I propose a ninth: The all-out battle. Characterized by hordes of weaker enemies alongside bigger ones and even possible elite-tier badguys. But it's not just the players fighting them, they also have allies. This could be an army of their own or collection of elite NPCs, likely allies they've built up over the course of the campaign or just relevant to a particular story arc. There might also be a set of actual objectives here. Kill the commander, defend a point, hold a point, take a point, route the enemy, buy time, capture a target. You name it. For inspiration for these, I like to look to wargames and movies. 40K and Lancer (yes I know its an RPG) both have a number of tactical objectives you can borrow whole cloth. I've even ran a naval battle directly inspired by the maelstrom battle at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, where the players and their allies were tasked with taking down a treasure fleet carrying tons upon tons of gold. Anyway, subscribed.
You would never run the larger battle as a combat though. You would narratively describe the wider battle and then only use the D&D mechanics for anything where the players get involved. Otherwise you just spend an hour with the players watching you roll dice with yourself.
these battles can be a lot of fun, but you definitely have to use them sparingly because huge amounts of enemies and allies really slows down the game, so it could easily leave players not engaged
@@ZarchAlDain You can absolutely run larger battles as a combat, or at least segments of them that are still fairly large. Troop-type NPCs as seen in Pathfinder (swarms made up of Small or larger sized creatures) can take a dozen+ entities and make them a single enemy, allowing you to keep the battle densely populated while requiring far less micromanagement and dice rolling, and can be used for both allies and enemies. There are also minion types, which are normal statblocks but will go down in 1-2 hits regardless of where they came from, if you wanna get more in on the micro. I've also heard of people pre-determining the actions that troops can take and full-on eliminating the dice rolls between allied and enemy NPCs. Another strategy is to simply let the players command or even directly control allied NPCs (usually these troops) so that they're always playing and not watching you fight yourself. Effectively, they're playing a Warhammer game against you. Pathfinder 1e (idk if 2e has these rules yet) also had a large-scale combat rule system. I don't particularly enjoy it personally, but I'm sure someone can and has gotten mileage out of it. I know it's a large part of Wrath of the Righteous at least.
@@ScaredJade Absolutely. I wouldn't recommend running these particularly often, maybe just a few times per campaign at most. Any more than that and it becomes a bit of a chore for your players, and a bit of a headache to prep for.
This is where you'd use the mass combat rules from older editions of D&D e.g. BECMI that are just straight up missing from modern editions 😢 Wouldnt be too hard to convert, but a simpler approach is just to treat each unit of troops as a single statblock with an attack and damage roll and a number of HP equivalent to the number of soldiers in the unit, and every time they get "hit" they lose a number of troops equivalent to the damage roll, and their attack bonus is reduced. Use morale rules, so roll for morale when half the troops in a unit are dead, etc
Tip for the ambush: allow smart players to learn about the ambush ahead of time. Once my players took the time to climb up a wall to look through the high windows and saw the cultists hiding inside waiting for them. This changed the entire situation, as they knew where the enemies where, but those were also aware of them and in advantageous positions, so they had to figure out a strategy. It became a great combat
17 years of running D&D and I've only ever considered combat as a way to resolve stories, not to create and expand them. Reminder that there's always more to learn.
This is the first time seeing a video from this channel. Within 90 seconds, I have a strong suspicion this guy has watched a lot of Matt Colville, and I mean that as a high compliment!
There's another type of fight that gm's should plan for- ones where the players' goal is separate from killing all enemies. Easy examples are retrieving an item during combat, destroying or activating several structures on the playing field, protecting a npc, freeing a trapped npc, or even escaping from the combat location. Any non-combat goals within combat vary play immensely, and are also really great for creating stakes if player characters are more or less narratively invincible. So with extra goals you get to have real fail states that players care about but are not life and death for them.
I completely agree! I want to make a video on adding objectives into combats, because I think that's separate from a combat's type. Any combat type can have any objective. And then you can mix and match depending on your story's needs.
I also like: hopeless Players encounter a monster that CANNOT be defeated at their level or current point in time, but what they can do is run and slow it down so they can escape and hide. It works as great introduction to a big fat boss that they will want to beat later.
I tried that but it didn't work. I debuffed the enemy too much. 2 of the 4 lvl 6 party members were playing, intro'd an adult gold dragon in human form. He almost killed 1, and had about 20 hp when we ended the session.
@@soldierx345 That's why I called it hopeless, my party of 5 lvl 7 killed an adult green dragon in it's lair along with his dragonborn guard, giant hydra guardian and goblin ambush, all in one session with no rests [fights were separate though]. For this to work you have to pick something that could WIPE them turn 1 and make it spend that turn playing with them / killing other stuff / mocking them. Critical role and chroma conclave is a good example of that like someone mentioned.
@@Chodor101it likely would have worked if I didn't dumb down the stats, but they also have some goodies they likely wouldn't have if we started at lvl 1 (first time players, we started at level 5 for the halibut).
The types of combat you identify, and the terms you used for them, are great. It's a very useful architecture for looking at it. Helps remind us as DMs that the enemies have different goals.
This is BRILLIANT and I agree with your points! I especially like and appreciate your examples. Too many D&D channels talk about the principles without giving good examples; your examples were INSTANTLY understandable and recognizable. Made me say “ohhh, yeah, I know how I can do that in MY game.”
This is absolute fire. Great video! Especially helpful for new GMs like me. The way you organize the information, articulate the words your speaking and the points you're presenting, fantastic.
I really appreciate the thought process here. I think it's important for combat to serve some sort of purpose, and this video illustrates that very well. It's really easy to throw around combat just for the sake of combat, or to kill time. Combat is a narrative tool as well, and it certainly takes some finesse to utilize it effectively.
