Bad Dungeon Master Advice & Better Options Instead
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ค. 2022
- Dungeon Masters, please stop doing this. Here are some better DM Tip alternatives for your Dungeon and Dragons table to try out instead. #dungeonmaster #dmtips #dnd
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If your players came up with a clever plan and you nullify it with boosted hp, they’ll start to feel like the time spent planning was wasted. If you boost hp to make up for some lucky crits, they’ll stop getting excited about them. You gotta have a solution that doesn’t feel like a consequence for the players doing well.
They will only feel those things if they know that you adjusted the stats, they will still be excited about the crits and then wonder how they would have survived without them, causing it to feel so much more heroic, the same with the planning, you are the only one who knows that you adjusted the fight to be dramatic even though they did the sneaky thing that would have ended it unceremoniously. In fact they will be happy they planned because they will feel if they hadn't it wouldn't have gone as easy as it did, even though it was harder than "it was supposed to be"
@@aggiegunner18 Again someone else gets it. The game is just a vehicle for good times and story. Never fudge rolls but fudge other things not seen by players to make the adventure more engaging. The illusion of choice is still there AND you managed to make the encounter feel epic.
On the other side, if they come up with a clever plan, and they don't get to run though it because the target dies to soon, you have the exact same boat. Adjusting things is more subtle that just double HP. Change things to make the encounter its most enjoyable, move things up, move them down, move anything you can to make the party enjoy it.
@@aggiegunner18 Coming from a player who has seen this type of DMing, no they will not be happy. It's pretty obvious when the DM is fudging more than just rolls. Your poker face isn't as good as you think.
When every fight has to be life or death on the chance of critting multiple times or you have to have the perfect plan or you're doomed, it just becomes exhausting and feels pointless. The fear of the big bad is nullified because you have the same level of difficulty for a fight with bandits on the road. In fact, this type of DMing kills the need for planning altogether. If you go into a battle with a master plan vs no plan at all, and every time the result is the same, why not just wing it? That's what you're telling them to do essentially because their choices don't matter in your cinematic that is playing.
Players love the feeling of interacting with the world and their choices mattering. When those choices all equate to the same result, they are really showing up to a story telling session, and might as well just swap their dice for popcorn.
Indeed. Never punish the players for success.
I halved my first baddy's hp mid fight (don't tell my players). Kinda overestimated what my players could do to him. Didn't want a tpk in the first session.
I've done this
I think we all have at some point
I've done this and also doubled it
Shhhh
Players and GMs need to quit being afraid of tpks.
TPK with careful consideration of the persons playing the PCs. TPKs are OK as long as everyone at the table is a mature fully functioning adult who understands it's a game. But, in 1 hour I am starting my 3rd session with a group of 13 year old girls (daughter's friends) and I will not TPK them no matter what. The reasons are: They are new to the game, they are youngsters, and they are really having a great time growing in their knowledge and understanding of Pathfinder 2e. Killing them off is the best way to make sure they never play again. I want them to discover a lifetime hobby filled with joy and adventure. It's the most fun I've ever had at the RPG table, too. They are nutty fun. Like the time the one girl who had frozen a zombie said she was going to eat a zombie ice cube... oh, yeah, that was fun to role play, and yes, she did get sick from it and we laughed and laughed.
I agree that the dm should only cheat for the players. That said, the villians HP can be adjusted (up or down) to make sure the fight is satisfying FOR THE PLAYERS. If the bbeg is going down fast, but the players made a big plan or did a lot out of combat to make it happen, let them take the bbeg down quickly. If they rolled some crits and max damage up front, let the bbeg die quickly. If however, you goofed and didn't really keep track of how much damage your players can do, adjust up or down within the first round, not for a specific round number, but just to make sure it is a satisfying experience.
Agreed!
1000%
Yeah, I've been in the situation both as a player and a DM where there was no plan made, the party just stumbled upon a big boss monster, and the guy goes down 1 or 2 rounds, half the party didn't even get to do anything. It's extremely unsatisfying on both ends.
THANK YOU for saying this. As soon as he said you only cheat FOR the players, I'm thinking "Well yeah, it's so the players have a satisfying fight." I'm not gonna give my baddie extra HP because I want him to last longer or to combat a clever move by the players, I'm gonna give him more HP if I miscalculated the difficulty level of the encounter. If I've been building up to a fight and the PC's look to be able to down him with basic stuff by round 2 because I miscalculated, I'm boosting that HP so it's epic for THEM.
Seriously. My players only really like stressful combat that feels like it matters. If they're not getting hit and there's no real threat and the baddie is just going to die in a round and a half, I know they're all sitting there going "Why are we doing this?" So, yeah, I'll adjust my baddie's stats or even give them reactions mid-fight so the players feel like they accomplished something when they win.
Dm of 11 years. On the fly adjustments are a part of running a good game. I have slashed or buffed enemy hp, attack or number of enemies on the fly. This is because there is no way you are gonna nail all the math all the time. Typically i make those adjustments before initiative tho.
I know you probably do, but i hope you reward your players for any increase in difficulty. If you add extra enemies, give them extra gold or exp. If they're too strong too fast, maybe turn the encounter into a role play moment. I don't imagine every monster/enemy/npc wants to fight to the death. It allows you to role play monsters in a way that makes them unique. Defeat an Orc and he might be proud and return with his tribe. Bloody a goblin or kobold, and they will surely flee, beg, or surrender, perhaps even before combat starts. But at the end of the day, If you're doubling enemies or even HP, hopefully you double the reward as well.
@@Docsfortune Difficulty is a big word , something trivial for a party could be deadly for a different one , they are the same obstacle .
Do you give LESS experience to the party that trivialized the problem?
I leave you with something to reflect on.
@@Docsfortune if I adjust a boss mid fight, I also almost always make sure that boss doesn't kill any players. Now it's about fun, and not having a hyped up fight fall flat.
One exception, I was playing a lich I had massively built up as a genius, but I had forgotten to add a spell to her spell list. She has an intelligence of 24. I mentally shrugged, meh she would have predicted this situation and is smarter THEN ME, . But in another situation they actually outsmarted her, and I didn't adjust her actions and made sure the party knew.
Last minute adjustments like this are about the roll play, and that I don't make perfect preparation. Otherwise I am just trying to make a cool boss fun and not be a flop.
I usually place treasure in advance based on guidelines, so I rarely need to adjust treasure. If the party has too much or too little treasure for their level, I prefer to adjust it down the line so I can get it right. I use milestone XP and know in advance where I want players to be at for the various areas, so adjusting individual encounters up or down generally has no impact on XP gains.
I was running a boss encounter a while back and as the players were just getting warmed up and readying some great combos I realized the boss had about 10hp. I doubled his HP.
Contrariwise, more recently my players had geared, prepped, and saved momentum up for a big boss fight. They beat him in 1 round. I happily gave them the 'how do you wanna do this' moment.
In each case I measured how much fun the players would have and adjusted to give them the most satisfaction. But I'm also not the type to get mad or frustrated when the players beat the badguy too fast. It's not supposed to be *me* challenging them. I'm supposed to give them a fun and engaging experience. Challenges are only a catalyst.
Generally, having _standard combat_ for your BBEG or especially player story related final showdowns is more the issue here. Combat is swingy in D&D. It isn't predictable. If a story needs a predictable ending there are other options for playing that out that usually end up being more satisfying. Some examples:
1) Countdown to Destruction - The players show up and the bad guy has just initiated something outside of everyone's control that is just _going to happen_ and even if they kill the bastard, that thing is still going to happen. The scene becomes about dealing with the consequences of the final event, and not merely killing or dealing with the bad guy. This works great for bad guys that were trying to bring about the apocalypse, or releasing a demon, or anything like that. It doesn't always have to be the final step that is happening either. A bad guy trying to end the world may _think_ they have succeeded, but the players can still beat back the great evil being used when it fully emerges. But perhaps it would be better to use...
