Caius of Glantri well actually I think that was half of a d20 since you'll never need to see the other half behind the camera... Also R.I.P the webdm D20 set
I know this is a year old, but I always feel obligated to tell this story whenever I get a chance. I had a Level 6 Sorcerer, nearly die to a single CR 0 snake, because he was CONVINCED that it was immune to poison damage, which was his primary damaging cantrip attack. So he just wailed at it with his dagger as it slowly poisoned him to death.
Good thing about using waves of enemies is you can cancel say wave three if your players are getting their heads kicked in. or add an extra wave if your players are coasting through an encounter.
The downside of this is that it eliminates the possibility of failure or total success. If the DM controls the players' success then it creates an issue similar to railroading, where the players' skill (or lack of) doesn't influence the outcome.
I absolutely LOVE when you guys talk gameplay. My favorite part of the game is typically non-combat encounters and I love when you guys touch on that subject because it always gives me some new insight on how I can make things work for my character, myself as a player, and the table in general. Keep up the videos, guys. You're hands down my favorite D&D youtubers!
DM had a champion+caster fight ready for horde of dragon queen while exploring the caves... We got the information we needed, found the pit and some Drake's and decided to collapse that cave with explosion. Just made sense.
I made a flat rule at the table where only 1 long rest is allowed per day and no more than 2 short rests depending on the nature of their situation. We've encountered scenarios where the rests explained themselves. I feel that, if you have to create a story/change the current story to explain the rest, they shouldn't be taking it, lol. I've also finagled it to where the 2nd short rest was for rolling hit dice only, no spell slot or skill recovery since they used the 1st short rest for that purpose, (or vice versa). That's what's awesome about the game, you have a pretty broad array of options to make doing the same thing over and over different each time.
I know it's actually older video now, but I've always viewed the "X number of encounters" rule to include all the various encounter types you even listed in the title - battles (of course), social encounters, villages, puzzles, etc etc... That way you easily hit the 6-8 encounters suggested, but also probably only 1 or 2 more important fights throughout
I really appreciate these videos. I am loving the tips and different ideas for running games. I am working on getting the DM books and I can't wait to give it a go.
i think they should have you guys as new interns at aquisitions incorporated. it would be badass to see you guys on stage with Jim Darkmagic, Binwin Bronzebottom, Viari, Omin Dran, and Christopher "DM to the Stars" Perkins
Beautiful. I have been waiting for a video like this since I started to DM!! Would you mind potentially digging a little more into engineering each particular encounter type a little more as far as how you might develop each of the individual waves is concerned, (perhaps even as three discrete, sequential videos?!) because while the DMG is great for guidelines on combat encounters, it's difficult for a new DM such as myself to interpret and extrapolate guidelines on the more ephemeral encounters, particularly environmentally, and socially speaking.
This reminds me of a couple of funny stories from a D&D campaign I DM’ed with my family whenever I came home from college. One time, my brother (a Rogue) tried to hit an Ogre but missed. The Ogre proceeded to hit him with its Greatclub, smash him into a tree, and knock him out for the rest of the fight. One other time, they were about to fight some zombies in a cave when they (the zombies) accidentally stepped in some eggs. Suddenly, a breeding pair of Grick emerged and joined the encounter.
I've been wondering about the encounters in my game after the last session so this video is perfectly timed. I know you guys probably have stuff planned out but I would love to hear your thoughts more in depth about how you do social and exploration "encounters". In my party they always want to roll to try and get stuff for free in towns or more gold and I don't want to tell them just no. Sorry for the long comment, but you guys have a lot of views and ideas I agree with. Keep up to good work.
For the people having issues with the 15 minute adventuring day (like I was). There's a rule somewhere in the DMG that states you can only benefit from a long rest once per 24 hours, that helped me out a lot. Also make sure your players know if they stop in the middle of clearing a dungeon to take an 8 hour nap that the rest of the monsters are going to figure out there are adventurers there and prepare for them.
I have had the opposite problem of the 15 minute adventuring day more often than not, especially at early levels. The monk and spellcaster's especially are terrified of using their abilities in case something more dangerous lurks ahead.
Good stuff thanks. I just found this channel. I heartily agree with waves and mostly swear by them. If a next wave might be too much I tend to have the party hear horns and voices approaching. A LOT of voices ! Failing a skill check for example falling from a rope, might result in a limp or half movement for the next period TBD, or the PC's boots are torn and then describe the discomfort from walking partially barefoot.
Great video as always. I would love to see you guys do a video on the Planescape setting. It is also my personal favorite setting (Dark Sun is a close contender) probably because of Planescape: Torment. You guys already did a video on Spelljammer and both Spelljammer and Planescape are interesting in that they are settings in themselves that can link different campaign settings together.
for exploration encounters i like to have the player doing the exploration describe how they get through an obstacle over giving them continuous checks for it if the obstacle is relatively easy
I like to put side objectives in combat encounters that reward bonus XP. So for example, if the party manages to get a surprise round on the enemy, they earn a little extra for doing well.
