The whole "Everyone sits next to one guy and smacks him around until he's dead, then moves on to the next guy" is why swashbuckler rogue is one of my favorite things to play. Really gives you that feeling of darting around the battlefield, slashing at different foes then diving behind cover.
I don't think that Swashbuckler necessarily de-incentivizes you to gang up on an enemy with your party. You still get sneak attack if your friends are adjacent to your enemy. You just also get sneak attack for 1v1's.
hearing that in the video made no sense to me because that's not at all how combat's gone whenever I've played; there's never more than 2 people attacking an enemy & a lot of running around during combat
@UCmtGCMXY3i38JOImxZp1YcA That's more up to your players more than anything (unless you're a fucking great DM that incentivises that playstyle, in which case you're awesome and well done my guy!). It's probably either a lack of understand of "optimal" play or they're just super awesome and prefer to roleplay in combat than be as efficient as possible.
I ran a pretty fun encounter recently where there were no enemies, but a tavern was on fire and 6 people were inside the building. Each round, every fire source spread 5 feet into any open square next to it, and as the fire grew, smoke become an obstacle as well. They really had to focus on moving efficiently and creatively as to not die or let the people they were trying to save die.
I did something similar when one of my players started using fireball during an encounter in an abandoned church. It did not help that I had an npc plant a magic bean nearby that cause a geyser of wine to rain down the building.
I think a nice example of this is Jocat’s 3rd episode of Necrohunt. They were fighting some worgs on a mountain, and it felt like a pretty average encounter. That is until the players realised that they had a a round or two until an avalanche buries them all. The goal of that combat completely shifted as they tried to get their cart/themselves stable and out of danger.
I don't know how good this is but you could try having a situation where you are crossing a bridge or narrow path near a body of water. The water is icy cold. Suddenly some winter wolves appear and demand that you pay a tax mainly your mounts. If you give them the mounts it's probable that they will follow you until you are exhausted and try to kill you then. If you don't the fight starts and off in the distance and rock slide happens a wave of ice water and everyone in it's path will be doused. Furthermore some areas will be flooded and ending your turn there will mean you take 1D4 cold damage. the wolves don't care because they are immune to cold damage.
Had a somewhat similar scenario happen to me in a while back Basically, we were fighting off some bandits along a steep cliff-face when our paladin triggered a rockslide by using Thunderous Smite (managed to take out bandits while the pally took a beating) The best part of it though was seeing the cleric "peace out" via Meld into Stone [on the ground beneath us] while I had my druid use Mold Earth to effectively swap places with a patch of loose earth along the cliff-wall, only to fail a Nature check the next turn and run back out thinking the whole mountain was about to come crashing down
@@3nertia i've actually planned a massive mudslide for my players to avoid!! it'll happen in the middle of a battle with a throng of bandits, and once the earth elemental makes its presence known, the bandits and the party will have to climb dead pine trees to avoid getting swept away, then work together to take the elemental down!
Bionic would be a really cool theme for a d&d campaign too! Just assign different existing stat blocks to existing bionic creatures and you have a pretty fresh campaign setting with creatures pre-designed for you.
@@RogueMelody003 Bionicle is terrible for d&d. Trust me, I tried :P It would work much better with a classless power-customisation game, something like Mutants and Masterminds.
The Ever-changing Chaos of Limbo has some unique terrain. Every round in an unstable area the land you're on could switch to lava, or worse a tornado, or become harmless snow. I used colored index cards that I randomly swapped at the end of each round for my encounter.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Water Mill fight from the second Pirates movie. Its probably one of the most intricately detailed and dynamic fight scenes in any movie I've seen. Not only are their positions constantly changing due to their environment, but it's a battle between 3 people, who's alliance's are constantly shifting while they constantly swap posession of the key as they move up the stairs of a steeple, onto the decaying roof, and onto the water wheel. The wheel then breaks off and turns the fight up to 11 as the characters have to avoid jungle branches and losing their balance as they fight in and on top of an out of control water wheel as the key bounces around. Just one element of the fight would be an amazing gimmick for an encounter, ropes to cut to launch you up, loose rocks to slip on, an entire water wheel breaking off and rolling through a jungle into the sea as people battle both on top of and inside, a 3rd party looking to kill the weakest group at any moment, it could be a lot of fun.
I've created an encounter... The party hasn't seen it yet... There's a + shaped wall in a square room. This perfectly divides the room into 4 smaller rooms, but the + is rotating. It moves 1d3 * 15 degrees forward each round as a Lair Action, giving it 6 total possible positions. (At 90 degrees of rotation, it's in basically the same scenario as it started.) I've marked the locations of each of these on the floor using a rainbow. (It starts in the orange position, moves to yellow, to green, etc...) The walls also have spikes. Anyone hit by one of these walls as it moves takes 1d4 piercing damage per tile they're pushed (which will be more closer to the outside of the circle). Somebody can also be pushed into the wall to take this damage. The corners of the room are safe, but the walls block line of sight, so you'll need to cross through to reach other corners. Sure, you can turtle in a corner, but so can the enemies, and the players need to light up each of the four corners of the room. It's also not a large enough space to rest, and one of the enemies burrows.
@@NotARussianDisinfoBot They got from level 1 to level 14 so far. I think they can handle it. I don't think I'd throw something like this at a lower level party
@@HawkofJudgment One of my dice sets came with a 1d3, so I have one in my dice bag. Not common, but they exist. This particular set's d4, d6s, & d10s are oddly shaped too, but fair sided.
My dm actually ran the parallel platform ideas as an entire session of our game this session being the third act of an arc for an episodic campaign. We were airship racing with dubious at best rules and had to compete with a variety of different types of ships using a prepared one we had to spend gold on to get upgrades. It was very fun juggling people boarding our ship or racing next to us, a single person on effectively a sailed hoverboard who had incredible speed but nothing else an even a story relevant hostage situation all in the span of one encounter.
Combat, but with portals. I imagine this taking place in a wizard's study, or perhaps the twisted mindscape of an eldritch horror. Feel free to flavor it up fellow DMs. Everytime someone steps through a portal they roll a die. The die they roll should correspond to the number of portals ideally, and based on their roll they end up through another random portal somewhere in the combat area. These portals don't need to be facing the same way either, some could be on different floors of the combat area or even on the ceiling if your encounter is inside. Maybe give the main enemy an innate ability or magic item that allows them to choose which portal they want to appear from, giving them a slight advantage. Edit: Also, with the eldritch route or something similar flavor wise, you can have portals disappear and reappear at will, probably as a lair action. If you end up going the more eizardy route, maybe include a mechanic for your players to possibly also control which portal they exit from, and possibly even allow them to destroy said portals (or the structure they are housed inside).
It's a tad evil, but, you could have it be a fractured mirror thing, where going in and rolling a die to determine how many times you're fractured, and have enemies in different fractures, but the PC's only get their one turn. Flavor-wise, all PC fractures do the same movement's and actions, however, the enemies are not fractured in this way, they would only be on one or maybe a few different fractures at a time. it's all a little hard to wrap your head around, but it would make for an interesting encounter that i'll test out on some sorry souls.
Dude this is making my imagination flair up. I'm just imagining a boss kinda dude that has good grappling skills and intentionally throws party members into portals to divide them. Seems like a real fun experience
On the topic of destroying portals: for balance: give them something(like dimeritium bombs from the witcher 3) to close them, that has a limited amount of resources
I had a combat with a god of chaos that would alter time and space for all involved creatures, including itself, at the start of every turn. At the beginning of each turn, everyone would roll initiative again, and act in the new order that turn. However, the crazy part was that everyone also swapped places depending on the new initiative order. Whoever rolled highest would change to the position of whoever had rolled highest the previous round, and so forth.
Beholders can only really "change reality" via telekiniesis, disintegration or falling asleep and dreaming. An asleep beholder is not really an encounter
@@defensivekobra3873 Sleeping beholder, being manipulated by a mind flayer or other mind-fuckery to intentionally disadvantage the party. Their goal is to kill the controller, or wake the beholder, but both require they approach the constantly shifting area.
