> comes in charging with a band of elephants; > tanks a fighter hitting him for several turns; > casually fries the party's cleric into a crisp; > refuses to elaborate further; > leaves.
I like how this was explicitly NOT an archdruid played with every possible trick of the trade and he still casually bodied a 4 man party and only let the fighter live because meh. Smartly played encounters are SCARY. I know I say it each time, but its a real good demonstration of dm skill that they can write encounters that dont end in constant tpk or casual party stomps.
The problem that I have with these videos are the stupid decisions from the "players", how we don't know their builds and how everything goes juuuust as planned for the monster. But yes, they are very creative ways to explore the monster's full potential.
@@ToAqui210 to be fair as the DM you can always make things go your way anyways. plus just is one scenario of many possible its just to show how you could play the archdruid and how running one in battle may go. youll always need to change things for your own parties set up
@@Styxer1008 Maybe, but honestly, that's kind of meaningless, really. At the end of the day, the DM can determine whatever they want. There are tons of ways even incredibly weak monsters COULD be broken, depending on the party's ability to fight back. In fact, a string of weak-ass monsters will eventually win via attrition. And, when you allow for things not explicitly listed in the stat block (which is pretty hard NOT to do), the sky's the limit. Take the Kobold video for example. He assumed they have all these traps set up and are prepared for a raiding party of adventurers. If you've annoyed the DM enough to make "worst case", then they can just say "The Kobolds scurry up rope ladders into tiny holes in the roof, pull the ladders up after them, then collapse the entrance tunnel and unleash the dam, flooding the cave. You all drown in a manner of minutes. The end." The videos are interesting and fun to watch, but I don't really see what practical value they have.
@@ToAqui210 Yeah. Nobody took AoO, the Cleric didn't cast Spiritual Weapon, the Fighter didn't Action Surge or use any of its subclass features, the sorcerer somehow managed to deal only about 25 damage on his fireball (50 if they made the save, but...c'mon. They shouldn't be able to). Maybe he didn't upcast it, idk. At 16th level, I feel like it should have been a cakewalk to take out at least 3 of those elephants in round one. Upcast fireball, two attacks from the Cleric (Sw and a regular attack) and at LEAST two attacks from the fighter. I'm assuming the party is fairly healthy as he usually mentions if the monsters strike while the party is weak.
Favorite part of druids. "Oh look it's a squirrel. Why is there a thunderstorm building above only us? Why is that squirrel pointing up? Oh god that lightning just took out Tim!"
@@gingermcgingin4106 This will unfortunately not work. If a space isn't big enough for your new form, you just kind of get shunted into the nearest available space.
My party: *casts fireball in an explicitly dry and woody forest and doesn't stamp out any of the little fires that start, spawning a forest fire that destroys massive swathes of the forest * Runesmith, only a few days later: So there's a pretty strong chance that your players have messed with an ecosystem...
To be fair, forest fires occur in nature plenty enough. Of course you can go 'oh it wasnt the right season' or 'the next fire was due in another year' but theres an excuse if you don't want to murderkill your party
@@alessandrocoatti5186 summer is a pretty popular season for fires. It just depends on how much dry brush is around. A healthy forest that is in spring and completely green shouldn't have a massive fire until the greenery dries out though.
@@alessandrocoatti5186 Forest fires can be started by lots of natural phenomena, actually (though lightning is certainly the most common)! One cause is that droplets of water can act like magnifying glasses and suddenly set spiderwebs in dead trees on fire. Then the tree catches, and the rest is as expected. Also, certain ecosystems near geothermal vents, volcanoes, or large coal deposits may experience wildfire caused by those things
Druids and Bards are the two main classes that I feel need WAY more antagonist roles in a D&D game. I'd love to see one of these tactics videos using Bards next time.
Suggestion in town for them to walk into the haunted forest at night or some other ambush. Join them to “chronicle their tales, not fight,” and then kill them after they fight the BBEG. Use Countercharm at any point to piss off the party.
I actualy used a Druid Villain. Ravisin the frost druid from rime of the frostmaiden and there is also a druid villain in Sunless Citadel. but I agree we need more bard villains and I don't recall any bard villains in the modules
i've used a bard villain in one of my games, he posed as a heroic performer in order to get in good with the locals, he had some red cap mercenaries on the pay roll, and had them take over a local orc tribe and had them raid the town so the bard could "save" them from the orcs, while also doing musical performances laced with charm magic to make the people love him even more. My players noticed the charm magic, but didn't seem to care, or perhaps they didn't fully understand the situation and thought he was just a scammer and not a psychopath. They figured it out eventually though when that bard started enacting his master plan to take over the local barony by using his heroic status with the locals to get close enough to the local baroness to charm/seduce her into an official marriage, and he then proceeded to turn her into a puppet to make decrees and proclamations, her voice, but his words. When they finally confronted him in the baroness's keep his final trump card was to order the baroness to kill her self if any of them harm him, she had both a vial of extremely potent poison and a dagger. Somehow those boobs found a way to both kill him and save her at the same time, i'm not sure how, but they did. They and I had a blast on that arc of my campaign.
I once made a level 20 whisper bard for an evil one-off. Some notable mentions from his magical secrets were destructive wave, blinding smite, simulacrum, and shapechange. He spent most of the game tearing up a city as a Leviathan. Late game bards are fucking scary.
They're level 16 and headed to a city, they can afford hiring a priest to cast raise dead twice, and they'll probably move on to the next major plot point unless they want revenge for some reason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I picked druid as my first ever class cause “we needed a healer” (none of us knew how to play at the time so we made our party around generic team comps ie: tank,dps,heals) so as it was explained to me “well you can be basically a preacher or a crazy forest man” so I choose crazy forest man and now druid is my favorite class and I plan on tryin all the subclasses as we continue to play
Haha same, I've been making the rounds but to be honest, I started with Circle of the Moon and, honestly, I don't think the other subclasses can really compare, but then again I've only ever really played at the lower levels.
Any Wizard: Don't you just hate it when a goblin manages to take off half your health with just one attack? Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer: Dude, my dragon blood gives me permanent mage armor. But yeah, that still sucks. Circle of the Moon Druid: You guys worry about that?
"This round won't function as a surprise round, since they're elephants." Actually, real life elephants are surprisingly quiet creatures, and would indeed be able to sneak up on the party due to padding they have on their feet.