Great video! I have a player just like you described with an IRL low charisma score, but always plays high charisma characters like paladins and bards. You really do just have to forgive the awkward attempts at charisma. He's aware of it though, so we'll have a laugh sometimes about it and just go with die roll. I make sure to let him know he doesn't have to do everything "in-character" but can just announce his action and intent. You still don't want to say "don't do anything in character" but just make sure he understands if he's having difficulty getting a point across, then he can resort to describing his intent. It really has improved the game for him. He also has a character with extremely high Intelligence and very high wisdom, but in real life he's a high INT low WIS person. So, decision making is difficult for him, and he has trouble thinking outside the box. I actually allow a bit of meta gaming for this character, and I try personally to remind him of abilities he has in ways where he discovers it on his own. Anyway, sorry to ramble on like this!
I usually have 1-3 pre-determined encounters per session at the parties' power level. Those are memorable and give a decent amount of XP. If the party goes looking for trouble, that's when I use the random encounter table.
I've seen the fifteen minute day a few times and almost every time it had to do with problem DMs. Every fight was basically a boss fight every time. After a random room we'd be down a PC or two, all spells, a dozen healing potions and the survivors would be at single digit hit points. Not seeing the fifteen minute day probably has more to do with a better balance
I like the idea of role playing out social encounters. My group has some of the best actors I've had the pleasure of working with, so I may start using that (with the option to roll if you want to). Also one of my players pointed out about skills and whatnot, taking a 10/20 (Pathfinder) is an option in that game for inconsequential whatsitses, why not take it that extra step and if they're masters in a skill/ability, let them role play that out, too! Thanks for giving me some great ideas for my table, can't wait for my players to chime in on it.
Generally as a player who plays support caster/bard with a barbarian and wizard, I find all characters can really have a role in all situations. Warrior can look all mean and intimidating or heroic in the back ground to reenforce the bard or the mage can use invisible servant or mage hand to help the barbarian with athletics. There is no end to everyone helping everyone. Our group kinda abuses the “help” action but it’s encouraged to bring everyone in. Our local barbarian doesn’t do social he isn’t much on speech craft but let him be goofy behind the face of the group to reenforce something said by the bard or the mage to to use a little magic to help the bard with a performance. This is honestly the best way I and our DM have been able to get whole groups of people to get invested in things they normally have no interest in. It’s an rp hook, and adventuring hook and a team building hook all in one. TL;DR: best way to get the whole group to work together is to encourage help actions when the person would be sitting around with their thumbs to their rear anyway. Brings everyone together neatly and invests the team in their actions.
Your experience with the Tyranny of Dragons campaign has been the same I have had. For that third assault of the Cult, I had to work to separate the party in different towers of a castle and let the dragon fly around and shoot his breath into the windows of the towers. They had never felt fear before and I really needed to instill it in them before the final conflict.
I feel like the fifteen minute adventuring day is an easy issue to counter as a DM. Even basic, realistic, time constraints can help prevent the worst of that. Have people that will only go off schedule by like a week, if that, before they assume the party has abandoned them. Or bad guys who succeed at their plan, or move on to step 2, if they are not stopped.
Playing Horde of the Dragon Queen, first two sessions, had six players, and it was still really pushing us with the encounters. Just straight up brutal
I build a plethora of npcs to put in my world in specific places, but more importantly at random locations. I give all of these npcs a motive and objective, and then let the chips fall where they may. Maybe you and this guy are both clerics of Gond, but maybe his ambitions put him at odds with you. Kinda how they said they make the antagonists and their goals, and the campaign all falls into place. I just do that with like 200 npcs. It really doesn't take that long.
To the point made at 7:06, I find 5E to be MUCH better without feats and multiclassing. Stuff like Sentinel, Sharpshooter, etc are really OP. Also, multiclasses like the Sorlock just unbalance the game. My go to rules are no feats, no multiclassing, and slow natural healing. With a certain crowd, I put in my own custom 3.5E-lite rules for AoOs. That makes the game sufficiently deadly. Players still have plenty of races, classes and archetypes to choose from but the cheese is reduced to a minimum.
Yea but there are players like Pruitt who are munchkin power gamers who sole focus is to try and "Win" D&D and they refuse to play unless they have all 18-20 ability scores and 10 feats. Their argument is "It's boring if you aren't an invincible unkillable God" and the opposite is well killing everything and being invincible is boring and stupid since there is no challenge.
In the most recent Unearthed Arcana there are actually rules for gaining xp for each of the "three pillars of play". I haven't started dming my first campaigning yet, so I don't really know what they're like, but I am thinking about using them.