@@liamwhite3522 this, i very much like this. You even have some risk/ reward stuff as you could wake the beholder as an action and now have an CR 13 monster with legendary actions on the field or try to use more actions to kill the controller
Volo's Guide reveals that they can have different eye effects for the main eye, not just the antimagic field. One was a constant 'Power Word: Stun' effect on everyone in it's LOS. Another was mystic terrain, an illusion spell that basically was real for anyone who didn't see through it.
Running an encounter where a god is destroying the area, every turn a part of the map is indicated and the next turn ceases to exist. After the enemies go down they have to escape, with how difficult that proves being dependent on how long they took
Does'nt have to necesarily be a god. It can also be a lavastream slowly melting ground, platforms in trees that are being buried by an avalanche, a bridge slowly falling apart, meteors going through a thin layer the players are standing on, or frankly anything.
No spoiler if you haven't seen it, but in Dimension 20's Escape from the Bloodkeep it's the concept for one of the coolest fights. Even thought all the encounters in that are like, tope tier in game design and atmosphere.
It's incredibly simple, but i have a werewolf encounter next session where he has backed up a group of commoners into an attic in a building which he has set on fire (because he's a sadistic beast). I made it so that at initiative count 10 I randomly determine a 5-foot space for a piece of flaming ruble to drop on. They are forced to succeed a Dex save or take full damage and be knocked prone. The area also becomes difficult terrain. The wall also are becoming vulnerable as being shoved into one deals fire damage but they can be easily broken. If they are broken, it prompts a piece of rubble to fall. After 2 rounds the 1d4-1 commoners dies at initiative count one. Additionally, there is family in a back room who attempt to run past the battle but get caught up in it and find themselves hostages. The hope i have is that the party will have a struggle against a single creature who hardly stands a chance against them but offers real stakes in the deaths of the family and other commoners.
This gave me an idea for something like a wrecking ball type hazard. Something swinging around dealing damage to anything it hits, shoving it a distance, and knocking it prone. Couple it with a crumbling arena where stuff is falling out from underneath the encounter, and it makes this tower of death where the players have to fight for their lives while scrambling to the bottom of the tower.
The most interesting thing I’ve ever had a fight take place in was an anti gravity minefield where gravity was randomly inverted in certain areas not triggered on a lair action but as the first action of the wizard who turned off an anti magic zone one of the most fun fights i had in that whole campaign
I love moving platforms, and while not quite this idea, I did do something similar once where the players were basically on a train that was being attacked by train robbers. As soon as the bandits realised that there was a sorta-tough group on board, they rushed to the front to try and cut loose the passenger cars, so the party had to reach there before they could finish and leap between the trains, half of them on the roof, and the other half inside. Second one was on a bridge that was suspended over a river filled with piranhas, and their guide was being mind controlled to attack them and cause problems. The enemies weren't really trying to kill them, just surround them while they cut the ropes to drop them into the river, and the party had to figure out a way to get as many of them to safety as quickly as possible without outright killing their mind controlled guard. Falling into the river would basically be a death sentence for them (the one player that did fell in dropped to 0 hp after one round, and they had to hastily try and save him and distract the piranhas with something else - like an enemy shoved into the river too, or rations, or a loud explosive). Honestly, anything that either forces the players to fight differently, or changes the win conditions to something other than "murder everybody" (or makes that option a lot more difficult and intense) is stuff that I love to see, as long as it makes players get creative instead of annoying them with random extra steps just to do the same thing.
One of my favorite things is to add extra elements to battle maps. A simple one is adding very tall dry grass. So if someone uses a fire spell or something gets ignited, everything is going up in flames. One I'm planning is a sheet of ice. So not only does the party have to avoid the large creature, but they can't break the ice or be plunged into water
Great video. I really like these ideas. One thought is the ground is actually frozen water and the boss is breaking it apart. Could have a small timer of rounds before the ground is mostly water with chunks of ice.
This one's also fun because your average party might have a Triton or something, meaning one of them could fight from the water, but I've never seen a d&d party ENTIRELY composed of aquatic races/classes. Having an Aquaman would be even better for the encounter IMO, that would mean the water isn't just a "death zone" and that falling in isn't immediately a fail state.
1:55 parallel moving platforms 3:17 arena shifts at random 4:35 alternating areas that move across the board 5:20 shooting ranges 6:08 moving proximity damage
I love the “kobold with a bomb strapped to them” because the kobold enemy in the game “Dungeon Defenders” is just a kobold with a huge stick of dynamite attached to itself.
I had an ideia of a exclusive movement reaction that costs your move in the next turn. In the start most players never used. But after seeing some enemies using it, everyone started to get really tactical with the movement. I love it.
A really interesting concept was in Arcadums stream. A while ago he had a time themed boss, where after images of the players would move to where the original was their prior turn. The after images would then have different interactions like a player taking damage when being to close to their own after image or the original taking damage if the after image was caught in an AOE.
Series of sea caves that you have to enter, retrieve treasure and escape while the tide constantly rises, closing off some escape routes and opening others. Hallucinagenic moss grows in the caves so not everything you see is real. Don't drown.
I had a game my brother ran where we were stopping bandits atop a train powered by lightning elementals. Every other round the lightning would arc for 2 rounds, sanctioning off sections of the map. No attacks can pass through the lightning so engaging without being stranded behind enemy lines becomes a core element to the fight.
Love the mine cart idea, it sounds like an absolute gas. Some of the most fun encounters I've ever had were ones where vertical space was a factor. Scaling walls, attacking from high ground... you'd be shocked by how much a fight can change just by having a 3D battlespace.
I had this idea: PCs enter a room that is equally divided into 2 by an impenetrable but see-through barrier. On the other side, other than the exit door, stand a number of animated armors equal to the number of PCs. In each half of the room, there is one 5-ft diameter arcane circle, glowing dimly. At initiative 20, given there is each a creature on them, these circle will switch those creatures' position. An animated armor is standing at the ready on one circle.
my players found themselves and their enemies inside a slow moving wurm they fell into (see sarlacc from star wars). wurm lowered it's head and started heading to the ocean. everyone could see how far the ocean was and how long until they go under. it was a narrow corridor of flesh and the throat muscles, while not strong, would try to pull everyone deeper. they did things like throw vile potions to slow the swallowing, make enemies sleep so the swallowing would be more effective on the snoozers, etc there was a moment where one of the last party members out stayed behind so it could breathe fire down it's throat, not to damage it, but to speed up the wurm towards the ocean while the enemies stayed inside.
This is a really valid point; I've been dreading running combat because it's always more boring than RP, but maybe it won't be if I use weirder environments... In fact, I have a couple ideas of my own already.
Definitely going to start implementing these ideas. I feel my combat encounters have been a bit weak lately and I think this was just the spark I needed.
I haven’t run it yet, but I made an encounter where the players come across a sort of magical bomb, and the only have a certain amount of time to defuse it. There’s multiple things they can do, something of them will help some won’t, kind of like a mini escape room that you have to do in 25 seconds or you die.
I am not sure if this counts but I did borrow a mechanic from Disgaea for 1 battle and the players enjoyed it so much I am probably bringing it back later on. basically the whole battlefield is covered in glowing squares 4-5 different colors of them and there are geo symbols- these magical crystals of about 4 different colors every square the same color as one with a geo symbol on it is under a magical effect ex: 1 extra attack, fire resistance, random teleportation, clone ( always hostile) ( i made a table and let the players roll on it, i also let them decide if they wanted all positive effects or a mix letting them know it would also effect enemies probably won't again but it was fun) they won't know the effect until they someone ends a turn and the effect goes live or they approach the geo symbol to investigate it. also the crystals can be moved or destroyed and destroying them will do damage to anyone standing on the same color - ally or enemy and then those squares turn the color of the destroyed crystal. bonus: the players get an extra magic item for clearing all the colors and effects from the the battlefield.
I ran a fun simple low-level encounter with some Modrons on a giant rotating cog with holes in it and a jutting-out piece of machinery pushing things that got near it into the holes. I drew out the battlemap then used a piece of cut cardboard to represent the jutting-out machinery, rotating it a quarter-circle around the cog each round. It ended up not being a big factor because the fight was over quite quickly, but the players complimented the cool visual and I'm totally keeping the idea for a tougher fight in another campaign!
