"Has: Permanently Armed" just means you can't Command it to Drop its teeth and claws. Ooh. I've only ever rescued them or delivered the chest unopened as they were trying to do. I had no idea what was in it. There must be some limit to what it can be used against.
My friends and I are new to paper RPG games, and we were wondering how to manage fights with a low number of powerful enemies. It seems that the action economy in DnD is tailored in such a way, that fights are almost always optimised around a group of enemies rather than one Big Bad Guy. Fights like the one with Flind and her (yes, Flind is cannonicaly a female gnoll) small army is one way to tackle it, you create one fairly strong opponent and surround it with a fair amount of smaller guys that should act as distraction and hope that your party is out of area of effect spells which could easily trivialise the whole encounter.
Flind is a species, rather than a name. She may be female, but she is *a* flind. Action economy is...tricky. I've designed a few boss fights against a single powerful enemy, and each one I gave the boss some tricks that help balance the fight. For one it was an assassin in a warehouse who'd hit and run, jumping back into the rafters. She had to be pinned down for the party to be able to consistently attack her. The second had various control moves (like knocking foes back, disarming, moving around despite opportunity attacks, etc). He was very also very difficult to bring force to bear against.
If players/npcs are being smart a "surround and pound" is typically going to be more effective than splitting up due to DnD's action economy. It's why a lot of challenging creatures/bosses that are designed to be attacked with a full party have lair abilities, extra abilities, or can sometimes even take multiple turns in a round because otherwise they don't really stand a chance. An exception to "surround and pound" can be when using strategy to lock down an enemy or player to keep them from being the most effective. Another thing to do as a DM in managing fights is to use terrain/surroundings to advantage with ambushes, reinforcements, cover, misdirection/distractions, etc so that even if there is only a lower number of strong enemies it still makes a challenge for the party (as an example in the campaign I was in we were going after an opposing party and a few rounds in an enemy rogue we were unaware about attacked from hiding/invisibility our backrow by shanking the cleric). Force instances when the player group has to split up to succeed. Leveled npcs can actually be difficult to play effectively because the DM isn't as familiar with all the options the npcs have for skills and spells compared to character party members so especially in returning antagonists it does well for the DM to sit down and essentially character sheet them even if most of the information may never be used. Also equip npcs appropriately for their level because players are certainly going to use their equipment to its fullest. Finally as DM, it's worth knowing what the goal of each npc is during the fight- if it's to kill the player characters and/or friendly npcs then they need to be trying to do that; if it's escaping then that is what they need to be doing; stalling the players so that X happens on X turn then do so; etc. Some npcs are going to be mindless or are so focused on something they have no strategy but having npcs be smart and use strategy will elevate things quite a bit and not every encounter has to end with the other side being destroyed.
Is there something already in the flask or is it empty? Also, ain’t it always the way, you refuse to use a power that’s definitely going to corrupt you down the line, but it’s heavily implied you should be using it.
"Has: Permanently Armed" just means you can't Command it to Drop its teeth and claws.
Ooh. I've only ever rescued them or delivered the chest unopened as they were trying to do. I had no idea what was in it. There must be some limit to what it can be used against.
My friends and I are new to paper RPG games, and we were wondering how to manage fights with a low number of powerful enemies. It seems that the action economy in DnD is tailored in such a way, that fights are almost always optimised around a group of enemies rather than one Big Bad Guy. Fights like the one with Flind and her (yes, Flind is cannonicaly a female gnoll) small army is one way to tackle it, you create one fairly strong opponent and surround it with a fair amount of smaller guys that should act as distraction and hope that your party is out of area of effect spells which could easily trivialise the whole encounter.
Flind is a species, rather than a name. She may be female, but she is *a* flind.
Action economy is...tricky. I've designed a few boss fights against a single powerful enemy, and each one I gave the boss some tricks that help balance the fight.
For one it was an assassin in a warehouse who'd hit and run, jumping back into the rafters. She had to be pinned down for the party to be able to consistently attack her.
The second had various control moves (like knocking foes back, disarming, moving around despite opportunity attacks, etc). He was very also very difficult to bring force to bear against.
If players/npcs are being smart a "surround and pound" is typically going to be more effective than splitting up due to DnD's action economy. It's why a lot of challenging creatures/bosses that are designed to be attacked with a full party have lair abilities, extra abilities, or can sometimes even take multiple turns in a round because otherwise they don't really stand a chance. An exception to "surround and pound" can be when using strategy to lock down an enemy or player to keep them from being the most effective.
Another thing to do as a DM in managing fights is to use terrain/surroundings to advantage with ambushes, reinforcements, cover, misdirection/distractions, etc so that even if there is only a lower number of strong enemies it still makes a challenge for the party (as an example in the campaign I was in we were going after an opposing party and a few rounds in an enemy rogue we were unaware about attacked from hiding/invisibility our backrow by shanking the cleric). Force instances when the player group has to split up to succeed. Leveled npcs can actually be difficult to play effectively because the DM isn't as familiar with all the options the npcs have for skills and spells compared to character party members so especially in returning antagonists it does well for the DM to sit down and essentially character sheet them even if most of the information may never be used. Also equip npcs appropriately for their level because players are certainly going to use their equipment to its fullest.
Finally as DM, it's worth knowing what the goal of each npc is during the fight- if it's to kill the player characters and/or friendly npcs then they need to be trying to do that; if it's escaping then that is what they need to be doing; stalling the players so that X happens on X turn then do so; etc. Some npcs are going to be mindless or are so focused on something they have no strategy but having npcs be smart and use strategy will elevate things quite a bit and not every encounter has to end with the other side being destroyed.
Is there something already in the flask or is it empty? Also, ain’t it always the way, you refuse to use a power that’s definitely going to corrupt you down the line, but it’s heavily implied you should be using it.
Y'know, I've done another recording since this video, and I completely forgot to check the flask. I'll try to remember to check it next time I play.