I use a lot of automatic successes and passive skill checks - but I play with botches so I will still occasionally ask a player to "roll against botch."
Someone may have said this below, but I like to combine the die roll and RP methods to social encounters--if the player can present a convincingly foolproof statement/charm targeting an NPCs vanities I'll give it to them, but if they try something like deception I'll give them advantage on the die roll if they offer the ruse in character first
I made an Excel sheet to analyze combat damage. It gives a number between 0 and 140 points for combat difficulty. 140 is complete party kill. As the day progresses, I add the difficulty of the combats. The goal is to reach a total between 100 and 150 total combat encounter points. Taking into account extra hit points available from short rests and second winds, 100 points uses up about 50% of total HPs available in a day. 150 points uses up about 70% of total HPs. It is a quick and easy system to measure combat daily encounters. Short rests become important. So even 6 easy combats of 20 points that use up 10% of total HPs each makes for an effective day. Also, I have a mechanic to reduce hit points regained after a long rest in the style of Middle Earth. My Excel sheet takes those reductions into account simple and easy. So each day of combat encounters, I can quickly judge the party's resources for another combat and make adjustments to test them effectively.... I have never seen this system anywhere, and it works great.
You mentioned sending waves at players to tune the difficulty of an encounter. This sounds like a great idea to me but seems like it would be challenging to consistently pull off in a believable way. How do you explain a wave attacking and then the subsequent waves waiting in the wings rather than just overwhelming the party. I think I could explain that once or twice but after a while it would seem gamey. Would love to hear your approach to this.
With you guys finally setting up in the new place is there still a chance to us seeing closure to the missing teen girls campaign?(avoiding spoilers for those who haven't watched it) I need my D&D fix and still want to see where that's going.
i don't fear the options I just feel overwhelmed because this will be my first campaign. I haven't memorized all the class rules or enemy stats and I just feel overwhelmed by the amount of *stuff* that there is. without CR i really have no idea how to build an appropriately difficult fight.
Then CR is definitely for you. It is meant to provide a guideline to what level of challenge it will provide to a party. CR 2 means you can kill 3-4 of them in a day if you are all lvl 2. Of course the dice may change that. I had my lvl2 group nearly TPK on our first Cr2 encounter, which was a gelatinous cube. We messed up. having our 2 tanks and our sorcerer engage in melee, being comsumed, and the cube deal 18/18 possible damage on the first digestion attack. If the DM hadn't buffed the remaining players, the group would not have survived the encounter, and sudden surge of power made for a great scene followed by wonder as to what on earth, this could possibly mean for our characters . The lesson to learn from this is that CR is somewhat inacurrate and you need to have some backup plans (allies or powers who will save the group in case of incoming TPK). At the same time, you may have some extra encounters ready, if the players are not challenged by your primary challening monster. :)
Booker Prime ok so i know this is a really late response but it may still help, use the CR for your first encounter or two if the players dance there way though it like its not there then up the challenge if the players are level 5 and not having a problem make a fight their level +2 if thats too easy keep going till you get to the challenge you want then run the rest of the as if the are X levels higer than they are.
Just to check, I thought "encounter" just means something like "something to do", be it searching for a secret door, disarming or avoiding a trap, tracking a beast or having a kerfuffle. "8 encounters" doesn't mean "8 combats". Or am I wrong?
Awesome vid, so helpful! Do you guys have any tips on how to relay the possibility of a persuasion/deception/intimidation as an alternate means of resolution in a given encounter to the player with out being too direct? Or what would you suggest is a good way to broaden a players use of these skills that isn't simply attempting to acquire endless discounts on items? Thanks guys!
Just started watching and I am a huge fan. I was wondering if you could do a video talking about large groups of adventurers. I am DMing for a group of 9 adventurers and I was wondering your thoughts on large group adventures like that.
I think one thing I noticed in the dungeon Master's guide is that it encourages you to have Encounters of multiple waves of enemies so you don't fight them all at once. This causes the players did not have to fight all of those enemies at one time, but it gives him no time to rest between fights. If the book is assuming you are doing this often, I might see you getting too high numbers of combats per day
your videos are great guys. have you or can you talk about starting a group at say level 9 or 10. What does that creation process look like? I watched you razel sinn game and you said you started at level 8. how did you choose magic items and such?
Alright so I have a question for you that maybe you can explain to DMs. How can you make a campaign last longer. Like I want to run a campaign revolved around exploring and unknown world, and I don't want my players to become level 20 badasses too quickly. I wanna have a kinda long, campaign with lots of cool places to go and things to discover, but I feel like if they get into a lot of combat that they'll boost through levels far too quickly. We are playing a campaign DMed by a friend of mine and one of our players said he feels like leveling up isn't quite as rewarding anymore, because we pretty much do it every session. Is there any advice you can give about how to may adjust XP so that it feels more rewarding to level up?