That Sasquatche story still gets me in the heart every time i see it! "We eat berries and mushrooms" "Go ahead and end my suffering, there's no point anymore"
Our Firbolg Druid just turned evil from accepting one too many gifts from the Amber Temple. This'll help me torture them with the consequences of their actions once he finaly catches back up to them
Druid bounty. When they're around, all animals get alerted and fuck off to make finding food much harder, the plants and woods become difficult terrain to slow their travel, and every once in a while a druid will come to attack em. Fun fact, too: Amber Dragons, a type of lesser gem dragon that lives a druidic lifestyle and is pretty chill with the druids. Could be a fun fight.
DM Steve: uhh, did I forget to mention he casted foresight right before the battle? And uh uh uh he can fly and shoot lasers! LvL 1 party in the first random encounter: The fuck Steve?
My first DM was like this and I will admit our party never argued. We couldn't make any mistakes & we never split the party except when the DM forced it on us. I grew to love it & now any DMs that take it easy on us I get bored really fast.
It would if the party was lured there, either in search of loot or to kill the archdruid himself. As it stands, with pyronius burning the forest, gluttonous depopulating the forest and cheesus proselytizing the forest, it holds thematic weight for the archdruid to bring the forest to them.
I am very amused because I'm playing a vengeful druid right now, and I suppose their "arc" is going to be learning to forgive. Still, I'll make a mental note, I like the idea that a druid wouldn't pursue an enemy who seems like they've learned their lesson.
ooh, haven't watched yet, but this might be useful. Druids in my worlds are quite sharply divided between those that are friendly (the type to live alon in some woods and make friends with everyone who comes by, human or animal, or the people that'll help farms out occasionally) and those that are brutal people living in an almost kill of be killed way of life. Might take some of the stuff in here for the more violent druid people.
man if I hadn't already played this card by temporarily having one player character marked the enemy of all fey I would love to have done this with druids instead.
We had a fight at a high-classed party where the property owner was showing off all of his pricey acquisitions. We were hired as guards. One attendee made a deal with some pixies to cause chaos while they tried to steal a magical dagger. One pixie uncorked and upended a jar containing a water elemental. Our fighter quickly realized that his non-magical weapon was useless, guessed that a pixie was a completely magical creature, grabbed the pixie and proceeded to use it's progressively mutilated body as a weapon against the elemental until he could reach the jar and trap it again. (This is the same fighter who used a fist-full of silvered arrows as his only effective weapon against a non-corporeal undead. And won.) - We had to complete two major quests to stop all fey everywhere in the region from messing with him constantly.
God I love these, Logan. I got audibly excited when I saw the title because intelligent enemies with ‘utility belt’ skill sets are super interesting and you really know how to utilize their diverse moves, without playing all their cards, to make an interesting (and in this case *terrifying* ) encounter.
This is a dream compared to the druids of my homebrew world, with large, vengeful barometz created specifically to guard a set area by its druidic creator for as far as its umbilical vine stretches. Of course you’d still have this sort of thing, but elephants would be the least of their worries.
Give an angry but patient Archdruid a Staff of the Woodlands, an untraveled/unpopulated forest, and a few years of solitude, and they'll have a full army of CR 4 Awakened Trees at their disposal.
My druid basically did this but on a smaller scale. Our DM had us warned about a big attack on some allies in the feywild. Luckily time was faster on the material so my druid spent several hours each day awakening trees. He then set them loose on the enemy when the battle happened.
I've been using these and surprising my players, they're very well crafted, adaptable and effective. This is A+ quality content, man. Loving this channel.
Fly up, spew breath weapons while you fly in 8s. If the breath is not recharged, fly even higher and wait for it to be back. The beginning and end of dragon tactics.
I have a yellow dragon encounter planned, (you can find a 5e coneversion for it on Dungeon Dad's channel) it's gimmick is that it's very fast, and it's breath weapon is concentrated salt, which deals low damage, but blinds, and makes you suffocate. I gave him a homebrewed salt golem as a minion, (literally just a clay golem, but I gutted some of the abilities, to make it lower CR, it doesn't have on hit effects on his slam, no multiattack, and no haste) and his tactic will be waiting under the salt field, hidden, using it's tremorsense to notice intruders. Then he flies up, darting away as fast as possible, while the salt golem activates, and starts hitting them. The dragon will spend it's turn doing flyby breath attacks, or picking up giant salt crystals/rocks, and dropping it on the players.
While I really enjoyed the concept of the video, the way that you ran the whole combat encounter left a lot to be desired. Because I'm the type of guy who loves to talk semantics, I'm gonna leave a list of all the mistakes I spotted in this encounter (for the sake of my own sanity if nothing else). Round 1 The archdruid uses his action to cast the spell Animal Shapes, which states that you transform the targets into Large or smaller beasts with a CR of 4 or lower. Elephants are Huge creatures (although they are shown to be the size of large creatures in the video), so the animals can't be transformed into them with this spell. The archdruid then uses his action to use his Change Shape ability. Both the Animal Shapes spell and this ability cost an action to use, so he can't do both of these on the same turn. Pyronius casts Fireball, which has a 20 foot radius. Unless he's trying to purposefully avoid hitting some of the elephants, this would easily hit all of them, including the archdruid who would need to make a concentration save to keep up Animal Shapes. Pyronius also takes no other actions on his turn. He could have easily hid behind his much more durable teammates, or if we assume he's a draconic bloodline sorcerer (which as a pyromancer themed character, he probably would be) he could use his bonus action to sprout wings and fly up out of reach of the elephants. The elephants surround and trample Pyronius dealing ~85 damage. The average level 16 sorcerer would have about 87 hit points, assuming he has 12 Constitution. If he's a draconic bloodline sorcerer he would have ~103 hit points, or more if he has at least 14 Constitution, which would be very reasonable at that level. While it's not unreasonable that Pyronius would go down, he would have better than even odds of enduring the elephant onslaught (at least for this round). The archdruid uses his prepared action to turn his elephant army into stegosauruses, which are also huge creatures. Round 2 Cheesus walks up to Pyronius and uses his action to heal him, presumably using Cure Wounds. As a level 16 cleric, he has access to 8th level spells. Even if he was saving these spells for some reason, the least he could do is cast Healing Word as a bonus action instead, letting him attack on the same turn. A couple of extra hit points from Cure Wounds isn't going to make much of a difference when your enemies are dealing this much damage. Gluttonius attacks the druid. As a level 16 fighter, he gets to make up to 3 attacks on his turn (or 6 if he uses his action surge). Elephants have an AC of 12, and assuming the fighter has 20 Strength, Gluttonius would be getting at least +10 to hit (more if he had a magical weapon). Its safe to assume that he hits every attack, which means the druid needs to roll a concentration save for every hit. The archdruid only gets a +1 to Constitution saves, so it is likely that he would fail at least one of these, reverting his stegosauri back into tiny woodland creatures. There is also a pretty good chance that the archdruid would take enough damage to be reverted back into human form from these attacks, considering he was able to kill the last elephant he hit. Also, before he makes the attack he runs out of range of one of the stegos for some reason, which is completely unnecessary and would provoke an attack of opportunity. Round 3 Runesmith mentions that the archdruid has had Foresight active for this fight. This likely wouldn't change much, since Gluttonius is still very likely to hit all his attacks, but it would make the archdruid more likely to have succeeded on his concentration saves. At this point the archdruid is almost certainly back to a human, which is probably a good thing because he's much harder to hit in that form. This doesn't change much though, since the archdruid ends up deciding to change back on his own later anyway. Round 4 The party happens to be standing in a line, which makes little sense. Earlier in the fight Gluttonius purposefully runs all the way around the archdruid instead of just hitting him from the north, and Cheesus could have easily cast a ranged healing spell on Pyronius instead of running into touch range. Even if he did want to cast a close-range healing spell, why would he run to the west of Pyronius rather than healing him from the north? There are probably a few things I missed, but these are the main problems I spotted. Again, I think that the idea of running an archdruid in an encounter like this is a fun idea, it's pretty clear that you don't do a very thorough job of reading the rules or ability descriptions before making these types of videos.