I once ran a dungeon in the Shadowfell that had a floor which temporarily vanished whenever bright light shone upon it. It made for an interesting encounter as fire and radiant spells could cause both the caster and whatever was on the receiving end to fall into the room below. The gravy on it all was our human fighter, who discovered the mechanic by walking into the room with a torch in hand.
For me layout shifting labyrinths are a good one for combat because not only do you have to consider changing terrain but you also have to monsters and other enemies suddenly being whisked away or placed in the parties paths at random, and if they’re not careful they’ll get separated.
Two big rings, both spinning in different directions. Gravity of the rings is always on one spot so if they go upside down, the person on it won’t fall off. The party or a few members have to jump from one to the other at the right time as enemies are on both platforms and are either holding them in place or are doing something that needs to be stopped in tandem. Very Sci-fi but I don’t remember where I got the idea from. Maybe a movie? Anyway would be a super interesting battle. One half of the party on one side, another half on the other side. Maybe a force field occasionally pops up when one or more people leap from one to the other as a system to prevent people from just jumping willy nilly. Enemies could also have sentinel or a powerful opportunity attack which would mean that one group would be locked into battle with one side, and another would be locked into battle with another
I've considered something similar with some gear shaped platforms so when you spin one all the others spin appropriately so some platforms only change slightly and others are thrown across the battlefield
Optional addition for the mine cart encounter: After a certain speed characters (PCs and NPCs alike) will need to make Dexterity Checks once the carts are no longer merely speeding forward... or someone in the party magically boosts their cart. Addition for the rampaging giant encounter: It's a battle between a colossus allied with the party and another with their enemies... both sides have the ability to aid or hinder the titanic brawl.
I had a similar idea as mine tracks, but it was with sleds high in the mountains. If players were captured by the orcs that was one of the ways they could escape: steal one of the sleds with raindeer, go on insane 70 degree descent and get chased between dangerous rocks and trees.
the third one is something i always were thinking by myself, it is just super cool idea to make the map change instead of "roll reflex" - No, you either stand in the way of Falling rock and need to beat impossible DC, or you move away and avoid any danger.
One idea I’ve used when my players entered an old abandoned wizard tower to try and plunder it. When in one room everyone would randomly swap places with each other at the start of each round. I explained this as being the cause of some strange space bending experiment the wizard was conducting and went out of control due to neglect.
i LOVE that you used that bionicle clip for the arena that changes altitude. i always loved that scene in the coliseum when the toa metru are just horrible outmatched.
A seesaw/teeter totter environment, probably on some flat rocks balanced on pillars, or some sort of trap-style floor in a dungeon. You have to make sure your party balances out the weight of the enemies on your side evenly so the platform doesn’t tilt and throw everyone on it to their deaths. Maybe even work with the enemy to get off or get close enough to one another to duke it out. At the start of every round, calculate the number of creatures on one side of the center fulcrum with those one space away counting as 1, 2 spaces as x2, 3 spaces as x3 and so on. Small creatures count as 1/2, large as 2 etc. Then do the same for the other side, and if either side has a larger number, the platform tilts that way by 45 degrees. At 90 degrees, everyone on the platform falls(unless they have a way to save themselves). You can push enemies off, but you risk unbalancing the platform. Corpses on the platform can still be used to help balance it out. Flying characters might be able to save themselves, but may doom the rest of the party if they don’t land to help balance things.
My sugestion for a way to mix up combat- emergent swarm combat. Emergent complexity is something that happens when you have a lot of things that follow simple rules, but create complex results as they interact. For example Ants or slime molds- both are small, with little or no brains, but have various instincts and behaviors driven by them. Ants have a bunch of phermones that they react to and produce, and most of their behavior is simple survival instincts augmented by instinctive pheremone responses- like leaving a trail of "I found food" Pheremones so other ants go that way later. colony organisms like slime molds or typs of jelly fish are even simpler but can combine to approximate multicellular life. So if you want a big combat encounter, with a lot of enemies, simplify it by giving each typ of enemy some simple rules and reactions, no need to plan anything other than where they show up, because the mobs will just do what their instincts tell them too- run to fight anything fighting one of their friends, use a range attack if there is a fight nearby but you see a non ally not fighting but in ranged attack range. Just give them 3 to 5 actions with conditions and then throw as many of them as you think your party can handle at them. It can be goblins raiding so one of thier actions would be to run away if it seems to risky, like if they go below a certain number of hit points, or if a bunch of them die at once, yeah a raiding party probably has multiple conditions to trigger running away, all falling under "this target isn't worth it". Kobolds can have specific actions and conditions for traps, and non sentient animals would have fewer possible actions, but you could throw more of them at a party since they are individually weaker, though for that you ar probably better off with just using the swarm template. There are probably better devised approaches for combat with tons of enemies but this was what came to me first as a way to up the scale of such things while still having them be managble for dms. Another idea Play terrain damag straight, have conditions or specific terrain types that change when certain things happen, the forest catching fire from a fireball happy wizard is one thing, but how about everything becomeing difficult terrain in an wet area after someone cast a cold element spell with enough damage, or have things like acid damage make things fragile- damage a cave wall with acid and risk falling rocks. I would make sure the players know this is a thing, give them checks to notice the risks, then they have to avoid them or take advantage of them. Just a few ideas, hope you can do something interesting with them.
I had an idea where the party is in the proximity of two adult dragons that are trying to kill each other, and the party has to try and escape to avoid becoming collateral damage.
A fun encounter I ran just the other night was a chase style situation within a crowd, the players were trying to escape the city from disguised assassin's while having to move through a panicking crowd that worked like changing difficult terrain and or cover, but with the knowledge any of them could of been out to kill them. most fun combat I've had in a while.
How about that classic movie trope where people on top of moving vehicles need to avoid overhangs and signs or tunnels by ducking or jumping into a pit? Make it based on each player's perception or the enemy perception to tell them how many rounds they have to get out of the way of the attack... or push someone into it.
descent into avernus module is pretty fun for experimenting with encounters since because of the nature of avernus you could come across such weird terrain and situations and of course stuff like vehicle combat that and change it up even more. in one session I had the party join in on a wacky races style race with all kinds of different opponents for the right to gain something from a powerful devil and it led to things like the mage using a wall of force to destroy a vehicle at high speeds and the artificer to boost their vehicle past its limits
These are perfect ! I have been looking at ways to make combat more interesting pretty much since I started DMing. Other favorites I include are -talking shjt is a free action -bonus action to use an item -bonus action to “study” your opponent to learn a stat -bloodied conditions -raid boss actions
Just ran this encounter 2 weeks ago. Sci-fantasy campaign, think spell Jammer but more mass effect in tone. Party is level 7, At the end of a long industrial dock, in low gravity above a drop into open vacuum at the bottom of this pit - is a ship that is taking off, the party has 8 turns to get to the ship and shut it down, bad guy is on it. More bad guys hold the bridge, it has lots of barrels and shipping crates. I blew it to pieces in round two, and now the broken bridge is drifting apart in the low gravity. Super fun to make changing lines of sight, and move people farther from the ship.
I think I see why he did it the way he did, actually. DnD is built around movement and distance in multiples of five. By have the die roll be multipled by 10, you would always have a whole number of squares being moved, and that can be translated easily to move-speeds or attack ranges. With percentiles, you're likely to get say, a 67, and have to try and turn that into a workable distance (not to mention the multiple moving "platforms" that would make calculations a nightmare)
@@All4Tanukionly if you use both dice. But if you use the die thats labeled 10,20… 90,00 (the percentile die) then you dont even need to multiply (not that its hard to add a 0)
You see, I play dnd, but as all the players, and the dm, and I write it down.. I’m writing a book basically, but I’m still going to use these probably, because they do sound fun and present interesting combat ideas and combat is something I can struggle with since I don’t have much experience writing it. Thanks Runesmith.