I have a player that That seemingly only likes combat encounters and only when they are epic or have some sort of big brutish type enemy. But at the same time he did one of my most engaging RP moments within the campaign. I asked him what interests him and all he said is IDK it just happens in the moment. I dont like just throwing big bad guys at the group all night long because even he gets bored of that. Anyone have any advice?
How does a week for a long rest even matter? Unless something is time sensitive and you are actually keeping track of hours and days, which is tedious and to me unfun, the duration becomes nothing more than spoken words. I really do not understand how time works in D&D. Could someone elaborate for me perhaps?
ZamboniElite Your campaign can really benefit from things being time sensitive. This isn't a video game where nothing happens until your characters show up. If a cult is performing a ritual to summon an archdevil, it wouldn't make sense for the party to go on vacation for a week. It also builds tension when the party is battered and bruised, but they have to press on because if they don't the world is doomed.
ZamboniElite I wouldn't make it so that you have a hard and fast clock, but if the world ends in 30 days, it's really easy to keep track of a short rest, long rest, and the like.
Oliver Hall throw magic resistant enemies at them dont be afriad to punish a party for having a big weakness unless you want it to be a magic based campaign
6 encounters per day is way to much but again one day can go between 2 sessions... What I do is I do it on my own pace, always trying to give interesting encounters or places where players can do smthg there
On the topic of the CR system being ridiculous, I had a player roll up a paladin lv 5 just to play a one shot in a dungeon like tower. Long story short the final boss was a CR 11 Horned Devil and my lv 5 player DESTROYED the fiend in 6 rounds.
There are 2 major factors that go into the CR system, first being the power of the players characters the system is meant for D&D adventurers league standard array or 25 point buy not characters with all 18's and 10 feats. Second is how knowledgeable and tactical the GM is at playing those monsters in the encounter and using them to their full potential.
Let your players take all the rests they want. Have people stumble upon a sleeping group with lots of loot and equipment laying around. In the PC version of Temple of Elemental Evil... didn't know that going for a rest meant the whole party actually slept, and they got ambushed by a giant cray fish :))
Playing in a dysfunctional group with Dysfunctional Characters in the party. Good part on this? Reeeeeeealy interesting roleplay. Sadly combat sees close to no roleplay at all. we are at not even a year on DND already looking into Homebrewing cause the system is to limiting in combat when it comes to working togheter and roleplaying that out in the battle. O_O
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I love the fact that you record this inside a d20.
Nice catch.
Caius of Glantri well actually I think that was half of a d20 since you'll never need to see the other half behind the camera... Also R.I.P the webdm D20 set
@@lukecarroll4052 rip sets
I really appreciate how natural the conversation flows in your videos. Always entertaining to listen to.
If it was an hour long podcast I would listen to it every day.
I threw three cr 1/8 Poisonous Snakes at my party and.... accidental TPK.
mrKeller I've seen a 5th level wizard use a poisonous snake familiar to kill an enemy wizard, they're no joke XD
I know this is a year old, but I always feel obligated to tell this story whenever I get a chance. I had a Level 6 Sorcerer, nearly die to a single CR 0 snake, because he was CONVINCED that it was immune to poison damage, which was his primary damaging cantrip attack. So he just wailed at it with his dagger as it slowly poisoned him to death.
Good thing about using waves of enemies is you can cancel say wave three if your players are getting their heads kicked in. or add an extra wave if your players are coasting through an encounter.
The downside of this is that it eliminates the possibility of failure or total success. If the DM controls the players' success then it creates an issue similar to railroading, where the players' skill (or lack of) doesn't influence the outcome.
that intro put me in tears, you guys are great
I absolutely LOVE when you guys talk gameplay. My favorite part of the game is typically non-combat encounters and I love when you guys touch on that subject because it always gives me some new insight on how I can make things work for my character, myself as a player, and the table in general. Keep up the videos, guys. You're hands down my favorite D&D youtubers!
Didn't play DND in months , now I wanna make a new adventure
Then you should! Don't stifle your own creativity!
I have binge watched nearly every episode over the last week or so, and this intro is the best by far. I cannot stop laughing.
DM had a champion+caster fight ready for horde of dragon queen while exploring the caves... We got the information we needed, found the pit and some Drake's and decided to collapse that cave with explosion.
Just made sense.
so happy you guys are back. If it's possible you should do more of the episodes where you talk about the monsters, similar to beholder/dragon episodes
Don't you worry one bit! More monsters are coming!
+JPruInc I like quite the opposite, when you talk about DMing and running the game, that's my jam. Great video!