I had a chase scene combat through a canyon. Using modular terrain blocks (RP Archive inspired), I always moved the board further, disassembled the parts too far behind and assembled what was ahead of the players. In front of them were dozens of wounded enemies who used the canyon to retreat from a battle, while from behind, they were chased by fresh enemies. Wounded meant that enemies died by taking any hit larger 11 damage or two hits of any damage. The goal of the players was to reach the camp of their allies.
3.x was designed for encounters to be a wide variety of difficulties, for this reason among others. But the community complained about the first adventures designed following the wide variety of difficulties method. I don’t know why, but the community got this ridiculous notion from somewhere that encounters had to all be balanced.
protecting NPC's or innocents through multiple combats adds a layer of the Puzzle to every fight. We've lost a few we were very engaged with, to a great table reaction of disappointment. One other important combat to mention, which our brilliant DM often employs is the ability to talk to many of the intelligent creatures. We fall into this trap often because we want to roll our sleeves up and roll some dice, but when the 'world' is 'real' some of our most brutal encounters could have been entirely avoided if we had just chatted to to the enemy. Which would have added more lore, plot points, side quests and faction intrigue. In a world of never ending bad guys and character choices affecting the world this adds plenty to the experience.
I would add 2 9: Darkest Hour: The PCs should only face this as a foreseeable consequence of many bad choices, or to enhance a theme set during session zero: They are woefully unprepared for the monster. They need to engage in a desperate withdrawal. Perhaps even sacrifice someone to hold back the tide while the rest run away. Or they take their last stand heroically. Maybe there is help coming? But until then, it is survival horror gameplay. 10. Mass Combat. This is often dealt with an entirely separate system overlaid upon the game, and can include encounters from all the previous categories. It deserves its own mentioning. It's not just a Horde. Its not just a puzzle. It is... More than a sum of it's parts.
Great tips! I once unintentionally put together an 'Elite Team' of NPCs-a group of seven Harper allies to support the players. But since neither side really knew each other, the players got suspicious. Our barbarian decided to attack without a second thought, and... well, it turned into a total bloodbath! Two player characters and the entire Harper team were wiped out in the chaos! 😂
That was pretty eye-opening, actually. I've never really thought too deep on all the different combat niches. But that's honestly really cool. That said, I do feel like you probably could have pointed out chase sequences as well, not all of them count as combat, but if you know how to use them effectively, I feel like they could be even more engaging than a normal battle! Honestly, I'm glad I happened upon this. Thanks for a cool new look at things.
Addition: Puzzle fights can also include Zelda or Horizon Zero dawn like mechanics, maybe a certain element doesnt hurt it but prevents it from using a devastating attack. These fights should be given opportunity to learn about your opponent before the serious fight, this can be the enemy showing off, the enemy fighting someone else, or some lore documentation of the weakness of the creature or opponent.
One of my favorite combat encounters is the minecart madness cliche, where a group of 2+ enemies are getting away on a minecart that can be accelerated by pushing a lever on it back and forth. The cart moves at a speed reliant on the character(s) whose pushing the lever, at a factor of 10x their strength modifier. The lever takes an action to pump/accelerate and the cart can fall off the rails at some sections if moving too fast (but give your players ample warning with a visibly broken guardrail in front of a sharp turn.) This new dynamic of action economy / movement through atypical means is always guaranteed to stick in your party's collective thoughts.
With my party at level 20, i regularly use hordes of monsters. I created stat blocks based on low cr monsters and modified their stats to reflect that it is a Gargantuan sized mass. As their hp reduces, they become less effective, even flee. It also great narrative. Having the barbarian swing their hammer and smash half a dozen rat men to the floor in a single bloody swing is appealing, or the ranged fighter unleashed a blizzard of arrows. Yes, it's one attack, but it's more fun to describe. If you need help with descriptions, read gotrex and Felix books 😂
There's a variation of the boss battle that might be it's own category: the prayer. This one is unwinnable unless your players get insane luck or pull off insane shenanigans. This one isn't usually a killing one though, maybe they are a level 4 party fighting a dragon, who instead of killing them takes them to their lair as trophies. Or perhaps the big bad was planning on capturing them for an experiment, and if they lose they then have to break out of the fortress.
I highly recommend taking a look at the SitRep system from Lancer (a tactical mecha ttrpg with heavy influence from 4e d&d.) Sitreps are a series of, essentially, templates for combat that pilots may encounter in a mission. Each sitrep represents a different objective for combat, very few of which include “defeat everyone”. Instead they’re things like: control this point for x number of rounds; escort this npc safely to the extraction zone; survive against overwhelming odds for long enough to let someone else escape; enter this fortified area, grab the objective, and flee with it; etc. There’s a bit of legwork to make this kind of template work in a non-sci-fi, non-military setting, but the thing that I find so compelling about sitreps is the way that those objectives just ooze story possibilities. If the pc’s job isn’t just “hit all the baddies till they stop moving” it immediately lends itself to more immersive storytelling. What are they protecting? Who are they escorting? What do they need to retrieve? In short: one should always look towards varying the objectives of a combat, not just the particulars of it.
I personally love puzzle fights! I run systems other than D&D, primarily Genesys and the FFG Star Wars RPG (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, Force & Destiny). My favorite boss fights to throw at my players aren't just "fight the thing until it's dead." Right now, for instance, I'm running a Castlevania-themed Genesys campaign. All the enemies are much more powerful than the ordinary human PCs, since the enemies are all powerful supernatural creatures. But, every enemy has some manner of vulnerability that can be exploited, and it's on the players to figure out what that weakness is and how best to make use of it. Dracula himself is an obvious example. Way too strong to be fought head-on with brute strength. But holy water, sunlight, ect, all weaken him and make it possible for the party to hold their own.
