Combat 201: 9 Tips for Fast & Exciting Combat Scenes - Playing RPGs
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 มิ.ย. 2024
- Spice and speed up your tabletop RPG combat scenes.
Find the Combat 101 video here: • Combat 101: Ten Tips f...
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Guest starring Todd, Mike, and Dweebles.
00:00 Intro
01:31 Describe Your Actions
05:25 Roll All of Your Dice at Once
06:40 Use the Appropriate Tactics for the NPCs
09:03 Adapt the Opponents for Your Party
12:30 NPCs Should React to Damage
15:44 Time Limits
17:59 Declare Actions at the Start of the Round
20:09 Give an End-of-Round Story
22:42 Have the Players Track NPC Damage
28:01 Closing and General Weirdness - เกม
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GM tip:
Don't ignore the damage die on a missed roll. Use the result as a "descriptive tool."
For example, a large damage roll can be interpreted as a mightly slash intercepted by the enemy's own blade with a ringing "clang!" Likewise, a low damage roll could be interpreted as "your blade slides along the Orc's breastplate with a faint "rasping" sound as he steps out of the way of your blow."
Using those roll results as prompts will make the combat just that much more exciting, even for you the GM, as you will not know the [descriptive] results of a hit until the die is rolled.
I dig that.
@@SSkorkowsky Keep up your own good work sir. You are greatly improving the hobby with your videos.
Great idea! Stolen!
Very good idea. You could even extend it to having a high-damage roll that missed very badly produce some kind of environmental effect/hazard/complication, eg you swing a mighty blow with your greataxe, forcing your foe to franticly dodge away - and your blade shears clean through one of the mine tunnel's supports. There's an ominous creaking sound, and you feel dust and dirt rain down from above.
Ok that's a great idea! That would be my objection to concurrent damage rolls otherwise, the psychology of "losing a good roll"
"Hello Internet, Seth Skorkowsky..." ah yes, music to my ears.
I put it on the same level as "Hey Hey people, Sseth here"
@@shotgunjustice9605 a man of culture
Aaah, listen to him... The Master of the Games... What sweet music he makes!
-Vlad D., ambitious transylvanian roleplayer
Now I can't stop thinking of Netflix challenge ratings.
Because you fought: Owlbear, you might enjoy: 16 Goblins.
Well, if I am the GM, you will prefer the Owlbear.
hilarious!
Because you fought: Zombies
You might enjoy: Alhoon
No, I don't think I would.
You look up a demon lord ONE TIME and now thats all it suggests!
@@DeathComesQuick666 Could be worse. How about watching A Bugs Life and then being recommend The Human Centipede (that happened to someone once). Not sure what the D&D equivalent to that would be. Battling a band of kobolds and being recommend an adult red dragon, maybe?
One useful GM prep idea: When you put together an encounter, take an extra few minutes and write yourself some quick notes on how you want each type/group of baddies to act under optimal circumstances. Doesn't need to be much, just a sentence or two, but include things like "hates spellcasters and will focus on them" or "will pause to loot bodies of fallen if not engaged" or "attempts to parley and offer a ransom if clearly losing" as appropriate. You have to adjust your combat scripts based on circumstances, but just having one will save time and brain wear by making some decisions in advance.
I recently started doing something like this!
I called it enemy AI, since it reminded me of the if branches I program for video game rpg enemy AI's.
I put in one or more bullet points that are 1 sentence long and use them as a guideline.
Typically an "if" statement will be included.
Like "if enemy is isolated, and if have allies = swarm and use pack tactics"
Or "if enemy has buff = use debuff skills"
Glad to see I am not the only one who came up with such a useful gm trick!
I'll actually vouch for this. I don't do a ton of combat encounters with my group, but when I write out my encounters, I'll basically make a table and label the monsters and across the top is Winning, Losing, Focus, and Aware to show their actions when they're winning, losing, who they focus on, and how aware they are when a PC goes down (for a killing attack) or if/when they know when to escape.