I made a flat rule at the table where only 1 long rest is allowed per day and no more than 2 short rests depending on the nature of their situation. We've encountered scenarios where the rests explained themselves. I feel that, if you have to create a story/change the current story to explain the rest, they shouldn't be taking it, lol. I've also finagled it to where the 2nd short rest was for rolling hit dice only, no spell slot or skill recovery since they used the 1st short rest for that purpose, (or vice versa). That's what's awesome about the game, you have a pretty broad array of options to make doing the same thing over and over different each time.
I agree! Everyone can do it their own way. It's a beautiful thing.
The 1 long rest per day is also official rules.
I use 1 short rest per long rest.
that intro though
I know, right?
As a DM I never really used the CR until I hit 3.5, always used to tailor my encounters directly to my players.
Great vid again!
I know it's actually older video now, but I've always viewed the "X number of encounters" rule to include all the various encounter types you even listed in the title - battles (of course), social encounters, villages, puzzles, etc etc...
That way you easily hit the 6-8 encounters suggested, but also probably only 1 or 2 more important fights throughout
In my opinion the old groovy track that played on beginning should be back. Still love you videos and i'm happy you are back!
Yeah. We should bring the funk back. Lemme call up 'Old Greg'....
I really appreciate these videos. I am loving the tips and different ideas for running games. I am working on getting the DM books and I can't wait to give it a go.
i think they should have you guys as new interns at aquisitions incorporated.
it would be badass to see you guys on stage with Jim Darkmagic, Binwin Bronzebottom, Viari, Omin Dran, and Christopher "DM to the Stars" Perkins
I agree with every word of your comment. Write your congressman.
I really like this video. It's full of useful, practical advice and sensible assessments from very knowledgeable and experienced "people!"
Love your stuff guys, big help with my home campaign and the 5e league I run at my local store.
Beautiful. I have been waiting for a video like this since I started to DM!! Would you mind potentially digging a little more into engineering each particular encounter type a little more as far as how you might develop each of the individual waves is concerned, (perhaps even as three discrete, sequential videos?!) because while the DMG is great for guidelines on combat encounters, it's difficult for a new DM such as myself to interpret and extrapolate guidelines on the more ephemeral encounters, particularly environmentally, and socially speaking.
I feel ya. We'll look at that and put it on the list.
This reminds me of a couple of funny stories from a D&D campaign I DM’ed with my family whenever I came home from college. One time, my brother (a Rogue) tried to hit an Ogre but missed. The Ogre proceeded to hit him with its Greatclub, smash him into a tree, and knock him out for the rest of the fight. One other time, they were about to fight some zombies in a cave when they (the zombies) accidentally stepped in some eggs. Suddenly, a breeding pair of Grick emerged and joined the encounter.
I've been wondering about the encounters in my game after the last session so this video is perfectly timed. I know you guys probably have stuff planned out but I would love to hear your thoughts more in depth about how you do social and exploration "encounters". In my party they always want to roll to try and get stuff for free in towns or more gold and I don't want to tell them just no. Sorry for the long comment, but you guys have a lot of views and ideas I agree with. Keep up to good work.
For the people having issues with the 15 minute adventuring day (like I was). There's a rule somewhere in the DMG that states you can only benefit from a long rest once per 24 hours, that helped me out a lot. Also make sure your players know if they stop in the middle of clearing a dungeon to take an 8 hour nap that the rest of the monsters are going to figure out there are adventurers there and prepare for them.
That had to be one of my favorite intros for one of these videos yet, the hand from the side of the screen cracked me up
I have had the opposite problem of the 15 minute adventuring day more often than not, especially at early levels. The monk and spellcaster's especially are terrified of using their abilities in case something more dangerous lurks ahead.
Good stuff thanks. I just found this channel.
I heartily agree with waves and mostly swear by them. If a next wave might be too much I tend to have the party hear horns and voices approaching. A LOT of voices !
Failing a skill check for example falling from a rope, might result in a limp or half movement for the next period TBD, or the PC's boots are torn and then describe the discomfort from walking partially barefoot.
Great video as always. I would love to see you guys do a video on the Planescape setting. It is also my personal favorite setting (Dark Sun is a close contender) probably because of Planescape: Torment. You guys already did a video on Spelljammer and both Spelljammer and Planescape are interesting in that they are settings in themselves that can link different campaign settings together.
Planescape is the shit! It's on the list.
Awesome as always. I lol'ed at the intro! Keep up the great work guys! :)
I'm glad you liked it! Thanks for coming back each week.
I never thought to look at their sheets before making the adventures, this is amazing~!
I'm new to DMing and I love your videos! I love the discussion format
Thanks and best of luck!
for exploration encounters i like to have the player doing the exploration describe how they get through an obstacle over giving them continuous checks for it if the obstacle is relatively easy
The word "Diplomance" and the implied "Diplomancer" is the best thing I've ever gotten from a WebDM video. (slight exaggeration)
So happy theirs another video up! Keep it up you guys!