Fastest I've ever clicked, I'm buffing the hell out of Ravisin from Icewind Dale and making her a bigger deal in the plot. Want her tactics to be brutal.
I have a buffed up stat block if you need one. what i did was I started her off in elk form had the party defeat that and then she did an evil monolauge and cast wind wall separating the party and cast sleet storm to make it so they will have to save or fall prone. she used a legendary action to cast conjure animals at 5th level summoning 2 Allosaurs. she left half the party with her and half with the allosaurs. she then misty steped into the moon dail room casting spike growth around the only entrance she also moved out of range of any ranged attacks. spike growth deals 2d4 piecing damage for every 5ft they move. no save just instant damage. she then started to cast ice storm and moonbeam from a distance. she then turned into a Dire wolf when she reached half Hp and when that form was reduced she used her sickles and frost fingers (ice type burning hands) in close range, she has an ability where if you start your tun within 5 ft of her you take 2d4 cold damage. the fight ended with the rouges on death saves, the bard dead, and everyone at low HP. the combat took 10 rounds to complete.
Can you do battle tactics of soldiers? Its could be a long video or some 2 or 3 short ones explaining how a poor conscript, a professional soldier and spec ops like some royal guards would fight
Have multiple compact groups of 8 soldiers: four with shields and swords in the front with Interception and four with pikes in the back with the polearm master feat. have archers spaced out far from each other in cover, not in straight lines or groups make sure the groups of melee soldiers are far enough from each other to avoid too much fireball value.
Druid: Circle of Spiders (It's just Underdark Land Druid, but it could be other things like Moon druid who just becomes a CR1 Giant Spider, or it could be a Homebrew that mainly gives them Spider Climb)
I'm a bit confused, how were you able to turn them into Stegosaurus? Aren't they Huge sized beasts? Animal Shapes: Your magic turns others into beasts. Choose any number of willing creatures that you can see within range. You transform each target into the form of a large or smaller beast with a challenge rating of 4 or lower.
I've got to say these tactics videos are my favorite type It really helps me get into the mind of my monsters and helps me challenge even high level parties. Even better that in this video it ended in a draw, making it a very scary encounter but also one that the party is expected to survive (which for deadly encounters is what you go for 90 percent of the time, obviously you want medium and easy fights in there too, but that's an entirely different animal (ba dum tiss)
Elephants have padded feet and effectively walk on tip-toes (they walk on their nails), surprisingly in a jungle an elephant can walk up behind you and you wouldn't notice. An elephant can surprise people, so long as they're walking and not running
bro crows are vengeful as heck they remember you and literally go tell other crows you've been a dick to them and they all drop whatever theyre doin just to find you and peck your eyes out
Just be thankful it wasn't an elemental arch druid, and yes technically their HP restore after every shape change. Its broken. As one famous arch druid said, they are basically gods. Then she immediately jumped off a cliff and died (she got better)
Unfortunately, Animal Shapes cannot create an elephant or a stegosaurus, as those are Huge and it specifies "a Large or smaller beast with a challenge rating of 4 or lower." However, it can totally make an arbitrarily large number of, say, dire wolves or giant scorpions, so this doesn't change the equation too much. EDIT: ok looks like a bunch of other people already pointed this out oops
This would be a fantastic and threatening encounter! Props to editor for the map. Minor change from elephants as they are Huge sizes, not large sized, but still giant spiders would be terrifying
Of course, knowing most groups, you've now completely lost whatever campaign you had for them to come back and burn the forest to the ground before torturing the archdruid to death...most groups that I know tend to turn into vengeful sadists with that sort of thing.
@@andresmarrero8666 hint: not me, I'm literally continent away when you druid circle get salty on those lumberjack and now blame it on me as if I piss on your mother's grave
I remember positing to a DMs group on facebook once if there was any PC that, at level 20, could be defeated by a group of 5 or 6 level 5 PCs. Answers largely came back "5e isn't meant for PVP" but the answers that actually engaged with the question came back pretty mixed, some suggestion rangers and rogues, one guy saying monk, a couple people even going so far as to say Warlock, if you can close the distance. But literally everyone agreed: At level 20, druids are pretty much unstoppable. A single druid could honestly drop most of an army on their own if played well.
So is no one going to mention that Animal Shapes doesn’t let you transform creatures into size Huge creatures? The maximum size is large. And elephants are huge.
The animal shapes spell says that the new form has to be size large or smaller. Elephants and Stegos are size huge and wouldn't be able to be used in this spell.
So I've gotten the seekers guide and finished reading it today and I just gotta say it was great but runesmith I do both love and hate you (mostly love) for what that poem did to me these last few hours it was a fun ride unless the stien flips the script entirely I'm pretty sure I've got it
Fun fact about level 20 durids: unless the spell requires a material component with a cost, they can't be counter spelled. Why you may ask? Because they ignore spellcasting components, in order to cast counter spell you need to see someone cast the spell, because durids can ignore components they can cast most of there spells while standing still saying NOTHING so you don't actually see them cast any spells
Nice tactic, probably will adapt in my game someday. Just one point, Elephants and Stegos are Huge and animal shapes allow to choose beasts of size up to Large only ;)
@@luis.gelati there’s no point in discussing potential tactics of an archdruid if you aren’t using the statblock. You could give them any number of abilities that the party has no way to counter or that don’t follow how similarly functioning rules, but that requires an entirely different consideration of said abilities in order to devise a strategy.
