I just want to rip their character apart with a Sorrow. Because it happened constantly. And what if I wanted to give that creature a 120 ft Misty Step. Ever fought a Balor? Fuck me. And the TPK, man. They were level 9, I used a Beholder with 50 extra Hitpoints. You would say "Are you insane?". Fun fact, if they would have managed to not fuck things up every round, they would have been able to do something. The last player standing that got not disintegrated got the killing blow. Mistakes included: Doing the same thing over and over again hoping to achieve a different result, not helping each other out, the paladin flanking on his own leaving the party without his +5 on saves aura..., just to mention some of the minor ones. Though I gotta be honest I wasn't sad about the Ranger being dead. She played an 80 year old elf, and because she read that elves were considered mature at around 100 or so, she would play her like a child aka mentally retarded. In the current campaign where I am a player those things are gone for the most part, aside from the female players way of playing. We've got a new player at the table and I feel like she's giving her bad advice. Funny thing is, as I am playing a true neutral character I can actually mediate between the characters ingame and she learns that inner party conflict can be something funny and good to workaround and the other player playing a lawful good fighter in the army learns that playing lawful good doesn't mean lopping off heads when someone does a crimey thing. So much growth. :3
Awesome. I knew some of it, but I love learning new techniques. The thing with waves seems really useful, not just for adjusting difficulty, but also to create a sense of progression during combat. I'll try it out and see how it feels
Yeah the waves thing is really good for making battles more interesting too. And it helps the dungeon master deal with spells like Fireball or hypnotic pattern that could invalidate the entire Kombat. With waves the fireball or hypnotic pattern doesn't hit everyone it just hits some of the monsters.
I've found one good way to adjust it on the fly without even really changing anything. Basically just make the enemies make little stupid decisions that leave them open to attack. The tricky part is doing it in a way that the enemy would feasibility do it, and not have it look obvious.
MAN I love this video! This is the single best video on this topic PERIOD. There were parts I felt like you were in my head! Haha All of this is brilliant and let’s the DM provide the experience they were going for! And I agree, you’ll have to do it less and less as you get better, but always be ready! I am never going to make a video on this anymore... because you just killed it!! Here’s the ONLY thing I could think of in moments like this. The fight is going bad and looks like it’s too much?? Have a BIGGER THREAT come in and take out what’s about to kill the PCs... THEN it turns into a chase scene or they have to hide from this even more threatening encounter. This might seem counter intuitive... but the bigger monster eats the smaller monster, but now it’s a skill challenge! So they don’t feel helpless like the NPC example, because they still feel like this thing could kill them too
@@tannerray5014 Haha exactly! This makes me think of the Star Wars Episode 1 scene where they are in the Gungan Submarine and they are running from that Eel monster... then RRRRRAAAAAAWWWWWWW The HUGE thing comes and eats it
Excellent video. You hit on nearly everything I’ve been doing for 40 years. All great advice, succinctly presented, and essential to being a successful DM. Keep it up!
Eh, I don't come up with solutions to my puzzles or encounters anymore. I pretty much just throw problems at my players and trust they're clever enough to think of a solution.
I’m not an experienced DM and a couple of sessions ago I had a Grick confront the party. I forgot that it had resistances to physical attacks but I realized it was going down way too fast. So I started adjusting the HP and turns out, I ended up giving it double as much HP, realizing afterwards that it was the best option since it corrected my mistake of forgetting resistances in the first place 😁
They were swamping a boss fight that included a big spirit thing and a bunch of cultists so I just made up an abilty on the fly for the cultists to walk into the big monster, dying instantly, but healing it for hitpoints equal to theirs.
As an new DM, this is an amazing video! Because of my lack of experience, I worry about TPKs on what I expect to be a trivial encounter, and now I know how to deal with that! I hope this channel becomes successful, because its content and advice is golden.
This is the best video ever, I have used almost every one of your ideas in my own campaign. Even had clay golems throw clay to stick PC in place to make it harder, they were so kicking my gloam ass
I feel that while the NPC-rescuer should generally be avoided, it also kinda depends on what kind of players you have. During my second campaign, we were playing a one-shot heist and at one point everything was going t e r r i b l e... All it took was a couple of bad dice rolls, and we were surrounded by guards. Plan botched. Players frozen in fear. We didn't know what to do, and safe to say, we already felt like we sucked for not having a plan B. Then our DM let an NPC at the party (whom one of our players had already flirted with earlier), turn out to be a Succubus with her own agenda, and attacked one of the guards, making them forget all about us and focus on the more immediate threat. Which allowed us to get back to our original plan and eventually get the treasure and leave, feeling awesome about ourselves. 👍 Our DM however felt bad about it, and asked us afterwards if we had any pointers on how she could do better next time. We had no idea what she was talking about, and were just happy that nobody died and that we managed to pull off the heist. However, I can imagine that more experienced players have more confidence, and would ultimately consider an NPC rescuer an insult to their own abilities. N00bs with little to no confidence in their own DnD-abilities might be more inclined to appreciate a random saviour, over having to roll a new character. 😅
It takes a fairly long time to dial in on how strong a given group is, so adjusting an encounter on the fly is paramount to make challenging encounters that are balanced. Since I always roll in the open and never fudge dice, I make use of HP adjustment and "monster morale" (depending on their intelligence score). Example: A pack of direwolves might be strong and confident while there are 5 or 6 of them, but once half of them go down, I as DM take a look at the situation. If the players are struggling, the wolves might back up, holding an attack action, then flee the round after. If they're doing ok the wolves will continue fighting. If they're walking all over the wolves, the alpha will have more HP and maybe a reaction ability.
Yes totally agree it takes some time to judge how strong a given group is. And I also roll out in the open with almost everything so fudging dice is not even on the table for me.
This was several editions ago, but I had a situation where I decided to let my players get creative, but that forced me to improvise. I had two players retrieving something from an evil wizard's tower (I lean in to tropes that I like), but instead of entering the front and working their way up the tower to the reward at the top, the rogue and wizard worked together and got creative, using a levitate spell with slippers of spider climbing (I think that was the combo I allowed) to bypass the the inside of the tower, and get the thief up to the top, so that they could break in from above. Now instead of facing a boss at the end of several encounters with minions, they were facing the boss when they were fresh and he was alone. So I had to get creative too, and have minions hear what was happening above, and come to aid. I also fudged a few stats in the moment so that the enemies wouldn't go down as easily. If I remember correctly (it was about two decades ago), the thief didn't even try to engage with the fight, which is why I first brought in minions, because the thief ran circles around the solo boss, and had successfully gotten the item while avoiding the boss. I had to then have minions block him in and force a fight; my wizard player was getting bored sitting outside the tower waiting, so I had some minions go on a patrol and encounter him, and bumped up the minion stats, since there would end up being fewer than he would've encountered if they'd gone through the tower. I think the rogue killed a few minions and damaged the evil mage before high-tailing it out of there with the object, and the wizard got to cast a few spells and ended up running for his life when outnumbered and alone, but they met back up later and seemed to enjoy that they felt that they had outsmarted the DM (me) by bypassing the inside of the tower, and managing to get the object without doing anything I'd planned. That will sometimes happen if you allow your players to get creative and try to think their way around the problems you planned to have them face. Rather than try to force them to do what I had planned (or punishing them for not doing so), I was able to work with what they wanted to do, and used some of these tricks from the video to adapt in the moment. That said, there are still a few things here that I hadn't thought of at the time, which I will likely use in the future.
I ask players to bring a back-up character sheet. The only thing I role behind a screen are persuasion/deception/intimidate interactions, with some house rules to make them more intrigue-laiden. But I do try to adjust encounters to suit their level, numbers, & skill level. I like to adjust the overall campaign to give players a good chance avoiding TPK, but there will be death. Bad runs with the dice or poor decisions can and do sometimes make me seem like a Murder-DM. But when you win, the sense of accomplishment is not hollow, and I'm liberal with loot and welcome creative exploitative tactics. Risk:Reward is high:high.
One thing you can do with NPC's to help a struggling party out, is offer support services which are not normally easily available. Due to the importance of your task, perhaps the quest giver might foot the bill for a resurrection, or perhaps due to the dire stakes at hand, a diety might actually answer with divine intervention, etc. A healer or buffer NPC, or a limited use legendary item, are good ways to let the players handle the glorious combat themselves, but with a bit of padding. Can also keep encounters initially a little weak, and then keep a variable amount of enemy reinforcements in your back pocket.
I did the "Such and such NPC to the rescue!" Recently, and holy crap it deflated all the tension and joy of the combat at my table. I am trying to keep the gent under powered compared to the party, but their healer is missing and so I figured sending someone in to help them fight the unbalanced combat I was not planning to run this way was what I thought as the best option. Based on this advice however I realize I should definitely done number 8 and had the minions run right out of there when one of the party members was cutting down 3 or 4 of them a round. (This player's character is scary! And it's wonderful.) I just assumed they were more scared of their boss than the guy cutting them down, but in hind sight... NAH.
For me, I usually do the adding of Legendary Actions on boss-type monsters from time to time, but I also will sometimes give those monsters a couple uses of Legendary Resistance as well. Among a few other things for other circumstances of course. That said, this does give me some ideas for the future, especially as my players become more and more capable :)
I can come up with a scenarion in which an NPC can rescue the party: they will be an ally who helps them out, thereby also gaining some trust. Mind you, this needs some degree of planning, but imagine it like this. The BBEG is sending some sort of tough (but not invincible) hit team to get rid of the party. The players struggle and an NPC with some motivation to fight the BBEG assists them (no instakilling). He can then present himself and some plotpoint. If they do well, have him pop up just after they leave initiative
I'm running a homebrew campaign that focuses on the player choices and the outcomes. So for the next session, the players fought off a Naga and nearly got killed, only to be ambushed by the spider community since the "death" of this naga created a power vacuum into the forest. Now I had an idea of NPC Dryad saving them, since previously they saved her life, but I'm going to use her only if the players choose to flee. So in my opinion NPC rescue in some cases is a valid option, if it fits in. If the players don't rely on anything but themselves and a patron swoops in just in time to fight the big bad evil guy for them to escape or the local town villagers rally up arms against the orc invasion inspired by the party's heroism, I think that would make an awesome moment. But a random dungeon where their local wizard patron comes in an swings a fireball at the BBEG when the party is down might make the whole adventure anti-climatic. This is just my two-cents.
Hey there, Extremely new DM here, still in high-school. Recently The party was going through a hag copy cat situation I chose to throw at them to confuse them and have a puzzle-like combat encounter that lead up them fighting 2 covens. One coven consisting of 2 Green hags and 1 Night hag and one coven consisting of 3 Green hags, two of those hags hiding for an ambush in the woods around them. I quickly realized...This is a way bigger Challenge Rating that I did not calculate, No stress just time to have the people of the village fight some Hags and Lower their health A-smidge-lot and have my players be rewarded by each getting 15 gold and A free level up to third level. Win-Win
So just a note for the dice fudging and npc savior tropes with examples. During a recent campaign I built in an npc savior as part of a combat since i was winging an odd encounter with 2 sub bosses and a bunch of minions. My players wanted to play/experience some monster hunter themed stuff so I'd converted the 5e monster hunter conversion to 3.5e and used waves initially. The issue was that it was something like 10 npcs on a caravan and the party. When the sub bosses popped in, a player did something stupid(they didnt know it was stupid, but it all but guaranteed a tpk) so I had the dwarf npc shout "I've always wanted to so this!" Drop his cross bow and jump off the tower shouting "Hammer Time!" And land on one of the sub bosses with his hammer. The players were laughing too hard to even register the potential trope. While not quite the usual savior trope, it is important for newer DMs to note that if you have npcs IN the battle, self-sacrifice and or game changers are far less likely to come across with the negative connotations. It is bringing IN to the combat an npc that has nothing to do with said combat that will likely irritate players. As for the fudging dice, I generally agree that it's a bad idea, but here's an example where it was all but necessary. I had a player joining the campaign end up missing his first session due to life. The party went and found a combat that was balanced to be fairly easy WITH the addition to the party...that was not added. I did some math and figured it pushed it from easy to moderate in difficulty and figured it should be fine.....and then I crit. And crit. And crit. I rolled 6 crits in 2 turns in a combat not balanced for what I had intended. I realized this was tpk territory if I'd dropped all those at the start, so I ignored 3 of them and "banked" them for the time being. After the initial pain train on the players, I ended up rolling garbage for a few rounds and once they had the encounter in hand, I "crit" a few times without looking at the dice rolls. If you are going to fudge the dice, try to do it in a method that is not super obvious and make sure it is more to fix a kerfuffle than just because you feel like it. I normally use waves as a method of difficulty control, and I've been doing this for years, but occasionally I'll have a perfect storm of 'oh crap.....they're all dead' and need to do some tweaking on the fly. Another fun way to make an encounter more difficult is to have the enemies use pots. I had a sub boss pop a pot in the middle of a combat and go from almost dead to looking much better. My players couldn't decide if they were more annoyed that he was no longer almost dead or that he just consumed a potion worth a few thousand gold that they would have kept if he died. Great video though! I actually use most of these myself, though I hadn't noticed it as note worthy!
I had this great idea and typed it all out on here as a comment only to, at the end, realize it was way to specific and required some DM level spells to accomplish. I was so stoked lol
In the campaign I am currently dming, the party wanted to clear a fort of bandits. It was a party of 4 2nd level pcs against 6 bandits and a bandit captain, which should have already been difficult, though because they had no healer other than the paladin who doesnt cast healing spells because he uses all his spell slots for divine smite, I gave each a couple potions of healing and the ability to drink a single potion as a bonus action, they managed to kill every bandit while staying at relatively high health. Disappointed by this, I threw another 2 bandits and another bandit captain at them, though they somehow plowed those taking little damage as well, even though they used a majority of their potions in the first wave. This group will never cease to amaze me with the difficulty of challenges they manage to conquer.