I once had a FATE game where one PC was in a drawn out solo combat mission. To keep the other players from getting bored, I would hand one of them the stats for a mini-boss type character each encounter so they could participate in this mission without their actual character being there. For each mini-boss, they had a goal like "Duel the solo PC one-on-one" or "Be the last one to die". If the player achieved that goal, their actual PC got a Fate Point
Very helpful to do that! Especially with monsters/creatures/NPCs that can cast spells, I've found that choosing the spells ahead of time saves me a boatload of time; otherwise I'll sit looking at the list of spells trying to make up my mind and bog the game down...
Also good to have planned ahead of time the "run away!" option: when will they decide to flee, and where/what direction will they flee? (or when will they attempt to negotiate an end to the combat...)
@@andrewlance3898 That's a good idea, actually. Helps the PCs with the thoughts of the opponents too. I might borrow that idea.
I love how Seth always manages to remind me of things I already knew but have forgotten or neglected to do. You're a treasure to the craft Seth.
My favorite part of describing my attack before I roll, is that when I fail my GM now turns my badass move into a fumbling duffus move.
Hopefully that isn't a consistent thing thing your DM does. Really turns the hero to a zero. Thats reserved for crit fails right!!
There are so many other ways to do bad attack rolls but it can just be an ineffective attack not just a miss. You can be blocked, you could clang off their armor or their shield, they could step back out of range etc etc..
Personally i hate it as a player when im supposed to be trained and experienced and i look like a drunk instead.
Outclassing me in enemy badassery is fine but at least make a show that im of the same skill level if it really is a competitve clash.
I'm getting into the habit of asking players what they "want to do" instead of what they "do". That way they can get into the mindset that whatever they do may or may not happen exactly as they described.
@@captaindudeman3613 as far as D&D goes, most hits that don't reduce HP to zero should be dodged, blocked or parried attacks anyway, glancing blows at worst.
You shouldn't be describing a hit with a battleaxe as digging deep into a characters flesh, except maybe when dealing with undead, demons/devils or regenerating enemies.
(or perhaps really big monsters where a single axe blow wouldn't kill it anyway.)
Roll your dice THEN describe what happens. That way you can narrate yourself why you missed/fumbled ect.
Also talk to your DM: it's a bad habit to describe every miss (even a nat 1) as a total 3 stooges level fumble, ruins the tone imo.
@@captaindudeman3613 I try to do this as GM. You're a trained soldier and veteran of a dozen brutal battles. You don't just swing your sword around at empty air. Instead, the goblin cowers from your attack, staying just out of reach of your blade. Or you realize the attack will leave you open to the enemies on your flank, so you hold off while you reposition. Same result, but the character comes off competent rather than clownish. Unless of course you're attempting something foolish. Then you can trip over an invisible turtle and be stunned for a round.
The pre-combat round is the most important addition to the combat scene. A tense still round of angry looks, weapons drawn, maybe a taunt, hidden threats slowly revealed, perceiving who will fight and who will flee. Western-genre films do this masterfully.
"When the music stops... Go for your +5 Holy Avenger Sword.", or, "There are two types of adventurers in this world; those who trigger all the traps at the front door, and those who sneak in via the secret passage under the waterfall."
Pre-combat round? .... That sounds like an amazing concept to me. I shall give this a try next time I get the chance.
This concept would work spectacular for Cyberpunk as players are rolling their Facedowns prior to the bullets flying. I will be stealing this idea. Thanks.
Great examples from 80's cartoons too.
@@SSkorkowsky oh you've got plenty of credit with me, I've being stealing ideas from you for a while now! :D
One thing I ask players when they default too much to “I attack” - I shift gears and ask “what would John Wick do?”
Then they feel like they have permission to be descriptive and imaginative
How to make combat more exciting: read the rules and know your character.
Nothing kills the mood faster than someone searching for the right dice or searching through their sheet for two minutes.
That's the intimidating part for new players though. I've seen new players freeze up at this moment or just give up in frustration, totally self-induced. Nobody wants to be the person who slows down the game, but sometimes it just happens, and a little patience shown to the new player pays off in spades.
@@lordzaboem Totally agree. I was thinking of situations where someone has been playing (even if it's been off and on) for months, or years.
I have been playing with the same group for a year, at least weekly, and I love the rp the group brings to the table but ho. ly. cow do the people im in a group with ever not know any of their game mechanics.