2) Stop Me or Else - The players show up as the bad guy is just starting a ritual or similar to summon their final goal. While performing it, they are invincible and you have a limited number of turns to deal with the situation, make the bad guy vulnerable, and end their ritual. This can take the form of having to destroy magical pillars surrounded by guards, or even simple puzzle solving on a time limit. Once, I had the players have to solve a small tower of Hanoi made from different sized corpses that were biting and scratching at them as they shuttled them between spikes, all while a the turn limit ticked down. Very tense.
3) Let's Play a Game - The players show up and the bbeg challenges them to a game instead of combat. The party has to win fairly (or cheat, or catch the boss cheating) at some other game. This works best if the game has been a part of the campaign already. If your dungeon crawl ends with a round of Jenga, it probably won't work. But if you've been using Jenga through the whole campaign (which is great, use Jenga in a dungeon to track how unstable things are and when it falls, all hell breaks loose in the dungeon, it adds an amazing push-your-luck mechanic to a dungeon. Every failed roll is a pull.) it works great. Just make sure the game itself has consequences that can be trusted. Either magically compelled or similar. The BBEG can't simply ignore the outcome.
4) The Spawn Ending - Killing the big bad engages a killswitch _that the players know about_ and they have to either disable that first or defeat the big bad some way other than combat. This raises the stakes of the big bad without just making them harder to put down.
5) The Lord-Ruler Ending - Similar to the Spawn Ending, but the players _don't know_ about it. This takes the form of the big bad warning the players that killing them is bad. "You don't know what I do for mankind." And when they die, things get worse somehow. A monster breaks free, or the world starts falling into the sun or the moon starts to fall to the Earth or something.
That doesn't seem right. You are robbing your players from the epic fight. It sould be more than normal combat, but definitly not less. It would be pretty anticlimatic if you defet the epic dragon, waiting on his treasure at the end of a long dungeon in a game of Jenga and he simply leaves. Yes combat isn't predictable, but thats the reason why ist is fun.
I'm just here for the Mistborn reference
@@Noobs_of_Gaming If you think I was advocating for the dragon at the end of a campaign that had nothing to do with Jenga challenging the players to a game and then flying off when he loses, you didn't understand what I was saying.
I literally said _not_ to do that. "If your dungeon crawl ends with a round of Jenga, it probably won't work."
What I am advocating for with all of these is the _option_ to have the final "fight" not be standard combat. If it would be dissatisfying for your players to not have a tense final conflict, it is absolutely an option for it not to be combat if your campaign supports it. Most DMs end campaigns, even big story-driven ones, with combat. But unless your game has been nothing but a dungeon crawl with very limited roleplay, you probably have more options.
Yes! I'm going to go out on a limb and say you've been doing this for awhile
The best way to ensure tense combat is introducing timed effects.
Just describe what is about to happenen roll a dice +modifier and that's how long it takes before the event is going to happen.
It can be simple as an alarm was rung and reinforcements are underway, if you are early in a dungeon.
Or the structure of a mine not holding on the room you are in and you want that treasure but the beast guarding it, it's magically compelled to guard it with it's life.
Players might find creative ways around these impeding dangers and they should be rewarded for it. It also steps away from the standard murder solution to all problems.
I have a rule I use for teaching and GMing: "Never let my students (players) pay a price for a mistake I made." If I made the assignment (encounter) too easy, let it go, NBD. If I made it too hard, reduce the consequences, change it to be easier, etc. The goal is learning (fun), keep that goal constantly in mind.
This!
While I agree in principle, and hell, I agree 99% of the time, I feel like an anticlimactic BBEG because I didn't accurately predict the amount of damage those guys can do IS punishing them. Working your way up an arc, or hell a whole campaign, to simply roflstomp the final boss without payoff to the foreshadowing of their power kinda cheapens everything that came before. I've been the player when that happened an I'll tell you now it took me a good while before that disappointment wore off.
I've been running my first adventure, and I've repeatedly forgotten small things that would have made encounters or dungeons a little harder... I ended up noticing these things shortly after the party was supposed to run into something (even left out that an entire fight would have happened much earlier, but the group wanted to sweep the area and take out all the monsters anyway). It's like that one card in Monopoly: "Bank error in your favor, collect $xx." If you screw up as the DM, reward the party.
@@Aussie_Archmage Same. I've been a player when our final fight against the BBEG ended with me still having 80% of my spell slots.
I got 2 turns in. Felt so fucking cheap.
@@KamuiSeph That's fair. If the GM is new, cut them a break, there is a learning curve to running games as well as playing them. In life, one thing that sucks is you have to suck at something before you become good at it.
I was DMing and threw an Enslaved Deva at the party. The first turn the wizard cast banish and the Deva failed the save. I was shocked but let it stand. It was a great learning moment as a DM and very memorable moment for the players.
Nice! And that's a great example of using the right tools from your players. But if a major boss that the party is afraid of gets rolled in a similar way, I will totally defend. Giving some buffs to make it a worthwhile fight that the party has spent months building up towards
Also that Deva can come back later, bigger and badder and more pissed off for being banished. No doubt they will have learned of a way to avoid being banished. he he.
Had something similar happen to me. A NPC I absolutely did not expect the party to take a swing at in the circumstances they were in (he was a demigod/demigod adjacent), so I was already on the back foot, but I picked a stat block that seemed close enough (pit fiend), knowing that with their planned actions, this would be over quickly one way or another. They dropped either banishment or plane shift in a surprise round, and he botched the save. Epic saves in a surprise round seemed wrong, so it went off, and he wound up in the hands of the party’s patron goddess (there was sort of a divine Cold War thing going on, and he’d made some choices that were not in keeping with that agreement, so once they had him away from his seat of power, she was able to step in.
That’s one of the Druid’s player’s favorite stories from the game. Not every fight has to be this big epic climactic event. If every boss fight is an anticlimax, that’s a separate issue, but one or two playing out anticlimacticly just serves the purpose of letting the party feel powerful, and especially if it was a long road to get there, and they’ve grown to hate the boss, it can be even more satisfying on occasion than the epic fight.
Lucky them, thats why all major bossed have legendary resistance XD
@@mwhearn1 if I remember correctly banish sends the being back to its home plane. The just saved that Deva they sent an enslaved Deva home to good plane full of beings that will help them.
I think it's important to draw a delineation between adjustments made on the fly to spite the players or railroad into certain narrative beats and adjustments made on the fly to preserve verisimilitude. Example: I recently ran an encounter where I had re-skinned a fiend stat block into an undead. Changed a couple of its abilities around, etc. Once combat started, one of my players hit it with necrotic damage and I realized I had neglected to write down immunity to necrotic in the stat block. So I gave the monster immunity on the fly. Not to spite the player, but because that made sense for the situation and I could easily have done it before initiative was rolled.
I think by the same token general encounter design fundamentals are the same way. The party is fighting a solo boss that I would have normally given legendary resistances and actions to, but I just simply forgot to do so? I'll probably have them start using them assuming it hasn't already been a few rounds.
Encounter design can be fluid. There's nothing fundamentally virtuous about locking in a monster's stat block when dice start rolling. That said, if you're going to do it, you need to know yourself well enough to know when you're doing it simply because you're not enjoying the outcome of the fight vs when you're doing it because you'd have done it beforehand if only you were more clever.
I have been running for about 20 years. I started making every big battle have 2-3 different versions. It is setup where minions or lieutenants could join, running in from a back room or different level.
Or if the players are loosing badly, maybe an enemy they let escape stabs the boss in the back, either physically or by breaking/taking a source of power.
Even this is quantum ogring. It makes the player decisions not meaningful. This fight will last 4 rounds no matter what so why bother? Let the players win.
The goal when DMing is for the players to have fun. Setting up reinforcements and/or phases in big fights normally does that for the group.