Oh yes! If I run Strahd again, I'll lean into that! Make him literally immune to all damage without the required "vampire killing things" - good stuff!
There's also a difference between a Boss Battle as you propose it, and the Mid-Boss Battle, which doesn't end the campaign but might end an arc of a campaign or setup the climax for that arc. I also like to mix and match aspects of different types of combat in the same initiative.
"Just throw enemies at them." ... fuck, no. Not on my table. There are enemies when it makes sense in the game world. Usually with levels of escalation and mortal combat only one option on how to deal with the situation.
Id propose another type. The unwinnable. A battle that's mostly used to establish the threat of the bad guys and keep the PCs off their feet. Something that's so hopelessly over powered for them that they have to think creatively about how to subvert the threat or run away to fight another day. Great for humbling the PCs and giving them motivation to fight later on
been thinking about making it so most of the normal Monsters (stuff like Dragons, Owlbears, or a few of the monsters I'd added in my games) are a bit of a mix between a targeted strike & Puzzle, same with some of the bosses, albeit with the bosses its more just trying to find information about them. The idea is to try and make it so the party learns things about the monster, whether by hearing about it or even just observing it, and then they do whatever they can to kill it while the monster then tries to counter in any way it can, and goes back & forth (ex. someone jumps into a red dragons horde, and uses the threat of the dragon damaging its own horde to prevent it from using it breath weapon, only for it to attempt to throw the players out and away from the horde so it can use its breath weapon safely).
I think you could also add the social/story battle, which is close to the puzzle battle but the fight becomes context around moving the story forward. In these, there is always another goal or purpose around which some conflict happens and complicates. It could be a chase where an enemy is getting away with the mcguffin and others are trying to delay the party. An easy battle but the party needs to sneak in somewhere and so must choose who and how to kill quickly and quietly. The fight becomes something different as it doesn't really matter about winning, rather the enemies become obstacles to be negotiated, and killing may just be one way of doing that.
I made a combat where the boss and the minions both had a reaction where they would get a free attack on a player that kills a minion which they all have low hp, but the boss has a legendary where he gains a reaction when a minion dies. basically they just had to realize the boss has to die before more minions
I think my biggest issue is making combats feel important. My players are heading into an abandoned building to talk to a ghost noc that they have to meet for a quest, but the abandoned building is full of giant spiders and skeletons in the book. Preparing ahead of time and changing out the spiders for other types of ghosts who attack on sight until their bodies are found and buried, or something related to the ghost npc would make places feel more connected. If im running a prewritten adventure, there's almost always a dozen encounters that are there to just add combat, but the enemy types feel out of place or a weird choice for the story even if it makes sense a bunch of spiders live in an abandoned house. The connection to the story isn't there
Hahaha! Yeahhh! He had a strange relationship with death. Came back from it repeatedly, bartered that deal with the Raven Queen I mentioned. And of course, in a dice-mandated twist of ironic fate, he's the one that died and didn't get better!
@@Mystic-Arts-DM Your video has inspired me to further prep the next sessions combat. My players will likely attempt to help a clan cross a swamp and I am planning to have a puzzle enemy, something that swoops in, grabs a few folks and vanishes in the darkness. They can leave the caravan to pursue it (leaving the caravan unguarded), decide to speed up as much as possible, etc. Taking inspiration from the videogame banner saga they will have a specific count of survivors, each decision making it go down by a certain amount.
"your players will spend the rest of the combat wondering "is something else coming"" in my experience they will spend the rest of the combat saying how unfair i am and this is bullshit
the main issue with advice like this is that dnd 5e doesn't have much to help GMs with designing encounters like this, there's very little mechanical assistance, which can make it difficult for new GMs who don't want to risk homebrewing stuff that's accidentally way too powerful and wipes the party. that's why I like to look at other games for advice, dnd 4e has some brilliant encounter design tips and stat blocks that you can steal abilities from for boss fights, and pf2e has an online rules reference that also has some pretty great stuff to pull from. there's also other systems that do combat (in my opinion) a lot better than dnd 5e. the reason most fights in dnd 5e turn into skirmishes is because the game is essentially a skirmish game, there's a lot of other ways to design a combat system, such as Cyberpunk 2020's high lethality gunfights that rely a lot more on careful positioning and cover than on high damage rolls, or mythras' duel system which turns every sword swing into multiple rolls worth of dramatic action, but this video is a pretty great resource on making the skirmish style of combat work well
I think I disagree with the premise, but good video. For example, what if you simple have some sort of dungeon, like some sort of underground unearthed base of monsters preparing for war, let's say they're orcs. This place is pretty huge, let's say it has 80 rooms with some 20 encounters, 12 of which are orcs, and the other 10 are all sorts of different incidental creatures or wargs or whatever else is around. Most of the time the orcs are either doing in something in the room they're in until the players show up, or they are patrolling moving from one place to another. It's gonna feel same-y but, on one hand it doesn't matter, because presumably if you were to kill 100 orcs in real life, each kill wouldn't be that different from the other, but you are representing the world as it would be. I guess you should factor in things that could be interesting about the dungeon itself or about each individual room but, man, it's a TON of work to try to make every single orc encounter have some unique aspect to it after the 5th or 6th group you run into, especially with random encounters.