Its dnd. You roll the die, and add the SAME NUMBER 99.9999% of the time in combat.
Any pc in our campaign with more than one choice in combat takes at least 15 seconds to figure out what they want to do.
@@johnsnow5968 Man, that's rough deal. Sounds like they're more into the social interaction than the war gaming part of TTRPGs. Maybe they'd be better at Call of Cthulhu?
@@drawfiend3104 I would like to switch over to something more like dates but it's still the best rpg group I've been in, ever, so if they like dnd im fine witj sticking to ot
I just realized something, I can't help but think of all the characters in your videos as different people. I mean like actual different people, not just different characters, wholly different people.
I know you are just putting on a hat, beard, or whatever and talking differently, but their body language and speech are unique enough and executed well enough that I find myself defaulting hard enough to thinking of them as different people that it is almost hard to do otherwise.
To be fair, I genuinely thought they were different people until a video where he commented on his characters
I've had that weird feeling to. It isn't so much that I think of the characters all being different people; but, rather, that I get a jolt when I remember that they are all Seth. Especially Jack; he's too cool to be Seth.
Yes. I know what you mean. Seth is really good at impersonating characers and give them personality with very little to go on. Also he's a great storyteller. He really should write books - or maybe become a DM - I guess he would be pretty good at that :D
It comes as no surprise to me that a guy who has been roleplaying for decades has become good at impersonation and acting as characters in front of a camera.
Hur hur, awesome!
The cinematic recap of the last round is one of THE BEST things I have ever heard. I have always tried to do the cinematics as the round went along, which will still work. But NOW I can do a big recap which has the possibility to add even more "flare" to the action. I have been playing D&D since, yes, 1974. So believe me I encounter very few NEW things to me. That was absolutely awesome Seth!
Thank you!~
Long time player here, you got me beat by 6 years, sir! So awesome to see other folk still playing. My original group still intact regrouped 4 years ago and have been playing biweekly Gamma World/Star Frontiers mash-up face to face games. The cinematic recap of the round has been part of our game since the 80's but I'm seeing new things or things new to me that is all the time. Happy gaming brother!
Never too old to learn new tricks!
I ran a play by post game years ago where I did this, and it worked fantastic. Each player sent a declaration, I figured out all the results and at the end of the week I could post up a dynamic story integrating all the major action over the last several rounds. For some reason, it never occurred to me to try this in real time, face to face games.
“ Give us a brief descriptor.“ You hear that my players? Brief. As in, less than four paragraphs.
But I have to describe the family ties of the wielders of my can opener +1 so you can grasp the gravity of the situation, when I plunge my sacred family heirloom in some unfortunate monster.
“My god, it’s the mythical pebble of pig-smiting! The best weapon in the game! For you see, long ago this weapon was forged in the fiery pits of Tartarus...”
[an eternity later]
“...Thus, Mardoza, Guardian of the Pebble, fell to his knees, and passed from this world.”
“Are you done?”
“Yes. But the legacy of the pebble lives on.”
- SAO Abridged
@@Ellebeeby I can't help but, I read the [an eternity later] with a French accent...
"The trees with crooked branches lunched over the battlefield like miserable starving men sweeping in the in the wind under a pale grey sky in this cold day in april. A crow shrieks in the distance. The chaotic rhythmic tapping of raindrops on the forest floor. Demeter's tears biting down with stringing cold on any wanderer's brow. A plume of mist exhales from my nostrils as I size up the dark cloaked figure in front of me. Which reminds me of my childhood mentor, father Lux from the Akavian monastery where I grew up. Ah yes, I remember it was like it was yesterday - it was a cold winter's day; the sound of as hundred tunics rustling in synchronicity as the monks were already lined up for morning exercise hours before sunrise... "
Dungeon Craft and Seth Skorkowsky in the same day?! It must be an April Fools...
Now we can run awesome fights in quickly setup dungeons.
@@hjalmarthehelmetman but never in a tower!
They both publish new vids every Thursday (usually) and have for quite a while, I believe. Makes me look forward to the midweek. 🙂👌🏻
I love the summary at the end of the round. Especially as it gives you the ingame-opportunity to describe why certain actions failed.
I can't stress enough how I hate, getting the charackter mocked for bad dice luck.