Easy answer.... Always deadly+ but adapted to your party's abilities. Party power level 350= encounter P. L 380. Giving them the opcion to feel fear but giving them the option to feel great when they win or not. Once I had a big boss battle against The Legion (castlevania monster), they were attacking it from a safe spot until they noticed the bodies of the legion's exterior were raising up creating a zombie horde walking towards them. So, they have to adapt their tactic on the fly, with this I was not denying their idea but I was giving them something to worry about... Until they destroyied the exterior and the second phase started.
Love it! One of the best fights I ran was more created on the fly instead of adjusted. In Storm King's Thunder, my players were assaulting the Fire Giant base, and via some weird tactics and lucky rolls, the final boss fight ended up happening with the Fire giant leader's son and daughter instead of the boss himself. This sounded really boring to me, since I was running a large party and knew they would steamroll over the fight. So........I took the Archmage spell list and gave it to the Fire Giant's daughter. /evillaugh
IDEA The main villain is a wizard who enchant monsters in order to make them stronger In each dungeon, he will enchant a random mob in the middle of the final fight so they get a buff and maybe some traits, legendary actions or other things to spice the combat up This ensures that the boss/miniboss has minions while also being unique and putting up a good fight with an interesting challenge A possible example: The party is clearing the Un-deed crypts which has been leaking different types of undead into the town of Vunara Ball In the final room, here is a horde of zombies, skeltons and some undead goblin archers. The evil wizard Dou Sha Bag (short for Doug Sharon Bagron) comes in and enchants one of the goblin archers - making him grow to a large creature, giving him extra hp, more ac, the ability to shoot someone as a legendary action and a special ability that can be used once per fight which causes all of the goblins to fire all at once at random targets. The wizard teleports back to his lair, hoping to never see the party again and preparing for what comes next. This also gives me an idea for the wizard fight, at random points he will summon a group of mobs and enchant one(probably a weaker enchantment than normal) while he prepares spells, heals up or throw spells at the battle - buffs, debuffs or damage.
I had players try to call me out for letting Otyughs do more attacks than they should to make a fight harder… The reality was that in their first encounter with an Otyugh, I had opted to have it use EITHER it’s tentacles or bite when it’s really supposed to be able to do both in the same turn. The light leaving my players’ eyes when I told them was so satisfying.
Sometimes if I'm using pre-made encounters or complex traps, or just stuff that I made quite some time ago, I accidentally adjust the difficulty by forgetting to do all the cool crap I had planned, or feeling to read that getting rid of a certain debuff in the encounter takes an action. Or stuff like that. If I'm adjusting something down on purpose, I can Bear in mind that just because of stat block says that a creature *can* do additional damage on an attack when an ally is within 5 ft of it, doesn't mean it necessarily will. If I want to adjust it up without changing the CR at all, I make sure all the monsters use all of their abilities, use tactics, focus fire, use cover and the environment creatively, etc. Maybe use max HP or allow healing of the monsters who receive to take them past their standard head points toward their max HP
Having the enemies flee and then show up two levels later for revenge is fun. One thing that I’ve found works is adjusting how much damage monsters can do. Instead of 1d6+3 damage I’ll lower the damage to 1d6 or raise it to 1d6+5. That’s a subtle change that works on the fly that my players have never noticed, although when I do that I usually start rolling the damage dice in the middle of the table.
New DM and tried using CR for 6 players, all of whom are creative and brilliant. After first few encounters went too easy, i created a narrative subplot for them to follow as to WHY they were getting off easy. Session 4 had an encounter w/ flight mechanic and realised i had one bad who could wreck the party. Had bads RP a relationship so the problem bad would focus on healing and protection
I had a game where we where basically fighting 4 creatures of the Black Lagoon at level 2. Only 2 out of 4 players showed up and the DM realized, when they knocked the Druid out of his last bear form for the day, that the encounter was still balanced for 4 players and the players that did not show up, where the combat characters, Hexblade and Barbarian, while the Druid and the Celestial Warlock where support, the Celestial was build for healing and illusions and did not even have Eldritch Blast. So we ran back into the corridor where we just killed some wall tentacles, speculating they would be too afraid to go there and the Druid cast Entanglement at the entrance of the room we where fighting in. The DM decided the creatures where spooked by the vines and jumped into some water basins, which counted as 3/4 cover. So we spend the next 10 round doing nothing but blasting them with Produce Flame and Sacred Flame.
i do alot of these things for boss fights, and even occasionally in rando encounters i'll just add an ability to one of the monsters on the fly to spice the combat up. ; i had the final battle for my longest running campaign last saturday, 10 level 15 PC's up against my super home-brewed version of Vecna. My goal was to kill half of them and end the fight with noone having any spell slots.. but the players ultimately win. I was fluctuating the max hp of the boss throughout the fight to get a feel where to draw the line, ended up at 900 damage. I also had to adjust a couple abilities through the fight but at the end 4 people were left alive, noone had any spellslots and i was cantripping down the remaining 4 (3 of them had less than 10 HP and their paladin had about 60-70HP)
I remember my 1st time DMing, I was kinda worried I was going to mess it up. I did know ahead of time some of these solutions, but frankly cheating in terms of fudging numbers or making purposeful bad moves didn't sound right to me. (Story below is kinda lengthy. Also I call him "cursed boi" because I forgot his name. Should clarify that, as he wasn't called that in game.) But I knew given I was very new to this, I was going to make plenty of errors. But one encounter the Ranger in the party managed to befriend a cursed being I initially planned being a more "Silly" one off encounter. Basically it was a rogue and so long as the Ranger wanted him to be there, he would be. I won't lie though, there was 1 time where the befriending him REALLY paid off for the party. (also if someone was out for that week, the party didn't have to halt progress. So that worked out nicely. Especially since it was my high school senior project. So we needed to get the main story I made a tad long done before the year was over.) The party found themselves in the middle of a fortresses courtyard, about 10 archers surrounding on the walls in all directions. The wizard actually saved the party by having everyone huddle together and then casting "Globe of Invulnerability". It only caused a stalemate though as they couldn't leave, but also couldn't be hurt. So the archers merely had to wait, firing on occasion to make sure the barrier was still up. But little did everyone remember, our little cursed boi was there. He snuck up there undetected whilst the archers were focused on the party. He took out 1 and then they all noticed him. The cursed boi took out 2 more before moving to a place he could sneak. And with 3 looking for him, the party managed to take out the rest as they were no longer stuck in the globe. The Ranger took out 4 after the barrier was down, and the mage took out the 3 who were huddled looking for the rogue with fireball. I am pretty sure this counted as "NPC savior", but given he was there in a set place because of one of the party members took him there and it was a sensible action that he would have actually taken. Eh, idk. Players didn't mind it, they seemed kinda ecstatic actually and used the reversal quite effectively. As for HOW he is played, while the Ranger and Rogue are near each other I allow the Ranger to choose his actions so long as they aren't meta, nonsensical, or outside cursed boi's moral standings. Otherwise, while separated I get into cursed boi's mindset and just play him as he would do things, unless he has a direct order from the Ranger. In which I follow that plan as best as he can. So he is basically a kinda NPC/PC hybrid.
I run risk of book assault, but I do keep a NPC hidden for fights I think may prove to be too difficult. Usually the NPC has a reason to be there and just helps by taking damage, providing healing or buffs, or to provide a little extra damage. One rule I have is the NPC never gets a kill (monsters drop to 1 hp instead of dying for example). The NPC will provide a little more healing after the fight, give some information to push the story forward or something similar then go on their way. Had a few good NPCs that my players either tracked down or ran into again later on. My players have never felt overshadowed in combat by NPCs, though they initially were a little jealous of the character's backstory, which resulted in the players fleshing out their character's more.
I personally like the rogue, plus you should consider making a marathon special about all the appearances of your lovable pc’s so far, I would definitely watch
@@theDMLair The ones that make the intro so entertaining, its almost end of the year so it would be great if you make a Christmas special with all the pc's introductions videos so far. :D
On a few occasions where I had planned out a difficult encounter, I set secondary benchmarks for the encounter. Basically, if it became clear that the PCs weren't going to kill the enemies without help, I'd start having the enemies die at specific points in combat. For example, if a party of 5 were having troubles beating 4 enemies, I'd have them kill one after two of the PCs were incapacitated, then keep adjusting until the encounter became manageable or until it ended by mercy of the DM.
In combat, I have smaller more plentifull enemies running around, instead of straight up fighting, they want to gimmick their way into victory. The aggression of the players tends to decide how good the gimmick will work. For example: 1. The players attack the enemies agressevily, the enemies notice after two turns and start focusing fire, or grappling players to the ground to restrain them. 2. The players take a defensive stance, so the enemies try to run a large knotted together piece of rope around them in a big circle to capturw them. For the bigger monsters, they tend to ease off for 1 or 2 turns. Looking into what the players do, before they aggresively pounce on the biggest threat, or the easiest target. Adjusting can be done by having the smaller enemies do more gimmicky or serious stuff. The bigger monsters can attack earlier or later.
About NPC rescuers, I had an campaign where my players were mere peasants(10 only stats), I had a group of NPC rescuing the players like 70% of the time, so that when the time came where the players where powerful enough to turn the table and do the opposite to not only that group but also other adventuring parties, I can see it was very successful.
What I did in the last boss fight which was close to a party whipe, I made some Spirits that were enslaved by the boss give the players buffs (like extra healing) a while after they have been beaten and freed. That way it also feels like an achievement.
I had an undead cursed dragon not so long ago who I designed on purpose to blow the party far far away to their destination, making them use nearly all their resources. Improve was a tail strike (3D6) and a sand storm which lasted 3 rounds and gave everyone disadvantage for attacks. I felt proud.
My very first encounter for my level 1 PC was a ghost... a CR 4 monster, who had a 21 to hit on me, and did 23 damage on me. A cutscene with the DMPC saved me On the other hand, the hardest encounter i gave them was in waves, blind where wave six had a kobold sniper hiding behind a deployable shield. He had a steady aim feature which gave him advantage in every shot. Needless to say he was killed horribly when they finally caught him. Till this day when I tell them "you see athena reflection of glass on-" they interrupt me like "IT'S A KOBOLD WITH A GUN, EVERYBODY DUCK" in my lore, kobolds are exploited as snipers in Eisengard, since they are dextrous and great aims also as calvary, but drake's are their mounts, captains having rage drakes.
@@kendrickrochelanzot2053 My first session was on a ship and they were attacked by orcs in canoes while they anchored up. The orcs kept failing at getting on board and the whole thing turned into a huge clusterfuck. I remember it fondly;)
There is a place I want to do a not quite NPC rescue. Basically during the first mission of a game I'm planning to run eventually, the party is part of a large group of people who were hired to storm this island for an item. Most of NPCs have been wiped out. Then the party will deal with a a level appropriate boss. Once that boss is defeated. One way above their current strength will show up to be chased off in a cut scene by some of the people who hired the party. Basically that early game taste of what kinda of threats they'll have to face in the later part of the game
Adjusting the HP : had a funny time it happened in onr of the last sessions : I had diminished the normal HP of a boss, as I felt it would be too much for them to handle, but then realised some of the PCs had some techniques to deal way too much damage, so I reaugmented the HP mid-fight.
I am playing 3.5 and decided to use mechanics from other editions aswell (minnions, legendary actions/resistances, ...) I m still new to the concept of legendary actions/resistances, and sadly my latest bossfight whent right down the drain when i forgott to autoresist the drowpoison, rendering my highpriest (the Brain) useless and unable to sumon a daemon (the Mussle). This one misstepp took more than haalf of the hittpoints out of the battle. Since the rest where basicaly cultists and minnions, it ended in a slaughterfest. Luckily the players opened an avenue for a lutenand to escaape, taking the highpriest with him. Now i can throw a reacuring villain at them, and have a hook to pull my group towards one of my BBEG's.
I like to tell the players "you two both hit the enemy this turn, it hits both of you back" if I'm easing up or "you really messed the enemy up and you have it's primary attention". It's mostly a flavor addition to spreading/focusing attacks, but the players respond well to it. It feels intuitive, helps naturally smooth out the difficulty, and lets the players have counterplay because they know what I'm doing.
I sometimes pre-plan those techniques like I once created an encounter that started with the party finding and investigating a cadaver of a HUGE animal. Then they were attacked by a pack of wolves. When I created that encounter I prepared 2 additional waves of wolves who would be drawn to the battle in case the encounter was too easy and I had a the roleplaying idea in mind of some of the wolves stopping to attack the party and instead start dragging the cadaver away as their food, if the encounter turned out to be too hard. And in cas it turned out to be WAY too hard I would have had the wolves start fighting amongst each other over the food once the party got weakened to a point where the wolves won't see them as a threat anymore.