@@tbgold07 making player decisions matter does it really well. DMed for 20 years now and that is easily the single biggest advice is let the players choices matter.
I agree choices should matter, agency is very important. As above if they decided to let an enemy live, it comes back affect them.
The top part is more for balance. The choice of whether phase two has minions or lieutenants is just a DM judgement call, like most game setup.
@@OldSchoolGM94 having the option to add reinforcements is not a bad call. What if the players worked to prevent that? Then yiu can reward them with the reinforcements not coming. What if an enemy they spared came and aided them against the boss? That's 100% player agency and Reward for actions. If they killed the enemy, they wouldn't get that aid.
The big part is how often you do this, is it telegraphed, and why do it? If you do this all the time, thats an issue. It becomes predictable to players and they will dislike it. Only on occasion? Then it's a way to spice up a boss fight. Isnit telegraphed? Then players can prepare for the event in various ways, or maybe prevent it. If they prevent it, don't do an unfair work around, reward their guile by preventing the reinforcements. If they have another way in, make it delayed as a reward. Maybe they can kill the boss and escape before the minions can come, making for an intense escape sequence. Lastly, why do it at all? To add to the experience, that should be the ONLY reason. The players are what matters and making the fighting, story, and exploring exciting is the DMs job. Sometimes, that means small twists and turns.
I don't disagree with the idea if don't adjust entirely, but to say it's ALWAYS wrong to do is flat out ignoring when it's not a bad thing. Know your players, what they like, and what would enhance the experience. For some DMs, this means next to no fights and making an interactive story experience. For others, this is non-stop, zerg wave like fighfighting, and others may be to replicate their favorite character in game. Just be smart about how you do it.
“Encounter design doesn’t stop once initiative is called.” -Matt Colville
If a DM can only ratchet DOWN (in favor of the players), as suggested in the video, then the DM can always just plan EVERY encounter as super deadly and then ratchet down during combat. The result - fun yet challenging combat - is the SAME as if the DM accidentally designed an easy encounter and ratcheted the difficulty up during combat.
The suggestion of adding a new boss or a second wave of minions mid-combat is conceptually no different than adding to the pool of boss hp. The bottom line is that the DM has increased the difficulty mid-combat.
Saying you can only ratchet DOWN during combat is meaningless, and allowing yourself to adjust everything EXCEPT HP is arbitrary.
Make whatever adjustments you need to make the game fun.
Auto-doubling hp on the fly might not be the best option in a situation, but it’s one legitimate tool in the DM toolbox if the encounter calls for it.
This, exactly this
Yup, you're right. The videos advice is BS 🤣
@@JimmiWazEre It’s not total BS. I agree that “just auto-doubling boss HP” mid-combat is probably not the best rule of thumb because a DM has many other tools available: adjust AC, adjust saving throw modifiers or DCs, alter boss features like multi-attacks, adjust the boss’s available spell slots or spell list, subtly use suboptimal combat tactics, etc.
A DM can always incorporate contingency plans as part of the encounter design. Plan something you think is balanced, but have a backup plan in case the encounter turns out too easy/hard.
If seeing the PCs curb stomp a boss seems like the most fun option for the table, then do it. Be more willing to let them stomp a mini-boss. You’ll have other chances down the line.
@@marcadiadd5681 Don't alter AC, stuff like multiattack or if the players can see the dice (e.g. roll20) modifier, if they allready seen it. You would give away that you are cheating. Its ok to cheat, but your players must never know that.
@@Noobs_of_Gaming I would never alter AC if the switcheroo can be discovered by the maths.
So... basically: dont cheat adding some HP... instead you suggest cheat in other ways... that are adding HP with extra steps, some of them more frustrating to the players than adding some hp to the monster, and more work and difficulty to the GM to implement. Aha... ok.
This.
this
This was basically my whole opinion of this video. Thank you
I learned this lesson really early on, in my first game of D&D actually. The DM threw an adult blue dragon at us, we killed it, and he basically said, it’s now an adult blue dracolich
Now that was a missed opportunity. The DM should have had it come back 6 months later as a dracolich, that would have been cool
@@JadeyCatgirl99 Yes, the timing is important. Essentially without it becomes: just fight the boss again because you killed it too fast
I remember, I was doing a one shot for my cousins just so they could try DnD for the first time (first time DMing), and I decided to include an optional encounter with some bandits (they were locked in the cells, if they decided to unlock the cells the bandits would attack). One of them decided, upon running into the room, that she wanted to *eat* the key right in front of the bandits, failed the CON save, and promptly vomited in front of these bandits. I made the executive decision that this intimidated the bandits into just listening to the crazy eld lady. Did this *completely* smash my planned final combat with a room full of goblins? Yes, and maybe it was rewarding stupidity, but I felt like rewarding a unconventional plan with some allies made their very first game ever fun. Because, like, bonking an enemy is fun, but being able to do something to make the bonks work better is *also* fun, and that works just as much to make the *player* feel powerful, even if not so much the player character.
I would argue that buffing a boss's HP mid fight is cheating for the players. There's nothing worse than an anticlimactic ending. If my DM gave me a boss and it's too easy that feels disappointing as a player.
I would disagree…if we as a group completely own a “BBEG” that makes us feel like the baddest people on the planet. Then, the DM makes the next encounter with a boss tough enough to humble us. No fudging required, just let the party revel in their awesomeness until you smack them back to reality with a tougher opponent later on!
I agree. If a bbeg is hyped up for so long and the party just walks over them, it mitigates all the foreshadowing and build up the villain had. Not satisfying for players or the DM.
Yeah, agreed. Buffing fights for the sake of story is almost always okay imo.
It depends. I think that cody is taking things to extreme in the video. If you kill the boss in a single round it probably will be a let down. Tho it will feel like cheating If the fight goes for ten rounds.
I agree with the stranger
I'd tend to disagree on that one. As a DM, preparation is sometimes tough, especially when you're a beginner. So, unless you spend an ungodly amount of prep time (and even then), you'll make mistakes, and make some encounters too weak and some to hard. Do you need to correct all the time to get a "calibrated" experience? Of course not. Let the player wreck some of your encounters, let them flee some of the harder ones. It makes for good and fun game and story. However, sometimes they cannot. Sometimes, they are stuck fighting an encounter you severely underestimated, and sometimes a supposedly climactic battle is way too underwhelming. And in these moments, I think it's okay to feel like you can adjust things on the fly to make up for you own prep mistakes (and not to compensate for a good plan or awesome luck from your players). And I would add, I would 100% rather have a BBEG fight get boosted mid-fight because the DM underestimated how much HP the fight needed to be fun and scary, than have a dumb out-of-nowhere plot twist where the villain was not the real villain actually - that will add 1000 plot holes and feel way more immersion breaking to me than any stat adjustment ever will.
It's a running joke in my games over the past 32 years that often when I come up with an epic encounter against a powerful foe of my own creation the players somehow go on an improbable run of natural 20's and obliterate it. My players refer to these creatures as my "super beasts."
32 years of getting constant 20s right at the big bad? So, are you aware your players are cheaters, or do you actually think they're that specifically lucky...or, are you just exaggerating your story to make it seem more interesting than it is?
Something that could help make Combat longer but also making them more fun, is that make Boss fights not only a single boss, but a group of enemies with a Boss, not only will players have more options but Bosses won't be rushed down in a few turns because of Action economy
If you want the players to _feel_ challenged, give them a big-bag-of-hit-points to beat on. If you _actually_ want to challenge them, give them a group of enemies.
Always have minions! It helps SOOO much with action economy, giving tactical choices to players, and makign certain builds shine like AoE attacks. if you are worried about tracking hit points, don't. All minions have 1 hit point. Sweet!
In my experience (3 decades behind the screen), your pc’s are going to walk all over any encounter you make in 5e. The game seems focused in that way. Never leave a monster to fight alone. Always have cultists or followers between your BBG and the party. Adding hp mid fight is lazy and doesn’t add anything to the encounter.