I once did a Triboar Pony Race encounter. They had to run laps, activate a lever to roll a ball down a rail then catch the ball, navigate an obstacle course with it and then put the ball in the end basket. It was fun because players also used their abilities like leaving magical effects to scare the ponies or inspiring the same ponies. In fact the rune knight used his enlarge ability and carried the pony on it's back for a round or two as well. I made a selection of ponies too. Well too bad they went into the Lurkwood next so they had to leave the ponies, but it was still good.
I run a SW5e campaign and I made this really fun encounter, feel free to use it. Battle is on a grid of 11x11 squares. Separate it in 5x5 sections and assign them numbers, and middle line would be forcefield. Something like this ____ | | | ‾ ‾ ‾ ‾ | | | ‾ ‾ ‾ ‾ Forcefield tiles are considered difficult terrain (like you need to push to pass through it). At initiative count 20 DM is rolling d4 which designate safe zone, and on second round at initiative 20 every zone aside from safe zone is engulfed in fire, every creature immediately inside and the one starting their turn in fire get 3d10 fire damage (I made this encounter in reactor shaft, and 4 zones were making ventilation cycles). My party was fighting boss character who was wearing environmental suit, so he had resistance to fire damage (I think that’s best way to make it a combat challenge).
I really like playing with different elevation levels to fights, makes fights become alot more strategic, and offers up alot of room for exploration afterwards. a tower in a large pool of water is perfect, you have the top of the tower, the base level around the tower and the pool of water as unique areas to work the same combat into. throw some archers on top, big shark in the water and something the party needs at one of the levels
i did use something similar to a couple of the ideas proposed here. once there was a boss fight while a magical storm was raging, repositioning the PCs at random every round. and in a current "kind-of-spelljammer" mini-campaign with lots of astral ship combat, i've used something similar to shooting ranges for "approaching danger", which the PCs would have to somehow deal with or suffer the consequences
One thing I did was have a bunch of platforms over top a lava flow which required a running long jump to pass over, and the platforms were constantly rising and falling as the high level wizard NPC and the magma elemental were trying to raise and drop the platforms respectively.
I had a nebulous idea about a dungeon crawl on a boat. Like the cheesy rides at water parks were those jerky robots jump out at you. Yes, I got the idea while riding one of them. This gives me ideas on actually how to run that. Thank you.
Oooh... I'm planning some travel through a swamp in my current campaign. Your comment about environmental hazards got me thinking about the last time I watched The Princess Bride...
creating a roulette arena was the best thing i ever did as a DM every round 3 things would occur. first a party member would have five seconds or so to yell where they think the roulette ball will land (reds, first 12, 27, etc). second the wheel would spin, and the actual rounds initiative occurs. third and lastly the wheel stops on initiative 0 and the result of the gamble is shown before starting over again the next round. that and lair actions for acrobats swinging in with various fun effects
I had an idea for three disks that rotate every turn and move everyone on them with them in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. That way it takes planning and thought for not only where you’ll be this turn, but also where you’ll be after the discs spin. I was also going to have fixed points on them that the boss could teleport between. Think 4 differently-colored dots on each disc, and the boss can go from one to the other as a bonus action or a legendary action.
I ran an encounter where the party was being chased and tried to escape by sliding on their butts down a steep sandy riverbed, which triggered a landslide behind them. The gang would have to move to get out of the way of obstacles, and large boulders would tumble past them, and the landslide would catch up with them, threatening to engulf them. A few of the pursuers got shoved into the path of these hazards. Actually really proud of that encounter :D.
i totally see my usual party mistaking that last scenario's roaving damage as the actual boss and getting hurt over and over trying to take it down instead of escape the scene.
This video actually gave mea good idea for a boss fight with a cult leader I’m working on, so I’m gonna make it so the floor is enchanted, and pillars of pure magic randomly shoot up from the ground and lower, to give the fight a more interesting challenge
I hope you enjoyed this enough to make more videos like this. I am building a campaign that is basically a platformer dungeon crawl arena and stuff like this makes for great fun.
Hooo boy, that last one reminds me of a fun magic item I made where you can summon the soul of a trapped Devil. It appears within 40 feet of you and charges at you on it's turn, anything between you and the Devil as it charges takes unavoidable damage as it tries to attack you. It makes an attack roll against you only and if it misses it flies 40 feet further with no opportunity attack because it has flyby. It's a risk reward thing were you can take massive damage but you can guarantee that you're enemies are also taking quite a bit too. You can also use the magic item again to chain him up for a round, and on his next turn he breaks free and charges double his original speed.
A great idea is to separate the party by some sort of physical barrier. It really makes them play up some kind of new combos they haven't thought of before. I once did this with a hefty metal door and a raging blizzard outside it.
an idea i had was a fight on a hex-map. Overlaid on the hexmap are smaller hexagonal tiles, that turn by 60 degrees on initiative counts 20, 15, 10 and 5. Each count causes the squares to move once. 2 Adjacent hex-tiles always turn in opposing directions. (if one goes clockwise, the hex next to it goes counter) There's also a large empty space in the centre of the battlemap, with a large pendulum swinging North-south on count 0, covering a distance larger then a creature can reasonably be expected to cross in 1 turn. (anyone in the way of the swinging pendulum must make a Dex save against its damage, someone riding the pendulum makes an Athletics check to stick to it and not fall down into the shaft) Its the insides of a giant mechanical clocktower, the hex-tiles are giant gears (which is why adjacents move oppositely).
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
The whole "Everyone sits next to one guy and smacks him around until he's dead, then moves on to the next guy" is why swashbuckler rogue is one of my favorite things to play. Really gives you that feeling of darting around the battlefield, slashing at different foes then diving behind cover.
I don't think that Swashbuckler necessarily de-incentivizes you to gang up on an enemy with your party. You still get sneak attack if your friends are adjacent to your enemy. You just also get sneak attack for 1v1's.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 you gang up, but you run to enemy and away so he wont attack you, because your pals are staying next to them
hearing that in the video made no sense to me because that's not at all how combat's gone whenever I've played; there's never more than 2 people attacking an enemy & a lot of running around during combat
@UCmtGCMXY3i38JOImxZp1YcA That's more up to your players more than anything (unless you're a fucking great DM that incentivises that playstyle, in which case you're awesome and well done my guy!). It's probably either a lack of understand of "optimal" play or they're just super awesome and prefer to roleplay in combat than be as efficient as possible.
@@user-jl2ec2ko4v That's... not specific to Swashbuckler. All rogues do that if they want to bother with melee attacks.
3:20
Is that- is that BIONICLE? It's just enough to make a grown man cry.
I almost remember that movie!
"Toa must prove themselves with deeds, not mere trinkets. To prove yourself, cross the Sea of Protodermis!"
I ran a pretty fun encounter recently where there were no enemies, but a tavern was on fire and 6 people were inside the building. Each round, every fire source spread 5 feet into any open square next to it, and as the fire grew, smoke become an obstacle as well. They really had to focus on moving efficiently and creatively as to not die or let the people they were trying to save die.
raz why do we watch all of the same youtubers
That’s sounds pretty cool
I did something similar when one of my players started using fireball during an encounter in an abandoned church. It did not help that I had an npc plant a magic bean nearby that cause a geyser of wine to rain down the building.
I think a nice example of this is Jocat’s 3rd episode of Necrohunt. They were fighting some worgs on a mountain, and it felt like a pretty average encounter. That is until the players realised that they had a a round or two until an avalanche buries them all.
The goal of that combat completely shifted as they tried to get their cart/themselves stable and out of danger.
Ooooh, an avalanche; that's good! *jotting note*
I don't know how good this is but you could try having a situation where you are crossing a bridge or narrow path near a body of water. The water is icy cold. Suddenly some winter wolves appear and demand that you pay a tax mainly your mounts. If you give them the mounts it's probable that they will follow you until you are exhausted and try to kill you then. If you don't the fight starts and off in the distance and rock slide happens a wave of ice water and everyone in it's path will be doused. Furthermore some areas will be flooded and ending your turn there will mean you take 1D4 cold damage. the wolves don't care because they are immune to cold damage.