Here is a super easy principle. Movement. Have your monsters move in a manner that offers attacks of opportunity or grants flanking advantage. “The demon is so engaged by the mage’s attack that it charges toward the mage, heedless that it turned its back on the rogue.” Heck, you can have it run a veritable gauntlet of free chances to beat it up. Have 5e monster move far enough to get into the face of a player that it needs to use its action. This is functionally a “lose a turn” card, and when you think about it in terms of action economy, for a typical 5 round fight you have nerfed hat monster by 20% without having to alter a single thing. Have the monster move underneath that precarious heavy stalactite which can be brought down onto its head or some other form of triggerable environmental hazard (and its best if you don’t point it out until a round later, “oh gee the monster made a mistake” rather than right away). Plus if someone is struggling to come up with an action, “Give me a perception roll (or just roll a meaningless die). OK, you notice that the monster is under one of those heavy stalactites.” Have one monster get in the way of another, costing them their action. And if the players seize that by taunting, using charms or commands, etc. have the monsters take a whack at each other. “Okay, normally a charm wouldn’t work like that, but in this moment the orc is so angry that it momentarily forgets the hobgoblin is an ally.” Have a monster go get something. “The gnoll disengages and retreats to the junk pile, searching for something.” Not enough loss of action? Next round “The gnoll kicks aside debris revealing a ballista that though damaged might be able to get one last shot.” And then? “This round the gnoll rushes past the fighter (opportunity attack!) and grabs a spear from the rack on the wall that looks like it could fit into the ballista.” Look at all those tension-building wasted moves and actions! Stretch it out, give the players chances for free damage, and let the monsters be their own worst enemies.
Both as a player and the DM, I've learned from the school of hard knocks that other than just letting a TPK happen, waking up in chains with a lot of your equipment missing is way more satisfying than having somebody swoop in and rescue you, or revive you from the dead. I thought the one time I did have a story appropriate NPC cast revivify, I made sure to use the text of the spell that says it only works on a willing soul. And it played out how really nice the after life they ended up in was. So it still felt like a player choice to return to the campaign. But kidding captured would have been a way better story. Plus the player is a monk. Don't need no stinking equipment
Leaning into the roleplay is my favorite solution. Let both players and monsters do things that aren't defined by the rules, character sheets, or stat blocks, as long as you do so in moderation, require reasonable justification or come up with relevant rolls, and don't stray too far into the territory of letting everyone do the things that one player went out of their way to build their character to be able to do, or negating the usefulness of future build options.
So I encourage my characters to think tactically, and try to predict the enemies next move which actually works sometimes and causes them to behave more smartly and to better deal with tactically smart enemies also one of my favorite things to do in D&D is to deal with characters in unexpected ways like chucking them off the bridge into the river for the archer or mage to take pot shots at till they die or throwing them off a cliff because why not
I don't like the idea of changing stats on the fly, but; Perhalps if the encounter is too hard, the enemys could realise their winning, get too confortable, and start making mistakes. ... If the pcs are winning, the enemys could drink some healing potions, summon help, or if they are a caster, activate a contingency spell.
Once my party faced a Goristro as a chapter boss in my campaign. It was MEANT to be a tpk, because its CR was way too high for them, so they could be revived by a Lich for story purposes. But the clever bastards started by polymorphing the Goristro into a sheep (it rolled a 3 on its con save), then they opened a portal leading far up in the sky for maximum potential falling damage and tossed the sheep through the portal. Once it had fallen and the damage broke through polymorph, it was down 80 HP and knocked prone for a second turn of an additional 100 damage from the PCs. As an emergency solution I gave the Goristro legendary actions in the form of rampant gore-charges and assistance from other medium-ranked demons, but it was all in vain. So I sat there in panic with no clue how to progress the story, and decided to called it a day. NEVER underestimate a PC group when they know it's a boss fight.
I really need this as the place i am lacking alot is Combat. I always either make the combat too hard or too easy. I have ALOT of problems with balancing and adjusting the combat on the fly, making it very noticeable and not as much of a satisfying battle. This video however helped me alot though.
I use morale checks for NPCs in my games, among other things. I also roll nearly every die roll in the open. The neat thing is that I set the DC check due to roleplay reasons, which is vague enough to fudge occasionally. Of course, this doesn't work in every case or every time, it's one tool among many in the toolbox.
NPC rescue works if it’s not free. Either it has to be earned beforehand by building an alliance with said NPC (doing a great service to them potentially, maybe stepping up in a similar manner for them), or after the fact, having a steep price (not necessarily monetary) to pay for it somehow.
Here's a strategy. Although I would only use it after quite a bit of preparation for a specific encounter, a really creative and on the spot DM can adjust the encounter via changing the environment. For example: -Water can begin rising up from the floor. I hope you can breathe underwater, because the dungeon is going under -FIRE! Burning rafters and hot coals fall from the ceiling randomly -Gusts of wind blow anchored PCs and NPCs around. This air can be frigid and deal cold damage -Vines sprout up from the ground, creating cover and difficult terrain -EARTHQUAKE!!! Time to make some Dex saves and get to cover This can be done most often as an obstacle to make the combat more difficult for players. However, this can also be used naturally as more of an obstacle for the villains if the combat is right (and unlike the "savior swoops in and takes over the combat for the players", the players still have a challenge to deal with afterwards). Changing the battlefield on the fly takes some very high levels of thinking in order to do it successfully, however doing it properly not only creates a more balanced combat, but also a more memorable one. Just wait until your players go "remember that fight in the circus tent where the escaped nightmares dashed over our heads, and remember how some rust monsters got loose and began tearing away at the iron pegs holding up the tent? Man, we were sure that we were going to be engulfed in flames if we weren't quick".
I make all my boss encounters incredibly hard on purpose. That way the party is forced to figure out another way to take out the boss rather than an impromptu brawl. They love it!
I did this in my last session. I added the Craig Cat to a frost druids wild shape and let her do it 3 times because while our martial players were being challenged the casters were kinda just cruising. Needless to say this scared them
I agree with the NPC rescuer being kind of bad, but there was one situation I used it and my player seemed to enjoy it, so I was curious what other people thought of the way I used it: I had made a one shot and was running it with a friend just to practice it. She was a rogue and since it was just her, I threw in just a basic character as a body she could work around. This dude didn't have a class or any special abilities, he was just charming and had a rapier so that as a rogue, she wasn't the focus of the battle and couldn't hide or get sneak attack that often. Anyway, there was one situation where I had overwhelmed her a bit and so I had reinforcements come in while the NPC said to run while he distracted them. At this point, she has kinda grown attached to him, but being a rogue she ditched him. Later, during the BBEG fight, she was again becoming a little overwhelmed, and so I had the NPC, whom she thought was dead, swing in on a vine from the trees with the enemies from before on their side. He had made it out by persuading then to join him. They then distracted all of the underlings so that she could focus 1v1 on this BBEG.
High level NPCs rescuing players in times of dire need can absolutely work, if the DM follows these 5 rules: 1. The players have to have *earned the help* . The players aren't just being saved by a finger wagging cheeseball who is way more powerful and could/should have just done the adventure themselves. They are *having a favour repaid* at a vital moment, perhaps because this is an NPC that the players previously rescued in a past adventure, or because ordinary townsfolk see what is going on and band together to save the heroes who saved their town countless times. 2. It has to *make immediate sense* why it has happened. The players should probably know about the NPC in advance, at least by reputation, before they arrive. It should be immediately obvious to them how the NPC a) knew to be there at that time, b) would want to intervene, and c) would know whose side they were on. 3. The new arrival(s) *shouldn't win the fight* , they should *even the fight* . The battle is not over, they just now have another ally, who maybe, depending on their power type and power level, revives unconscious players and gives them some hit points and/or spell slots back. 4. It *can't be expected* . If players are losing the fight and start crossing their fingers hoping for a deus ex machina, then it's the wrong time for one. It is not something the players can rely on, and if they start to indicate they are relying on it, you have overused the technique. 5. It *can't be repeated* . Once, MAYBE twice in a campaign it can work if there's a long gap between the two occasions.
I normally agree wholeheartedly about the Not having a Deux ex Machina moment to save PCs from certain doom, but I do have one time that I actually appreciated the DMs choice to do it. Took my Wife to an AL game, First game for her ever, she plotted and planned and conjured up a character that was perfect for her. I can't recall what module it was, it was a Moonshea one iirc. Anyways, Since it was a group of 6 or 7 (i cant recall) the difficulty had to be ramped up a bit so it wasnt trivial. DMs dice were lucky, and He started to realize when the Paladin(who is also new, first game) and Bard (my wife) were down and on their second Death saves, my barbarian was on her way out, and the other 3 were not looking so well that he might TPK the group. I've DMed a lot historically, so I saw exactly where he was, and happening to forget to attack of opportunity the fighter so they could go feed a potion to a paladin (I did the same for my wife, but as bugbear, I was out of their AoO range anywho). It was a pretty tasteful pulling of punches. My wife got her revenge on the DM at the end of the module where she Hit a nasty max dmg roll Dissonent whisper and basically did in the BBEG with little help from the rest of us.
I think there's a time and place for deus ex machina moment as a dungeon master. In the case of a new player at their very first game, totally justified. And I wouldn't blame or judge a dungeon master one bit about that sort of usage.
Sometimes, one of my players has a tough time for the night. Failed skill checks, missed attacks, spells failing due to passed spell save. When it comes to a boss fight with one of these nights, I keep the boss alive, even if they're past 0 hp. Once that player having the terrible night attacks, if it hits, I let them roll their damage. I tell them they fall, and let that player describe how they do it. It makes them happy and the rest of the party cheers them on. Usually helps with the mood for the rest of the night
Hey, Luke. Matthew-Harry here with a most unique question on the topic you discussed in this video of "NPC Rescuer:" I am a brand new DM starting my first campaign ever soon. I am basing it on my action epic I've been writing for over 25 years. For the ultimate final boss battle, I want to do it in the style of a certain level in "The Lord Of The Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth." In this level of "BFME," you must defend Minas Tirith until three different waves of good reinforcements arrive. (Rohan, Gandalf, etc.) I want to setup my final boss battle of having my player characters fight as defensively as possible, so as to hold out until two different waves of spaceships arrive with good NPC troops, and then the grand finale of the four strongest heroes in the franchise who show up to save the day. The heroes, good armies, and the player characters all then charge in together for the final battle against the ultimate boss and his army of giant monsters. I know you say you wouldn't like to see NPC rescuing, but I thought it might be a unique form of gameplay. For dramatic purposes, I was thinking about having the final boss kill off the PCs one at a time, and after each death, a wave of good reinforcements arrives to offset the death. Then, once the four heroes arrive, they could revive the fallen PCs, and continue the battle. Any ideas as to how I could create this, and have it be a rewarding experience, where it doesn't feel staged or lame? Mega big thanks, ~Matthew-Harry
I think the "NPC comes to the rescue" can be done well, but its a fine line. If they come in and completely mop the floor with the baddies, yeah that's bad and will make the players feel worthless. But I think if the NPC comes in and shares in the pain its both more believable and is better on the player's moral. It becomes less of "Oh boy, the DM is just holding out hand" to "Ohshit, thanks for taking some of the heat off of us friendly NPC. Now we can all win this." That, or if the PCs specifically called for aid. Maybe they blew a horn that alerts a friendly group of soldiers of the dangers the party is in, or something else of similar occurrence. But, that's just my late two cents on the matter. As for the topic of the video, I generally do most of what you suggest. Change hitpoints, make monsters flee, and add waves of enemies. The latter also helps with making it so the players don't feel super bogged down imo.
Similar to adjusting HP on the fly, you can soft-fudge die by just reducing/increasing stuff like AC or saving throw bonuses. Players rarely keep track of it and its not always going to come up multiple times. Also, sometimes I "fudge" dice but not really in the sense of changing my mind about the dice results but more so that I make pointless dice rolls for stuff that isn't dependant on them. Me rolling dice keeps players on edge and stops them from brainlessly barreling through a dungeon.
I have fudged dice sometimes, but not a lot just a very very few times. And sometimes i made up stuff for the enemies to do, and im planning a scene with an NPC rescue but its totally for narrative purposes since its one of the players most hated enemies who turns out to be a secret allie for them working inside the BBEG operation. I always think about how the scene will be working fine to reach the climax i want, and also in my games the only way to die is by basically very very stupid decisions, like trying to remove a leviathans tooth from inside his mouth with a spoon (that level of dummy)
The only time I adjust down is if I just totally screwed up building the encounter. Especially when I build them on the fly. I usually end up having to beef up enemies because my player just steam roll everything
I think as a DM you create the encounter, you set it up a certain way. Nothing says the players HAVE to win every time, sometimes they need to fall back and re-think the encounter, give them a way out if they decide they want to run/regroup. I think some encounters should be exactly what EXP really is... EXPERIENCE Points, knowledge they've gained on their adventure, give them a learning experience, make them earn that learned value. It shouldn't always be about stabbing and monologuing, there should be some serious thought put into what they find. Like you need to get past a body guard, on the first try he roughs you up and throws you out... he didnt chase you and you didn't die, next time you go to take him on, you learned his moves and his weak spots and you know how to take him down. The encounter didn't change, but your thought process did. Example from my game: When I made my temple encounter it beat the party the first time and they had to run as they were getting their asses kicked in, now I DID fudge numbers since no one told the Duskblade to jump back into the door and throw a spell which she then caught like 6 arrows and 3 spells, I did go ahead and survive her at -6 hp and bleeding vs. the -28 she would have been at. Nothing was chasing them they weren't pursued for the finisher, they were allowed to leave unimpeded, but she derped and I had to intervene to save the character. That instance or something similar, sure, fudge some numbers on HP or damage, but I didn't adjust my encounter, they had to still beat it as it was presented. They lost round 1, on round 2 they came in hot and won since they knew the layout and having destroyed a bunch of the Dread Guards, they had numbers/strength advantage. I don't think you have to change the hitpoints of the baddie or the minions or whatever the case may be, but whatever it is doesn't always have to chase them if they run away, I say give a way out, allow them to flee if it's too hard, more often than not, big bads in most games generally have the arrogant mindset of "haha cowards, go die alone in the desert you're not worth the time to hunt and kill now" because they ran away... now yes, this isn't ALL games there are DM's that are like nahhhhh time for the coup de' gras, finish whats left to make a statement.... but it seems the common mindset is the prior (hell even in my game my BBEG is like that, you're weak, go die cold and alone so I can raise your corpse later). Don't wanna kill a character? fudge some damage unless they REALLY do something stupid and basically bring it on themselves, then shrug and be like "you did this not me". Even most intelligent creatures when they know a foe is strong, if that foe backs off they too will fall back to recover, and that gives you something to play on too, but even if it chases, you can still give a way out that eludes capture but gives some intensity to the scenario and adds more thrill. You also want them to want to come back to beat it, give them an idea they CAN win they just need to be more thoughtful about what they're doing, make a plan, carry it out, earn that EXP.