Bro, have you ever been up close with elephants? Their footfall is literally silent. A dog makes much more noise walking. If they wanted to, they could walk right up behind the party as they say around the fire and nobody would notice until a trunk reached over someone's shoulder to raid their trail mix. They are so surprisingly stealthy.
This is proof that making a difficult encounter is not hard and as long as you have a good plan you can challenge even characters who should stomp the enemy.
Today I learned Animal Shapes is the strongest druid healing spell. I mean sure it turns off class features and such, but if there is some reason your party needs to tank waves and waves of damage, Animal Shapes will just keep topping up the temporary HP.
Or you could go a much simpler route, have the druid cast shape change and turn into something really powerful, and archdruids live a long time, so they've most likely seen many powerful creatures.
Using allies is always a better investment than fighting on your own behalf. True power comes from delegating responsibility for power to the lieutenants below you. Also, having more enemies for the players to fight means that they will have the satisfaction of having defeated a few of them before they all leave
The enemy battle tactics are hands down my favorite videos on the channel. It gives inspiration to make combat encounters actually interesting instead of “a wild pack of goblins appears”
Love this idea, however there is one glaring issue, Animal Shapes explicitly says "You transform each target into the form of a Large or smaller beast with a challenge rating of 4 or lower." Elephants and stegosaurus are CR4, but they are huge creatures, therefore you can't change your squirrel army into elephants RAW. A fix I would use is to transform your animal army into armored saber-toothed tigers from Curse of Strahd. They have pounce, which offers similar effects than an elephants charge. Normal saber-toothed tigers would work too, they'll just have slightly worse stats. For the second transformation, I'd use giant snapping turtles from Tomb of Annihilation.
Fun fact: the tail spikes of a stegosaurus is actually called a thagomizer after a Far Side comic actually gave it a name and the scientific community didn't actually have a name for it and just ran with it.
> comes in charging with a band of elephants;
> tanks a fighter hitting him for several turns;
> casually fries the party's cleric into a crisp;
> refuses to elaborate further;
> leaves.
Chadruid
Power move.
Never explain yourself to the beta party, sigma druid grindset
*leafs
Sounds like Eldar diplomacy
I like how this was explicitly NOT an archdruid played with every possible trick of the trade and he still casually bodied a 4 man party and only let the fighter live because meh. Smartly played encounters are SCARY. I know I say it each time, but its a real good demonstration of dm skill that they can write encounters that dont end in constant tpk or casual party stomps.
The problem that I have with these videos are the stupid decisions from the "players", how we don't know their builds and how everything goes juuuust as planned for the monster. But yes, they are very creative ways to explore the monster's full potential.
@@ToAqui210 to be fair as the DM you can always make things go your way anyways. plus just is one scenario of many possible its just to show how you could play the archdruid and how running one in battle may go. youll always need to change things for your own parties set up
@@ToAqui210 Isn't the point to showcase HOW broken the monster COULD be with these though? Like worst case scenario if you annoy your DM lol
@@Styxer1008 Maybe, but honestly, that's kind of meaningless, really. At the end of the day, the DM can determine whatever they want. There are tons of ways even incredibly weak monsters COULD be broken, depending on the party's ability to fight back. In fact, a string of weak-ass monsters will eventually win via attrition. And, when you allow for things not explicitly listed in the stat block (which is pretty hard NOT to do), the sky's the limit.
Take the Kobold video for example. He assumed they have all these traps set up and are prepared for a raiding party of adventurers. If you've annoyed the DM enough to make "worst case", then they can just say "The Kobolds scurry up rope ladders into tiny holes in the roof, pull the ladders up after them, then collapse the entrance tunnel and unleash the dam, flooding the cave. You all drown in a manner of minutes. The end."
The videos are interesting and fun to watch, but I don't really see what practical value they have.
@@ToAqui210 Yeah. Nobody took AoO, the Cleric didn't cast Spiritual Weapon, the Fighter didn't Action Surge or use any of its subclass features, the sorcerer somehow managed to deal only about 25 damage on his fireball (50 if they made the save, but...c'mon. They shouldn't be able to). Maybe he didn't upcast it, idk. At 16th level, I feel like it should have been a cakewalk to take out at least 3 of those elephants in round one. Upcast fireball, two attacks from the Cleric (Sw and a regular attack) and at LEAST two attacks from the fighter. I'm assuming the party is fairly healthy as he usually mentions if the monsters strike while the party is weak.
The biggest flex that a 20 level druid can make is wild shape into a squirrel and look inocent while summoning an incendiary cloud
High Level Barbarian Bad Guy with Danger Sense: _Something_ ...
Favorite part of druids. "Oh look it's a squirrel. Why is there a thunderstorm building above only us? Why is that squirrel pointing up? Oh god that lightning just took out Tim!"
It's an even bigger flex if you are a Moon Druid. "Yeah I coulda turned into a mammoth and shot a sunbeam out mah nose. But I didn't NEED to."
Step 1: Turn into a mouse
Step 2: Force yourself down your target's throat (or any other available orifice)
Step 3: Turn into a mammoth
@@gingermcgingin4106 This will unfortunately not work. If a space isn't big enough for your new form, you just kind of get shunted into the nearest available space.
My party: *casts fireball in an explicitly dry and woody forest and doesn't stamp out any of the little fires that start, spawning a forest fire that destroys massive swathes of the forest *
Runesmith, only a few days later: So there's a pretty strong chance that your players have messed with an ecosystem...
To be fair, forest fires occur in nature plenty enough. Of course you can go 'oh it wasnt the right season' or 'the next fire was due in another year' but theres an excuse if you don't want to murderkill your party
@@mrvoltem9379 how often do forest fires naturally start with no intervention from humans though? Like every couple thunderstorm at most?
@@alessandrocoatti5186 summer is a pretty popular season for fires. It just depends on how much dry brush is around. A healthy forest that is in spring and completely green shouldn't have a massive fire until the greenery dries out though.
@@alessandrocoatti5186 Forest fires can be started by lots of natural phenomena, actually (though lightning is certainly the most common)! One cause is that droplets of water can act like magnifying glasses and suddenly set spiderwebs in dead trees on fire. Then the tree catches, and the rest is as expected. Also, certain ecosystems near geothermal vents, volcanoes, or large coal deposits may experience wildfire caused by those things
This was epic. I need more of these examples to amp up my dm skills!