Just assuming that all characters are heroes, or at least proficient in what they do - it's staggering how many professional fighters drop their sword or nearly decapitate their comrades or even themselves.
But yeah - if you explain those things by 'The dying monster slammed into your ally, shoving hin into your attack' makes way more sense, instead of declaring that the characters are just like the three stooges - just with swords instead of paint cans.
I have been guilty of the "I hit it with my sword" attacks. I will work on that.
Hey, I was a caster and definitely fell victim to just repeating "Firebolt!" for the longest time. Just takes some time is all. You got this ;c )
RP'ing takes time to get used to, and having a good group helps a lot.
@@kozetanaka5395 this reminds me of that cosplay video of the guy just yelling LIGHTNING BOLT " whilst throwing beansacks
4:07 I want to see Jack the NPC dancing to "What a feeling" from Flashdance.
Hey Seth, its Mike again. Me and my friends just finished the 6th session of our home game based on your Ashes of Onyx. I actually borrowed both the magic system and the entire setting itself from the novel since I thought instead of shoehorning your magic system into a D&D setting, it would be a lot better to build an entire homemade game system around your novel. We are calling it the Ashesverse.
The canon of the novel has been kept intact and our campaign takes place 5 weeks after the death of Candice. Our PCs are the newest recruits of the Ruby Tower based in Amarillo, Texas. The game is mage-centric (just like Potterverse) where PCs exclusively become mages. Got rid of the class system and made the game skill based: every PC starts off as an aspiring mage, gets recruited by a tower, learns and masters various magical skills. Replaced the level system with the 7 fold rank system of your novel, PC starts off as Neophyte eventually climbing the ladders to become a Magus. Reading tomes, attending lectures and practicing spells improve your magical skills. There are 15 (10 of which are initially available after becoming an initiate) different magical skills divided into 3 groups: Support (Healing, Shields, Warding etc), Offense (Fire/Ice/Shock/Force etc) and Abyssal (Elemental Absorption, Portal Travel, Astral Projection) [ Initially completely locked until the PC chooses the Viatoric path after becoming Magister Arcani] . Other than the 15 magical skills there are 10 Mundie skills (Lockpicking, Tech, Fighting etc) available to everyone from the get-go. The Golden spire acts as the police system in Ashesverse using 'Notoriety' as a reputation meter, gain too much of it and the Spire comes hunting for you. Another reputation scale is that of 'Influence' with your Tower, higher rep can gain you favors, low rep gets you booted out. Every major tower has a magical shortcut gateway to Whittaker's which acts as the mega tavern in the setting. Introduced many new spells, artifacts and relic all completely in tune with the types in your novel.
Oh and I've borrowed my big bad from one of the minor bads of the novel: "A disgruntled, disillusioned, disenchanted, embittered, excommunicated ex Magister Arcanus of the Amber Tower. Currently shunned by the magi community of Maryland for murdering a mundie, betrayed by her two fellow outcasts and once co-conspirators, forced out of the East Coast, desperately out of money and heavily addicted to Liquor and Red Dust (ironic turn of tables), her current occupation is stealing magical artifacts and selling them to the magical black market for an odd buck. Wears a Colombina half mask to conceal her distinctive hideous beak-like nose caused by improper and rushed healing after it got broken in a magical duel." (I hope you have no grand plans for her in the sequel novels, I dont wanna brew anything that clashes with your canon),
We are just having a blast playing Ashesverse. Its usually very difficult and hectic to create an entire game system but your novel just feels tailor made as a source material. Its so versatile, creative and accessible. You are a true genius Seth. On behalf of me and my friends Thank You So Much
A trick I like for keeping track of enemy HP is the Pips method. A Pip is roughly 10HP (or whatever lowest equivalent for your system), so any enemies with 8 or 12 HP have 1 Pip where as a baddy with 30 HP has 3 Pips. When players attacks reach the threshold, the enemies lose the appropriate number of Pips. Instead of keeping track of HP that could go (in some games) into the hundreds and require a stupid amount of math, a DM needs only to track 3 to 5 Pips per enemy at most. It also helps makes it easier to tailor combat encounters on how fast or challenging you want it to be.