About the NPC rescue, i just do it when the plot of the game need it. For an example, in one of my adventures the PCs find a realy powerfull warrior that is having problems with a wizard. He can easily beat the wizard, but his wife and children are cursed and will die if he do this. My ideia is: If everything fail on the combat, the players will not die but will get the "bad ending", where the warrior protect the PCs and defeat the wizard because this was his problem from the beggining, but after this he get depressed and dont want to fight anymore. But this is only on that especific situation, not all batles will have a alternative ending
NPC rescue also feels less meh if there is a squad (made up of members individually weaker than the PCs) instead of a single awesome NPC. Say you're on a ship getting wrecked by a Kracken. It feels dispowering if Aquaman shows up and 1HKOs it like a DM controlled spotlight hog. But if a squad of mermen come to fight it as it is still latched onto the deck (making use of the fact that it is stuck to get solid hits in, something the PCs can help by anchoring the tentacles etc), that makes it team effort. It feels less like someone is stealing the kill than that the world isn't completely out to get them, and makes making contacts more appealing. Maybe next time the adventurers go out to sea they contact these guys in advance, or they get some nifty potions/equipment to give themselves swim speeds and/or underwater breathing. The more this NPC rescue is tied to previous actions of the party (maybe the PCs rescued a mermaid from pirates a few day ago), the more it feels earned. NPC rescue is a great way to introduce a threat that players cannot currently handle, but will be able to handle in the foreseeable future. Maybe they meet another Kracken when they sail home and absolutely wreck it this time. The context of having needed help before with a foe they can now crush by themselves reinforces the jump in power in between those moments.
And they dont win XP if they get the "Bad ending". Its like "You went to combat the wizard but you arent ready yet, and there are consequences worse than death in this case (Without this warrior the city cant defend itself, so the players now need to make the warrior want to fight again or defend the city themselfs or enemys will destroy the city)". Like i said, in this very specific case, its because of the plot of the game. Im not saving them because they went bad on a combat, im showing them that the consequences of losing a battle can be worse than just death
What do you do to adjust encounters on the fly during combat?
Nerdarchy's Out of the Box Encounters ▶▶ www.kickstarter.com/projects/nerdarchy/out-of-the-box-encounters-for-5th-edition
PATREON BENEFITS ▶▶ www.patreon.com/thedmlair
CHEAP D&D ADVENTURES I'VE CREATED ▶▶ www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/11812/Luke-Hart
If you're going to have an npc(s) save the day, set it up beforehand, make it a helms deep scenario
Then instead of the players feeling like they failed and a cool npc came to rescue them, they feel like they succeeded by surviving long enough for the cavalry to arrive. If they do better than expected have the cavalry arrive too late to help, only to find the enemy unexpectedly vanquished
Actually, I use the "NPC rescuer" a bit creatively. Mainly by having low level NPCs show up from Town A (this is a rough example) because they heard the fighting. Most times these guys are just cannon fodder BUT it allows the players to not take hits and thus keep them in the fight longer. It's never "so and so shows up and just yeets your ass out of the fire" but more like "a group of concerned peasents have shown up to help you rid the village of its goblin problem".
This isn't a perfect example but it's an example nonetheless. I even do a little back and forth too where the monsters may get a few reinforcements with waves of them coming and waves of peasants. Most of my players (who are fairly aytypical players) do like this because it gives them a sense of grandeur when they finally win across the bodies of the monsters and peasants.
If I use waves I mostly spread them out as I see fit instead of having a hard amount of rounds or an event that triggers them. Often it is enough to send the next wave one round earlier or later to get back to the desired difficulty. I also often use roleplaying to balance encounters and often even preplan that like a bunch of stupid hill giants would often defeat my players when they encounter them, but because they are stupid they use ineffective tactics or start arguing with each other or fall for fimple tricks and become much easier to defeat making the players feel even better about they victory as they used their better tactics to defeat somthing actually stornger than themselves.
And I have to say that I use that NPC thing - but mostly as a plotpoint or storytelling device like the low level group of pcs is tasked with holding a part of the wall of a city. They barely manage to do so for some rounds and then the reinforcements arrive being lead by an important NPC who then can be used for roleplaying or to deliver plothooks.
DM: The six of you happen upon a pair of kobolds looting a wrecked cart on the side of the road ...
Players: Only two? GET THEM CHARGE !!!
*players get led on a foot race with the kobolds*
DM: The kobolds dip into a vine and moss covered cave in the side of a hill. What do you do?
Players: It's only kobolds. They might have treasure!
Lone cautious player: Guys, we're still level 1 ...
Other 5 Players: Nah we got this! They're weak creatures only 1/8th CR. Shinies here we come!!!
*DM plays kobolds as pack tacticians. Secret passages to fire at players from across pit traps. Splashing oil onto the players burning torches. The entirety of the warrens has traps and dead ends. Kobolds attacking and retreating repeatedly. Players barely crawl out alive dragging half of them out unconscious. Might have killed a single kobold and wounded another. Left with no spells, no treasure, and no supplies*
**12 levels later**
DM: The six of you happen upon a pair of kobolds looting a wrecked cart on the side of the road ...
Players: Have they noticed us yet?
DM: *rolls* ... No they haven't
Players: Okay we all back away slowly and go in a different direction ...
This almost word for word happened in my group with an orc raiding band, second encounter was more just a we gtfo before initiative is rolled
Tucker's Kobolds?
after session 1
me: the encounters were kinda easy, weren't they?
players: "NO! WE ALMOST DIED!"
Just remember players tend to have a bad way of measuring combat difficulties if they've never DMed. Especially if they're new or haven't had a few tpks under their belt. I've had players say the same thing at the start of a campaign...and then a few sessions later commented that they were clearly wrong after a few brutal combats. Remember, if a player doesn't drop, it was easy. XD
If a player doesn't drop it was easy. LOL. There's some truth to this for sure. Like I have hard grueling combats 4 players drop save three or four times get healed and get back up. But if they don't even get close to dropping that it was not challenging at all. They got to be slivered or down on the ground bleeding or the combat wasn't very challenging. 😁
@@theDMLair as it was their 1st session, I pulled the punches a little...
@@theDMLair my 'levels of difficulty' are easy, normal, challenged, and '***** **** ************ **** we're all going to die!!!!'
Easy is if no one gets dropped or comes close. If the barb has one hit point at the end it may be normal, but if no one looks like Peter Griffon after the raccoon attack, it wasn't notable and was easy. Normal means someone dropped or came close. If the tank has 15 hp after popping pots and or cleric spells...this was normal. Challenged means that at least one player went down and most of the party is low on hp and or other resources. 'We are all gonna die' is when the players have a story they'll remember forever about the fight that they nearly lost. I.e. in a campaign I'm helping plan, the players will be fighting a level 20ish cr monster at around...oh level 8 or so. It's doable with some of the plot devices they'll get, but there is no room for error. I've done the math and the party either wins or loses in like 3.25 turns. No wiggle room. They can kill it in 3.25, it WILL kill them in 3.33 turns accounting for all resources usable. ;3 if they win...they'll have one hell of a story.
At level 1 a block of cheese can take half your health, so it is harder not to down someone session 1.
I think an important note is: Even if the fighting encounter seems a bit too hard. Think why it is first. Is it your fault? Or is their fault because they wanted to just take a pointless artefact just to piss off that friendly dragon.
Lol, yep... 😂
And if it is because they roll very bad, maybe give them a chance to escape. They shouldn't always win, but a tpk because of bad rolls is a shame. It takes courage to say when you're defeated, especially in a ttrpg. Not every fight should be for the end of the world if they lose. Let them catch their breath, make a new strategy and get back in the fight.
@@mennograafmans1595 What I was saying that they should be punished by their stupidity for their stupidity
And if they are having a normal fight and lose because of bad rolls I let it happen and let the enviroment get them out, or a NPC, or I let them get captured.
If they are still low level and get rekt by goblins I maybe let a owlbear come and attack the goblins, or the goblins capture them. Leading to a great escape scenario, or maybe like a slavery arc, if they get sold
@@coolboy9979 I'm getting goblin slayer flashbacks
One of the most interesting NPC rescuers I've heard of came from one of my friend's games. He was a player in it, and they were fighting an adult red dragon. The players were losing pretty badly, but the dragon was on its last legs. Knowing that the dragon was about to cause a TPK with its breath weapon, the DM had a valiant hero jump down onto the dragon's head and finish it off. He then looked up to an old timey camera crew and asked if they got it on tape. He was a huge douche to the players themselves, thanking them for softening it up, and expecting them to thank him for saving their lives. The players hated him, so they went on an entire mini adventure just to find the guy and kill him. Turns out he was only a level 4 Champion fighter, who did it to get fame. Needless to say he didn't walk away from the battle against 5 level 9 PCs. My suggestion is, if you make an NPC save them, make them hate their savior, it can go a long way, and makes for a lot of roleplay and plot ability.
This idea is golden. Your comment is criminally underrated.
@@isectoid9454 why thank you very much
Nearly TPK'd a level 9 group of 5, with a single Banshee. 4 of them failed the ST on the Wail. All dropped to 0 HP. Only the Wizard saved his throw. And it was close
Wow who would have seen that coming? LOL
How did they survive? Cleric get a nat 20 death save?
The wizard chucked a potion of superior healing down the clerics throat. The cleric used his turn to healing word one and gave a potion of healing to the other. All survived. They beat the banshee but I haven't used one since
"or players TAUNTING the dungeon master"
Love this line XD
I had a player who would taunt me... 😁
My wife taunts me almost every game one way or another. I don't mind giving her a few extra damage for it cause it's literally the only time EVER that id be able to do that without being a complete scumbag 😆😆😆
@@theDMLair I was actually gonna ask why you didn't link it in the info box. Now I have to look it up myself again D:
Was looking for this comment!
@@theDMLair I believe it! I've seen your vid about the issue, which makes this line all the better! 😁
Ah, so the wizard knows the DM Tricks. _Its almost like he is a DM._
That would explain a lot! But I'll need to see hard evidence...
@@theDMLair Might I ask what school of magic the wizard follows?
@@theDMLair He's a Divination Wizard isn't he... *looks suspiciously*
WonderFurret the school of dungeon mastery
@@theDMLair It could be that the wizard taught the DM.
Hey Luke,
absolutely on your side with everything, especially: If the players are doing everything right and you as DM are the one to blame, you can't punish the players but must punish yourself!
I adjust monsters before the session: more or less HP, AC, DMG, different special abilities, weapons or tactics, but not completly randomly; a Goblin is a still a goblin and not a dragon, so CR should always be aproximate the same as written in the MM.
CR 10 kobolds at level 15 are fun though. Players be like "kobolds, hah!" Then a fun little encounter happens. 😁
@@theDMLair True, but for example if you do the kobolds on lvl 1 and then on level 5 and just scale them up, the players loose the feeling for challenge in encounters (sorry just lacking the right words to express what I mean)... than rather put 400 kobolds level 1 there and the players know: This will be freaking awsome, but hard as hell XD
I fudged a crit to stop someone dying instantly to their first boss. Died anyway after failing death saves.
Some would call me a murder-DM, but I do tend to go kinda easy on first timers ...kinda.
I shun unearned success myself, and generally DM as though the players are of like mind. As a player, I'd rather die than survive via rule bending.
But first timers kinda lack the seasoned perspective of how starting over can be fun too. I like to DM gently on early levels, and ramp things up over time. I couldn't fudge a crit for a newbie because i roll combat outside the screen, but I share your 'feels' on that situation.
I tend to make my monster encounters just a smidge too powerful. Once the enemy comes into combat, it doesnt immediately start dealing damage or using crazy abilities. My monsters will sometimes ease into a situation like its a cold pool. That way if the PCs are going nutso on them, they can act in kind and defend themselves.
These are some great suggestions including some I hadn't thought of doing! Stuff like having some of the monsters just leave/flee; maybe the big bad leaves the party to his cronies because he is disgusted that it's too easy also...
One I used recently was just let the boss battle play out easier than I had planned it to be, and then justify it in RP afterwards... I had my party of five level 3s face off against a young copper dragon, mistakenly thinking CR7 would be enough for a boss battle and underestimating the fact some of the characters had proning abilities... But since I had already planned on this copper dragon being a scheming agent of pure chaotic neutrality, I just worked it in that HE had underestimated the party and was utilizing the Clone spell to make himself younger and less intimidating than his nearly-ancient true self and was now even more impressed with this party he had taken a liking to... 😁
The Big Bad walking off in disgust is a great idea! 😁
My most influential past DM(who really helped me develop my style) was always a firm believer in the "war-gamer/rule-of-cool" play-style. He was an old-school war-gamer prior and an army veteran, so he really knew how to hammer people tacitly. An in-group joke amongst us(since DBZ Abridged was a thing at that time) was that he majored in Dynamic Storytelling, with a minor in Educational Beat-downs... We pulled some crazy-shit, which he then sometimes used on us later. Never tried to out-right TPK us, but made it damn near impossible to hate him for it.