Druids and Bards are the two main classes that I feel need WAY more antagonist roles in a D&D game. I'd love to see one of these tactics videos using Bards next time.
Suggestion in town for them to walk into the haunted forest at night or some other ambush. Join them to “chronicle their tales, not fight,” and then kill them after they fight the BBEG. Use Countercharm at any point to piss off the party.
I actualy used a Druid Villain. Ravisin the frost druid from rime of the frostmaiden and there is also a druid villain in Sunless Citadel. but I agree we need more bard villains and I don't recall any bard villains in the modules
i've used a bard villain in one of my games, he posed as a heroic performer in order to get in good with the locals, he had some red cap mercenaries on the pay roll, and had them take over a local orc tribe and had them raid the town so the bard could "save" them from the orcs, while also doing musical performances laced with charm magic to make the people love him even more. My players noticed the charm magic, but didn't seem to care, or perhaps they didn't fully understand the situation and thought he was just a scammer and not a psychopath. They figured it out eventually though when that bard started enacting his master plan to take over the local barony by using his heroic status with the locals to get close enough to the local baroness to charm/seduce her into an official marriage, and he then proceeded to turn her into a puppet to make decrees and proclamations, her voice, but his words. When they finally confronted him in the baroness's keep his final trump card was to order the baroness to kill her self if any of them harm him, she had both a vial of extremely potent poison and a dagger. Somehow those boobs found a way to both kill him and save her at the same time, i'm not sure how, but they did. They and I had a blast on that arc of my campaign.
I once made a level 20 whisper bard for an evil one-off. Some notable mentions from his magical secrets were destructive wave, blinding smite, simulacrum, and shapechange. He spent most of the game tearing up a city as a Leviathan.
Late game bards are fucking scary.
Bardic Dragon-R*p!st?
A nice, light hearted filler session...
*Kills half the party*
They're level 16 and headed to a city, they can afford hiring a priest to cast raise dead twice, and they'll probably move on to the next major plot point unless they want revenge for some reason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"I am the lorax, I speak for the trees. ... They tell me to *break your fucking knees*."
Water and air elemental: o... k?
The *bold letters* don't work if you add an . directly after the *
"Very few animals are vengeful"
me "You haven't me my cat"
"No animal is vengeful to the point of self hinderance"
me: "Again, my cat."
Tigers
Wolves are vengeful.
@asdrubale bisanzio Also, crows and ravens will hold a grudge, and pass it on to later generations.
cats, badgers, orcas (those fuckers are as evil as cats), etc.
This would be my parrot. Literally bites the hand that feeds it.
I picked druid as my first ever class cause “we needed a healer” (none of us knew how to play at the time so we made our party around generic team comps ie: tank,dps,heals) so as it was explained to me “well you can be basically a preacher or a crazy forest man” so I choose crazy forest man and now druid is my favorite class and I plan on tryin all the subclasses as we continue to play
Haha same, I've been making the rounds but to be honest, I started with Circle of the Moon and, honestly, I don't think the other subclasses can really compare, but then again I've only ever really played at the lower levels.
Ah druids, the healer who can tank a lot and build their own spy network/family if desired.
Any Wizard: Don't you just hate it when a goblin manages to take off half your health with just one attack?
Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer: Dude, my dragon blood gives me permanent mage armor. But yeah, that still sucks.
Circle of the Moon Druid: You guys worry about that?
@@harry_ordah yes found family, but what you found was a bunch of rats
@@Emily124711. Pick Druid
2. Awaken a bunch of doggos
3. ????
4. Profit
Man Grumbo really pulled his weight during that fight.
No, he said she not he. Still the goat tho
"This round won't function as a surprise round, since they're elephants."
Actually, real life elephants are surprisingly quiet creatures, and would indeed be able to sneak up on the party due to padding they have on their feet.
ninjaed. yap, elephants are stealthy AF in forest.
squirrels transformed into elephants probably don't scamper so lightly
@@jayaltairi good point
This completely ignores the fact you have eyeballs
@@Specter_1125 Doesn't stop rogues, though.
The Battle Tactics series is definitely my most favorite!
That Sasquatche story still gets me in the heart every time i see it!
"We eat berries and mushrooms"
"Go ahead and end my suffering, there's no point anymore"
Our Firbolg Druid just turned evil from accepting one too many gifts from the Amber Temple. This'll help me torture them with the consequences of their actions once he finaly catches back up to them
Druid bounty. When they're around, all animals get alerted and fuck off to make finding food much harder, the plants and woods become difficult terrain to slow their travel, and every once in a while a druid will come to attack em.
Fun fact, too: Amber Dragons, a type of lesser gem dragon that lives a druidic lifestyle and is pretty chill with the druids. Could be a fun fight.
@@kylehahn4410 Genius.
Lol my druid died from a demon bite and 5 nat 1s in a row including a D100.. So he came back as side villion in his new form lol
This is literally “Finding Bigfoot” if Bigfoot was an immortal nature magician
so it's literally Finding Bigfoot then
DM Steve: uhh, did I forget to mention he casted foresight right before the battle? And uh uh uh he can fly and shoot lasers!
LvL 1 party in the first random encounter: The fuck Steve?
Who has had DMs like this? Or is one?
My first DM was like this and I will admit our party never argued. We couldn't make any mistakes & we never split the party except when the DM forced it on us. I grew to love it & now any DMs that take it easy on us I get bored really fast.
My name is Steve :(
Druid grove is the perfect boss arena
Hold Person works well with it too.
It would if the party was lured there, either in search of loot or to kill the archdruid himself. As it stands, with pyronius burning the forest, gluttonous depopulating the forest and cheesus proselytizing the forest, it holds thematic weight for the archdruid to bring the forest to them.
I am very amused because I'm playing a vengeful druid right now, and I suppose their "arc" is going to be learning to forgive. Still, I'll make a mental note, I like the idea that a druid wouldn't pursue an enemy who seems like they've learned their lesson.
ooh, haven't watched yet, but this might be useful. Druids in my worlds are quite sharply divided between those that are friendly (the type to live alon in some woods and make friends with everyone who comes by, human or animal, or the people that'll help farms out occasionally) and those that are brutal people living in an almost kill of be killed way of life. Might take some of the stuff in here for the more violent druid people.