How do you deal with small dmg like a dagger or something else that doesn’t reach a 10, is it a round up/rounds down kind of deal?
@@rossalupus8866 Case by case, really. If you want to drag it out a little, half a Pip. If you want to speed it up, just round up to a full Pip.
With daggers or weak weapons in general, I would definitely encourage players to describe where exactly they're stabbing/slashing/thwacking. Key spots like the neck and collarbone, under the armpit, groin are pretty much insta-death for anyone attacked with a dagger. Dice rolling just confirms if they succeeded their called shot. This also has the added bonus of encouraging roleplay.
Oh that's a great idea. Some VTTs let you display a health bar and this is the RL version of it.
4:15 Not gonna lie, while I know this was supposed to be a negative example I was *REALLY* into it! XD
Totally! If I were GM I'd award an inspiration point haha
Right?
If that was the killing blow, that would be awesome, but if that is literally every attack that player does, it gets... tedious.
Something similar to players keeping track of enemy HP that I think works well, using Minion rules (1-Hit enemies) - This is mostly for D&D, but I think it can translate well enough to other games/genres. Eventually, players should get to a point where the damage they can deal numbers into 20+ damage, or they’re at a level far beyond the challenge rating of certain monsters. At that point, rolling individual attacks and damage is just wasting time, and feels like a slog through deep mud. But, treating them like a horde of opponents the characters can just wade into and disappear into a fine red mist of just mowing down enemies, that can be a really epic way to use low-level monsters against high-level PCs. Even using them in MASS quantities (swarm of 100+ zombies or such, and each zombie is 1 hp of the swarm), that can help hammer home the idea that even powerful players can’t take on an army by themselves, as they will eventually he overrun.
Also, did anyone else notice the natural 20s Seth rolled in “Roll All of Your Dice at Once?”
Thanks for this. One tip I picked up from more experienced DM's is letting the player who lands a killing blow against an opponent describe "how they did it". It's almost like a mini-reward, and players really love it.
The Adventures in Middle Earth Loremasters Guide has a pretty useful section called: "Creature Actions and Abilities" which has a whole bunch of possible modifiers for monsters or even groups of monsters. Things such as "Coward", "Starving", "Berserk", "Survivor" and so on. While the suggested mechanical changes are specific, I find these are often pretty easily adapted and have been using these quite a bit in my games to add variety to the enemies my players face
Thanks for the tip, I'll look into it.
I've done the roll all the dice at once method and it's really easy to do, especially if you don't have a ton of dice to roll, nice little tip. Asking everyone what they do at the start of the round could be interesting to pick up the pace of gunfights too
Yes, especially the reverse order, declaration of actions, do change combat away from the usual "your turn to move" board game.
It's great when it works, but there are rules systems where it doesn't get you much improvement in speed, if any. Things where you deal extra damage based on level of success, or have triggers based on your attack roll, that sort of stuff. Even in a D&D clone some character builds can struggle a bit - I've had high-tier PCs whose attacks required a half-dozen dice and more on top with situational triggers on top. Not much you can really do about that beyond making sure you've got your required dice pool ready before your turn starts, and any likely extra contingent dice to hand if you need them.
For narration purposes: watch good action movies with well choreographed action scenes, and variable pacing, and see why they work. Read books by writers who know how to write a good action scene, often because they've been in real life fights, and understand what the experience is like. Poul Anderson, R.E. Howard, and Jack Vance come to mind.
Salvatore also
The hit point range also allows for some variability of challenge rating. If the players are mowing things down, put the damage on the higher HP enemies to keep pressure and action economy against the players. If they are having a really hard time, then put those hits towards lower HP creatures so the action economy favors the players.
Describing my attacks and kills is one of my favorite parts of playing
In Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, we were racing down a corridor on board a prison barge when a group of three Stormtroopers jumps from around the corner and starts drawing a bead on my character, a massive Klatooinian weapons expert. My character draws his twin axes, and I describe how he teleports behind the troops as they fall in half, anime-style.
Our medic was behind me, tending to a party member's wounds while my character does Sailor Moon poses in the background. We all had a pretty good laugh about that one.
Give them the ol’ “Heh... nothing personnel, kid”
All good stuff. Inspired me to keep tweeking my dual wield ranger rolling. Lots of dice. Also, great call back on mini not being painted.