The main problem I have wih base-level D&D combat is how much you can do in a turn, whether creatively or practically "I cast firebolt" **passes turm** "... I hit him, twice" **Passes turn**
and then there's the ship to ship (or any other large vehicular or maybe siege-like combat) where player contribute to a larger scale battle above their normal personal scale. I think it probably fits in somewhere between Skirmish and Puzzle? though unless a campaign is focused on it I suppose this type of battle will only come up very rarely.
That's a slightly kit-bashed version of the Celestant Prime from Warhammer! It was the main endboss for my 6 year campaign, which I may have lifted from Matt Colville's Invincible Overlord... who can say?
Great video! One thing i think is important is that, most of the time, only Elite Team and Boss Battle should feel deadly! I am in a campaign right now where the DM thinks that every Encounter should feel like a Boss Battle, but that just creates a game where Boss Battles feel anti-climactic.
This somewhat seems to imply the GM chooses (which they do in a literal sense) but I put my players at the help of ambush or being ambushed. Do they scout, gather intel. etc. I certainly dont choose to hand it out as a reward they. I think maybe I am more sandbox simulationist than narrativist GM. Yeah in fact I run all of these types of encounters but not because I choose its because my PLAYERS make it happen!!
The players of course have tremendous control. I tend to think of it as the power to shift encounters from one type to another. They can turn the ambush into a skrimish, or avoid the horde of bad guys entierly, or whatever else!
Besides the puzzle, they all seem mechanically nearly identical. In the TTRPG groupe i am in, we usually play arround objectives and time limits to fulfil those objectives. How does that fit in into DnD? Or are all kinds of objective based fights puzzles?
Of course everyone has their own style of play, to each their own. And I think any battle could result in death, goodness knows many random deaths have occurred at my table, often long before the finale. But for me, it's more about expectations. Players expect life to be on the line in the finale, usually in my experience, not in other fights. That doesn't mean it won't happen.
It's about the story. How many novels have one of the main characters die to a random encounter with a giant rat in the sewers? In D&D you have a tension between the "game" elements, that says that you should have something on the line and stakes for the battle to mean anything vs the dramatic elements that want any deaths to contribute to the story. Some people lean more into the strategy/game/etc side of things - other people lean more into the story side.
Your piano track is slightly too loud / sharp in points to your talking. Might be worth moving to something softer as it was a click away moment on an otherwise good video.
My battles have been a little lucklaster (been running DH in CoS)...Thanks I know how to tor_ make it more fun! need to start being cool with actually adding in some stakes and tension hahaha
My favourite is boss double feature. Did they think it was a boss fight they had no chance in winning fairly? They gonna shit them pants when they realize its actually TWO fucking monsters they cant win against. Just an absolute lateral thinking match, usually best to actually make the big monsters fight eachother, so faction play becomes really important if they didnt care about it before. My fav was a lvl 1 shadowdark party finding a haunted forest and a dungeon. The forest had a weeping angel-adjacent creep (willowman) and the dungeon had a medusa. I call it "damned if you see, damned if you dont". They all actually made it trough that session. Also a big highlight was a 5e session in a submarine with a dissecated aboleth inside and a spiderdragon outside (skinned as a mantis-shrimp-dragon). Yes, they shoot the aboleth to the shrimpdragon using the torpedo bay.
I propose a ninth: The all-out battle. Characterized by hordes of weaker enemies alongside bigger ones and even possible elite-tier badguys. But it's not just the players fighting them, they also have allies. This could be an army of their own or collection of elite NPCs, likely allies they've built up over the course of the campaign or just relevant to a particular story arc. There might also be a set of actual objectives here. Kill the commander, defend a point, hold a point, take a point, route the enemy, buy time, capture a target. You name it.
For inspiration for these, I like to look to wargames and movies. 40K and Lancer (yes I know its an RPG) both have a number of tactical objectives you can borrow whole cloth. I've even ran a naval battle directly inspired by the maelstrom battle at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, where the players and their allies were tasked with taking down a treasure fleet carrying tons upon tons of gold.
Anyway, subscribed.
You would never run the larger battle as a combat though.
You would narratively describe the wider battle and then only use the D&D mechanics for anything where the players get involved.
Otherwise you just spend an hour with the players watching you roll dice with yourself.
these battles can be a lot of fun, but you definitely have to use them sparingly because huge amounts of enemies and allies really slows down the game, so it could easily leave players not engaged
@@ZarchAlDain You can absolutely run larger battles as a combat, or at least segments of them that are still fairly large. Troop-type NPCs as seen in Pathfinder (swarms made up of Small or larger sized creatures) can take a dozen+ entities and make them a single enemy, allowing you to keep the battle densely populated while requiring far less micromanagement and dice rolling, and can be used for both allies and enemies. There are also minion types, which are normal statblocks but will go down in 1-2 hits regardless of where they came from, if you wanna get more in on the micro.
I've also heard of people pre-determining the actions that troops can take and full-on eliminating the dice rolls between allied and enemy NPCs. Another strategy is to simply let the players command or even directly control allied NPCs (usually these troops) so that they're always playing and not watching you fight yourself. Effectively, they're playing a Warhammer game against you. Pathfinder 1e (idk if 2e has these rules yet) also had a large-scale combat rule system. I don't particularly enjoy it personally, but I'm sure someone can and has gotten mileage out of it. I know it's a large part of Wrath of the Righteous at least.
@@ScaredJade Absolutely. I wouldn't recommend running these particularly often, maybe just a few times per campaign at most. Any more than that and it becomes a bit of a chore for your players, and a bit of a headache to prep for.