Yep you got it. This is why I ALWAYS say 5e numbers do not matter. Its a story driven game massively in the PC's favor. If you want engaging combat just go play something more oldschool where hits feel like they matter and hp pools are much lower.
I think this happened roughly fifteen years ago: My group of a sorceress, druidess, cleric NPC and barbarian NPC had finally come to the battle I had spent the most time ever in my DM career to prep: the biggest hydra in the MM 3.5 book. Round one: sorceress casts her newly learned _Polymorph_ spell. We used active rolls for everything (every instance of ‘10+’ was replaced by ‘d20+’). It didn’t matter one bit. Hydra rolls horribly on its saving throw; secondary save for mental faculties, fails too, though barely. Hydra is turned into a kitten and dropped in a well to be drowned (quite horrible!) for fear it might turn back (they couldn’t know, after all). I don’t think we had ever laughed so hard from a fight ever! Had I fudged the dice, we would never have had that great memory.
Don’t fudge your dice, fellow DMs; enjoy your players’ success and they and you will love you for it.
Agreed.
to me the worst advice i got was "just remove the boss hp"
Increasing HP can be useful when you realize you've severely undertuned your encounter. It isn't stealing agency, it's making adjustments to your encounter design on the fly. You can also add additional waves of enemies or toss in some unexpected spells or abilities. As long as you make it interesting it's fine. The problem comes when you continuously undertune or overtune and have to always make adjustments. Every boss encounter should be important to the story and have things occurring during it that make your party think. You should allow your players to come up with clever solutions to defeat the bbeg, AND you should let them work, at least partially, if they make any kind of sense. Your party should never know everything there is about the BBEG though, and so maybe their plan to kill him works... but he comes back as undead, or his demonic master resurrects him, but at a price, or his lieutenant escapes and becomes the new BBRG having inherited his master's will. Or maybe instead of outright killing him you blast off his arm and he loses his ability to use one of his powerful abilities. That way your party still gets a cool encounter and you don't take away agency.
Sometimes changing the HP is the best thing you can do. I just make sure that I do it as rarely as I can. If there is a better measure I do it. Sometimes the party will have to flee. Someetimes the boss will. Sometimes something unexpected happens. A shield appears. A lieutenant appears to try to save the boss and earn glory. Anything could happen. But they are all fudge. Being a DM is about knowing when and how to fudge. Dare to make mistakes. Practice. And know when the time is right to fudge. You usually shouldnt. But sometimes there is no way out if you want the session or campaign to be epic.
The trick can't be used too often; the players are going to notice eventually.
Ive been playing, and DMing a long time, two things i like in this situation, 1) combat isnt quiet, and can draw in other nearby encounters, creating a multi-stage fight, where the party gets pressed to clear one group before the next arrives. And 2) add a confounding element. IE, the McGuffin is about to be destroyed if you dont get to it, or, the BBEG has kidnapped someone important. To raise the stakes. Just as examples
Combat gets complicated REALLY fast when you has just one more wheel. It is Glorious!
A third party? who are they going to attack first? can we ally with them? what if they takes pot shots at both? now we have to think of angles as well as distance between three fronts!
An innocent party? now you have to think about portecting them, running interferance, expediting retreat.
Another non-combat task to complete, Such as finding a specific book, completing a ritual, healing someone, or shutting down a portal. Now you have to decide do you focus on the task at hand, or do you put a few whacks on the bad guy to give your friends some breathing room.
Envoirmental BS! How can you use it? how can your enemy use it? How can you avoid it? What will happen if we don't? is this situation stable or is something worse going to happen?
Add one more thing for the players to worry about and it makes for a tense and memorable combat, as well as tactical choices to make. And as a GM, it adds a butt load of more ways to complicate the situation should it be too easy.
I wouldn't say , never adjust the hp up mid fight. Sometimes I forget to do it before the fight, as generally need a bit of a buff.(not doubling). Occasionally something is meant to be hard and the players only perform marginally and you realize that was way to easy for the moment. It's not about preserving a round count. It's fixing a moment that might fall flat. It's not often thing, but there are times you are avoiding an " oh that's it ? " Moment . You read the table. And use some nuance
I as a DM have rebalanced many fights mid session. Especially when new spell levels and stuff comes on. I rarely do it. But I have done. it. Having everything perfectly balanced with testing each encounter is difficult. It is not wrong to use the tools at your disposal to prevent your mistakes from affecting your players. It is the only reasonable choice.
Accidentnally TPK:ing your players because that spell apparently did 10d8 dmg is your fault for not noticing. Most of them only have
I actually did that in the first session of my new campaign. The "boss" for the first session was a Bandit Captain, and beforehand I was a little nervous that he might be a little too tough for four level-one characters to defeat, at least not without potentially killing someone - the previous (and first) time I'd run a game, I nearly one-shot a PC with the "boss" (a kobold sorcerer who hit the lvl-1 rogue with Scorching Ray) - so I reduced his "level" a bit (lowering his HP by 20 or so) and took away his parry ability. Then the PCs got to him and got him down to below half within a single round. I realized I probably didn't need to nerf him, so I gave him back the HP I'd taken away.
And nothing is wrong with that. I don't agree with taking20's take on this at all...
That’s not necessarily what he was talking about. Correcting a mistake mid game is different than deciding to extend the fight because they PCs are doing well.
Intent matters and the players will pick up on that.
@@DOOMsword7 Miscalculating the amount of dmg your party can do is not a mistake?
It goes both ways , i don't understand this comment section at all , you all act like you just deus ex machina your players out of every dangerous unexpected situation but when the situation goes from an expected hard to trivial you just don't care , that makes 0 sense , that's a table my players would NEVER sit at , it's clear that i modify stuff on the go and they trust me because i am fair in both ways and that's what actually makes the game fun , maybe you all don't agree with this take because you actually need a brain to do this without breaking players' trust or game balance .
@@CoffeeSipper555 Rude
I change my fight to fix the pacing, if I made a mistake in monster design then that's my problem and it should be fixed. Same if the fight is going on for too long, reduce the hp or give the win to the character who could benefit from it the most. The game doesn't need to be locked in , its doesn't undermine your players at all, you are trying to make it as fun as possible for everyone
I am totally in Taking20 camp with it.
I am sure you think you are doing good of course. You think you are making everything as fun as possible for everyone but you are not: you are deciding what happens and narrating your story, assigning kills to player in the way you think will make the best story and funniest night. This is not your role, and you are taking a power that is not your and robbing players of their agency. They are not there to listen to your story about how they are very cool. They are there to play their character and discover together with you what will happen.
Only time I ever did something like it was when a missing player unexpectedly joined the fight mid Session, so I readjusted the fight a little to fit more players. But I did it as a second phase when the enemy was down to half their hitpoints
Balance is key
When I was starting out DM’ing, finding out that CR doesn’t mean much and what I could use to create easy & tough fights
I’ll admit that I have in the past during my first year some of my bigger bads got given some extra HP, but only to get a few more rounds in to build more excitement and give my PCs a more solid and earned win
I’m much more experienced now in how to balance encounters and love seeing how my PCs treat every challenge I throw at them
A message to Cody, telling people that it’s wrong to do so I’d say is bad advice, it’s disingenuous to do it often, but it can be necessary especially if you where underprepared to run the encounter
1. Let it happen. I have had this happen more than once, and I have talked/laughed after the session with the players, admitting they breezed through an encounter. I also have done this when I obviously overtune a fight. They really appreciate the honesty in these discussions, because they know that what they do matters, and I am not fudging things when it comes to encounters.
2. I always try to have some method where a BBEG can attempt escape or utilize minions/additional assets in a fight if it is appropriate. After all, they would prepare as much as the players would. My current 3.5 campaign that's been going on more than a year has a throwaway mini vampire boss from like session three that was obviously a caster and was able to escape with some of their minions through a logical means. He's reappeared once just to maintain that reminder that he is still out there, and they still occasionally mention how he definitely won't go after them again, right? And I smile and shrug, leaving them to always consider that there are foes in the world that may do them harm.