I miss my 1st group...
Sometimes I also create special abilities on the fly, but they always have to be "thematic". For example, in one fight against an ettin, the paladin moved away and took the opportunity attack, to let the squishier character to leave. Thus, the sorceress thought she was free to move away from the ettin, but she also took the opportunity attack... due to the second head of the ettin, and the player said: "Oh God, how did I not imagine this?" ;)
Had a final boss encounter planned for a short campaign. Players burned through his health in 2-3 rounds while taking little damage in return. I could see disappointment on the faces of my players. When the final hit landed on the boss, I had it resurrect in an explosion, dealing some damage to all of them and give him some slight buffs. Turned into a grueling deathmatch with the last attack of the wizard (last player standing) managing to take it out, and having 1 player die, which then became a dramatic ending to rush the body to a temple of Heironeous for a revive. Pure gold.
On the NPC rescue part, would you not even consider it even if the players have had positive interactions with that NPC and rather than the NPC taking the spotlight, have it support the players?
That's a really cool way to turn that boss fight into a fun battle for your players. I had a boss once that went down in one round to a Paladin's smites. And that same Paladin commented that the fight was disappointing.
I think I would just never use an NPC rescuer. I just don't like the idea. Like if other people want to do it like I'm not going to you know crap on them because everyone can run and play the game they enjoy playing. I just personally don't like it. And I feel like players are smart enough to understand when they've been rescued by the dungeon master. And I think that cheapens the game experience. That's just my opinion on it.
Nice video. Yes, all those things - especially the enemy combat tactics and the use of reinforcements. Another little trick I picked up somewhere (this isn't mine) was the idea of partitioning a boss-monster's HP into pools - so rather than having, say, 30 HP it might have 3 x 10 HP pools and damage to one pool doesn't bleed over into another. So, having reduced it to 1 + 10 + 10 HP the next hit, even a critical, is only going to do a max of 1 HP of damage to it. Also, you can trigger a special action or new behaviour when a pool is depleted; it goes invisible, gets an additional attack, takes to the aiir and only does ranged attacks, uses an auto-recharge breath weapon, etc.
NPC rescuers can work if it feels like the PCs earned the support of the NPC. If that wizard that they worked so hard to win over shows up to bail then out, that works a lot better than just a random NPC or someone who liked them without any effort. Pretty much, make it look like their diplomacy and roleplay got them the support rather than it just being a DM bail out.
yeah I try to do a sort of Dark Souls approach to it.
How does the NPC know to show up at just the right moment to help the PCs?
@@theDMLair that depends on the situation. A spell-caster might have happened to be scrying on their allies, or someone may have recieved a vision from a god, or they may have been aware of the coming fight and only been able to show up at that point, or they may have just been in the area. The players will know you bailed them out, but that doesn't always matter. It can't be done too often (probably once per campaign at most), and really should only be used if the players really worked to earn an NPC's trust, and are on the verge of a TPK, but it can make for some memorable and epic moments. It might not work with every group, and it certainly does not work in every scenario, but I have been at tables where this has been done and not negatively impacted the game.
I tend to prefer the "NPC shows up to help escape" over the "NPC kills the bad guys" approach. Especially if they're in an area where they have connections, it could be a situation of an ally not daring to get into the fight and having waited for the more powerful PCs to deal with the danger, only to then realise the party isn't going to make it and "over here!" to either distract the enemy so the party can get away, or grabbing a friend's hand and starting to pull them towards a secret entrance to a hideout the enemy won't follow.
I had an encounter recently where I was so proud of my players for making the fight easier for them, but near the end I had to take some creative liberties to keep them from dying.
I was running Dragon of Icespire Peak, and the players had just stormed and taken over an enemy base in a run down mansion. They were pretty tired. However, there were sentries outside og the manse that they never defeated, and the book states that they ambush the players when the players try to leave. The enemies in the encounter are said sentries (which were these pretty scary half orc cultists with Lightning Bolt), and a bunch of Needle Blights. Here is where my players brilliance shined through. They used an immovable rod to bar the door shut, and heard the half orcs issue commands to the needle blights to flank around and go through the back, while the half orcs tried breaking down the door. The players dropped caltrops and ball bearings in front of the main entrance, waited two turns so the needle blights wouldn't just come back immediately, and deactivated the immovable rod. The half orcs came in and were slowed and damaged by the traps they laid, while the blights were still going around the house. One of the players was even shooting them from upstairs with a bow, so if the half orcs wanted to close in on him, they had to make dexterity check to jump over a hole in the stairs that led to a bed of wooden spikes (Which is actually how the first cultist died).
One of the half orcs was still alive by the time the blights got inside. One of the players distracted the blights while the other players killed the half orc. However, due to some unfortunate dice rolls, it took longer to finish that orc than expected, so the one player was getting ganged up on pretty hard. They finally killed the half orc, and each player had less than 10 hp by that point, so I said that the blights were no longer compelled to fight after their masters were dead. It doesn't say this anywhere in the book, but I told the players that the blights were magically enslaved by the cultists, and killing the cultist they were tied to broke the magic. So they simply stopped fighting and walked away into the woods.
Definitely one the more interesting encounters that campaign.
I have had to learn alot of this on the fly. Mostly because I made the PC's to powerful early. Some great techniques here. Never thought of legendary actions tho.
Yeah, in 5e PCs get powerful fast without help from the DM (or even magic items).
Honestly, I do a lot of these already, such as adjusting hit points, changing enemy tactics or making the enemies flee. I recall one time I had 5 silver dragons attacking my party's air ship and I almost killed one of them with one move, having the dragons attacking in the most intelligent way. After that, I decided not to have them do multi-attack for the rest of the encounter.
I have added abilities on the fly as well as enemy equipment. My players wanted to read one of my NPCs thoughts and I didn't want them to know what the NPC was thinking, so right then and there I gave that NPC an item that blocked spells of that nature.
I've also added entire extra boss fights that I hadn't planned on having when my players beat my encounter, but it seemed in retrospect like it wasn't challenging enough. Now, I have at one point added in rescue NPCs, but I quickly realized that mistake and created an encounter as stated which immediately removed those NPCs to fight the players with the knowledge that they had nobody else to rely on at that point. That way they not only had the dread of facing something that just removed their powerful NPC allies all by themselves, but when they beat it they had the knowledge that they were now the saviors of these NPCs, thus making them feel more important.
Sometimes, though, I don't make the enemies tougher or weaker. In cases where the players had a brilliant idea that I never considered which makes the combat way too easy, I let them have it. Also, when they have had an easy time and now the boss fight is a struggle for them, I usually let it be what it is and hope they can come up with something clever like they tend to do. At least a couple of my players are too smart for these encounters, so I like to throw situations at them which forces them to come up with a way to cheap-shot the thing or die. They always think of a way.
If the party is wrecking my boss and are a round from taking him down, I subtly add a phase 2 to the fight. His special abilities recharge, he can do new things that were not part of his stat block (cause quakes to echo throughout the cave and send stalactites hurdling towards the players), and his health increases and maybe a certain damage resistance. I also sprinkle phase two bosses throughout my game so it isn't as noticeable when I make it up though. That's a one and done though, you don't want a three phase fight unless he really is the BBEG and you planned it.
This is starting to sound like D*** S***s
I have found the biggest factor that makes a fight challenging or not is how the DM plays it. This past weekend, our party of 4 level 15 characters killed a CR 17 and a CR 12 at the same time with little sweat. We then proceeded to fight a CR 20 without a rest, and while it was tough, only one character came close to being unconscious.
The next day, I had to scale back the difficulty of an encounter with 3 yuan-ti to prevent several character deaths in a 10th-level party. Why? Because I played the yuan-ti to use HEAVY battlefield control abilities, essentially locking down several party members.
Gotta be honest and vent for a second (it ends on a good note). I really like doing things on the fly, but to give an example on how it usually ends:
"You see the creature disappear in a puff of smoke and appear right next to you. It attacks you." I was using Cape of the Mountebank and Action Surge.
Player: "Misty Step doesn't have that much distance."
Me: "Correct."
Player: *pulling up his eyebrows and having a "Uh huh, sure, whatever"-face* "Mh-hm. Well then."
This passive aggressiveness really pisses me off, to the point where I just want to rip their character apart with a Sorrow. Because it happened constantly. And what if I wanted to give that creature a 120 ft Misty Step. Ever fought a Balor? Fuck me.
And the TPK, man. They were level 9, I used a Beholder with 50 extra Hitpoints. You would say "Are you insane?". Fun fact, if they would have managed to not fuck things up every round, they would have been able to do something. The last player standing that got not disintegrated got the killing blow.
Mistakes included: Doing the same thing over and over again hoping to achieve a different result, not helping each other out, the paladin flanking on his own leaving the party without his +5 on saves aura..., just to mention some of the minor ones. Though I gotta be honest I wasn't sad about the Ranger being dead. She played an 80 year old elf, and because she read that elves were considered mature at around 100 or so, she would play her like a child aka mentally retarded. In the current campaign where I am a player those things are gone for the most part, aside from the female players way of playing. We've got a new player at the table and I feel like she's giving her bad advice. Funny thing is, as I am playing a true neutral character I can actually mediate between the characters ingame and she learns that inner party conflict can be something funny and good to workaround and the other player playing a lawful good fighter in the army learns that playing lawful good doesn't mean lopping off heads when someone does a crimey thing. So much growth. :3
Awesome. I knew some of it, but I love learning new techniques. The thing with waves seems really useful, not just for adjusting difficulty, but also to create a sense of progression during combat. I'll try it out and see how it feels
Yeah the waves thing is really good for making battles more interesting too. And it helps the dungeon master deal with spells like Fireball or hypnotic pattern that could invalidate the entire Kombat. With waves the fireball or hypnotic pattern doesn't hit everyone it just hits some of the monsters.
@@theDMLair I didn't think of that, but yeah, it's a good way to counter players who go nuclear.
I've found one good way to adjust it on the fly without even really changing anything. Basically just make the enemies make little stupid decisions that leave them open to attack. The tricky part is doing it in a way that the enemy would feasibility do it, and not have it look obvious.
MAN I love this video! This is the single best video on this topic PERIOD. There were parts I felt like you were in my head! Haha
All of this is brilliant and let’s the DM provide the experience they were going for! And I agree, you’ll have to do it less and less as you get better, but always be ready!
I am never going to make a video on this anymore... because you just killed it!!
Here’s the ONLY thing I could think of in moments like this.
The fight is going bad and looks like it’s too much?? Have a BIGGER THREAT come in and take out what’s about to kill the PCs... THEN it turns into a chase scene or they have to hide from this even more threatening encounter.
This might seem counter intuitive... but the bigger monster eats the smaller monster, but now it’s a skill challenge! So they don’t feel helpless like the NPC example, because they still feel like this thing could kill them too
Thanks, dude. 😁
There’s always a bigger fish.
@@tannerray5014 Haha exactly! This makes me think of the Star Wars Episode 1 scene where they are in the Gungan Submarine and they are running from that Eel monster... then RRRRRAAAAAAWWWWWWW The HUGE thing comes and eats it
Excellent video. You hit on nearly everything I’ve been doing for 40 years. All great advice, succinctly presented, and essential to being a successful DM. Keep it up!
Thanks! 😂
Eh, I don't come up with solutions to my puzzles or encounters anymore. I pretty much just throw problems at my players and trust they're clever enough to think of a solution.
I’m not an experienced DM and a couple of sessions ago I had a Grick confront the party. I forgot that it had resistances to physical attacks but I realized it was going down way too fast. So I started adjusting the HP and turns out, I ended up giving it double as much HP, realizing afterwards that it was the best option since it corrected my mistake of forgetting resistances in the first place 😁
They were swamping a boss fight that included a big spirit thing and a bunch of cultists so I just made up an abilty on the fly for the cultists to walk into the big monster, dying instantly, but healing it for hitpoints equal to theirs.
As an new DM, this is an amazing video! Because of my lack of experience, I worry about TPKs on what I expect to be a trivial encounter, and now I know how to deal with that! I hope this channel becomes successful, because its content and advice is golden.
This is the best video ever, I have used almost every one of your ideas in my own campaign. Even had clay golems throw clay to stick PC in place to make it harder, they were so kicking my gloam ass
That's awesome. Clay in the face. 😀
I feel that while the NPC-rescuer should generally be avoided, it also kinda depends on what kind of players you have. During my second campaign, we were playing a one-shot heist and at one point everything was going t e r r i b l e... All it took was a couple of bad dice rolls, and we were surrounded by guards. Plan botched. Players frozen in fear. We didn't know what to do, and safe to say, we already felt like we sucked for not having a plan B. Then our DM let an NPC at the party (whom one of our players had already flirted with earlier), turn out to be a Succubus with her own agenda, and attacked one of the guards, making them forget all about us and focus on the more immediate threat. Which allowed us to get back to our original plan and eventually get the treasure and leave, feeling awesome about ourselves. 👍
Our DM however felt bad about it, and asked us afterwards if we had any pointers on how she could do better next time. We had no idea what she was talking about, and were just happy that nobody died and that we managed to pull off the heist. However, I can imagine that more experienced players have more confidence, and would ultimately consider an NPC rescuer an insult to their own abilities. N00bs with little to no confidence in their own DnD-abilities might be more inclined to appreciate a random saviour, over having to roll a new character. 😅
It takes a fairly long time to dial in on how strong a given group is, so adjusting an encounter on the fly is paramount to make challenging encounters that are balanced. Since I always roll in the open and never fudge dice, I make use of HP adjustment and "monster morale" (depending on their intelligence score).