This is where you'd use the mass combat rules from older editions of D&D e.g. BECMI that are just straight up missing from modern editions 😢
Wouldnt be too hard to convert, but a simpler approach is just to treat each unit of troops as a single statblock with an attack and damage roll and a number of HP equivalent to the number of soldiers in the unit, and every time they get "hit" they lose a number of troops equivalent to the damage roll, and their attack bonus is reduced. Use morale rules, so roll for morale when half the troops in a unit are dead, etc
Tip for the ambush: allow smart players to learn about the ambush ahead of time.
Once my players took the time to climb up a wall to look through the high windows and saw the cultists hiding inside waiting for them. This changed the entire situation, as they knew where the enemies where, but those were also aware of them and in advantageous positions, so they had to figure out a strategy. It became a great combat
This was concise, FRESH, and so helpful. Subscribed!
I like how you link the combat and the story together. That's definitely something I could use more of
" No matter how good the story wont survive /or be to be quality iif the DM is saddled with a Lame'o group of players" - Chris Perkins
17 years of running D&D and I've only ever considered combat as a way to resolve stories, not to create and expand them. Reminder that there's always more to learn.
This is the first time seeing a video from this channel. Within 90 seconds, I have a strong suspicion this guy has watched a lot of Matt Colville, and I mean that as a high compliment!
You got me.
@@Mystic-Arts-DM The "boss battle" figurine of the floating golden dude reminded me of Ajax the Invincible actually
There's another type of fight that gm's should plan for- ones where the players' goal is separate from killing all enemies. Easy examples are retrieving an item during combat, destroying or activating several structures on the playing field, protecting a npc, freeing a trapped npc, or even escaping from the combat location. Any non-combat goals within combat vary play immensely, and are also really great for creating stakes if player characters are more or less narratively invincible. So with extra goals you get to have real fail states that players care about but are not life and death for them.
I completely agree! I want to make a video on adding objectives into combats, because I think that's separate from a combat's type. Any combat type can have any objective. And then you can mix and match depending on your story's needs.
This is awesome, Cheers 😊
I also like: hopeless
Players encounter a monster that CANNOT be defeated at their level or current point in time, but what they can do is run and slow it down so they can escape and hide.
It works as great introduction to a big fat boss that they will want to beat later.
Very much CR and the arrival of the Chroma Conclave... "19 misses?!?!"
I tried that but it didn't work. I debuffed the enemy too much.
2 of the 4 lvl 6 party members were playing, intro'd an adult gold dragon in human form. He almost killed 1, and had about 20 hp when we ended the session.
@@soldierx345 That's why I called it hopeless, my party of 5 lvl 7 killed an adult green dragon in it's lair along with his dragonborn guard, giant hydra guardian and goblin ambush, all in one session with no rests [fights were separate though].
For this to work you have to pick something that could WIPE them turn 1 and make it spend that turn playing with them / killing other stuff / mocking them.
Critical role and chroma conclave is a good example of that like someone mentioned.
Players usually don't make heroes that run away from fights. This needs to be bluntly telegraphed.
@@Chodor101it likely would have worked if I didn't dumb down the stats, but they also have some goodies they likely wouldn't have if we started at lvl 1 (first time players, we started at level 5 for the halibut).
The types of combat you identify, and the terms you used for them, are great. It's a very useful architecture for looking at it. Helps remind us as DMs that the enemies have different goals.
This is amazing. One of the best and well-presented videos on combat encounters I've seen.
Wow, thank you!
This is BRILLIANT and I agree with your points! I especially like and appreciate your examples. Too many D&D channels talk about the principles without giving good examples; your examples were INSTANTLY understandable and recognizable. Made me say “ohhh, yeah, I know how I can do that in MY game.”
This is absolute fire. Great video! Especially helpful for new GMs like me. The way you organize the information, articulate the words your speaking and the points you're presenting, fantastic.
Glad it was helpful! Thanks so much!
I really appreciate the thought process here. I think it's important for combat to serve some sort of purpose, and this video illustrates that very well. It's really easy to throw around combat just for the sake of combat, or to kill time. Combat is a narrative tool as well, and it certainly takes some finesse to utilize it effectively.
This was very timely and useful. Thank you. Subbed.
Damn, way to come out of the gate swinging, man! This is great stuff. Welcome to the dungeontube community. Excited to see this channel grow.
Awesome vid! Loved it! Fantastic way to break it down. Thank you!
I had a chase scene combat through a canyon. Using modular terrain blocks (RP Archive inspired), I always moved the board further, disassembled the parts too far behind and assembled what was ahead of the players.
In front of them were dozens of wounded enemies who used the canyon to retreat from a battle, while from behind, they were chased by fresh enemies. Wounded meant that enemies died by taking any hit larger 11 damage or two hits of any damage.
The goal of the players was to reach the camp of their allies.
3.x was designed for encounters to be a wide variety of difficulties, for this reason among others. But the community complained about the first adventures designed following the wide variety of difficulties method. I don’t know why, but the community got this ridiculous notion from somewhere that encounters had to all be balanced.
protecting NPC's or innocents through multiple combats adds a layer of the Puzzle to every fight. We've lost a few we were very engaged with, to a great table reaction of disappointment.
One other important combat to mention, which our brilliant DM often employs is the ability to talk to many of the intelligent creatures. We fall into this trap often because we want to roll our sleeves up and roll some dice, but when the 'world' is 'real' some of our most brutal encounters could have been entirely avoided if we had just chatted to to the enemy. Which would have added more lore, plot points, side quests and faction intrigue. In a world of never ending bad guys and character choices affecting the world this adds plenty to the experience.