If they wait too long does the vampire become a lich?
I was running a fight where my PCs went up against a bearded devil. It wasn't supposed to be a super dangerous encounter, but I was still shocked at how they were annihilating it. Something wasn't right and I didn't quite realize what, so I doubled the devil's HP. This ended up making it take a little longer than I intended. Afterwards, I realized the mistake I had made. I somehow had blanked on the devil's resistances and immunities. Had I run the encounter how I designed it from the start, everything would have been fine.
Similarly, I had my player's destroy an encounter through a combination of clever strategy and spell use, high rolls, and the fact that after Roll20 broke on me forcing me to refresh, I opened up stat blocks of much weaker creatures than what they were actually facing.
Moral of the story, don't completely deprive yourself of sleep and still try to DM when your brain just can't hack it.
I don't entirely agree with this take... I agree not to take away player agency, but you as a DM also has an obligation to make an encounter enticing, suspenceful, challenging and above all of that; fun and satisfying. It's very anticlimactic if the BBEG goes down in the first round of combat, unless the players have come up with a brilliant plan.
To that end, I sometimes adjust HP on the fly. Not doubling, but enough to maybe last one more turn. That's the only fudging I ever do as a DM, and only if it serves the satisfaction of the encounter.
I learned a valuable lesson about 6 years ago dming. It was that the numbers don't matter for D&D (other systems they do) but in D&D all that matters is that player choices matter to some degree and that the adventure was fun. Ultimately fudge absolutely everything if it gets you the above desired goals.
So if my bbeg has a crystal logged in his back and it sundenly starts making him glow as he takes damage so at 30%hp he gets access to a 7th level spellslot.
Players are at level 7 would this be good or
should I make it a second phase that makes him be consumed by the crystal and additionally make things in the surrounding area be sucked in with a save, so they fight in the etherial inside the crystal, if they get sucked in.
For me, the point of the game is for people to have fun. It's important to let players have victories, but by the same measure, a victory that's too easy can also be anticlimactic. It also means that player agency is less important than players *feeling* that they have agency. I recently ran a campaign where I gave the players full agency, but I found out too late that some players felt that they *didn't* have agency, and it killed the game.
"Cheat"
Monster hp are the average , it means that the monsters can have more or less and if your party is killing everything too fast with little to no resources spent you can modify those hp , you are not taking agency away by prolonging the fight for one round to let the enemy do something especially if the fight turns out to be very anticlimatic and you can partially fix it .
The players are not gonna know that you modified hp , BUT they are gonna notice that you are making shit up storytelling wise when you prolong the story instead of making the world react to their actions.
2nd phase is just like adding hp , it requires more Dm work and it CAN still be as anticlimatic as the normal fight could be , they look like a fun idea but every time i tried them they failed hard , they require more Dm work but they are just non functional , if you divide the Monster hp into different pool it means every phase is super short and less meaningful unless you increase the monster hp and if you do that you have to make the first phase weaker ( so very short and meaningless ) to compensate for the hp increase and the 2nd+ phases being harder but at that point you can increase the hp instead or give the Monster another ability/legendary action that does what your new phase would do ; 2nd phases feels even worse for the players because they are basically forced and even if you balance them properly it feels you are takin agency away from the players , not reccomended at all.
I think there's a significant difference between "I don't want the players to win, I'd better increase the boss's HP" and "This is a climactic event with a level of planning to the experience, I want to make sure that they get what they came for". There are encounters where my players have surprise stun-locked and annihilated bosses and salted the earth, and there are encounters where players fought against tweaked HP thresholds to make sure the entire experience of a fight properly happens. And while I'll accept this is entirely up to the vibe of the table, I have yet to have even one person at mine say they wish they had more fights like the former than the latter, or that they dislike and don't enjoy fights that are extended to fit in their engaging elements.
No one is considering the "I don't want the players to win" extreme, that's just toxic nonsense and no one would defend it. Of course the video is about tweaking for (imagined) increased tension.
And I fully agree with Taking20: it does not increase tension and if you think that the players do not notice you are wrong. I noticed every time it happened as a player, and I hated it. It always look like you have to pay due homage to the time the DM spent preparing the event. Also notice that often the opposite is true: tweaking the event midfight is a way out of spending time properly preparing the event.
Indeed if the players stun-lock the boss without any clever planning, using standard strategies and class skills, the issue is that the event is lousily prepared.
If instead the players defeat the boss in a clever and original way, good for them! That's way more memorable than waiting round after round to see how long the DM wants them to play with it before declaring the monster dead.
How do you feel about a proper final boss eg the last fight of OoTA being nuked in 2 turns? It felt underwhelming I pushed the health to triple rather than a turn limit
What is the difference between max hp prior to the fight and having to tone it down mid fight or starting at average hp and buffing to max mid fight?
I’ve been running the same campaign for 4 years. I routinely turn the dials on my villains to ensure that the encounters aren’t too soft. This is practically necessary with level 10 plus characters.
Follow for quite some time and use tons of information and tips from Cody
But can't agree with "never fudge" dogma
Fudging is a tool to create suspense in a right moment
Or execute bigBad in an epic manner
Or give players chance to win this
Or use it as spotlight tool and give sweet kill and finishing move to the one whos arch was build on it
Lots of cases
But NEVER TO TOOK AGENCY!
On that I'm agree, sir
So I'm running a dungeon ina. Few weeks. I wrote in potential extra enemies in two of my encounters. Maybe there's another Bandhob floating over in 2 turns, or if the team is struggling, there's not. Does that seem like good middle ground?
So how would adding powers, specifically if there is no equivalent in the game or available in RAW, work? Like what if a player or two takes massive issue with that when they power-game and rules lawyer?
How do we feel about simply having more enemies show up to the encounter after a few rounds? Usually it's pretty easy to justify in most environments, without seeming unreasonable within the context of where the players are. I'd never add enough to try to screw the players over, just enough to tweak the difficulty and excitement of the encounter a bit more.
I do that a lot! Have you ever heard a fight in the parking lot outside a bar and watched people running out to see what's going on? Now imagine that with the sounds of ringing steel and screams of pain. That would ECHO through a dungeon like a fire siren. Anyone living there MIGHT be curious about what all the racket outside their "house" is!
That is my normal way for encounters. Really helpfull if you dont know how strong your new monsters. Strat with few and ad every few runds some more. I personaly dont let them fight in the first rund, so the players can react to them. Works especially good with monsters, that typically come in large numbers: cobolds, rats ... Sadly that will not work for a single BBEG
I’m not quite in agreement, because this feels like a false dichotomy. Adding HP is not strictly reducing agency, unless you are running a dungeon crawl. If you are running a super thematic and story driven game, you should give a sense of danger with your big scenes. When players succeed, it’s not that the players rob me as the DM, it’s that if the bad guy is not as strong as hyped, I have robbed my players of that experience of beating a big boss. It’s especially problematic with backstory related villains. Sure, a player can just switch up their backstory, but that’s kind of a cop out and a lot of players, like those I play with, would find me forcing an alteration or under powering their boss to be a greater theft of agency than buffing their hp or damage on the fly. This is great advice for dungeon crawls, but not story-oriented campaigns. Well presented tho!
I completely agree. If a bad guy has been hyped up as a big challenge, having the players demolish it in two turns is gonna make them feel way more robbed than if you powered them up halfway through the fight. They were expecting a gnarly fight where they can really explore the mechanics of their character, and suddenly the fights over! It's way worse if its a backstory villain, those HAVE to be satisfying, no way they should be underpowered or the player might feel like you just don't care about their character, and honestly that's the last thing I'd ever want as a DM.