This sounds more like the forest hermit type to me
@@johntheherbalistg8756 Yeah, it does apply a more to the hermit types, but the vid did give me some ideas for the more violent types.
man if I hadn't already played this card by temporarily having one player character marked the enemy of all fey I would love to have done this with druids instead.
We had a fight at a high-classed party where the property owner was showing off all of his pricey acquisitions. We were hired as guards.
One attendee made a deal with some pixies to cause chaos while they tried to steal a magical dagger.
One pixie uncorked and upended a jar containing a water elemental. Our fighter quickly realized that his non-magical weapon was useless, guessed that a pixie was a completely magical creature, grabbed the pixie and proceeded to use it's progressively mutilated body as a weapon against the elemental until he could reach the jar and trap it again.
(This is the same fighter who used a fist-full of silvered arrows as his only effective weapon against a non-corporeal undead. And won.)
-
We had to complete two major quests to stop all fey everywhere in the region from messing with him constantly.
@@MonkeyJedi99 what a king
God I love these, Logan. I got audibly excited when I saw the title because intelligent enemies with ‘utility belt’ skill sets are super interesting and you really know how to utilize their diverse moves, without playing all their cards, to make an interesting (and in this case *terrifying* ) encounter.
This is a dream compared to the druids of my homebrew world, with large, vengeful barometz created specifically to guard a set area by its druidic creator for as far as its umbilical vine stretches. Of course you’d still have this sort of thing, but elephants would be the least of their worries.
Give an angry but patient Archdruid a Staff of the Woodlands, an untraveled/unpopulated forest, and a few years of solitude, and they'll have a full army of CR 4 Awakened Trees at their disposal.
My druid basically did this but on a smaller scale. Our DM had us warned about a big attack on some allies in the feywild. Luckily time was faster on the material so my druid spent several hours each day awakening trees. He then set them loose on the enemy when the battle happened.
I've been using these and surprising my players, they're very well crafted, adaptable and effective.
This is A+ quality content, man. Loving this channel.
That was incredible, and I'd love to see more tactical videos! Could we get one about dragons?
Fly up, spew breath weapons while you fly in 8s. If the breath is not recharged, fly even higher and wait for it to be back. The beginning and end of dragon tactics.
It'd be interesting to see how the different color dragon's minions come into play lol
I have a yellow dragon encounter planned, (you can find a 5e coneversion for it on Dungeon Dad's channel) it's gimmick is that it's very fast, and it's breath weapon is concentrated salt, which deals low damage, but blinds, and makes you suffocate. I gave him a homebrewed salt golem as a minion, (literally just a clay golem, but I gutted some of the abilities, to make it lower CR, it doesn't have on hit effects on his slam, no multiattack, and no haste) and his tactic will be waiting under the salt field, hidden, using it's tremorsense to notice intruders.
Then he flies up, darting away as fast as possible, while the salt golem activates, and starts hitting them. The dragon will spend it's turn doing flyby breath attacks, or picking up giant salt crystals/rocks, and dropping it on the players.
Well, given that a goblin village reveres one of my party's PCs as a fire god, this will likely come in _very_ handy.
Don't mind me, just vigorously taking notes as my Wildfire Druid prepares for war...
While I really enjoyed the concept of the video, the way that you ran the whole combat encounter left a lot to be desired. Because I'm the type of guy who loves to talk semantics, I'm gonna leave a list of all the mistakes I spotted in this encounter (for the sake of my own sanity if nothing else).
Round 1
The archdruid uses his action to cast the spell Animal Shapes, which states that you transform the targets into Large or smaller beasts with a CR of 4 or lower. Elephants are Huge creatures (although they are shown to be the size of large creatures in the video), so the animals can't be transformed into them with this spell.
The archdruid then uses his action to use his Change Shape ability. Both the Animal Shapes spell and this ability cost an action to use, so he can't do both of these on the same turn.
Pyronius casts Fireball, which has a 20 foot radius. Unless he's trying to purposefully avoid hitting some of the elephants, this would easily hit all of them, including the archdruid who would need to make a concentration save to keep up Animal Shapes.
Pyronius also takes no other actions on his turn. He could have easily hid behind his much more durable teammates, or if we assume he's a draconic bloodline sorcerer (which as a pyromancer themed character, he probably would be) he could use his bonus action to sprout wings and fly up out of reach of the elephants.
The elephants surround and trample Pyronius dealing ~85 damage. The average level 16 sorcerer would have about 87 hit points, assuming he has 12 Constitution. If he's a draconic bloodline sorcerer he would have ~103 hit points, or more if he has at least 14 Constitution, which would be very reasonable at that level. While it's not unreasonable that Pyronius would go down, he would have better than even odds of enduring the elephant onslaught (at least for this round).
The archdruid uses his prepared action to turn his elephant army into stegosauruses, which are also huge creatures.
Round 2
Cheesus walks up to Pyronius and uses his action to heal him, presumably using Cure Wounds. As a level 16 cleric, he has access to 8th level spells. Even if he was saving these spells for some reason, the least he could do is cast Healing Word as a bonus action instead, letting him attack on the same turn. A couple of extra hit points from Cure Wounds isn't going to make much of a difference when your enemies are dealing this much damage.
Gluttonius attacks the druid. As a level 16 fighter, he gets to make up to 3 attacks on his turn (or 6 if he uses his action surge). Elephants have an AC of 12, and assuming the fighter has 20 Strength, Gluttonius would be getting at least +10 to hit (more if he had a magical weapon). Its safe to assume that he hits every attack, which means the druid needs to roll a concentration save for every hit. The archdruid only gets a +1 to Constitution saves, so it is likely that he would fail at least one of these, reverting his stegosauri back into tiny woodland creatures. There is also a pretty good chance that the archdruid would take enough damage to be reverted back into human form from these attacks, considering he was able to kill the last elephant he hit. Also, before he makes the attack he runs out of range of one of the stegos for some reason, which is completely unnecessary and would provoke an attack of opportunity.
Round 3
Runesmith mentions that the archdruid has had Foresight active for this fight. This likely wouldn't change much, since Gluttonius is still very likely to hit all his attacks, but it would make the archdruid more likely to have succeeded on his concentration saves. At this point the archdruid is almost certainly back to a human, which is probably a good thing because he's much harder to hit in that form. This doesn't change much though, since the archdruid ends up deciding to change back on his own later anyway.
Round 4
The party happens to be standing in a line, which makes little sense. Earlier in the fight Gluttonius purposefully runs all the way around the archdruid instead of just hitting him from the north, and Cheesus could have easily cast a ranged healing spell on Pyronius instead of running into touch range. Even if he did want to cast a close-range healing spell, why would he run to the west of Pyronius rather than healing him from the north?