I would add 2
9: Darkest Hour: The PCs should only face this as a foreseeable consequence of many bad choices, or to enhance a theme set during session zero: They are woefully unprepared for the monster. They need to engage in a desperate withdrawal. Perhaps even sacrifice someone to hold back the tide while the rest run away. Or they take their last stand heroically. Maybe there is help coming? But until then, it is survival horror gameplay.
10. Mass Combat. This is often dealt with an entirely separate system overlaid upon the game, and can include encounters from all the previous categories. It deserves its own mentioning. It's not just a Horde. Its not just a puzzle. It is... More than a sum of it's parts.
Great tips! I once unintentionally put together an 'Elite Team' of NPCs-a group of seven Harper allies to support the players. But since neither side really knew each other, the players got suspicious. Our barbarian decided to attack without a second thought, and... well, it turned into a total bloodbath! Two player characters and the entire Harper team were wiped out in the chaos! 😂
That was pretty eye-opening, actually. I've never really thought too deep on all the different combat niches. But that's honestly really cool.
That said, I do feel like you probably could have pointed out chase sequences as well, not all of them count as combat, but if you know how to use them effectively, I feel like they could be even more engaging than a normal battle!
Honestly, I'm glad I happened upon this. Thanks for a cool new look at things.
Well this was inspiring, definitely gonna apply some of these bits to my table!
Wonderful!
I’m shocked how few subs you have, awesome video, you’re going to do amazing on this platform man
Great video. Really made me think about my combat design.
holy shit this video is incredibly well made, was expecting a massive channel. Great job keep it up i want to use these in my games.
Addition: Puzzle fights can also include Zelda or Horizon Zero dawn like mechanics, maybe a certain element doesnt hurt it but prevents it from using a devastating attack. These fights should be given opportunity to learn about your opponent before the serious fight, this can be the enemy showing off, the enemy fighting someone else, or some lore documentation of the weakness of the creature or opponent.
One of my favorite combat encounters is the minecart madness cliche, where a group of 2+ enemies are getting away on a minecart that can be accelerated by pushing a lever on it back and forth. The cart moves at a speed reliant on the character(s) whose pushing the lever, at a factor of 10x their strength modifier. The lever takes an action to pump/accelerate and the cart can fall off the rails at some sections if moving too fast (but give your players ample warning with a visibly broken guardrail in front of a sharp turn.) This new dynamic of action economy / movement through atypical means is always guaranteed to stick in your party's collective thoughts.
The one I would add to this is the chase scene. fights where mobility is paramount to winning the battle
Stomping grounds can be fun. I love making terrified goblin noises as the paladin rushes straight for a heavily outmatched little minion.
With my party at level 20, i regularly use hordes of monsters. I created stat blocks based on low cr monsters and modified their stats to reflect that it is a Gargantuan sized mass.
As their hp reduces, they become less effective, even flee.
It also great narrative. Having the barbarian swing their hammer and smash half a dozen rat men to the floor in a single bloody swing is appealing, or the ranged fighter unleashed a blizzard of arrows. Yes, it's one attack, but it's more fun to describe.
If you need help with descriptions, read gotrex and Felix books 😂
Great video! Excited to see what else comes from your channel, it's off to an excellent start!
Thanks so much! And welcome along!
There's a variation of the boss battle that might be it's own category: the prayer. This one is unwinnable unless your players get insane luck or pull off insane shenanigans. This one isn't usually a killing one though, maybe they are a level 4 party fighting a dragon, who instead of killing them takes them to their lair as trophies. Or perhaps the big bad was planning on capturing them for an experiment, and if they lose they then have to break out of the fortress.
I highly recommend taking a look at the SitRep system from Lancer (a tactical mecha ttrpg with heavy influence from 4e d&d.)
Sitreps are a series of, essentially, templates for combat that pilots may encounter in a mission. Each sitrep represents a different objective for combat, very few of which include “defeat everyone”. Instead they’re things like: control this point for x number of rounds; escort this npc safely to the extraction zone; survive against overwhelming odds for long enough to let someone else escape; enter this fortified area, grab the objective, and flee with it; etc.
There’s a bit of legwork to make this kind of template work in a non-sci-fi, non-military setting, but the thing that I find so compelling about sitreps is the way that those objectives just ooze story possibilities. If the pc’s job isn’t just “hit all the baddies till they stop moving” it immediately lends itself to more immersive storytelling. What are they protecting? Who are they escorting? What do they need to retrieve?
In short: one should always look towards varying the objectives of a combat, not just the particulars of it.
Good advice, thank you
I personally love puzzle fights! I run systems other than D&D, primarily Genesys and the FFG Star Wars RPG (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, Force & Destiny). My favorite boss fights to throw at my players aren't just "fight the thing until it's dead." Right now, for instance, I'm running a Castlevania-themed Genesys campaign. All the enemies are much more powerful than the ordinary human PCs, since the enemies are all powerful supernatural creatures. But, every enemy has some manner of vulnerability that can be exploited, and it's on the players to figure out what that weakness is and how best to make use of it. Dracula himself is an obvious example. Way too strong to be fought head-on with brute strength. But holy water, sunlight, ect, all weaken him and make it possible for the party to hold their own.
Oh yes! If I run Strahd again, I'll lean into that! Make him literally immune to all damage without the required "vampire killing things" - good stuff!
At 1.25 speed, if I close my eyes, I feel like I'm listening to a young Bernie Sanders
There's also a difference between a Boss Battle as you propose it, and the Mid-Boss Battle, which doesn't end the campaign but might end an arc of a campaign or setup the climax for that arc.
I also like to mix and match aspects of different types of combat in the same initiative.
"Just throw enemies at them."
... fuck, no. Not on my table.