Yep this fella gets it. This entire video is a false dichotomy. The thing about 5e is that it almost always requires this type of quick editing on the DM's part. PC's have WAAAAAY too many abilities and it makes encounters almost impossible to structure without really bending some game mechanics. Ultimately 5e is more of a story driven adventure than any other D&D system and the illusion of scale has to be maintained. Now if you are playing Dungeon Crawl Classics, this all goes out the window and makes way more sense to have these insane swings.
Yeah mad disagree, in my experience the last encounter that players should feel like you are fudging numbers on is the boss. Especially if it is a single creature, it is painfully obvious when a DM is artificially adding difficulty through more HP.
@@alecolson8360 it shouldn't be and if you are seeing that you have a bad dm
@@alecolson8360 They shouldn’t feel like you’re fudging, of course. But I don’t see how they would.
Ehhh, I have an exception to this: I have difficulty gauging how much damage my players can output as they go up in levels. As a result, I will make boss characters with a range of hp (80 - 100, for example) or give them a healing item. It's not to artificially extend the fight, but to make the threat of the bad guy feel appropriate. Sometimes when the big boss is *almost* killed from an epic attack (like, 3 HP left over) I will round up the damage so it ends big.
I think slightly cheating the game can be done well for storytelling and awesome moments, but it requires careful judgement and awareness of what is fun for everybody.
I’m currently using Lost Mine of Phandelver to creates a story in the past that ties into Tyranny of Dragons (this story is set a few thousand years before the events of HotDQ). When the party took the ONE path that lead straight to the black spider (which I replaced with Wyrmlord Azarkul) I just added another boss. I replaced the spectator with a young black dragon named “Hazirawn”. The party shoveled black dragon scales into the forge like coal to reignite the innate magics in the Forge of Spells and used it to forge a greatsword. The forge hasn’t been lit in hundreds of years so the process malfunctioned which inadvertently trapped the black dragons soul in the weapon thus the sentient weapon Hazirawn. so now they took part in creating the weapon that will show up thousands of years later in Tyranny of Dragons
Got to say I disagree with this take.
But not your reasoning behind it.
Change the stat block mid fight only to help your players. NOT THEIR PC'S. THE PLAYERS.
I routinely change stats and such mid fight. If the players have a really cool idea or something they want to try, and before they can get it fully set up, the monster would go down. Well it turns out he is a tougher bugger than they thought. But the party's plan just so happens to work perfectly.
Or if one player hasn't gotten to do much this session and the bardlock is about to kill the thing off, turns out it as immunity to that damage type but the quieter pc is overpowered against it.
Yep this person gets it. D&D numbers DO NOT MATTER. as long as your players FEEL like they have agency and they never peer through the illusion you have done your job. The game is just a framework for the story and a vehicle for good times.
This misses the mark. There is so much more to player agency than initial HP values. Their choices still 100% matter, and making a meaningful encounter can mean stretching it out or shortening it for various reasons. Run your games however, but DMs who modify along the way are not ruining the game or betraying their players’ trust.
I agree. The ideas listed as alternate ways to buff the boss were great. Even though they were good suggestions does not mean they work for all scenarios.
I had an encounter where the necromancer boss was squishy, but had filled the field deadly traps. If a player failed the first save they would be pulled to the ground by skeletal arms and would get another chance the second turn with disadvantage as they would be prone. If they failed the second save they would re-emerge from the ground as a zombie version of themselves fighting for the necromancer on their next turn. The only way to return to their true form was to defeat the necromancer as they did not yet have spells powerful enough to reverse the effect.
However, the players rolled really well and not even one of them ever failed the first save to get pulled to the ground. Because of this they steamrolled the encounter and with all of their combined damage killed the boss in 1 round once they got through the minions barring their path to him. One of my players said, "Really?" in a voice that sticks with me to this day when the necromancer died. They were disappointed by how easy the fight was.
I explained the mechanic that they completely avoided through lucky rolls rather than good ideas and they agreed it would have been a really cool encounter if that had happened. Instead they remembered it as a boring encounter because I didn't modify anything and they got lucky
In my first campaign my DM threw a horror style travel encounter with a waaay over-leveled demon like creature at us. He had envisioned us to flee, but with some lucky nat 20s we managed to kill it. My DM apparently had written a whole backstory for the creature and when it died, it left two bracelets behind. Despite my DM’s subtle warnings one of the player put them on, revealing that they where impossible to remove. Later we would learn that they slowly would turn him into the same creature we just fought. What followed was an epic adventure of us trying to find a way to get rid of them to save our friend’s life! Would that have happened if my DM instead inflated it’s Hp? most definitely not
That sounds pretty awesome~
As a player, I love it when my DM hears my damage roll, gives an annoyed sigh, and tells me to pick up the mini. It gives me life
I will always change my monster for the players enjoyment. Sometimes they wanted more of a challenge. But yea, like you said I just use second phases like the mythic actions, but I foreshadow them well before the fight, even if it doesn't go anywhere. Additionally, if someone has a better story connection and they drop the big bad to 10 or less, I just give them the kill.
I feel like this is more nuanced than just saying 'never do this', been DMing longer than you've been alive (probably), and can say that this is often dependent on the players, the encounter - and purpose of it to the plot or campaign, and the mood at the table. I disagree that doing this robs the players of their agency, that's just a stupid thing to say - you don't know my players, you aren't at the table - what a dumb assumption to make. The problem with this type of 'absolutely never do this or that' is life doesn't work that way. There are always exceptions.
Exactly. "I want memories that players will remember." My players aren't gonna remember the BBEG that I'd hyped up who turned out to be an absolute chump.
Creating a bigger boss doesn't fix the throwaway fight. "Your princess was in another castle" type reactions are far, far worse of a response.
I can't even count how many times I had an awesome fight all mapped out, and then a creative player idea just ends it in a round. What I've learned over the years though is if the players can end the fight in a round, then that fight was only worth one round. Use all that time saved on more rp, or future combat encounters.
Would you say it's ok to buff/augment enemies before battle? For instance, my players know the monster manual pretty well, so to throw them off a bit, I change some stats before battle. Like make the enemy a juvenile, or if going up, it's now a master of it's race and abilities.
I’ve only been Dming for a few years and over the few years I’ve learned that my players having fun and me having fun in the end is what matters. As long as me and my players are smiling after each session than it was a good session. Your videos have helped me get to this mind set and I love the advice you have given me. I completely agree with you, the players fun is what matters.
Totally agree, having fun is my number one goal.
I strongly disagree that you should NEVER do this. I would agree if the point was to *avoid* doing this or only do it sparingly, especially if it's going to extend a fight that's already dragging on. But there's been too many times I have *under* tuned an encounter and the players are finding it 'trivial' when it should be 'medium' at least. Being an XP DM has helped with that, as opposed to the Milestone user I was before.
how do you feel about halving the monster HP when you find its too powerful?
The trick I often use is introducing other enemies to the fight. Possibly from an angle they weren't expecting. It changes up the dynamics and "adds more hit points" to the fight without explicitly saving the bbeg.
The advice in this though is great and I plan on using ot
I disagree on his post (coz it very simple and usually not working) but i also disagree with you with that - DM screen not for "cheating".
I make phases for one of my bosses mid fight coz my players get bored when previos evil dude was evaporated by them like snail and this one gonna be the same, if i didnt remake him right there.
BTW CR calculator was saying - its VERY hard.
And Yes DM screen there for your to fudge sometimes rolls and stats and other to make game interesting for your player.
Not all the time for sure but when its needed to be done. Player happiness is main goal at the table.
Strongly, strongly disagree with this take. First of all, the DM cannot "cheat". It is the DM's job to craft engaging encounters and, alongside the players, tell an interesting story together.
Sometimes this means adjusting an encounter, but only for the right reasons. If they've been particularly clever or got lucky rolls? Yeah, they can defeat the bad guy faster than anticipated. But if I've misjudged something, and even through normal combat they're steamrolling the bad, an adjustment needs to be made.