Banana man
Had a somewhat similar scenario happen to me in a while back
Basically, we were fighting off some bandits along a steep cliff-face when our paladin triggered a rockslide by using Thunderous Smite
(managed to take out bandits while the pally took a beating)
The best part of it though was seeing the cleric "peace out" via Meld into Stone [on the ground beneath us] while I had my druid use Mold Earth to effectively swap places with a patch of loose earth along the cliff-wall, only to fail a Nature check the next turn and run back out thinking the whole mountain was about to come crashing down
@@3nertia i've actually planned a massive mudslide for my players to avoid!! it'll happen in the middle of a battle with a throng of bandits, and once the earth elemental makes its presence known, the bandits and the party will have to climb dead pine trees to avoid getting swept away, then work together to take the elemental down!
My brain exploded when I saw the fucking BIONICLES. That was a deep cut
Bionicle 2: Legends of Metru Nui lets GOOOOOOOOOO
IN THE TIME
BEFORE TIME
TAKUUUUUUAAAA
Bionic would be a really cool theme for a d&d campaign too! Just assign different existing stat blocks to existing bionic creatures and you have a pretty fresh campaign setting with creatures pre-designed for you.
@@RogueMelody003 Bionicle is terrible for d&d. Trust me, I tried :P It would work much better with a classless power-customisation game, something like Mutants and Masterminds.
I never would have thought ANYBODY would make a reference to the 2nd bionicle movie in a video about D&D.
3:18 Wow, I haven't seen a clip from Legends of Metro Nui in a long time. Good memories. Love me some Bionicle
The Ever-changing Chaos of Limbo has some unique terrain. Every round in an unstable area the land you're on could switch to lava, or worse a tornado, or become harmless snow. I used colored index cards that I randomly swapped at the end of each round for my encounter.
I have to steal that!
Interesting idea!
I was planing to do a similar thing in a Dreamscape, on a dream, things should change but not outright randomly.
I like this idea and I really love how you keep track of it; brilliant!
@@estebanrodriguez5409 Then what are the "rules"?
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Water Mill fight from the second Pirates movie. Its probably one of the most intricately detailed and dynamic fight scenes in any movie I've seen. Not only are their positions constantly changing due to their environment, but it's a battle between 3 people, who's alliance's are constantly shifting while they constantly swap posession of the key as they move up the stairs of a steeple, onto the decaying roof, and onto the water wheel. The wheel then breaks off and turns the fight up to 11 as the characters have to avoid jungle branches and losing their balance as they fight in and on top of an out of control water wheel as the key bounces around.
Just one element of the fight would be an amazing gimmick for an encounter, ropes to cut to launch you up, loose rocks to slip on, an entire water wheel breaking off and rolling through a jungle into the sea as people battle both on top of and inside, a 3rd party looking to kill the weakest group at any moment, it could be a lot of fun.
From the Pirates of the Caribbean?
This is why in Mutant's and Masterminds i always use the optional "get punched go flying" rule
YO A BIONICLE REFERENCE?
That caught me off-guard but made me happy to see
I've created an encounter... The party hasn't seen it yet...
There's a + shaped wall in a square room. This perfectly divides the room into 4 smaller rooms, but the + is rotating. It moves 1d3 * 15 degrees forward each round as a Lair Action, giving it 6 total possible positions. (At 90 degrees of rotation, it's in basically the same scenario as it started.) I've marked the locations of each of these on the floor using a rainbow. (It starts in the orange position, moves to yellow, to green, etc...) The walls also have spikes. Anyone hit by one of these walls as it moves takes 1d4 piercing damage per tile they're pushed (which will be more closer to the outside of the circle). Somebody can also be pushed into the wall to take this damage. The corners of the room are safe, but the walls block line of sight, so you'll need to cross through to reach other corners. Sure, you can turtle in a corner, but so can the enemies, and the players need to light up each of the four corners of the room. It's also not a large enough space to rest, and one of the enemies burrows.
Pretty clever. It would probably kill my party.
@@NotARussianDisinfoBot Pretty sure it would definitely kill me!
@@NotARussianDisinfoBot They got from level 1 to level 14 so far. I think they can handle it. I don't think I'd throw something like this at a lower level party
Cool idea but 1d3? That's a pretty odd die
@@HawkofJudgment One of my dice sets came with a 1d3, so I have one in my dice bag. Not common, but they exist. This particular set's d4, d6s, & d10s are oddly shaped too, but fair sided.
My dm actually ran the parallel platform ideas as an entire session of our game this session being the third act of an arc for an episodic campaign. We were airship racing with dubious at best rules and had to compete with a variety of different types of ships using a prepared one we had to spend gold on to get upgrades. It was very fun juggling people boarding our ship or racing next to us, a single person on effectively a sailed hoverboard who had incredible speed but nothing else an even a story relevant hostage situation all in the span of one encounter.
Combat, but with portals. I imagine this taking place in a wizard's study, or perhaps the twisted mindscape of an eldritch horror. Feel free to flavor it up fellow DMs. Everytime someone steps through a portal they roll a die. The die they roll should correspond to the number of portals ideally, and based on their roll they end up through another random portal somewhere in the combat area. These portals don't need to be facing the same way either, some could be on different floors of the combat area or even on the ceiling if your encounter is inside. Maybe give the main enemy an innate ability or magic item that allows them to choose which portal they want to appear from, giving them a slight advantage.
Edit: Also, with the eldritch route or something similar flavor wise, you can have portals disappear and reappear at will, probably as a lair action. If you end up going the more eizardy route, maybe include a mechanic for your players to possibly also control which portal they exit from, and possibly even allow them to destroy said portals (or the structure they are housed inside).
It's a tad evil, but, you could have it be a fractured mirror thing, where going in and rolling a die to determine how many times you're fractured, and have enemies in different fractures, but the PC's only get their one turn. Flavor-wise, all PC fractures do the same movement's and actions, however, the enemies are not fractured in this way, they would only be on one or maybe a few different fractures at a time.
it's all a little hard to wrap your head around, but it would make for an interesting encounter that i'll test out on some sorry souls.
Dude this is making my imagination flair up. I'm just imagining a boss kinda dude that has good grappling skills and intentionally throws party members into portals to divide them. Seems like a real fun experience
well _now_ you're thinking with portals
On the topic of destroying portals: for balance: give them something(like dimeritium bombs from the witcher 3) to close them, that has a limited amount of resources
I had a combat with a god of chaos that would alter time and space for all involved creatures, including itself, at the start of every turn. At the beginning of each turn, everyone would roll initiative again, and act in the new order that turn. However, the crazy part was that everyone also swapped places depending on the new initiative order. Whoever rolled highest would change to the position of whoever had rolled highest the previous round, and so forth.
This video is coming at the perfect time. I'm about to start a new game and this is perfect
A beholder using his reality shifting powers to change the scene each round
Beholders can only really "change reality" via telekiniesis, disintegration or falling asleep and dreaming.
An asleep beholder is not really an encounter
@@defensivekobra3873 Lair Action?
@@defensivekobra3873 Sleeping beholder, being manipulated by a mind flayer or other mind-fuckery to intentionally disadvantage the party. Their goal is to kill the controller, or wake the beholder, but both require they approach the constantly shifting area.
@@liamwhite3522 this, i very much like this.
You even have some risk/ reward stuff as you could wake the beholder as an action and now have an CR 13 monster with legendary actions on the field or try to use more actions to kill the controller
Volo's Guide reveals that they can have different eye effects for the main eye, not just the antimagic field. One was a constant 'Power Word: Stun' effect on everyone in it's LOS. Another was mystic terrain, an illusion spell that basically was real for anyone who didn't see through it.
Running an encounter where a god is destroying the area, every turn a part of the map is indicated and the next turn ceases to exist. After the enemies go down they have to escape, with how difficult that proves being dependent on how long they took
Does'nt have to necesarily be a god. It can also be a lavastream slowly melting ground, platforms in trees that are being buried by an avalanche, a bridge slowly falling apart, meteors going through a thin layer the players are standing on, or frankly anything.