Example:
A pack of direwolves might be strong and confident while there are 5 or 6 of them, but once half of them go down, I as DM take a look at the situation. If the players are struggling, the wolves might back up, holding an attack action, then flee the round after. If they're doing ok the wolves will continue fighting. If they're walking all over the wolves, the alpha will have more HP and maybe a reaction ability.
Yes totally agree it takes some time to judge how strong a given group is. And I also roll out in the open with almost everything so fudging dice is not even on the table for me.
This was several editions ago, but I had a situation where I decided to let my players get creative, but that forced me to improvise. I had two players retrieving something from an evil wizard's tower (I lean in to tropes that I like), but instead of entering the front and working their way up the tower to the reward at the top, the rogue and wizard worked together and got creative, using a levitate spell with slippers of spider climbing (I think that was the combo I allowed) to bypass the the inside of the tower, and get the thief up to the top, so that they could break in from above. Now instead of facing a boss at the end of several encounters with minions, they were facing the boss when they were fresh and he was alone. So I had to get creative too, and have minions hear what was happening above, and come to aid. I also fudged a few stats in the moment so that the enemies wouldn't go down as easily. If I remember correctly (it was about two decades ago), the thief didn't even try to engage with the fight, which is why I first brought in minions, because the thief ran circles around the solo boss, and had successfully gotten the item while avoiding the boss. I had to then have minions block him in and force a fight; my wizard player was getting bored sitting outside the tower waiting, so I had some minions go on a patrol and encounter him, and bumped up the minion stats, since there would end up being fewer than he would've encountered if they'd gone through the tower. I think the rogue killed a few minions and damaged the evil mage before high-tailing it out of there with the object, and the wizard got to cast a few spells and ended up running for his life when outnumbered and alone, but they met back up later and seemed to enjoy that they felt that they had outsmarted the DM (me) by bypassing the inside of the tower, and managing to get the object without doing anything I'd planned. That will sometimes happen if you allow your players to get creative and try to think their way around the problems you planned to have them face. Rather than try to force them to do what I had planned (or punishing them for not doing so), I was able to work with what they wanted to do, and used some of these tricks from the video to adapt in the moment. That said, there are still a few things here that I hadn't thought of at the time, which I will likely use in the future.
I ask players to bring a back-up character sheet. The only thing I role behind a screen are persuasion/deception/intimidate interactions, with some house rules to make them more intrigue-laiden. But I do try to adjust encounters to suit their level, numbers, & skill level. I like to adjust the overall campaign to give players a good chance avoiding TPK, but there will be death. Bad runs with the dice or poor decisions can and do sometimes make me seem like a Murder-DM. But when you win, the sense of accomplishment is not hollow, and I'm liberal with loot and welcome creative exploitative tactics. Risk:Reward is high:high.
One thing you can do with NPC's to help a struggling party out, is offer support services which are not normally easily available. Due to the importance of your task, perhaps the quest giver might foot the bill for a resurrection, or perhaps due to the dire stakes at hand, a diety might actually answer with divine intervention, etc. A healer or buffer NPC, or a limited use legendary item, are good ways to let the players handle the glorious combat themselves, but with a bit of padding. Can also keep encounters initially a little weak, and then keep a variable amount of enemy reinforcements in your back pocket.
I did the "Such and such NPC to the rescue!" Recently, and holy crap it deflated all the tension and joy of the combat at my table. I am trying to keep the gent under powered compared to the party, but their healer is missing and so I figured sending someone in to help them fight the unbalanced combat I was not planning to run this way was what I thought as the best option.
Based on this advice however I realize I should definitely done number 8 and had the minions run right out of there when one of the party members was cutting down 3 or 4 of them a round. (This player's character is scary! And it's wonderful.) I just assumed they were more scared of their boss than the guy cutting them down, but in hind sight... NAH.
For me, I usually do the adding of Legendary Actions on boss-type monsters from time to time, but I also will sometimes give those monsters a couple uses of Legendary Resistance as well. Among a few other things for other circumstances of course. That said, this does give me some ideas for the future, especially as my players become more and more capable :)
I can come up with a scenarion in which an NPC can rescue the party: they will be an ally who helps them out, thereby also gaining some trust. Mind you, this needs some degree of planning, but imagine it like this. The BBEG is sending some sort of tough (but not invincible) hit team to get rid of the party. The players struggle and an NPC with some motivation to fight the BBEG assists them (no instakilling). He can then present himself and some plotpoint. If they do well, have him pop up just after they leave initiative
I'm running a homebrew campaign that focuses on the player choices and the outcomes. So for the next session, the players fought off a Naga and nearly got killed, only to be ambushed by the spider community since the "death" of this naga created a power vacuum into the forest. Now I had an idea of NPC Dryad saving them, since previously they saved her life, but I'm going to use her only if the players choose to flee. So in my opinion NPC rescue in some cases is a valid option, if it fits in. If the players don't rely on anything but themselves and a patron swoops in just in time to fight the big bad evil guy for them to escape or the local town villagers rally up arms against the orc invasion inspired by the party's heroism, I think that would make an awesome moment. But a random dungeon where their local wizard patron comes in an swings a fireball at the BBEG when the party is down might make the whole adventure anti-climatic. This is just my two-cents.
Hey there, Extremely new DM here, still in high-school. Recently The party was going through a hag copy cat situation I chose to throw at them to confuse them and have a puzzle-like combat encounter that lead up them fighting 2 covens. One coven consisting of 2 Green hags and 1 Night hag and one coven consisting of 3 Green hags, two of those hags hiding for an ambush in the woods around them. I quickly realized...This is a way bigger Challenge Rating that I did not calculate, No stress just time to have the people of the village fight some Hags and Lower their health A-smidge-lot and have my players be rewarded by each getting 15 gold and A free level up to third level. Win-Win
Wow, two covens! Yeah that's hard core. 😂
So just a note for the dice fudging and npc savior tropes with examples. During a recent campaign I built in an npc savior as part of a combat since i was winging an odd encounter with 2 sub bosses and a bunch of minions. My players wanted to play/experience some monster hunter themed stuff so I'd converted the 5e monster hunter conversion to 3.5e and used waves initially. The issue was that it was something like 10 npcs on a caravan and the party. When the sub bosses popped in, a player did something stupid(they didnt know it was stupid, but it all but guaranteed a tpk) so I had the dwarf npc shout "I've always wanted to so this!" Drop his cross bow and jump off the tower shouting "Hammer Time!" And land on one of the sub bosses with his hammer. The players were laughing too hard to even register the potential trope. While not quite the usual savior trope, it is important for newer DMs to note that if you have npcs IN the battle, self-sacrifice and or game changers are far less likely to come across with the negative connotations. It is bringing IN to the combat an npc that has nothing to do with said combat that will likely irritate players.
As for the fudging dice, I generally agree that it's a bad idea, but here's an example where it was all but necessary. I had a player joining the campaign end up missing his first session due to life. The party went and found a combat that was balanced to be fairly easy WITH the addition to the party...that was not added. I did some math and figured it pushed it from easy to moderate in difficulty and figured it should be fine.....and then I crit. And crit. And crit. I rolled 6 crits in 2 turns in a combat not balanced for what I had intended. I realized this was tpk territory if I'd dropped all those at the start, so I ignored 3 of them and "banked" them for the time being. After the initial pain train on the players, I ended up rolling garbage for a few rounds and once they had the encounter in hand, I "crit" a few times without looking at the dice rolls. If you are going to fudge the dice, try to do it in a method that is not super obvious and make sure it is more to fix a kerfuffle than just because you feel like it. I normally use waves as a method of difficulty control, and I've been doing this for years, but occasionally I'll have a perfect storm of 'oh crap.....they're all dead' and need to do some tweaking on the fly.
Another fun way to make an encounter more difficult is to have the enemies use pots. I had a sub boss pop a pot in the middle of a combat and go from almost dead to looking much better. My players couldn't decide if they were more annoyed that he was no longer almost dead or that he just consumed a potion worth a few thousand gold that they would have kept if he died.
Great video though! I actually use most of these myself, though I hadn't noticed it as note worthy!
I had this great idea and typed it all out on here as a comment only to, at the end, realize it was way to specific and required some DM level spells to accomplish. I was so stoked lol
In the campaign I am currently dming, the party wanted to clear a fort of bandits. It was a party of 4 2nd level pcs against 6 bandits and a bandit captain, which should have already been difficult, though because they had no healer other than the paladin who doesnt cast healing spells because he uses all his spell slots for divine smite, I gave each a couple potions of healing and the ability to drink a single potion as a bonus action, they managed to kill every bandit while staying at relatively high health. Disappointed by this, I threw another 2 bandits and another bandit captain at them, though they somehow plowed those taking little damage as well, even though they used a majority of their potions in the first wave. This group will never cease to amaze me with the difficulty of challenges they manage to conquer.
Easy answer.... Always deadly+ but adapted to your party's abilities. Party power level 350= encounter P. L 380. Giving them the opcion to feel fear but giving them the option to feel great when they win or not.
Once I had a big boss battle against The Legion (castlevania monster), they were attacking it from a safe spot until they noticed the bodies of the legion's exterior were raising up creating a zombie horde walking towards them. So, they have to adapt their tactic on the fly, with this I was not denying their idea but I was giving them something to worry about... Until they destroyied the exterior and the second phase started.
Love it! One of the best fights I ran was more created on the fly instead of adjusted.
In Storm King's Thunder, my players were assaulting the Fire Giant base, and via some weird tactics and lucky rolls, the final boss fight ended up happening with the Fire giant leader's son and daughter instead of the boss himself. This sounded really boring to me, since I was running a large party and knew they would steamroll over the fight. So........I took the Archmage spell list and gave it to the Fire Giant's daughter.
/evillaugh
IDEA
The main villain is a wizard who enchant monsters in order to make them stronger
In each dungeon, he will enchant a random mob in the middle of the final fight so they get a buff and maybe some traits, legendary actions or other things to spice the combat up
This ensures that the boss/miniboss has minions while also being unique and putting up a good fight with an interesting challenge
A possible example: The party is clearing the Un-deed crypts which has been leaking different types of undead into the town of Vunara Ball
In the final room, here is a horde of zombies, skeltons and some undead goblin archers. The evil wizard Dou Sha Bag (short for Doug Sharon Bagron) comes in and enchants one of the goblin archers - making him grow to a large creature, giving him extra hp, more ac, the ability to shoot someone as a legendary action and a special ability that can be used once per fight which causes all of the goblins to fire all at once at random targets. The wizard teleports back to his lair, hoping to never see the party again and preparing for what comes next.
This also gives me an idea for the wizard fight, at random points he will summon a group of mobs and enchant one(probably a weaker enchantment than normal) while he prepares spells, heals up or throw spells at the battle - buffs, debuffs or damage.
I had players try to call me out for letting Otyughs do more attacks than they should to make a fight harder… The reality was that in their first encounter with an Otyugh, I had opted to have it use EITHER it’s tentacles or bite when it’s really supposed to be able to do both in the same turn. The light leaving my players’ eyes when I told them was so satisfying.
Sometimes if I'm using pre-made encounters or complex traps, or just stuff that I made quite some time ago, I accidentally adjust the difficulty by forgetting to do all the cool crap I had planned, or feeling to read that getting rid of a certain debuff in the encounter takes an action. Or stuff like that.
If I'm adjusting something down on purpose, I can Bear in mind that just because of stat block says that a creature *can* do additional damage on an attack when an ally is within 5 ft of it, doesn't mean it necessarily will.
If I want to adjust it up without changing the CR at all, I make sure all the monsters use all of their abilities, use tactics, focus fire, use cover and the environment creatively, etc. Maybe use max HP or allow healing of the monsters who receive to take them past their standard head points toward their max HP
Having the enemies flee and then show up two levels later for revenge is fun.
One thing that I’ve found works is adjusting how much damage monsters can do. Instead of 1d6+3 damage I’ll lower the damage to 1d6 or raise it to 1d6+5. That’s a subtle change that works on the fly that my players have never noticed, although when I do that I usually start rolling the damage dice in the middle of the table.
I adjust hit points on the fly all the time.
Good video
New DM and tried using CR for 6 players, all of whom are creative and brilliant.
After first few encounters went too easy, i created a narrative subplot for them to follow as to WHY they were getting off easy.
Session 4 had an encounter w/ flight mechanic and realised i had one bad who could wreck the party. Had bads RP a relationship so the problem bad would focus on healing and protection
I had a game where we where basically fighting 4 creatures of the Black Lagoon at level 2.
Only 2 out of 4 players showed up and the DM realized, when they knocked the Druid out of his last bear form for the day, that the encounter was still balanced for 4 players and the players that did not show up, where the combat characters, Hexblade and Barbarian, while the Druid and the Celestial Warlock where support, the Celestial was build for healing and illusions and did not even have Eldritch Blast. So we ran back into the corridor where we just killed some wall tentacles, speculating they would be too afraid to go there and the Druid cast Entanglement at the entrance of the room we where fighting in.