Perhaps a very skilled and experienced DM can perfectly tune encounters before the game, but I don't think this perfect DM exists. When we over or underestimate the party's ability, it's definitely okay to adjust the encounter.
Yep you get it as well. The numbers in D&D do not matter you could strip the entire game of numbers and still achieve a similar result. The correct answer is indeed to craft encounters that are fun and leave the pc's with a sense of accomplishment.
Idk but if a combat at the end is unsadifying is it really better for your players? I mean if its just any bandit captain that get oneshoted thats okay, but not big treat that is build up over a longer period of time like strahd or someone like that.
Before a fight, I typically use the max hp for bbeg in my games but I don’t change it mid fight. I will sometimes delay the last hit for narrative purposes if something really cool happens or funny happens I’ll sometimes end the fight early to do that as well
I’ve never actually downvoted a video before, but I feel like this is really bad advice. It starts with a false premise and builds from there. On the fly changes in HP, abilities, number of monsters is fine as long as you are making those changes to make things more fun for the players. It does not “steal agency” in any way.
Then you go on and make suggestions that are equivalent to giving the BBEG more HP in more words. I feel like you lost the plot here Cody.
More hit points doesn't make a fight more exciting. It just makes it a slog. If players Cakewalk thru your Big Bad, design better lead in rooms/fights to make the players use up their resources/spells before they hit the big bad. Nothing is more intimidating/fun than taking on the BB when your wizard is down to casting cantrips and your healer has one or two charges left.
Nothing's more intimidating than fighting a big bad and watching it suck up 300 damage worth of spells before it gets a turn without dieing.
Some people find different things intimidating, some people find different combat interesting or technical. I often centre my dungeons or climatic sessions around a powerful boss enemy in a environment that the players can heavily interact with or, the boss can interact with, like liar actions but they usually effect terrain more.
Why would I want to take away all of the players cool, powerful and exciting abilities before they get to the final encounter? Simply assuming everyone enjoys the same style of play as you, and telling DMS to just "design better dungeons" helps nobody. Thats why such dogmatic opinions as "never adjust monster HP" are toxic.
@@pastformal8354 "To each their own," said the Old Lady as she kissed the cow.
Is it still bad if in that situation to give the BBEG just a single round, sort of a final attack if the oneshot would make the fight anticlimatic?
I use roll20 with open rolls and HP bar. What I try to do is always having a plan b to avoid a tpk. How can the campaign survive if the pcs loose the fight?
And to avoid bbeg being stomped I have testdrive battles. Throw a weaker tenent before the villian to check how they deal with.
I think presenting your ideas as alternatives that potentially take more effort and experience to pull off would have been better than calling someone out and saying to never do it
Matt Coville put it perfectly when he said “encounter design doesn’t stop once initiative is called.” My job as the DM is to provide a fun, challenging encounter for the players. If them steamrolling an enemy isn’t going to be fun, I absolutely am going to adjust its HP midfight, and I’m not going to feel bad about doing it. It’s not taking away their agency, it’s making the game enjoyable
Have to agree. In one of my campaigns, my players clashed with a paladin and a bunch of warrior followers. One of the PC, a dwarf champion just rushed to the paladin and scored three crits (he had advantage on the rolls). The fight was over in a round, every enemy just threw their weapon and stood still as they just saw how their powerful leader layed there reduced to shreds. Even though my encounter didn't go as expected, it was great to see the reactions. Can't deny them the fun !
I've been running a very customized and barely recognizable version of Descent into Avernus. Back in Baldur's Gate my players finally found Thalamra Vanthampur and cornered her. I knew they would wreck her pretty much immediately, which they did...but not before she could hurl a couple of fireballs into the group. She was a glass cannon...easily defeated, but devastating, especially since they weren't through the whole dungeon yet.
A second example is when they fought their way through Elturel's cemetery, which had a portal for the Abyss. I made it abundantly clear that powerful necromantic energies were flowing through that portal, and they fought against undead and demons up until they defeated the glabrezu guarding the portal. One of the paladin made a big religion check and correctly identified Orcus as the demonic influence behind all that, he relayed the information to the party...and as soon as he said "Orcus" a shockwave of energy came through the portal, reviving all the demons and the dead human soldiers as undead, and the second phase of the combat began. What was beautiful about it is that it was entirely because of that roll, I didn't plan for it at all. Epic.
There is nothing more disappointing on both sides of an encounter than when you extend the HP mid-fight to bump up the climax, then your players suddenly roll like shit and die. I tried that on an endgame boss, second to last arc-ender. thought I'd add 50 HP. Then it quickly turned to "OK NEXT HIT KILLS." and they proceeded to never hit for 2 full rounds. felt bad for them, and for me because I knew I'd cheated them.
On the flipside, my players sent tiamat kicking and screaming back to hell in and all-out blast of 1 round of a 2-year-long campaign. She never got an attack off, outside legendary actions. It wasn't anticlimactic, they call that one of the best moments in our decade of weekly games. Because it wasn't anticlimactic because it was over so quick, it was thrilling to watch the goddess of evil's eyes go wide, the queen of dragons acknowledging how powerful they grown while her sudden anger and fear. If blasting a powerful foe to bits in seconds isn't interesting, you need to up your description game.
I'm not saying you should never change anything. Some of the greatest gaming moments have come when the party's brilliant plan left your homebrew ultraboss with 4 hp and you decide it dies there, as opposed to on the monk's turn with a slap. But I'm very much in the camp of letting the dice lay where they roll unless there's a VERY good reason. Almost all of which are in the vein of "Oh shit I messed up this encounter bad, they can't actually fight OR escape this," "oh crap I forced this on them and it's way overpowered," etc.
Because of the items and creativity my party wields do have a hard time perfecting combat balance, so if I am worried that it's gonna be too easy I prep a "second wave" for the boss battle prepped as back up, and if I mess up and realize I am about to tpk I absolutely fudge a few rolls on my side to rebalance
As a possibility, you could have a situation arise where the BBEG is being teleported against their will and chooses to ask for the party's help in preventing the teleportation; the party has a major choice in this example and if they decide to help the BBEG they could end up gaining an ally.
Love the second stage of a boss fight idea. Gonna be running an adventure using the Elder Brain dragon ad the BBEG... thinking of using the second stage for the final combat.
I am still learning to balance encounters with my group, so I sometimes add a little more hitpoints, but I have never gone so far as doubling them. I have also thrown a couple more of the bad guys into the fray, which usually works out well.
In a fight before Ive literally made a monster heal by eating one of the downed pc's (telegraphed this before with in game lore) and showed it gaining double its HP right infront of them. Best shit their pants moment I have ever seen.
I can tell generally in the first round if the monsters are too weak for what I had planned. It’s a lot easier to buff a mistakenly weak encounter than it is to nerf a mistakenly too hard encounter. Especially on those first big battles after a player power spike (level 5, etc)
I've been running Icewind Dale recently, and one thing I have come to appreciate about the module is the wide variety of encounter difficulties throughout. It helps a lot with suspension of disbelief (at any given level) to have some encounters which are quite easy, and some which are severely challenging. "There's always a bigger fish..." -- sometimes it's the party, sometimes its the Ancient White Dragon they could conceivably run into at Level 1! Every time a potential enemy appears, the players are highly engaged trying to determine just how dangerous it might be. There is always the possibility of a super fun stomp where they wreck the competition, but always some nervousness that any encounter could conceivably become quite deadly.
Thank you for helping me I’m starting DMing and I want to make as little mistakes as possible
i first realized this concept when i was playing in game when i carried around an arrow of dragon slaying for 5 levels. Finally faced the dragon, and the only way for it to fail the save was rolling 1. the dm rolled behind the screen and just froze, looked at me, picked up the dice and showed me the 1. that was the day i oneshot a cr 23 dragon at level 15.