Happy to bring it to you.
I like to put side objectives in combat encounters that reward bonus XP. So for example, if the party manages to get a surprise round on the enemy, they earn a little extra for doing well.
Great video! I have a player just like you described with an IRL low charisma score, but always plays high charisma characters like paladins and bards. You really do just have to forgive the awkward attempts at charisma. He's aware of it though, so we'll have a laugh sometimes about it and just go with die roll.
I make sure to let him know he doesn't have to do everything "in-character" but can just announce his action and intent. You still don't want to say "don't do anything in character" but just make sure he understands if he's having difficulty getting a point across, then he can resort to describing his intent. It really has improved the game for him.
He also has a character with extremely high Intelligence and very high wisdom, but in real life he's a high INT low WIS person. So, decision making is difficult for him, and he has trouble thinking outside the box. I actually allow a bit of meta gaming for this character, and I try personally to remind him of abilities he has in ways where he discovers it on his own. Anyway, sorry to ramble on like this!
I usually have 1-3 pre-determined encounters per session at the parties' power level. Those are memorable and give a decent amount of XP. If the party goes looking for trouble, that's when I use the random encounter table.
I've seen the fifteen minute day a few times and almost every time it had to do with problem DMs. Every fight was basically a boss fight every time. After a random room we'd be down a PC or two, all spells, a dozen healing potions and the survivors would be at single digit hit points. Not seeing the fifteen minute day probably has more to do with a better balance
I like the idea of role playing out social encounters. My group has some of the best actors I've had the pleasure of working with, so I may start using that (with the option to roll if you want to).
Also one of my players pointed out about skills and whatnot, taking a 10/20 (Pathfinder) is an option in that game for inconsequential whatsitses, why not take it that extra step and if they're masters in a skill/ability, let them role play that out, too!
Thanks for giving me some great ideas for my table, can't wait for my players to chime in on it.
Generally as a player who plays support caster/bard with a barbarian and wizard, I find all characters can really have a role in all situations. Warrior can look all mean and intimidating or heroic in the back ground to reenforce the bard or the mage can use invisible servant or mage hand to help the barbarian with athletics. There is no end to everyone helping everyone. Our group kinda abuses the “help” action but it’s encouraged to bring everyone in. Our local barbarian doesn’t do social he isn’t much on speech craft but let him be goofy behind the face of the group to reenforce something said by the bard or the mage to to use a little magic to help the bard with a performance. This is honestly the best way I and our DM have been able to get whole groups of people to get invested in things they normally have no interest in. It’s an rp hook, and adventuring hook and a team building hook all in one.
TL;DR: best way to get the whole group to work together is to encourage help actions when the person would be sitting around with their thumbs to their rear anyway. Brings everyone together neatly and invests the team in their actions.
I give roll bonuses for RP-ing the social encounters (sometimes it's a negative) to encourage the rp.
Your experience with the Tyranny of Dragons campaign has been the same I have had. For that third assault of the Cult, I had to work to separate the party in different towers of a castle and let the dragon fly around and shoot his breath into the windows of the towers. They had never felt fear before and I really needed to instill it in them before the final conflict.
I feel like the fifteen minute adventuring day is an easy issue to counter as a DM. Even basic, realistic, time constraints can help prevent the worst of that. Have people that will only go off schedule by like a week, if that, before they assume the party has abandoned them. Or bad guys who succeed at their plan, or move on to step 2, if they are not stopped.
Playing Horde of the Dragon Queen, first two sessions, had six players, and it was still really pushing us with the encounters. Just straight up brutal
I build a plethora of npcs to put in my world in specific places, but more importantly at random locations. I give all of these npcs a motive and objective, and then let the chips fall where they may. Maybe you and this guy are both clerics of Gond, but maybe his ambitions put him at odds with you. Kinda how they said they make the antagonists and their goals, and the campaign all falls into place. I just do that with like 200 npcs. It really doesn't take that long.
To the point made at 7:06, I find 5E to be MUCH better without feats and multiclassing. Stuff like Sentinel, Sharpshooter, etc are really OP. Also, multiclasses like the Sorlock just unbalance the game. My go to rules are no feats, no multiclassing, and slow natural healing. With a certain crowd, I put in my own custom 3.5E-lite rules for AoOs. That makes the game sufficiently deadly. Players still have plenty of races, classes and archetypes to choose from but the cheese is reduced to a minimum.
That's the beauty of this game. Many paths to take.
Yea but there are players like Pruitt who are munchkin power gamers who sole focus is to try and "Win" D&D and they refuse to play unless they have all 18-20 ability scores and 10 feats. Their argument is "It's boring if you aren't an invincible unkillable God" and the opposite is well killing everything and being invincible is boring and stupid since there is no challenge.