No spoiler if you haven't seen it, but in Dimension 20's Escape from the Bloodkeep it's the concept for one of the coolest fights.
Even thought all the encounters in that are like, tope tier in game design and atmosphere.
@@theanonymousone1698 yeah, a god just fit best with the campaign
It's incredibly simple, but i have a werewolf encounter next session where he has backed up a group of commoners into an attic in a building which he has set on fire (because he's a sadistic beast). I made it so that at initiative count 10 I randomly determine a 5-foot space for a piece of flaming ruble to drop on. They are forced to succeed a Dex save or take full damage and be knocked prone. The area also becomes difficult terrain. The wall also are becoming vulnerable as being shoved into one deals fire damage but they can be easily broken. If they are broken, it prompts a piece of rubble to fall. After 2 rounds the 1d4-1 commoners dies at initiative count one. Additionally, there is family in a back room who attempt to run past the battle but get caught up in it and find themselves hostages.
The hope i have is that the party will have a struggle against a single creature who hardly stands a chance against them but offers real stakes in the deaths of the family and other commoners.
This gave me an idea for something like a wrecking ball type hazard. Something swinging around dealing damage to anything it hits, shoving it a distance, and knocking it prone. Couple it with a crumbling arena where stuff is falling out from underneath the encounter, and it makes this tower of death where the players have to fight for their lives while scrambling to the bottom of the tower.
BIONICLE REFERENCE , LET'S GOOO. I am running a Bionicle campaign and have used some of Lunesmith's technics
Doronai Nui?
Lunesmith
The most interesting thing I’ve ever had a fight take place in was an anti gravity minefield where gravity was randomly inverted in certain areas not triggered on a lair action but as the first action of the wizard who turned off an anti magic zone one of the most fun fights i had in that whole campaign
I love moving platforms, and while not quite this idea, I did do something similar once where the players were basically on a train that was being attacked by train robbers. As soon as the bandits realised that there was a sorta-tough group on board, they rushed to the front to try and cut loose the passenger cars, so the party had to reach there before they could finish and leap between the trains, half of them on the roof, and the other half inside.
Second one was on a bridge that was suspended over a river filled with piranhas, and their guide was being mind controlled to attack them and cause problems. The enemies weren't really trying to kill them, just surround them while they cut the ropes to drop them into the river, and the party had to figure out a way to get as many of them to safety as quickly as possible without outright killing their mind controlled guard. Falling into the river would basically be a death sentence for them (the one player that did fell in dropped to 0 hp after one round, and they had to hastily try and save him and distract the piranhas with something else - like an enemy shoved into the river too, or rations, or a loud explosive).
Honestly, anything that either forces the players to fight differently, or changes the win conditions to something other than "murder everybody" (or makes that option a lot more difficult and intense) is stuff that I love to see, as long as it makes players get creative instead of annoying them with random extra steps just to do the same thing.
One of my favorite things is to add extra elements to battle maps.
A simple one is adding very tall dry grass. So if someone uses a fire spell or something gets ignited, everything is going up in flames.
One I'm planning is a sheet of ice. So not only does the party have to avoid the large creature, but they can't break the ice or be plunged into water
In the DMG 2 (3.5e) there's an example of an ice bridge environment.
Hell yea Bionicles
Great video. I really like these ideas. One thought is the ground is actually frozen water and the boss is breaking it apart. Could have a small timer of rounds before the ground is mostly water with chunks of ice.
This one's also fun because your average party might have a Triton or something, meaning one of them could fight from the water, but I've never seen a d&d party ENTIRELY composed of aquatic races/classes.
Having an Aquaman would be even better for the encounter IMO, that would mean the water isn't just a "death zone" and that falling in isn't immediately a fail state.
Moving platforms is why ship or boat combat is fun
1:55 parallel moving platforms
3:17 arena shifts at random
4:35 alternating areas that move across the board
5:20 shooting ranges
6:08 moving proximity damage
Honestly, the minecart one is PERFECT for the chase through a goblin camp that I'm planning for my current adventure! Thank you so much!!!
Yoooo love the Bionicles inclusion
Great video btw, will definitely try out some of these ideas
I love the “kobold with a bomb strapped to them” because the kobold enemy in the game “Dungeon Defenders” is just a kobold with a huge stick of dynamite attached to itself.
I had an ideia of a exclusive movement reaction that costs your move in the next turn. In the start most players never used. But after seeing some enemies using it, everyone started to get really tactical with the movement. I love it.
That sounds like it could add a lot to strategies. I might try this.
how did it work specifically?
@@VimyGlide checkpoint. i wanna know too, im learning a lot from this video's comment session
Details, man! Details!
A really interesting concept was in Arcadums stream. A while ago he had a time themed boss, where after images of the players would move to where the original was their prior turn. The after images would then have different interactions like a player taking damage when being to close to their own after image or the original taking damage if the after image was caught in an AOE.
Sort of like, everybody's an Echo Knight? Cool!
Came for 2 reasons: 1) to appease the algorithm, 2) I love these combat simulation/idea series you've started doing, really great stuff
I’m definitely going to have fun with moving platforms and shooting ranges
Series of sea caves that you have to enter, retrieve treasure and escape while the tide constantly rises, closing off some escape routes and opening others. Hallucinagenic moss grows in the caves so not everything you see is real. Don't drown.
The bionicle scene made runesmith a legend
This is perfect timing, my players just set off from a city and I had very little new ideas
The minecart one is super dope, I'll be sure to use that in my upcoming campaign.
I had a game my brother ran where we were stopping bandits atop a train powered by lightning elementals.
Every other round the lightning would arc for 2 rounds, sanctioning off sections of the map. No attacks can pass through the lightning so engaging without being stranded behind enemy lines becomes a core element to the fight.
My first thought was a heavily rocking ship where uphill/downhill switch directions every round.
Love the mine cart idea, it sounds like an absolute gas.
Some of the most fun encounters I've ever had were ones where vertical space was a factor. Scaling walls, attacking from high ground... you'd be shocked by how much a fight can change just by having a 3D battlespace.
I had this idea:
PCs enter a room that is equally divided into 2 by an impenetrable but see-through barrier. On the other side, other than the exit door, stand a number of animated armors equal to the number of PCs. In each half of the room, there is one 5-ft diameter arcane circle, glowing dimly. At initiative 20, given there is each a creature on them, these circle will switch those creatures' position. An animated armor is standing at the ready on one circle.
BIONICLES????? LETS GOOOOOO
^^^^^
my players found themselves and their enemies inside a slow moving wurm they fell into (see sarlacc from star wars). wurm lowered it's head and started heading to the ocean.
everyone could see how far the ocean was and how long until they go under.
it was a narrow corridor of flesh and the throat muscles, while not strong, would try to pull everyone deeper.
they did things like throw vile potions to slow the swallowing, make enemies sleep so the swallowing would be more effective on the snoozers, etc
there was a moment where one of the last party members out stayed behind so it could breathe fire down it's throat, not to damage it, but to speed up the wurm towards the ocean while the enemies stayed inside.
dude used bionicle legends of metrunui yesssss my life is complete
This is a really valid point; I've been dreading running combat because it's always more boring than RP, but maybe it won't be if I use weirder environments...
In fact, I have a couple ideas of my own already.
Definitely going to start implementing these ideas. I feel my combat encounters have been a bit weak lately and I think this was just the spark I needed.
I haven’t run it yet, but I made an encounter where the players come across a sort of magical bomb, and the only have a certain amount of time to defuse it. There’s multiple things they can do, something of them will help some won’t, kind of like a mini escape room that you have to do in 25 seconds or you die.
25 actual seconds or like 4 turns?
@@itwasidio1736 4 turns, but there was a ticking clock with 25 seconds, to make it a little more thematic.
@@Castlattice Cool.