What's the difference between adding a 2nd stage and buffing HP on the fly? They're mechanically equivalent.
I've done this, or at least something very similar. Upping hit points is very different from the situation you described where something a player wanted to do and rolled well on was just completely invalidated
A lot of the solutions described here aren't anything you can come up with on the spot. Certainly not good for new DMs not practiced in inprov
I have started taking the base monsters in the MM and adding things to up their action economy. I've added grunts to a fight that my boss monsters can control and have given the boss heals and shields that the team have the opportunity to counter if they can. It serves to extend the combat, make the fight more challenging and to give those awesome character moments. It makes my players feel like they have accomplished something when they win.
yeah, I remember once when I did a critical hit with my paladin thanks to the druid's faerie fire, doubling the dice from both my thunderous smite and my regular smite (and it was a vampire, so there was an extra smite die). I essentially did an one hit kill on the guy, but the fight kept happening as if it was nothing
Lots of great ideas here. My thought... not every fight is a fight to the death. Your BBG might surrender but have a trick up its sleeve to escape, or maybe being captured is part of a calculated part of its plan (or as suggested in the video, a plan concocted by a higher power). Give the players the win (and the great loot if that's what motivates them) but begin plotting BBG's next move.
when this happened to me i used the BBEG's action to disengage and flee far enough away to consume a health potion, and grab a wand. this enabled the party to see that the stratigies they employed worked and the boss is pulling out their big gun's.
A wave of reinforcements, or even a ‘planned’ trap, luring them in and goes popping up behind
I like having backup plans for the big fights. Build the BBEG as you intend, but plan some contingencies, and keep in mind that you do not need to USE every ability at the BBEG's disposal. Is the party wiping the floor with the boss faster than you expected? Awesome, reward their strategizing! You can draw it out without "punishing" them for good planning or teamwork; you want to reward them. So have a few minions pop up to draw some of their attention and soak up some hits so that it doesn't end too fast and they still get the reward of good planning. Is the opposite true, and maybe you made this harder than you intended? I'd say do not pull your punches, but perhaps the BBEG has a few useful items about their person, like spell scrolls or potions, or maybe one of their minions does instead. Also: sometimes a hard fight just has to be a hard fight, and that's okay too, because winning a tough fight is satisfying. I built a high level wizard as a BBEG, and gave them about 2 levels in cleric so that if they got wrecked really fast, my plan going into the fight was that they could heal themselves (which the players would see the mage do on her turn). We can't plan for EVERYTHING, but we can have backup plans.
So how I combat this is I calculate party's expected damage and monsters expected damage vc the party (at the lowest AC and saves) than I decide how hard I want it to be and how long I want it to be and adjust enemy HP/AC/saves accordingly. Additionally if I want it to feel a bit more dangerous I might adjust the numbers so that enemies are lethal but crumble faster. I get that it is not for everyone but this method gives me some guidelines
While I would not adjust stats mid-battle, I'm certainly not above fudging a roll or two if a big encounter is getting ridiculously easy (though I prefer not to). It should be done sparingly, but it has NOTHING to do with player agency. Players beating an encounter via good decision-making and beating it via sheer luck are completely different things.
I never double the hp, or smudge rolls (unless I'm about to tpk). I have underlings walk in because they heard a loud noise. Or I make a note and make another bbeg. I like your tips for improving the battle.
Agreed wholeheartedly. I was planning a campaign where the players would meet the big bad early on as he's using his magical mcguffin to try and summon death god but the players wound up killing him in the third session before he could escape. The campaign turned from my rather generic plot to one where the players tried figuring out what the mcguffin was, how it worked, and how to protect it from the evil cult that now wanted to take it back from them. Never could have done that if I'd just boosted his HP and let him escape.
I have a story to share:
After three sessions freeing a city, dealing with spies and finally traversing a live maze my players face the big bad guy, a green young dragon and his army of kobolds. The players them blinded the dragon (I didn't realize dragons have blind sense) and focused fire, killing the dragon in 3 turns without taking any damage.
Up to this day (4 years latter) they talk abou this fight.
I have added extra monsters or the hit points before. However, I'm in that level up phase and, have just started doing the trying new stuff as of late. It's coming!
Had a friend railroad us and it brought the session to an end. We talked later and helped him learn. We finished the adventure, but I left the campaign forthwith.
Blinding light engulfs the room and the BBEG has been replaced with something (I've done a hostage, an orphan, an animal). BBEG then uses the Message spell and says something menacing and vaguely ominous like phase 1 is complete or the first seal is opened, I hope you look forward to our next encounter.
I usually have some reinforces premade, for both, allies and enemies. I don't throw them all the time, only when it fit the story and the encounter need a rebalance.
Great video. This is the problem with newer DM's ( and players...), particularly as a result of the way the 5E rules are written.
You are SO right about the "nobody's gonna know" part. People actually paying attention will know. They will hear you say that phrase differently, they will notice the small change in your tone, they will see your eyes shift. They will notice things that change about you that you think are hidden, because we are a species build for pattern recognition and notice when something changes, even when we don't consciously recognize what. and many WILL feel cheated. I've had fights in my early years where I (or another DM) would try to change something, either for or against the party, and the player would repeatedly argue. Because "let me live or die for my decision, I'm here to make a story not watch you write a book." And honestly, even though I've lost multiple characters I loved to that sort of mindset, I wholeheartedly agree. As long as I wasn't like, teleported into a dimensional arena randomly, I chose to be here and do this fight. I could've run for it at any point. And if I dunk on the boss quick? GOOD, if you described it half decently now I feel powerful. Campaigns feel SO much more fun, because I actually feel like I earned everything, because I KNOW that if I made a bad call on what I could take I wouldn't be here.
Because there's one thing nobody talks about on this, and it's that now every death is going to feel like an attack the second you get caught. You changed the HP to make it bigger, they rightfully won and you extended it to kill them. You didn't extend the HP on the last boss when Jeff was about to die, but I died on this one and I felt we were doing a ton of damage, is it because you bumped up the HP? Why did I die, I KNOW you fudge dice, I KNOW you change stats, why did you fudge for Alice last arc but not for me right now? We have a DM in our group who has slowly lost FOURTEEN players over the last 6 years, and this is the biggest reason. Alongside it's extension of "gotta make sure they live for plot reason." An act which makes the player stop caring immediately, because why are you wasting my time with combat now that I know I can't lose?
Iv never doubled my villains ho MID fight but I have doubled it directly before the fight. They had been clearing my Dungeon extremely efficiently and I was extremely confident in them that they could handle it with ease. So I doubled it and we had a great time. The couple rounds that that probably added to the combat led to some really cool RP moments that actually brought the party closer together. D&D is just so great. Great video as always Cody!
Great video mate!!
I have definitely been guilty of this in the past, and I've always had this weird feeling about it, and I think you're able to summarize why. Without realizing it, I was taking away my player's agency, and that just ain't DnD.
I still may consider keeping "one hit til death" if the next person to act hasn't had a lot of the moments in that combat/session. Something about getting the killing blow perks my players up.
Also, in regards to the second phase. I recently did this in a game where the players had been confronted by a Maharaja Rakshasa, whom they had a long and bloody history with, and after killing the creature, it rose from the dead moments after it fell. It made sense in my campaign as the BBEG is a necromancer who is receiving aid from the goddess of undeath. So the players were on board. But I think running the two combats over two different sessions helped a lot. They killed the Rakshasa, I described it dying and being revived in front of their eyes, we ended the session there. We kicked off the next session with an intense combat.
The big joke in our group was that the DM just rolled dice to make it seem like it mattered but actually decided what happened on the fly. We never knew for sure what went on behind the screen but it was always good fun.
Another thing, fights often seem like they are in the party's favor to me, until we get to roughly round 3. At that point people start dropping or running out of resources. If I prematurely buff something on round 1 or 2, the party can unknowingly be in a super deadly encounter.