The DM decided the creatures where spooked by the vines and jumped into some water basins, which counted as 3/4 cover. So we spend the next 10 round doing nothing but blasting them with Produce Flame and Sacred Flame.
i do alot of these things for boss fights, and even occasionally in rando encounters i'll just add an ability to one of the monsters on the fly to spice the combat up. ; i had the final battle for my longest running campaign last saturday, 10 level 15 PC's up against my super home-brewed version of Vecna. My goal was to kill half of them and end the fight with noone having any spell slots.. but the players ultimately win. I was fluctuating the max hp of the boss throughout the fight to get a feel where to draw the line, ended up at 900 damage. I also had to adjust a couple abilities through the fight but at the end 4 people were left alive, noone had any spellslots and i was cantripping down the remaining 4 (3 of them had less than 10 HP and their paladin had about 60-70HP)
I remember my 1st time DMing, I was kinda worried I was going to mess it up. I did know ahead of time some of these solutions, but frankly cheating in terms of fudging numbers or making purposeful bad moves didn't sound right to me. (Story below is kinda lengthy. Also I call him "cursed boi" because I forgot his name. Should clarify that, as he wasn't called that in game.)
But I knew given I was very new to this, I was going to make plenty of errors. But one encounter the Ranger in the party managed to befriend a cursed being I initially planned being a more "Silly" one off encounter. Basically it was a rogue and so long as the Ranger wanted him to be there, he would be. I won't lie though, there was 1 time where the befriending him REALLY paid off for the party. (also if someone was out for that week, the party didn't have to halt progress. So that worked out nicely. Especially since it was my high school senior project. So we needed to get the main story I made a tad long done before the year was over.)
The party found themselves in the middle of a fortresses courtyard, about 10 archers surrounding on the walls in all directions. The wizard actually saved the party by having everyone huddle together and then casting "Globe of Invulnerability". It only caused a stalemate though as they couldn't leave, but also couldn't be hurt. So the archers merely had to wait, firing on occasion to make sure the barrier was still up. But little did everyone remember, our little cursed boi was there. He snuck up there undetected whilst the archers were focused on the party. He took out 1 and then they all noticed him. The cursed boi took out 2 more before moving to a place he could sneak. And with 3 looking for him, the party managed to take out the rest as they were no longer stuck in the globe.
The Ranger took out 4 after the barrier was down, and the mage took out the 3 who were huddled looking for the rogue with fireball.
I am pretty sure this counted as "NPC savior", but given he was there in a set place because of one of the party members took him there and it was a sensible action that he would have actually taken. Eh, idk. Players didn't mind it, they seemed kinda ecstatic actually and used the reversal quite effectively.
As for HOW he is played, while the Ranger and Rogue are near each other I allow the Ranger to choose his actions so long as they aren't meta, nonsensical, or outside cursed boi's moral standings. Otherwise, while separated I get into cursed boi's mindset and just play him as he would do things, unless he has a direct order from the Ranger. In which I follow that plan as best as he can. So he is basically a kinda NPC/PC hybrid.
I run risk of book assault, but I do keep a NPC hidden for fights I think may prove to be too difficult. Usually the NPC has a reason to be there and just helps by taking damage, providing healing or buffs, or to provide a little extra damage. One rule I have is the NPC never gets a kill (monsters drop to 1 hp instead of dying for example). The NPC will provide a little more healing after the fight, give some information to push the story forward or something similar then go on their way. Had a few good NPCs that my players either tracked down or ran into again later on. My players have never felt overshadowed in combat by NPCs, though they initially were a little jealous of the character's backstory, which resulted in the players fleshing out their character's more.
I am going to the convention, only live about 3-31/2 hours form there. Can't wait. BTW, great video.
Awesome! Make sure you find me and say what up!
@@theDMLair I will make sure to say hello 👍
I personally like the rogue, plus you should consider making a marathon special about all the appearances of your lovable pc’s so far, I would definitely watch
Do you mean the appearances of the PCS in the skits before my videos? Or do you mean the PCS in my actual games?
@@theDMLair The ones that make the intro so entertaining, its almost end of the year so it would be great if you make a Christmas special with all the pc's introductions videos so far. :D
On a few occasions where I had planned out a difficult encounter, I set secondary benchmarks for the encounter. Basically, if it became clear that the PCs weren't going to kill the enemies without help, I'd start having the enemies die at specific points in combat. For example, if a party of 5 were having troubles beating 4 enemies, I'd have them kill one after two of the PCs were incapacitated, then keep adjusting until the encounter became manageable or until it ended by mercy of the DM.
In combat, I have smaller more plentifull enemies running around, instead of straight up fighting, they want to gimmick their way into victory. The aggression of the players tends to decide how good the gimmick will work. For example:
1. The players attack the enemies agressevily, the enemies notice after two turns and start focusing fire, or grappling players to the ground to restrain them.
2. The players take a defensive stance, so the enemies try to run a large knotted together piece of rope around them in a big circle to capturw them.
For the bigger monsters, they tend to ease off for 1 or 2 turns. Looking into what the players do, before they aggresively pounce on the biggest threat, or the easiest target.
Adjusting can be done by having the smaller enemies do more gimmicky or serious stuff. The bigger monsters can attack earlier or later.
About NPC rescuers, I had an campaign where my players were mere peasants(10 only stats), I had a group of NPC rescuing the players like 70% of the time, so that when the time came where the players where powerful enough to turn the table and do the opposite to not only that group but also other adventuring parties, I can see it was very successful.
What I did in the last boss fight which was close to a party whipe, I made some Spirits that were enslaved by the boss give the players buffs (like extra healing) a while after they have been beaten and freed. That way it also feels like an achievement.
This is one of the best concise advice videos for encounters (its like you have been doing this since high school).
I had an undead cursed dragon not so long ago who I designed on purpose to blow the party far far away to their destination, making them use nearly all their resources. Improve was a tail strike (3D6) and a sand storm which lasted 3 rounds and gave everyone disadvantage for attacks. I felt proud.
My very first encounter for my level 1 PC was a ghost... a CR 4 monster, who had a 21 to hit on me, and did 23 damage on me. A cutscene with the DMPC saved me
On the other hand, the hardest encounter i gave them was in waves, blind where wave six had a kobold sniper hiding behind a deployable shield. He had a steady aim feature which gave him advantage in every shot. Needless to say he was killed horribly when they finally caught him. Till this day when I tell them "you see athena reflection of glass on-" they interrupt me like "IT'S A KOBOLD WITH A GUN, EVERYBODY DUCK"
in my lore, kobolds are exploited as snipers in Eisengard, since they are dextrous and great aims also as calvary, but drake's are their mounts, captains having rage drakes.
I love this comment. So relatable:)
A ghost at level 1? Isn't there something in the DMG about cruel and unusual punishment? 😂
@@theDMLair it was the first session and first encounter
@@kendrickrochelanzot2053 My first session was on a ship and they were attacked by orcs in canoes while they anchored up. The orcs kept failing at getting on board and the whole thing turned into a huge clusterfuck. I remember it fondly;)
@@Rokkiteer that's a cool first encounter, like pirates. Sounds funny that they couldn't even go up.
I am with you one the NPC save. #7 is a fun one also just need to note the special occurrence so if it ever gets repeated the DM stays consistent.
I like how the wizard always sees through the tricks or know what to do :)
There is a place I want to do a not quite NPC rescue. Basically during the first mission of a game I'm planning to run eventually, the party is part of a large group of people who were hired to storm this island for an item. Most of NPCs have been wiped out. Then the party will deal with a a level appropriate boss. Once that boss is defeated. One way above their current strength will show up to be chased off in a cut scene by some of the people who hired the party. Basically that early game taste of what kinda of threats they'll have to face in the later part of the game
Adjusting the HP : had a funny time it happened in onr of the last sessions : I had diminished the normal HP of a boss, as I felt it would be too much for them to handle, but then realised some of the PCs had some techniques to deal way too much damage, so I reaugmented the HP mid-fight.
Yeah I am constantly reminded of how much damage PCS can crank out when they want to. It's pretty crazy. LOL
I am playing 3.5 and decided to use mechanics from other editions aswell (minnions, legendary actions/resistances, ...)
I m still new to the concept of legendary actions/resistances, and sadly my latest bossfight whent right down the drain when i forgott to autoresist the drowpoison, rendering my highpriest (the Brain) useless and unable to sumon a daemon (the Mussle). This one misstepp took more than haalf of the hittpoints out of the battle. Since the rest where basicaly cultists and minnions, it ended in a slaughterfest. Luckily the players opened an avenue for a lutenand to escaape, taking the highpriest with him. Now i can throw a reacuring villain at them, and have a hook to pull my group towards one of my BBEG's.
I steal from other editions too, especially 4e.
Legendary actions are a godsend for DMs. 😁
I like to tell the players "you two both hit the enemy this turn, it hits both of you back" if I'm easing up or "you really messed the enemy up and you have it's primary attention". It's mostly a flavor addition to spreading/focusing attacks, but the players respond well to it. It feels intuitive, helps naturally smooth out the difficulty, and lets the players have counterplay because they know what I'm doing.
I sometimes pre-plan those techniques like I once created an encounter that started with the party finding and investigating a cadaver of a HUGE animal. Then they were attacked by a pack of wolves. When I created that encounter I prepared 2 additional waves of wolves who would be drawn to the battle in case the encounter was too easy and I had a the roleplaying idea in mind of some of the wolves stopping to attack the party and instead start dragging the cadaver away as their food, if the encounter turned out to be too hard. And in cas it turned out to be WAY too hard I would have had the wolves start fighting amongst each other over the food once the party got weakened to a point where the wolves won't see them as a threat anymore.
Here is a super easy principle.
Movement.
Have your monsters move in a manner that offers attacks of opportunity or grants flanking advantage. “The demon is so engaged by the mage’s attack that it charges toward the mage, heedless that it turned its back on the rogue.” Heck, you can have it run a veritable gauntlet of free chances to beat it up.
Have 5e monster move far enough to get into the face of a player that it needs to use its action. This is functionally a “lose a turn” card, and when you think about it in terms of action economy, for a typical 5 round fight you have nerfed hat monster by 20% without having to alter a single thing.
Have the monster move underneath that precarious heavy stalactite which can be brought down onto its head or some other form of triggerable environmental hazard (and its best if you don’t point it out until a round later, “oh gee the monster made a mistake” rather than right away). Plus if someone is struggling to come up with an action, “Give me a perception roll (or just roll a meaningless die). OK, you notice that the monster is under one of those heavy stalactites.”
Have one monster get in the way of another, costing them their action. And if the players seize that by taunting, using charms or commands, etc. have the monsters take a whack at each other. “Okay, normally a charm wouldn’t work like that, but in this moment the orc is so angry that it momentarily forgets the hobgoblin is an ally.”
Have a monster go get something. “The gnoll disengages and retreats to the junk pile, searching for something.” Not enough loss of action? Next round “The gnoll kicks aside debris revealing a ballista that though damaged might be able to get one last shot.” And then? “This round the gnoll rushes past the fighter (opportunity attack!) and grabs a spear from the rack on the wall that looks like it could fit into the ballista.” Look at all those tension-building wasted moves and actions!
Stretch it out, give the players chances for free damage, and let the monsters be their own worst enemies.
Both as a player and the DM, I've learned from the school of hard knocks that other than just letting a TPK happen, waking up in chains with a lot of your equipment missing is way more satisfying than having somebody swoop in and rescue you, or revive you from the dead. I thought the one time I did have a story appropriate NPC cast revivify, I made sure to use the text of the spell that says it only works on a willing soul. And it played out how really nice the after life they ended up in was. So it still felt like a player choice to return to the campaign. But kidding captured would have been a way better story. Plus the player is a monk. Don't need no stinking equipment
*sees title*
Me: What's thi... WAIT! ACTUALLY!..
This is some next level stuff that's going to completely change how I run my first game!
Leaning into the roleplay is my favorite solution. Let both players and monsters do things that aren't defined by the rules, character sheets, or stat blocks, as long as you do so in moderation, require reasonable justification or come up with relevant rolls, and don't stray too far into the territory of letting everyone do the things that one player went out of their way to build their character to be able to do, or negating the usefulness of future build options.
So I encourage my characters to think tactically, and try to predict the enemies next move which actually works sometimes and causes them to behave more smartly and to better deal with tactically smart enemies also one of my favorite things to do in D&D is to deal with characters in unexpected ways like chucking them off the bridge into the river for the archer or mage to take pot shots at till they die or throwing them off a cliff because why not
I don't like the idea of changing stats on the fly, but;
Perhalps if the encounter is too hard, the enemys could realise their winning, get too confortable, and start making mistakes.
...
If the pcs are winning, the enemys could drink some healing potions, summon help, or if they are a caster, activate a contingency spell.
I was just thinking of how I could adjust the difficulty on the fly, and then this video popped up.
That's because I read your mind. Bam. :-)
Once my party faced a Goristro as a chapter boss in my campaign. It was MEANT to be a tpk, because its CR was way too high for them, so they could be revived by a Lich for story purposes. But the clever bastards started by polymorphing the Goristro into a sheep (it rolled a 3 on its con save), then they opened a portal leading far up in the sky for maximum potential falling damage and tossed the sheep through the portal. Once it had fallen and the damage broke through polymorph, it was down 80 HP and knocked prone for a second turn of an additional 100 damage from the PCs.
As an emergency solution I gave the Goristro legendary actions in the form of rampant gore-charges and assistance from other medium-ranked demons, but it was all in vain. So I sat there in panic with no clue how to progress the story, and decided to called it a day.
NEVER underestimate a PC group when they know it's a boss fight.