THAT BONKLE CUTSCENE THO!
my party is entering a battle royale style adventurers’ tournament soon and this came at the perfect time to help give some more variety to the fights
I am not sure if this counts but I did borrow a mechanic from Disgaea for 1 battle and the players enjoyed it so much I am probably bringing it back later on. basically the whole battlefield is covered in glowing squares 4-5 different colors of them and there are geo symbols- these magical crystals of about 4 different colors
every square the same color as one with a geo symbol on it is under a magical effect ex: 1 extra attack, fire resistance, random teleportation, clone ( always hostile)
( i made a table and let the players roll on it, i also let them decide if they wanted all positive effects or a mix letting them know it would also effect enemies probably won't again but it was fun)
they won't know the effect until they someone ends a turn and the effect goes live or they approach the geo symbol to investigate it. also the crystals can be moved or destroyed and destroying them will do damage to anyone standing on the same color - ally or enemy and then those squares turn the color of the destroyed crystal.
bonus: the players get an extra magic item for clearing all the colors and effects from the the battlefield.
I ran a fun simple low-level encounter with some Modrons on a giant rotating cog with holes in it and a jutting-out piece of machinery pushing things that got near it into the holes. I drew out the battlemap then used a piece of cut cardboard to represent the jutting-out machinery, rotating it a quarter-circle around the cog each round. It ended up not being a big factor because the fight was over quite quickly, but the players complimented the cool visual and I'm totally keeping the idea for a tougher fight in another campaign!
I once ran a dungeon in the Shadowfell that had a floor which temporarily vanished whenever bright light shone upon it. It made for an interesting encounter as fire and radiant spells could cause both the caster and whatever was on the receiving end to fall into the room below. The gravy on it all was our human fighter, who discovered the mechanic by walking into the room with a torch in hand.
Sick bionicle reference
For me layout shifting labyrinths are a good one for combat because not only do you have to consider changing terrain but you also have to monsters and other enemies suddenly being whisked away or placed in the parties paths at random, and if they’re not careful they’ll get separated.
Two big rings, both spinning in different directions. Gravity of the rings is always on one spot so if they go upside down, the person on it won’t fall off. The party or a few members have to jump from one to the other at the right time as enemies are on both platforms and are either holding them in place or are doing something that needs to be stopped in tandem. Very Sci-fi but I don’t remember where I got the idea from. Maybe a movie? Anyway would be a super interesting battle. One half of the party on one side, another half on the other side. Maybe a force field occasionally pops up when one or more people leap from one to the other as a system to prevent people from just jumping willy nilly. Enemies could also have sentinel or a powerful opportunity attack which would mean that one group would be locked into battle with one side, and another would be locked into battle with another
I've considered something similar with some gear shaped platforms so when you spin one all the others spin appropriately so some platforms only change slightly and others are thrown across the battlefield
Anything with Weird Gravity is a goldmine. Send your party to Pandemonium or Bytopia for some Planescape flavour.
@@321apocalyps Mechanus moment? Hell yes - except for those Modrons.
I love this concept! Thanks for the ideas and I hope you do another one of these. 😃
Optional addition for the mine cart encounter: After a certain speed characters (PCs and NPCs alike) will need to make Dexterity Checks once the carts are no longer merely speeding forward... or someone in the party magically boosts their cart.
Addition for the rampaging giant encounter: It's a battle between a colossus allied with the party and another with their enemies... both sides have the ability to aid or hinder the titanic brawl.
I might just integrate that Mine track battle into lost mines that sounds really fun
I had a similar idea as mine tracks, but it was with sleds high in the mountains. If players were captured by the orcs that was one of the ways they could escape: steal one of the sleds with raindeer, go on insane 70 degree descent and get chased between dangerous rocks and trees.
the third one is something i always were thinking by myself, it is just super cool idea to make the map change instead of "roll reflex" - No, you either stand in the way of Falling rock and need to beat impossible DC, or you move away and avoid any danger.
Perfect ideas for my heist campaign/series of one shots, really.
One idea I’ve used when my players entered an old abandoned wizard tower to try and plunder it. When in one room everyone would randomly swap places with each other at the start of each round. I explained this as being the cause of some strange space bending experiment the wizard was conducting and went out of control due to neglect.
i LOVE that you used that bionicle clip for the arena that changes altitude. i always loved that scene in the coliseum when the toa metru are just horrible outmatched.
I love these channels. Especially this one.
The fact that he used a bionicle movie as an example astonishes me
This is great! I am saving it to my "RPG Favorites - DM" playlist.
A seesaw/teeter totter environment, probably on some flat rocks balanced on pillars, or some sort of trap-style floor in a dungeon. You have to make sure your party balances out the weight of the enemies on your side evenly so the platform doesn’t tilt and throw everyone on it to their deaths. Maybe even work with the enemy to get off or get close enough to one another to duke it out. At the start of every round, calculate the number of creatures on one side of the center fulcrum with those one space away counting as 1, 2 spaces as x2, 3 spaces as x3 and so on. Small creatures count as 1/2, large as 2 etc. Then do the same for the other side, and if either side has a larger number, the platform tilts that way by 45 degrees. At 90 degrees, everyone on the platform falls(unless they have a way to save themselves). You can push enemies off, but you risk unbalancing the platform. Corpses on the platform can still be used to help balance it out. Flying characters might be able to save themselves, but may doom the rest of the party if they don’t land to help balance things.
My sugestion for a way to mix up combat- emergent swarm combat. Emergent complexity is something that happens when you have a lot of things that follow simple rules, but create complex results as they interact. For example Ants or slime molds- both are small, with little or no brains, but have various instincts and behaviors driven by them. Ants have a bunch of phermones that they react to and produce, and most of their behavior is simple survival instincts augmented by instinctive pheremone responses- like leaving a trail of "I found food" Pheremones so other ants go that way later. colony organisms like slime molds or typs of jelly fish are even simpler but can combine to approximate multicellular life.
So if you want a big combat encounter, with a lot of enemies, simplify it by giving each typ of enemy some simple rules and reactions, no need to plan anything other than where they show up, because the mobs will just do what their instincts tell them too- run to fight anything fighting one of their friends, use a range attack if there is a fight nearby but you see a non ally not fighting but in ranged attack range. Just give them 3 to 5 actions with conditions and then throw as many of them as you think your party can handle at them. It can be goblins raiding so one of thier actions would be to run away if it seems to risky, like if they go below a certain number of hit points, or if a bunch of them die at once, yeah a raiding party probably has multiple conditions to trigger running away, all falling under "this target isn't worth it". Kobolds can have specific actions and conditions for traps, and non sentient animals would have fewer possible actions, but you could throw more of them at a party since they are individually weaker, though for that you ar probably better off with just using the swarm template.
There are probably better devised approaches for combat with tons of enemies but this was what came to me first as a way to up the scale of such things while still having them be managble for dms.
Another idea Play terrain damag straight, have conditions or specific terrain types that change when certain things happen, the forest catching fire from a fireball happy wizard is one thing, but how about everything becomeing difficult terrain in an wet area after someone cast a cold element spell with enough damage, or have things like acid damage make things fragile- damage a cave wall with acid and risk falling rocks. I would make sure the players know this is a thing, give them checks to notice the risks, then they have to avoid them or take advantage of them.
Just a few ideas, hope you can do something interesting with them.
Hey this is like- My WHOLE thing! I make a map exactly like this every week!
I had an idea where the party is in the proximity of two adult dragons that are trying to kill each other, and the party has to try and escape to avoid becoming collateral damage.
A fun encounter I ran just the other night was a chase style situation within a crowd, the players were trying to escape the city from disguised assassin's while having to move through a panicking crowd that worked like changing difficult terrain and or cover, but with the knowledge any of them could of been out to kill them. most fun combat I've had in a while.
How about that classic movie trope where people on top of moving vehicles need to avoid overhangs and signs or tunnels by ducking or jumping into a pit?
Make it based on each player's perception or the enemy perception to tell them how many rounds they have to get out of the way of the attack... or push someone into it.
descent into avernus module is pretty fun for experimenting with encounters since because of the nature of avernus you could come across such weird terrain and situations and of course stuff like vehicle combat that and change it up even more. in one session I had the party join in on a wacky races style race with all kinds of different opponents for the right to gain something from a powerful devil and it led to things like the mage using a wall of force to destroy a vehicle at high speeds and the artificer to boost their vehicle past its limits
These are perfect ! I have been looking at ways to make combat more interesting pretty much since I started DMing.