There are enemies when it makes sense in the game world. Usually with levels of escalation and mortal combat only one option on how to deal with the situation.
Celestant Prime is quite a boss battle alright!
This is a great video! I really like the categories you presented!
Gives me new ideas for the horde encounter next session...
Love this guide, I'm a fairly new DM and always looking to find ways of making combat more varied. You've given me some great ideas
We've got more coming! Thanks for watching!
remember us when your channel goes huge!!
Hahaha! That's sweet! Help us make it happen!
Great video mate! Gets me excited to DM again!
First video I’ve seen of yours too, happy to sub and binge what you’ve put out 😁
Great job. I'll use the last one in my next encounter.
Id propose another type. The unwinnable. A battle that's mostly used to establish the threat of the bad guys and keep the PCs off their feet. Something that's so hopelessly over powered for them that they have to think creatively about how to subvert the threat or run away to fight another day.
Great for humbling the PCs and giving them motivation to fight later on
also great for a tpk when the ding dong players don't get it.
been thinking about making it so most of the normal Monsters (stuff like Dragons, Owlbears, or a few of the monsters I'd added in my games) are a bit of a mix between a targeted strike & Puzzle, same with some of the bosses, albeit with the bosses its more just trying to find information about them. The idea is to try and make it so the party learns things about the monster, whether by hearing about it or even just observing it, and then they do whatever they can to kill it while the monster then tries to counter in any way it can, and goes back & forth (ex. someone jumps into a red dragons horde, and uses the threat of the dragon damaging its own horde to prevent it from using it breath weapon, only for it to attempt to throw the players out and away from the horde so it can use its breath weapon safely).
I think you could also add the social/story battle, which is close to the puzzle battle but the fight becomes context around moving the story forward. In these, there is always another goal or purpose around which some conflict happens and complicates. It could be a chase where an enemy is getting away with the mcguffin and others are trying to delay the party. An easy battle but the party needs to sneak in somewhere and so must choose who and how to kill quickly and quietly. The fight becomes something different as it doesn't really matter about winning, rather the enemies become obstacles to be negotiated, and killing may just be one way of doing that.
This was interesting, I had to go back and rewatch parts because your stories spawned new ideas and I got lost. Thank you
Where does the invisible grizzly bear in a slippery, violently shaking mirror maze with strobing spotlights fit?
This one's a thinker. Give me the week and I'll get back to you.
I made a combat where the boss and the minions both had a reaction where they would get a free attack on a player that kills a minion which they all have low hp, but the boss has a legendary where he gains a reaction when a minion dies. basically they just had to realize the boss has to die before more minions
Not a novel concept, but you chose your categories well. The video was well presented, and weaving in solid examples really helped.
Ironic that the only PC that wasn't brought back after death was named Lazarus.
It had to be him!
The cut to Django made me cackle out loud! These are some excellent combat scenarios!
It was a little reward!
First time here, great advice, great examples. Subscribed!
Welcome aboard!
Love the video! Looks super professional and you have a very dramatic presentation style. I’ll be subscribing!
I think my biggest issue is making combats feel important. My players are heading into an abandoned building to talk to a ghost noc that they have to meet for a quest, but the abandoned building is full of giant spiders and skeletons in the book. Preparing ahead of time and changing out the spiders for other types of ghosts who attack on sight until their bodies are found and buried, or something related to the ghost npc would make places feel more connected. If im running a prewritten adventure, there's almost always a dozen encounters that are there to just add combat, but the enemy types feel out of place or a weird choice for the story even if it makes sense a bunch of spiders live in an abandoned house. The connection to the story isn't there
You're telling me the only one in the party that didn't get resurrected was named Lazarus??
Hahaha! Yeahhh! He had a strange relationship with death. Came back from it repeatedly, bartered that deal with the Raven Queen I mentioned. And of course, in a dice-mandated twist of ironic fate, he's the one that died and didn't get better!
Dope video! Looking forward to the channel's future!
More to come!
Great stuff - combat can be so much more than just numbers hitting each other.
Exactly! Combat isn't separate from story, it's the conflict in the story!
@@Mystic-Arts-DM Your video has inspired me to further prep the next sessions combat.
My players will likely attempt to help a clan cross a swamp and I am planning to have a puzzle enemy, something that swoops in, grabs a few folks and vanishes in the darkness. They can leave the caravan to pursue it (leaving the caravan unguarded), decide to speed up as much as possible, etc.
Taking inspiration from the videogame banner saga they will have a specific count of survivors, each decision making it go down by a certain amount.
Yes! Banner Saga is so cool!
"your players will spend the rest of the combat wondering "is something else coming"" in my experience they will spend the rest of the combat saying how unfair i am and this is bullshit
Awesome video break down, Im a relatively new DM myself.
the main issue with advice like this is that dnd 5e doesn't have much to help GMs with designing encounters like this, there's very little mechanical assistance, which can make it difficult for new GMs who don't want to risk homebrewing stuff that's accidentally way too powerful and wipes the party. that's why I like to look at other games for advice, dnd 4e has some brilliant encounter design tips and stat blocks that you can steal abilities from for boss fights, and pf2e has an online rules reference that also has some pretty great stuff to pull from.
there's also other systems that do combat (in my opinion) a lot better than dnd 5e. the reason most fights in dnd 5e turn into skirmishes is because the game is essentially a skirmish game, there's a lot of other ways to design a combat system, such as Cyberpunk 2020's high lethality gunfights that rely a lot more on careful positioning and cover than on high damage rolls, or mythras' duel system which turns every sword swing into multiple rolls worth of dramatic action, but this video is a pretty great resource on making the skirmish style of combat work well
Subscriber 284 here. Taking notes.