In the most recent Unearthed Arcana there are actually rules for gaining xp for each of the "three pillars of play". I haven't started dming my first campaigning yet, so I don't really know what they're like, but I am thinking about using them.
I use a lot of automatic successes and passive skill checks - but I play with botches so I will still occasionally ask a player to "roll against botch."
I love passive checks, but I have yet to use automatic successes. I've looked at the rules, just haven't incorporated them.
Jim would definitely be the top
Someone may have said this below, but I like to combine the die roll and RP methods to social encounters--if the player can present a convincingly foolproof statement/charm targeting an NPCs vanities I'll give it to them, but if they try something like deception I'll give them advantage on the die roll if they offer the ruse in character first
I made an Excel sheet to analyze combat damage. It gives a number between 0 and 140 points for combat difficulty. 140 is complete party kill. As the day progresses, I add the difficulty of the combats. The goal is to reach a total between 100 and 150 total combat encounter points. Taking into account extra hit points available from short rests and second winds, 100 points uses up about 50% of total HPs available in a day. 150 points uses up about 70% of total HPs. It is a quick and easy system to measure combat daily encounters. Short rests become important. So even 6 easy combats of 20 points that use up 10% of total HPs each makes for an effective day. Also, I have a mechanic to reduce hit points regained after a long rest in the style of Middle Earth. My Excel sheet takes those reductions into account simple and easy. So each day of combat encounters, I can quickly judge the party's resources for another combat and make adjustments to test them effectively.... I have never seen this system anywhere, and it works great.
Wow! Thank you for all this information.
You mentioned sending waves at players to tune the difficulty of an encounter. This sounds like a great idea to me but seems like it would be challenging to consistently pull off in a believable way. How do you explain a wave attacking and then the subsequent waves waiting in the wings rather than just overwhelming the party.
I think I could explain that once or twice but after a while it would seem gamey. Would love to hear your approach to this.
0:48 is that Kayako from the grudge I hear in the background????
With you guys finally setting up in the new place is there still a chance to us seeing closure to the missing teen girls campaign?(avoiding spoilers for those who haven't watched it) I need my D&D fix and still want to see where that's going.
Really great episode!
Thanks and stay tuned.
i don't fear the options I just feel overwhelmed because this will be my first campaign. I haven't memorized all the class rules or enemy stats and I just feel overwhelmed by the amount of *stuff* that there is. without CR i really have no idea how to build an appropriately difficult fight.
Then CR is definitely for you. It is meant to provide a guideline to what level of challenge it will provide to a party. CR 2 means you can kill 3-4 of them in a day if you are all lvl 2. Of course the dice may change that. I had my lvl2 group nearly TPK on our first Cr2 encounter, which was a gelatinous cube. We messed up. having our 2 tanks and our sorcerer engage in melee, being comsumed, and the cube deal 18/18 possible damage on the first digestion attack. If the DM hadn't buffed the remaining players, the group would not have survived the encounter, and sudden surge of power made for a great scene followed by wonder as to what on earth, this could possibly mean for our characters . The lesson to learn from this is that CR is somewhat inacurrate and you need to have some backup plans (allies or powers who will save the group in case of incoming TPK). At the same time, you may have some extra encounters ready, if the players are not challenged by your primary challening monster. :)
Booker Prime ok so i know this is a really late response but it may still help, use the CR for your first encounter or two if the players dance there way though it like its not there then up the challenge if the players are level 5 and not having a problem make a fight their level +2 if thats too easy keep going till you get to the challenge you want then run the rest of the as if the are X levels higer than they are.
Just to check, I thought "encounter" just means something like "something to do", be it searching for a secret door, disarming or avoiding a trap, tracking a beast or having a kerfuffle. "8 encounters" doesn't mean "8 combats". Or am I wrong?
great video as always, you motivate me to start a campain
good stuff. I also hate the CR system for measuring difficulties, or perhaps we are just sucky DMs when it comes to combat😭
No...the CR system is broken. That's pretty much an accepted fact about 5e.
Awesome vid, so helpful! Do you guys have any tips on how to relay the possibility of a persuasion/deception/intimidation as an alternate means of resolution in a given encounter to the player with out being too direct? Or what would you suggest is a good way to broaden a players use of these skills that isn't simply attempting to acquire endless discounts on items?
Thanks guys!
Just started watching and I am a huge fan. I was wondering if you could do a video talking about large groups of adventurers. I am DMing for a group of 9 adventurers and I was wondering your thoughts on large group adventures like that.
if they don't answer. u could try dawnforgecast. he just posted a video about large groups.
We will put it on the list! Stay tuned!
Probably my favorite intro ever xD
I wonder how you guys handle difficult terrain, if it's a cliff do you make the group do checks often?
You guys are just too kool for school!