There are probably a few things I missed, but these are the main problems I spotted. Again, I think that the idea of running an archdruid in an encounter like this is a fun idea, it's pretty clear that you don't do a very thorough job of reading the rules or ability descriptions before making these types of videos.
>Druid is angry about the party cutting down trees for a massive bonfire.
>Casts firestorm
>wat
Ironically, that druid somehow has 30 WIS despite all of his action being 1 WIS
Fun fact: elefants have very soft feet and can be surprisingly sneaky, especially in a forest setting
I like how he’s just “imma come in here, beat the crap out of any killers of nature, and leave.”
*5 minutes later*
The forest: *Got utterly destroyed per the local request*
Step 1: Make leaf (big)
Step 2: Throw leaf, make it spiky maybe
Step 3: become a beaver
Step 4: Stop being a beaver (optional)
Step 5: Profit
Fastest I've ever clicked, I'm buffing the hell out of Ravisin from Icewind Dale and making her a bigger deal in the plot. Want her tactics to be brutal.
I have a buffed up stat block if you need one. what i did was I started her off in elk form had the party defeat that and then she did an evil monolauge and cast wind wall separating the party and cast sleet storm to make it so they will have to save or fall prone. she used a legendary action to cast conjure animals at 5th level summoning 2 Allosaurs. she left half the party with her and half with the allosaurs. she then misty steped into the moon dail room casting spike growth around the only entrance she also moved out of range of any ranged attacks. spike growth deals 2d4 piecing damage for every 5ft they move. no save just instant damage. she then started to cast ice storm and moonbeam from a distance. she then turned into a Dire wolf when she reached half Hp and when that form was reduced she used her sickles and frost fingers (ice type burning hands) in close range, she has an ability where if you start your tun within 5 ft of her you take 2d4 cold damage. the fight ended with the rouges on death saves, the bard dead, and everyone at low HP. the combat took 10 rounds to complete.
druids could use low lvl spells to just devastate food stores in town. In climate that harsh it would hit harder then demon horde.
Druid's point: Don't fuck with the woods.
Players reaction: He thinks he can come and beat us, we'll hunt him down!
That sign can't stop me cause I can't read!
@@DeadMech1 Sounds like a Barbarian. If your a totem barbarian they might still know better.
*OKAY I PULL UP, HOP OUT AT THE AFTER PARTY-* 3:53
Can you do battle tactics of soldiers? Its could be a long video or some 2 or 3 short ones explaining how a poor conscript, a professional soldier and spec ops like some royal guards would fight
Group combat has Defense and Interception fighting styles. Probably staggered/spaced lines with archers to avoid Fireballs and other AoE spells.
Have multiple compact groups of 8 soldiers: four with shields and swords in the front with Interception and four with pikes in the back with the polearm master feat. have archers spaced out far from each other in cover, not in straight lines or groups make sure the groups of melee soldiers are far enough from each other to avoid too much fireball value.
Cavalry ruins loose formations so have Grease spells and stakes ready.
Yeah this series again
I thought this said "Arachnodruid" for a second.
Druid: Circle of Spiders (It's just Underdark Land Druid, but it could be other things like Moon druid who just becomes a CR1 Giant Spider, or it could be a Homebrew that mainly gives them Spider Climb)
Knowing my oath of conquest paladin if he survives he will come back to fuck up nature even harder once he becomes higher level.
@King Base
there are now 5 archdruids with a army of animals
Let your players have hard earned victory, I see that forest being torn down and a factory being made 🤘
chong willson so? Beast don't have range attack, neither Counterspell nor Meteor Storm
*So we gonna ignore how some innocent little forest critters got their early deaths after being swayed by the ArchDruid*
He mentions they are unconsious
Small sacrifices for greater gain?
This series is awesome Logan! You explain in depth the tactics of enemies in a fun, entertaining and informative way.
Hey look, its MY turn to leave one of those "was just trying to figure out how to run this, thanks Runesmith!"
I love how this was presented as a filler episode and potentially half of the party is dead
You say that like it isn’t how 90% of filler episodes go.
I'm a bit confused, how were you able to turn them into Stegosaurus? Aren't they Huge sized beasts?
Animal Shapes: Your magic turns others into beasts. Choose any number of willing creatures that you can see within range. You transform each target into the form of a large or smaller beast with a challenge rating of 4 or lower.
Ah, but that does leave some pretty cool options like making them into Giant crabs or Giant Eagles, and then just bringing more into the fight
Juvenile Stegos?
Elephants are also huge.
@@kylestanley7843 Adolescent elephants? Dwarf elephants?
I'm flailing here for answers.
@@MonkeyJedi99 as a dm I'd say sure but with some stat nerfs and fewer hit die
I've got to say these tactics videos are my favorite type
It really helps me get into the mind of my monsters and helps me challenge even high level parties.
Even better that in this video it ended in a draw, making it a very scary encounter but also one that the party is expected to survive (which for deadly encounters is what you go for 90 percent of the time, obviously you want medium and easy fights in there too, but that's an entirely different animal (ba dum tiss)
Elephants have padded feet and effectively walk on tip-toes (they walk on their nails), surprisingly in a jungle an elephant can walk up behind you and you wouldn't notice. An elephant can surprise people, so long as they're walking and not running
bro crows are vengeful as heck they remember you and literally go tell other crows you've been a dick to them and they all drop whatever theyre doin just to find you and peck your eyes out
At least the Goblin Gal survived
Just be thankful it wasn't an elemental arch druid, and yes technically their HP restore after every shape change. Its broken.
As one famous arch druid said, they are basically gods. Then she immediately jumped off a cliff and died (she got better)
Unfortunately, Animal Shapes cannot create an elephant or a stegosaurus, as those are Huge and it specifies "a Large or smaller beast with a challenge rating of 4 or lower."
However, it can totally make an arbitrarily large number of, say, dire wolves or giant scorpions, so this doesn't change the equation too much.
EDIT: ok looks like a bunch of other people already pointed this out
oops
Runesmith - Inside this forest are two scout druids and an ancient archdruid.
Me - watching the fight and waiting for the scout druids to show up
This would be a fantastic and threatening encounter! Props to editor for the map. Minor change from elephants as they are Huge sizes, not large sized, but still giant spiders would be terrifying
Of course, knowing most groups, you've now completely lost whatever campaign you had for them to come back and burn the forest to the ground before torturing the archdruid to death...most groups that I know tend to turn into vengeful sadists with that sort of thing.