Enemy strategies are great. They introduce a lot of character into the enemies wether it a group of police officers doing a strategic breach or clear or some street thugs passing up a chance to attack the players to trash the store the party was supposed to protect.
Thank you for actually understanding how CR works. TH-cam is lousy with videos slamming the CR system without understanding what it is or how to use it.
Well... What can be expected from an TH-cam algorithm?
It have a tendency to favour what people are looking at: “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
... and the big zombie swarm do use CR to adjust all combats to be maximum boring.
People understanding exactly what Seth says here is precisely why everyone criticizes it. If you're going to have to go in after and verify the math yourself anyway then CR is completely pointless. In fact, it's worse than pointless since it actively misleads new DMs who make the incorrect, but understandable, assumption that it has any kind of utility whatsoever.
That piece of advice early on, that when you want to see a particular behavior at the table you should try demonstrating that behavior, is really well put. It feels so common sense when you put it like that.
For D&D combat I use miniatures with magnetic bases. I have some small brackets which have different colors and number. These could be attached to the miniatures and I also use dice the same color as the brackets. So it is easy for me to track each opponent in combat. It also helps the players, as the simply could say "I shoot at the red orc".
I appreciate that you assume we tabletop players have ever been to a dance.
How long does it take to roll four ones on four dice? You must be a very patient man. Very patient.
It took once. I'd setup my camera for the B-roll example shots of dice rolling and that was the very first roll I made. Total fluke, but I figured it was worth sharing because it was so spectacularly bad.
@@SSkorkowsky Some days the dice just hate you. As you said - they are the true enemy....
@@SSkorkowsky And worthy It was, indeed! O don't think you'll be able to do It again anytime soon!
I was legitimately thinking that it was a neat trick, and the ways how he could've pulled it off. Turns out it was just blind luck :D
Time to bring back the rubber chicken foot!!
4:15 Agreed that things like this should only be done when fighting a narratively important villain, but might I also recommend that before you do this you roll to see if you succeed first. Nothing takes the wind out of the old sails like giving a big flourish about avenging your dead mentor who was also your lover, then just missing.
i will never not like any of your content seth :)
you helped me in so many ocasions with my Groups.
my games in Shadowrun, the dark eye, star wars etc. have improved so much :)
thx for your content man, I really appreciate it.
I love his alter ego players XD Nodding in excitement at his DM summaries of the carnage.
I think the best procedure when describing actions is: The GM briefly describes the scene, cueing the player. Then the player tells what action he's going to take. Then the player rolls the dice, and according to the result of the roll he describes what his character did (being successful or not). Following that the GM describes the results of the action of that PC and reacts accordingly.
I see Todd's collection of punk t shirts has grown -- awesome.
Boy, that advice on not turning action descriptions into a monologue hits home. I've been listening to some Mecha Hack playthroughs over the last week and one of the channels doing them might as well be doing improv exercises with every single thing that happens. The vids (and the combat) would be a less than half the length they were if they'd followed Seth's advice - or better yet, they could have been the same length and gotten in twice as much gameplay and not keep having to skip encounters or side plots. Seen the same thing a few times face to face, but usually its just one player trying to write their novel rather than a whole group.
I really wonder if that sort of thing stems from trying to emulate Twitch and TH-cam play groups without realizing that performance art is a different animal than actual roleplay with your friends. What Critical Role and company are doing is not the norm for most RPG groups, and never will be. You can be descriptive *and* succinct if you try.
Phenomenal video Seth and great advice I have been using a lot of these techniques for years but you sir have given me some new ones I never thought of before that I will definitely use.