Other favorites I include are
-talking shjt is a free action
-bonus action to use an item
-bonus action to “study” your opponent to learn a stat
-bloodied conditions
-raid boss actions
Nice ones. I have also included Crit and Fumble tables to spice things further up. Certainly activates the players :o)
Just ran this encounter 2 weeks ago.
Sci-fantasy campaign, think spell Jammer but more mass effect in tone.
Party is level 7,
At the end of a long industrial dock, in low gravity above a drop into open vacuum at the bottom of this pit - is a ship that is taking off, the party has 8 turns to get to the ship and shut it down, bad guy is on it.
More bad guys hold the bridge, it has lots of barrels and shipping crates.
I blew it to pieces in round two, and now the broken bridge is drifting apart in the low gravity.
Super fun to make changing lines of sight, and move people farther from the ship.
Ah yes! Dynamic terrain/surroundings are SO MUCH FUN! Chase sequences, stampedes, floods, burning/collapsing buildings, complex giant mechanisms, haywire magical experiments that randomly teleport people/stuff... soooo many choices! ❤
one I used - a ferry across a river that will tilt as enemies climb on the sides or the party moves to hit them
“Roll a d10 and multiply it by 10” SO A PERCENTILE DICE
I think I see why he did it the way he did, actually. DnD is built around movement and distance in multiples of five. By have the die roll be multipled by 10, you would always have a whole number of squares being moved, and that can be translated easily to move-speeds or attack ranges. With percentiles, you're likely to get say, a 67, and have to try and turn that into a workable distance (not to mention the multiple moving "platforms" that would make calculations a nightmare)
No, not percentile dice. Those would give you stupid, annoying numbers like 87 or 13 or 26
@@All4Tanukionly if you use both dice. But if you use the die thats labeled 10,20… 90,00 (the percentile die) then you dont even need to multiply (not that its hard to add a 0)
You see, I play dnd, but as all the players, and the dm, and I write it down.. I’m writing a book basically, but I’m still going to use these probably, because they do sound fun and present interesting combat ideas and combat is something I can struggle with since I don’t have much experience writing it.
Thanks Runesmith.
I once did a Triboar Pony Race encounter. They had to run laps, activate a lever to roll a ball down a rail then catch the ball, navigate an obstacle course with it and then put the ball in the end basket. It was fun because players also used their abilities like leaving magical effects to scare the ponies or inspiring the same ponies. In fact the rune knight used his enlarge ability and carried the pony on it's back for a round or two as well.
I made a selection of ponies too.
Well too bad they went into the Lurkwood next so they had to leave the ponies, but it was still good.
I run a SW5e campaign and I made this really fun encounter, feel free to use it. Battle is on a grid of 11x11 squares. Separate it in 5x5 sections and assign them numbers, and middle line would be forcefield. Something like this
____
| | |
‾ ‾ ‾ ‾
| | |
‾ ‾ ‾ ‾
Forcefield tiles are considered difficult terrain (like you need to push to pass through it). At initiative count 20 DM is rolling d4 which designate safe zone, and on second round at initiative 20 every zone aside from safe zone is engulfed in fire, every creature immediately inside and the one starting their turn in fire get 3d10 fire damage (I made this encounter in reactor shaft, and 4 zones were making ventilation cycles). My party was fighting boss character who was wearing environmental suit, so he had resistance to fire damage (I think that’s best way to make it a combat challenge).
I really like playing with different elevation levels to fights, makes fights become alot more strategic, and offers up alot of room for exploration afterwards. a tower in a large pool of water is perfect, you have the top of the tower, the base level around the tower and the pool of water as unique areas to work the same combat into. throw some archers on top, big shark in the water and something the party needs at one of the levels
thank you for the ideas, I'll be sure to use some of them in my current cyberpunk campaign
i did use something similar to a couple of the ideas proposed here. once there was a boss fight while a magical storm was raging, repositioning the PCs at random every round. and in a current "kind-of-spelljammer" mini-campaign with lots of astral ship combat, i've used something similar to shooting ranges for "approaching danger", which the PCs would have to somehow deal with or suffer the consequences
One thing I did was have a bunch of platforms over top a lava flow which required a running long jump to pass over, and the platforms were constantly rising and falling as the high level wizard NPC and the magma elemental were trying to raise and drop the platforms respectively.
I had a nebulous idea about a dungeon crawl on a boat. Like the cheesy rides at water parks were those jerky robots jump out at you. Yes, I got the idea while riding one of them. This gives me ideas on actually how to run that. Thank you.
Oooh... I'm planning some travel through a swamp in my current campaign. Your comment about environmental hazards got me thinking about the last time I watched The Princess Bride...
Perfect addition to the moving platforms:
A gap between them. Forcing melee fighters to jump between the platforms and possibly miss.
creating a roulette arena was the best thing i ever did as a DM every round 3 things would occur. first a party member would have five seconds or so to yell where they think the roulette ball will land (reds, first 12, 27, etc). second the wheel would spin, and the actual rounds initiative occurs. third and lastly the wheel stops on initiative 0 and the result of the gamble is shown before starting over again the next round. that and lair actions for acrobats swinging in with various fun effects
I had an idea for three disks that rotate every turn and move everyone on them with them in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. That way it takes planning and thought for not only where you’ll be this turn, but also where you’ll be after the discs spin.
I was also going to have fixed points on them that the boss could teleport between. Think 4 differently-colored dots on each disc, and the boss can go from one to the other as a bonus action or a legendary action.
You could also make it that 1 demon fight from Demon Slayer, where he plays his drums and the whole house shifts and flips
I ran an encounter where the party was being chased and tried to escape by sliding on their butts down a steep sandy riverbed, which triggered a landslide behind them. The gang would have to move to get out of the way of obstacles, and large boulders would tumble past them, and the landslide would catch up with them, threatening to engulf them. A few of the pursuers got shoved into the path of these hazards. Actually really proud of that encounter :D.
i totally see my usual party mistaking that last scenario's roaving damage as the actual boss and getting hurt over and over trying to take it down instead of escape the scene.
This video actually gave mea good idea for a boss fight with a cult leader I’m working on, so I’m gonna make it so the floor is enchanted, and pillars of pure magic randomly shoot up from the ground and lower, to give the fight a more interesting challenge
I hope you enjoyed this enough to make more videos like this. I am building a campaign that is basically a platformer dungeon crawl arena and stuff like this makes for great fun.
Hooo boy, that last one reminds me of a fun magic item I made where you can summon the soul of a trapped Devil.
It appears within 40 feet of you and charges at you on it's turn, anything between you and the Devil as it charges takes unavoidable damage as it tries to attack you. It makes an attack roll against you only and if it misses it flies 40 feet further with no opportunity attack because it has flyby.
It's a risk reward thing were you can take massive damage but you can guarantee that you're enemies are also taking quite a bit too.
You can also use the magic item again to chain him up for a round, and on his next turn he breaks free and charges double his original speed.
That is an awesome item.
@@asskicker4000 Thank you, I took some inspiration from a few games so it's wholly original but I made it unique enough (I think).
A great idea is to separate the party by some sort of physical barrier. It really makes them play up some kind of new combos they haven't thought of before. I once did this with a hefty metal door and a raging blizzard outside it.
an idea i had was a fight on a hex-map.
Overlaid on the hexmap are smaller hexagonal tiles, that turn by 60 degrees on initiative counts 20, 15, 10 and 5. Each count causes the squares to move once.
2 Adjacent hex-tiles always turn in opposing directions. (if one goes clockwise, the hex next to it goes counter)
There's also a large empty space in the centre of the battlemap, with a large pendulum swinging North-south on count 0, covering a distance larger then a creature can reasonably be expected to cross in 1 turn. (anyone in the way of the swinging pendulum must make a Dex save against its damage, someone riding the pendulum makes an Athletics check to stick to it and not fall down into the shaft)
Its the insides of a giant mechanical clocktower, the hex-tiles are giant gears (which is why adjacents move oppositely).