Considering that they just got destroyed in this scenario, that would be an extremely dumb decision.
Andres Marrero it's not though, the druid did it first so he deserve to die like that
@@justnoob8141 and who destroyed the forest first? Surprising on how people like to ignore thar part in the scenario.
@@andresmarrero8666 hint: not me, I'm literally continent away when you druid circle get salty on those lumberjack and now blame it on me as if I piss on your mother's grave
They really wouldnt have lost. But if they did, 16th level characters have ways to combat basically any threat, provided they bother to prepare.
I love these mock encounters! Really good for inspiration, and also just fun to watch!
I remember positing to a DMs group on facebook once if there was any PC that, at level 20, could be defeated by a group of 5 or 6 level 5 PCs. Answers largely came back "5e isn't meant for PVP" but the answers that actually engaged with the question came back pretty mixed, some suggestion rangers and rogues, one guy saying monk, a couple people even going so far as to say Warlock, if you can close the distance. But literally everyone agreed: At level 20, druids are pretty much unstoppable. A single druid could honestly drop most of an army on their own if played well.
It's a murder... a group of crows is called a murder...
For future reference, the tail spikes of a stegosaur are officially known as its thagomizer.
3:14. My dude has never heard of what tigers can get up to when you piss one off.
So is no one going to mention that Animal Shapes doesn’t let you transform creatures into size Huge creatures? The maximum size is large. And elephants are huge.
I mean, my ranger brings his black panther everywhere, and it roams free, so that can't be good for local habitats.
Love how you used Malfurion stormrage as the archdruid example
The animal shapes spell says that the new form has to be size large or smaller. Elephants and Stegos are size huge and wouldn't be able to be used in this spell.
Damn that sounds scary. I like how you plan these fights they are great inspiration.
Gotta say, I love these tactics videos you do. Very cool.
So I've gotten the seekers guide and finished reading it today and I just gotta say it was great but runesmith I do both love and hate you (mostly love) for what that poem did to me these last few hours it was a fun ride unless the stien flips the script entirely I'm pretty sure I've got it
If you mess with the squirrel, you get the trunks
Fun fact about level 20 durids: unless the spell requires a material component with a cost, they can't be counter spelled.
Why you may ask? Because they ignore spellcasting components, in order to cast counter spell you need to see someone cast the spell, because durids can ignore components they can cast most of there spells while standing still saying NOTHING so you don't actually see them cast any spells
Nice tactic, probably will adapt in my game someday. Just one point, Elephants and Stegos are Huge and animal shapes allow to choose beasts of size up to Large only ;)
@@luis.gelati there’s no point in discussing potential tactics of an archdruid if you aren’t using the statblock. You could give them any number of abilities that the party has no way to counter or that don’t follow how similarly functioning rules, but that requires an entirely different consideration of said abilities in order to devise a strategy.
Dire Wolves and Allosaurus then?
My dyslexia read the thumbnail as *"THE BATTLE TACTICS OF AN ANGRY ORCHARD"* like the cider XD
I'm in love with that party comp
"Savior of elephants..." *proceeds to stab an elephant as one of the first ones in the party to attack*
Love to see the technically-not-bears mama bears of nature get their own (amazing) video
The centipede in the room. You know the not problem everyone is making into one.
Another idea: wild shape into a bug and while the party fights the elephants the Druid pelts them with spells from every direction
archdruid: it, is time, to DIE!
Wizard: I cast Antimagic field gg you lose
archdruid's squirrels: nuuuu
thank you for pointing out that the archdruid would see adventurers as part of nature
Angering a Druid circle = Quickest way to being fertilizer.
I really love the Battle tactics videos, I wanna see what battle tactics a high cleric would have.
Bro, have you ever been up close with elephants? Their footfall is literally silent. A dog makes much more noise walking. If they wanted to, they could walk right up behind the party as they say around the fire and nobody would notice until a trunk reached over someone's shoulder to raid their trail mix. They are so surprisingly stealthy.
I saw the thumbnail and knew it was one of your videos. Good branding.
This is proof that making a difficult encounter is not hard and as long as you have a good plan you can challenge even characters who should stomp the enemy.
Perfect timing! I'm DMing a new campaign that has an archdruid as a potential bad guy
Today I learned Animal Shapes is the strongest druid healing spell. I mean sure it turns off class features and such, but if there is some reason your party needs to tank waves and waves of damage, Animal Shapes will just keep topping up the temporary HP.
Or you could go a much simpler route, have the druid cast shape change and turn into something really powerful, and archdruids live a long time, so they've most likely seen many powerful creatures.
Using allies is always a better investment than fighting on your own behalf.
True power comes from delegating responsibility for power to the lieutenants below you.
Also, having more enemies for the players to fight means that they will have the satisfaction of having defeated a few of them before they all leave
The enemy battle tactics are hands down my favorite videos on the channel. It gives inspiration to make combat encounters actually interesting instead of “a wild pack of goblins appears”
I'm planning out a game where the Emerald Enclave has a serious presence so this is sure to be useful.
Love this idea, however there is one glaring issue,
Animal Shapes explicitly says "You transform each target into the form of a Large or smaller beast with a challenge rating of 4 or lower." Elephants and stegosaurus are CR4, but they are huge creatures, therefore you can't change your squirrel army into elephants RAW. A fix I would use is to transform your animal army into armored saber-toothed tigers from Curse of Strahd. They have pounce, which offers similar effects than an elephants charge. Normal saber-toothed tigers would work too, they'll just have slightly worse stats. For the second transformation, I'd use giant snapping turtles from Tomb of Annihilation.
For Halloween you can do The Battle Tactics of The Undead or Dracolich just for fun.
I like this video because there are lots of elephants in it.
MAKE MORE OF THESE VIDEOS LOGAN PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE!!!!!!!
This Video came In just in time. My players were not very respectful while traveling through the woods.
And we're back!
"This round wont count as a suprise round because there elephants" .... dude... you would be suprised how stealthy bush elephants can be xD
Love these videos. One on the beholder would be really helpful
2:20 garlic bread domain but reskinned into pizza domain. XD
Fun fact: the tail spikes of a stegosaurus is actually called a thagomizer after a Far Side comic actually gave it a name and the scientific community didn't actually have a name for it and just ran with it.
Alternatively, accidently burn down half a forest with fire magic as a light cleric
One time I played a Druid Necromancer that worshipped Freedom.
"I am the lorax, don't f*ck with my trees"
My party found that their airship couldn't land in the forest... So they set it on fire.