16:50 On players taking too long. One I've heard that I like is when the player takes too long they default to Total Defense (or system equivalent). So sure, they lose their turn, but they're not standing there doing nothing, they're at least defending themselves.
edit: The round robin "What do you do?" is a lot like how combat works in 2nd Ed Fading Suns.
love the reverse order announcement concept
A thing that I've learned from the first published game I've played (and it was a small, local thing, maybe 40 pages long, so nothing fancy or complex) about managing when and how NPCs behave once the combat starts going sideways (usually for them) is that there should be a simple counter on the GM side. Half of the group is already down or badly wounded? Make a roll to see if the other half still feels like fighting. If the other side is particularly feeble (untrained mob and similar), make that quarter, rather than half. Maybe they run away. Maybe they are now demoralised, making it easier to fight them. Their leader/CO/whoever goes down? Make that roll again. And repeat it with each slain member of the group. Maybe even apply a modifier, when you want them to eventually break, rather than taking the risk they will somehow keep going due to rolls alone. Or maybe reverse - they are this badass group of spec ops send after the party, and they will fight to the last man, because that's just part of the job that your friend's head got turned into a pink mist. Either way, having even the most simplistic resolution for when the "rout" happens really helps out.
All of this sort of consideration really allows to flesh things out and the fact that there is a roll involved further makes if feel like a game - because you never know when the other side will truly break and just flee, maybe they really have the courage (or stupidity) to fight to the last man, or maybe they will fold
End of Round story is one of the simplest, yet amazing ideas I've heard in a long time.
Last two tips were the best
I really like the round summary, efficient and flavorful. I’ll have to try this one. Great video!
It's so much more fun for the GM as well. The first time I ran combat was pretty exhausting because both players and enemies kept rolling abysmally bad. Making sure to include roleplaying aspects into combat was what kept both myself and my players invested and going.
Some of my group's favorite gems came from combat - the Goblin that took an arrow to the shoulder after breaking its weapon and got the 'genius' idea to rip it out and try to use it against the fighter. The poor single survivor of a whole tribe of goblins that collapsed into an existential crisis ending with the sorcerer trying to punch it out to spare it additional emotional upheaval and instead giving it a black eye. They still sometimes muse about what became of that goblin and seriously hope it has made its way in the wordl. And many more.
These are among my favorite D&D vids. I could watch Seth Skorkowsky all day. Sometimes I do!
I've used several of these on various occasions. Really need to do it more often. Be well and stay safe!
I used to ask my players not to shout out enemy Armor class/defense etc once they figured it out. But I've since turned on that. it's a great help letting the players help take the reigns in combat, be able to announce their own hits and misses. Granted you have to have trustworthy players for that to work. but distributing your book keeping is a great idea to help speed up combat. Sometimes I'll just tell my players, especially if there's a lot of enemies to keep track of.
i also keep a cheat sheet of my the party's HP and AC handy so I can just reference that instead of having to ask what their AC is.
Also a good tip for players: Learn your character's abilities. If you're playing something complex. MAKE FLASH CARDS. so you can quickly and easily access your abilities on the fly without having to dig through the books. this is an especially useful tool if you're character uses stuff from a variety of different source books. then you don't have to dig through the mountain of books besides you all the time to figure out how that one ability you just remembered you have works.
I don't comment frequently but I just wanted to let you know how helpful and entertaining your videos have been. As a budding GM all of your advice and reviews have helped me develop my own style for my games.
When I was first getting into RPGs I was a big fan of another content creator who looking back had some very unhelpful, borderline gatekeeping opinions. Among other things, disparaging new editions and versions of games and spreading pretty much every Call of Chthulu myth you mentioned in your video about the game. But your videos have really helped me avoid getting into bad habits and, if my players are being honest, have become pretty good at running fun games. So thank you Seth, for putting all of yourself out there. Happy gaming!
A recent gaming session, one of our players was commenting how he was killing more monsters with his bow than my tank did with a sword.
In an above ground encounter vs 5 orcs. I charge them on horseback, couched lance taking out one.
This other guy takes two shots while he stood on his horse-drawn cart. He takes out two.
I circle back, ready for my second charge.
Then, Mr Archer critically fumbles, and though my character is beyond a 45 degree arc, he nails my horse, dropping it where I stood.
We painted images of the two orcs on his wagon, as kill flags, as well as a horse head, so from now on, he will no longer make his bragging comment.
Combat that gets into vehicles, leaves vehicles, and back into vehicles. E. G. Dogfighting, landing/crashing, shooting someone personally, steal a ship and back into it.
Or, ship destroyed but ejected, rescued, take over as a turret gunner.
Worked really well in a Star Wars TIE pilot game.