I think one thing I noticed in the dungeon Master's guide is that it encourages you to have Encounters of multiple waves of enemies so you don't fight them all at once. This causes the players did not have to fight all of those enemies at one time, but it gives him no time to rest between fights. If the book is assuming you are doing this often, I might see you getting too high numbers of combats per day
your videos are great guys. have you or can you talk about starting a group at say level 9 or 10. What does that creation process look like? I watched you razel sinn game and you said you started at level 8. how did you choose magic items and such?
That's a good idea. It's on the list.
Gr8 Intro, made me laugh!
Alright so I have a question for you that maybe you can explain to DMs. How can you make a campaign last longer. Like I want to run a campaign revolved around exploring and unknown world, and I don't want my players to become level 20 badasses too quickly. I wanna have a kinda long, campaign with lots of cool places to go and things to discover, but I feel like if they get into a lot of combat that they'll boost through levels far too quickly. We are playing a campaign DMed by a friend of mine and one of our players said he feels like leveling up isn't quite as rewarding anymore, because we pretty much do it every session. Is there any advice you can give about how to may adjust XP so that it feels more rewarding to level up?
Best intro ever.
Thanks! I had a special feeling about this intro in particular.
I have a player that That seemingly only likes combat encounters and only when they are epic or have some sort of big brutish type enemy. But at the same time he did one of my most engaging RP moments within the campaign. I asked him what interests him and all he said is IDK it just happens in the moment. I dont like just throwing big bad guys at the group all night long because even he gets bored of that. Anyone have any advice?
How does a week for a long rest even matter? Unless something is time sensitive and you are actually keeping track of hours and days, which is tedious and to me unfun, the duration becomes nothing more than spoken words. I really do not understand how time works in D&D. Could someone elaborate for me perhaps?
ZamboniElite Your campaign can really benefit from things being time sensitive. This isn't a video game where nothing happens until your characters show up. If a cult is performing a ritual to summon an archdevil, it wouldn't make sense for the party to go on vacation for a week. It also builds tension when the party is battered and bruised, but they have to press on because if they don't the world is doomed.
ZamboniElite I wouldn't make it so that you have a hard and fast clock, but if the world ends in 30 days, it's really easy to keep track of a short rest, long rest, and the like.
Have you ever tried to make your own roleplay system from ground up?
Its rough.
Jim has done some of that. I should get him to talk about...
JPruInc Please do, Itd help a lot.
Much love for you guys, keep it up.
Very nice.
we want a spelljammer live play
I'm DMing for a group of players who all want to be spellcasters and all never roleplay. How can I take this to what I want to happen?
Oliver Hall throw magic resistant enemies at them dont be afriad to punish a party for having a big weakness unless you want it to be a magic based campaign
Oliver Hall have them be hunted by a ranger with Silence and poisons of all types of status. It was great fun for me.
I love the uncomfortable lead in... lol
Thanks this really helped me out with the combat in my campgain I'm running for my freinds
Hey Pruitt , Where can I get that shirt online ?
I want that ying-yang d20 shirt.
BEST INTRO EVER
How do you award XP for noncombat encounters?
Best intro joke yet! X-D
Do you guys play any of the Star Wars table top role playing games
I've encointered the 15 min asventuring day lol
Top intro yet hahaha
The doctor recommends 6-8 balanced encounters per day.
where did you guys get that cool castle terrain?
Daniel Anderson that's his dm screen
Best intro? I think so
That beholder is so cursed
6 encounters per day is way to much but again one day can go between 2 sessions... What I do is I do it on my own pace, always trying to give interesting encounters or places where players can do smthg there
On the topic of the CR system being ridiculous, I had a player roll up a paladin lv 5 just to play a one shot in a dungeon like tower. Long story short the final boss was a CR 11 Horned Devil and my lv 5 player DESTROYED the fiend in 6 rounds.
There are 2 major factors that go into the CR system, first being the power of the players characters the system is meant for D&D adventurers league standard array or 25 point buy not characters with all 18's and 10 feats. Second is how knowledgeable and tactical the GM is at playing those monsters in the encounter and using them to their full potential.
Let your players take all the rests they want. Have people stumble upon a sleeping group with lots of loot and equipment laying around.
In the PC version of Temple of Elemental Evil... didn't know that going for a rest meant the whole party actually slept, and they got ambushed by a giant cray fish :))
That opening...rofl
As a new time dm, ill make people make rolls, and lower the DC based on how good they are at that skill
haha holy fuck that opener bahahaha
Rip intro joke :(
*Thumbs Up*
Druid with 20 strength is "balanced"
Playing in a dysfunctional group with Dysfunctional Characters in the party. Good part on this? Reeeeeeealy interesting roleplay.
Sadly combat sees close to no roleplay at all. we are at not even a year on DND already looking into Homebrewing cause the system is to limiting in combat when it comes to working togheter and roleplaying that out in the battle. O_O