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Great video! It’s good to see a fellow creator making some good ttrpg content!
Keep it up!
Thanks and ditto! I'll go check out your videos!
I think I disagree with the premise, but good video. For example, what if you simple have some sort of dungeon, like some sort of underground unearthed base of monsters preparing for war, let's say they're orcs. This place is pretty huge, let's say it has 80 rooms with some 20 encounters, 12 of which are orcs, and the other 10 are all sorts of different incidental creatures or wargs or whatever else is around. Most of the time the orcs are either doing in something in the room they're in until the players show up, or they are patrolling moving from one place to another. It's gonna feel same-y but, on one hand it doesn't matter, because presumably if you were to kill 100 orcs in real life, each kill wouldn't be that different from the other, but you are representing the world as it would be. I guess you should factor in things that could be interesting about the dungeon itself or about each individual room but, man, it's a TON of work to try to make every single orc encounter have some unique aspect to it after the 5th or 6th group you run into, especially with random encounters.
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Good job man, great content!
Really cool video and definitely some food for thought.
Hey just discovered your channel. Loved this. New subscriber now. :)
Welcome aboard! 🫡
I'm one of your first 100 subscribers! Here from the start of a great channel ;)
Wow thanks! And welcome along!
The main problem I have wih base-level D&D combat is how much you can do in a turn, whether creatively or practically
"I cast firebolt" **passes turm** "... I hit him, twice" **Passes turn**
This is DMG material.
and then there's the ship to ship (or any other large vehicular or maybe siege-like combat) where player contribute to a larger scale battle above their normal personal scale. I think it probably fits in somewhere between Skirmish and Puzzle? though unless a campaign is focused on it I suppose this type of battle will only come up very rarely.
Love that boss mini at 11:25, do you remember where its from? I'd love to get my hands on one xD
That's a slightly kit-bashed version of the Celestant Prime from Warhammer! It was the main endboss for my 6 year campaign, which I may have lifted from Matt Colville's Invincible Overlord... who can say?
amazing video, thank you.
could you make a video of how you make creature stat blocks? i would love to see your process
I think you just found your video that going to get your account to blow up
These last few days have been wild!
Great video!
One thing i think is important is that, most of the time, only Elite Team and Boss Battle should feel deadly! I am in a campaign right now where the DM thinks that every Encounter should feel like a Boss Battle, but that just creates a game where Boss Battles feel anti-climactic.
This somewhat seems to imply the GM chooses (which they do in a literal sense) but I put my players at the help of ambush or being ambushed. Do they scout, gather intel. etc. I certainly dont choose to hand it out as a reward they. I think maybe I am more sandbox simulationist than narrativist GM. Yeah in fact I run all of these types of encounters but not because I choose its because my PLAYERS make it happen!!
The players of course have tremendous control. I tend to think of it as the power to shift encounters from one type to another. They can turn the ambush into a skrimish, or avoid the horde of bad guys entierly, or whatever else!
This man looks like Henry Cavils younger brother.
I believe you're missing war battle, with lots of NPC's and minions on both sides + the party in the middle of it all
Besides the puzzle, they all seem mechanically nearly identical. In the TTRPG groupe i am in, we usually play arround objectives and time limits to fulfil those objectives. How does that fit in into DnD?
Or are all kinds of objective based fights puzzles?
I use objectives a lot too, and I think they can be added to combat types to further deepen them! I'll make a video on just that!
❤
The escape
Great video! But what's the resistance to PCs dying unless it's the FINAL BATTLE™? PCs put themselves in harm's way, harm's going to come their way.
Of course everyone has their own style of play, to each their own. And I think any battle could result in death, goodness knows many random deaths have occurred at my table, often long before the finale. But for me, it's more about expectations. Players expect life to be on the line in the finale, usually in my experience, not in other fights. That doesn't mean it won't happen.
It's about the story.
How many novels have one of the main characters die to a random encounter with a giant rat in the sewers?
In D&D you have a tension between the "game" elements, that says that you should have something on the line and stakes for the battle to mean anything vs the dramatic elements that want any deaths to contribute to the story.
Some people lean more into the strategy/game/etc side of things - other people lean more into the story side.
Great example of an elite team is the Iron Shepards in Critical Role's Mighty Nein.
Changed the whole campaign.
Well said.
Side note: I like your Halo 3 icon profile picture. I used the same icon with different colors, back in the glory days.
Your piano track is slightly too loud / sharp in points to your talking. Might be worth moving to something softer as it was a click away moment on an otherwise good video.
🥳🫂👍🏿
I submit that the dice mechanics can made a difference.
My battles have been a little lucklaster (been running DH in CoS)...Thanks I know how to tor_ make it more fun! need to start being cool with actually adding in some stakes and tension hahaha
lucklaster! I'm going to use that!
Checklists are a great tool. A graphic would have been really cool.
My favourite is boss double feature.
Did they think it was a boss fight they had no chance in winning fairly? They gonna shit them pants when they realize its actually TWO fucking monsters they cant win against.
Just an absolute lateral thinking match, usually best to actually make the big monsters fight eachother, so faction play becomes really important if they didnt care about it before.
My fav was a lvl 1 shadowdark party finding a haunted forest and a dungeon. The forest had a weeping angel-adjacent creep (willowman) and the dungeon had a medusa. I call it "damned if you see, damned if you dont". They all actually made it trough that session.
Also a big highlight was a 5e session in a submarine with a dissecated aboleth inside and a spiderdragon outside (skinned as a mantis-shrimp-dragon). Yes, they shoot the aboleth to the shrimpdragon using the torpedo bay.