I really need this as the place i am lacking alot is Combat. I always either make the combat too hard or too easy. I have ALOT of problems with balancing and adjusting the combat on the fly, making it very noticeable and not as much of a satisfying battle.
This video however helped me alot though.
I use morale checks for NPCs in my games, among other things. I also roll nearly every die roll in the open. The neat thing is that I set the DC check due to roleplay reasons, which is vague enough to fudge occasionally. Of course, this doesn't work in every case or every time, it's one tool among many in the toolbox.
NPC rescue works if it’s not free. Either it has to be earned beforehand by building an alliance with said NPC (doing a great service to them potentially, maybe stepping up in a similar manner for them), or after the fact, having a steep price (not necessarily monetary) to pay for it somehow.
A fantasy/D&D joke:
A giant walks into a bar.
Giant (lifting feet and looking under them): Bar? What bar?
(I have one or two variants of this) :)
Here's a strategy. Although I would only use it after quite a bit of preparation for a specific encounter, a really creative and on the spot DM can adjust the encounter via changing the environment.
For example:
-Water can begin rising up from the floor. I hope you can breathe underwater, because the dungeon is going under
-FIRE! Burning rafters and hot coals fall from the ceiling randomly
-Gusts of wind blow anchored PCs and NPCs around. This air can be frigid and deal cold damage
-Vines sprout up from the ground, creating cover and difficult terrain
-EARTHQUAKE!!! Time to make some Dex saves and get to cover
This can be done most often as an obstacle to make the combat more difficult for players. However, this can also be used naturally as more of an obstacle for the villains if the combat is right (and unlike the "savior swoops in and takes over the combat for the players", the players still have a challenge to deal with afterwards).
Changing the battlefield on the fly takes some very high levels of thinking in order to do it successfully, however doing it properly not only creates a more balanced combat, but also a more memorable one. Just wait until your players go "remember that fight in the circus tent where the escaped nightmares dashed over our heads, and remember how some rust monsters got loose and began tearing away at the iron pegs holding up the tent? Man, we were sure that we were going to be engulfed in flames if we weren't quick".
I make all my boss encounters incredibly hard on purpose. That way the party is forced to figure out another way to take out the boss rather than an impromptu brawl. They love it!
I did this in my last session. I added the Craig Cat to a frost druids wild shape and let her do it 3 times because while our martial players were being challenged the casters were kinda just cruising. Needless to say this scared them
I agree with the NPC rescuer being kind of bad, but there was one situation I used it and my player seemed to enjoy it, so I was curious what other people thought of the way I used it:
I had made a one shot and was running it with a friend just to practice it. She was a rogue and since it was just her, I threw in just a basic character as a body she could work around. This dude didn't have a class or any special abilities, he was just charming and had a rapier so that as a rogue, she wasn't the focus of the battle and couldn't hide or get sneak attack that often. Anyway, there was one situation where I had overwhelmed her a bit and so I had reinforcements come in while the NPC said to run while he distracted them. At this point, she has kinda grown attached to him, but being a rogue she ditched him.
Later, during the BBEG fight, she was again becoming a little overwhelmed, and so I had the NPC, whom she thought was dead, swing in on a vine from the trees with the enemies from before on their side. He had made it out by persuading then to join him. They then distracted all of the underlings so that she could focus 1v1 on this BBEG.
High level NPCs rescuing players in times of dire need can absolutely work, if the DM follows these 5 rules:
1. The players have to have *earned the help* . The players aren't just being saved by a finger wagging cheeseball who is way more powerful and could/should have just done the adventure themselves. They are *having a favour repaid* at a vital moment, perhaps because this is an NPC that the players previously rescued in a past adventure, or because ordinary townsfolk see what is going on and band together to save the heroes who saved their town countless times.
2. It has to *make immediate sense* why it has happened. The players should probably know about the NPC in advance, at least by reputation, before they arrive. It should be immediately obvious to them how the NPC a) knew to be there at that time, b) would want to intervene, and c) would know whose side they were on.
3. The new arrival(s) *shouldn't win the fight* , they should *even the fight* . The battle is not over, they just now have another ally, who maybe, depending on their power type and power level, revives unconscious players and gives them some hit points and/or spell slots back.
4. It *can't be expected* . If players are losing the fight and start crossing their fingers hoping for a deus ex machina, then it's the wrong time for one. It is not something the players can rely on, and if they start to indicate they are relying on it, you have overused the technique.
5. It *can't be repeated* . Once, MAYBE twice in a campaign it can work if there's a long gap between the two occasions.
As always great advice. Great channel! Has been a tremendous help for my dungeon mastering
I normally agree wholeheartedly about the Not having a Deux ex Machina moment to save PCs from certain doom, but I do have one time that I actually appreciated the DMs choice to do it.
Took my Wife to an AL game, First game for her ever, she plotted and planned and conjured up a character that was perfect for her.
I can't recall what module it was, it was a Moonshea one iirc.
Anyways, Since it was a group of 6 or 7 (i cant recall) the difficulty had to be ramped up a bit so it wasnt trivial.
DMs dice were lucky, and He started to realize when the Paladin(who is also new, first game) and Bard (my wife) were down and on their second Death saves, my barbarian was on her way out, and the other 3 were not looking so well that he might TPK the group.
I've DMed a lot historically, so I saw exactly where he was, and happening to forget to attack of opportunity the fighter so they could go feed a potion to a paladin (I did the same for my wife, but as bugbear, I was out of their AoO range anywho).
It was a pretty tasteful pulling of punches.
My wife got her revenge on the DM at the end of the module where she Hit a nasty max dmg roll Dissonent whisper and basically did in the BBEG with little help from the rest of us.
I think there's a time and place for deus ex machina moment as a dungeon master. In the case of a new player at their very first game, totally justified. And I wouldn't blame or judge a dungeon master one bit about that sort of usage.
Great information and methods that I've used for years. Thanks for taking the time.
Sometimes, one of my players has a tough time for the night. Failed skill checks, missed attacks, spells failing due to passed spell save.
When it comes to a boss fight with one of these nights, I keep the boss alive, even if they're past 0 hp. Once that player having the terrible night attacks, if it hits, I let them roll their damage. I tell them they fall, and let that player describe how they do it. It makes them happy and the rest of the party cheers them on. Usually helps with the mood for the rest of the night
Hey, Luke. Matthew-Harry here with a most unique question on the topic you discussed in this video of "NPC Rescuer:"
I am a brand new DM starting my first campaign ever soon. I am basing it on my action epic I've been writing for over 25 years. For the ultimate final boss battle, I want to do it in the style of a certain level in "The Lord Of The Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth."
In this level of "BFME," you must defend Minas Tirith until three different waves of good reinforcements arrive. (Rohan, Gandalf, etc.) I want to setup my final boss battle of having my player characters fight as defensively as possible, so as to hold out until two different waves of spaceships arrive with good NPC troops, and then the grand finale of the four strongest heroes in the franchise who show up to save the day. The heroes, good armies, and the player characters all then charge in together for the final battle against the ultimate boss and his army of giant monsters.
I know you say you wouldn't like to see NPC rescuing, but I thought it might be a unique form of gameplay. For dramatic purposes, I was thinking about having the final boss kill off the PCs one at a time, and after each death, a wave of good reinforcements arrives to offset the death. Then, once the four heroes arrive, they could revive the fallen PCs, and continue the battle.
Any ideas as to how I could create this, and have it be a rewarding experience, where it doesn't feel staged or lame?
Mega big thanks,
~Matthew-Harry
I think the "NPC comes to the rescue" can be done well, but its a fine line. If they come in and completely mop the floor with the baddies, yeah that's bad and will make the players feel worthless. But I think if the NPC comes in and shares in the pain its both more believable and is better on the player's moral. It becomes less of "Oh boy, the DM is just holding out hand" to "Ohshit, thanks for taking some of the heat off of us friendly NPC. Now we can all win this."
That, or if the PCs specifically called for aid. Maybe they blew a horn that alerts a friendly group of soldiers of the dangers the party is in, or something else of similar occurrence.
But, that's just my late two cents on the matter. As for the topic of the video, I generally do most of what you suggest. Change hitpoints, make monsters flee, and add waves of enemies. The latter also helps with making it so the players don't feel super bogged down imo.
Similar to adjusting HP on the fly, you can soft-fudge die by just reducing/increasing stuff like AC or saving throw bonuses. Players rarely keep track of it and its not always going to come up multiple times. Also, sometimes I "fudge" dice but not really in the sense of changing my mind about the dice results but more so that I make pointless dice rolls for stuff that isn't dependant on them. Me rolling dice keeps players on edge and stops them from brainlessly barreling through a dungeon.
I have fudged dice sometimes, but not a lot just a very very few times. And sometimes i made up stuff for the enemies to do, and im planning a scene with an NPC rescue but its totally for narrative purposes since its one of the players most hated enemies who turns out to be a secret allie for them working inside the BBEG operation.
I always think about how the scene will be working fine to reach the climax i want, and also in my games the only way to die is by basically very very stupid decisions, like trying to remove a leviathans tooth from inside his mouth with a spoon (that level of dummy)
The only time I adjust down is if I just totally screwed up building the encounter. Especially when I build them on the fly. I usually end up having to beef up enemies because my player just steam roll everything
I think as a DM you create the encounter, you set it up a certain way. Nothing says the players HAVE to win every time, sometimes they need to fall back and re-think the encounter, give them a way out if they decide they want to run/regroup. I think some encounters should be exactly what EXP really is... EXPERIENCE Points, knowledge they've gained on their adventure, give them a learning experience, make them earn that learned value. It shouldn't always be about stabbing and monologuing, there should be some serious thought put into what they find. Like you need to get past a body guard, on the first try he roughs you up and throws you out... he didnt chase you and you didn't die, next time you go to take him on, you learned his moves and his weak spots and you know how to take him down. The encounter didn't change, but your thought process did.
Example from my game: When I made my temple encounter it beat the party the first time and they had to run as they were getting their asses kicked in, now I DID fudge numbers since no one told the Duskblade to jump back into the door and throw a spell which she then caught like 6 arrows and 3 spells, I did go ahead and survive her at -6 hp and bleeding vs. the -28 she would have been at. Nothing was chasing them they weren't pursued for the finisher, they were allowed to leave unimpeded, but she derped and I had to intervene to save the character.
That instance or something similar, sure, fudge some numbers on HP or damage, but I didn't adjust my encounter, they had to still beat it as it was presented. They lost round 1, on round 2 they came in hot and won since they knew the layout and having destroyed a bunch of the Dread Guards, they had numbers/strength advantage.
I don't think you have to change the hitpoints of the baddie or the minions or whatever the case may be, but whatever it is doesn't always have to chase them if they run away, I say give a way out, allow them to flee if it's too hard, more often than not, big bads in most games generally have the arrogant mindset of "haha cowards, go die alone in the desert you're not worth the time to hunt and kill now" because they ran away... now yes, this isn't ALL games there are DM's that are like nahhhhh time for the coup de' gras, finish whats left to make a statement.... but it seems the common mindset is the prior (hell even in my game my BBEG is like that, you're weak, go die cold and alone so I can raise your corpse later). Don't wanna kill a character? fudge some damage unless they REALLY do something stupid and basically bring it on themselves, then shrug and be like "you did this not me". Even most intelligent creatures when they know a foe is strong, if that foe backs off they too will fall back to recover, and that gives you something to play on too, but even if it chases, you can still give a way out that eludes capture but gives some intensity to the scenario and adds more thrill. You also want them to want to come back to beat it, give them an idea they CAN win they just need to be more thoughtful about what they're doing, make a plan, carry it out, earn that EXP.
About the NPC rescue, i just do it when the plot of the game need it. For an example, in one of my adventures the PCs find a realy powerfull warrior that is having problems with a wizard. He can easily beat the wizard, but his wife and children are cursed and will die if he do this. My ideia is: If everything fail on the combat, the players will not die but will get the "bad ending", where the warrior protect the PCs and defeat the wizard because this was his problem from the beggining, but after this he get depressed and dont want to fight anymore. But this is only on that especific situation, not all batles will have a alternative ending
NPC rescue also feels less meh if there is a squad (made up of members individually weaker than the PCs) instead of a single awesome NPC. Say you're on a ship getting wrecked by a Kracken. It feels dispowering if Aquaman shows up and 1HKOs it like a DM controlled spotlight hog. But if a squad of mermen come to fight it as it is still latched onto the deck (making use of the fact that it is stuck to get solid hits in, something the PCs can help by anchoring the tentacles etc), that makes it team effort. It feels less like someone is stealing the kill than that the world isn't completely out to get them, and makes making contacts more appealing. Maybe next time the adventurers go out to sea they contact these guys in advance, or they get some nifty potions/equipment to give themselves swim speeds and/or underwater breathing.
The more this NPC rescue is tied to previous actions of the party (maybe the PCs rescued a mermaid from pirates a few day ago), the more it feels earned.
NPC rescue is a great way to introduce a threat that players cannot currently handle, but will be able to handle in the foreseeable future. Maybe they meet another Kracken when they sail home and absolutely wreck it this time. The context of having needed help before with a foe they can now crush by themselves reinforces the jump in power in between those moments.
And they dont win XP if they get the "Bad ending". Its like "You went to combat the wizard but you arent ready yet, and there are consequences worse than death in this case (Without this warrior the city cant defend itself, so the players now need to make the warrior want to fight again or defend the city themselfs or enemys will destroy the city)". Like i said, in this very specific case, its because of the plot of the game. Im not saving them because they went bad on a combat, im showing them that the consequences of losing a battle can be worse than just death