I remember changing my entire group with simple, brief descriptions of my actions in combat. It wasn't too many sessions later that almost everyone was doing it. It adds so much to visualization and immersion... and once I started DMing I allowed my players more latitude to "do my job" so to speak. Things like being able to narrate their own hits and misses if they wanted to, even determining enemy reactions if they wanted to.
Of course all this requires trust and experience. I had the benefit of a group full of people experienced in DMing themselves, so they knew what to do and what not to do. You can seriously add so much just by asking questions as a player
During my senior year in high school, I was introduced to the system which actually required players to describe their actions during encounters and if they managed to use a particular type of object or action in their description, they could get additional bonuses. This was a complete gamechanger for our group.
Was this a game system that did this or was it a house-rule you started? Either way it sounds pretty cool. I can see that working in a lot of systems.
@@SSkorkowsky It's in a Polish system called Wolsung.
@@SSkorkowsky
One of the core rules is that players first decide which skill they are planning to use, then roll and then they are obliged to describe the result accordingly. They can introduce new elements to the scene if reasonable.
Moreover, there is something called "archetype" of your character, each of them has 4 areas, coresponding to one of the 4 card colors. At the various moments, players get cards to their hand and if they manage to fit the description of their actions to the right area of their archetype, they can use the card to get a significant bonus.
There are 4 basic archetypes: Detective, Explorer, Daredevil and "Salonowiec" (I'm not sure how to translate it, but it covers characters that specialize in social situations, such as diplomats, artists, seducers etc.), but as we get more familiar with the system, we introduced our homebrew archetypes as well.
Example: Daredevil has "transport" on the clubs.
Let's say that a player wants to test their melee combat skill, rolled and is not satisfied with the result, thus wants to throw in the King of Clubs for a +4 bonus. Instead of simply saying "I hit the golem with my hammer", they can say "I grab the guard's shield that is lying on the floor (which is a reasonable object to introduce to the scene), and I glide on it down the stairs, building momentum for a massive strike on the golem."
Summarizing each round is something I skipped into a few years ago and after a while everyone at the table was just ready for it.
I love the descriptive action players use as I'm having people do that at the table. I reminded my wife that she's not playing monopoly but a TTRPG, Basic Fantasy BTW.
Hey Seth! I'm an old role player who got started in the 70s on the white box and supplements, I also was a play tester on a module that you seem to like, "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh," although I am listed in the second module in that series, if you still have a copy of that. We play tested that at the UK TSR headquarters in Cambridge England before it was published. I just wanted to say I sure as heck wish you and your videos had been around then (well, we would have needed the internet too, although you probably would have been writing articles in The Dragon magazine back then). Your videos are spectacular. I've been DM'ing since I was 12, and I've learned a lot over the years, but the process was drawn out and sometimes painful lol. So I've encountered many of the issues you cover in your videos, but you address these in such a concise and fun way that I've watched just about every one of your videos. These days I mostly run Call of Cthulhu and Traveller games. Just wanted to say hi, and please keep making these. I've watched some with my regular group of players both as a reminder for myself and for them of how we should all behave ourselves lol!
Wow. Yeah, Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is a great adventure (A lot of TSR UK's stuff was pretty great). Run it several times and liberally stolen elements from it far more than that. That's awesome you get to say "I was there" for that little piece of Tabletop History.
Learning all the tricks and techniques was a pretty painful process to learn what I can look back on and go, "Yeah that's kind of obvious now that I think about it." It's worse when you forget and have to stumble around until you remember that really obvious trick you already figured out once (or twice) before. I'm glad to hear you and your group are enjoying the channel. My goal is that if I can't make my vids helpful I can at least make them entertaining.
Another sort of a tip regarding 'NPC tactics':
If you want the players to use the enviroment - as in toppling tables, throwing chairs, swing on chandeliers or slide down large banners with their dagger: Let the NPC do that. When the players realise, the enviroment isn't just background but can actually be manipulated - and mabye to great effect even - they will do it. Also - at least you should adjust the damage done by enviroment at least in 5e - because 1d6 for 'getting hit by a life size stone statue' seems a bit low.
But generally - my favorite actions in this regard have been so far:
* shoving the BBM in the large brazier, grilling it alive (now... it wasn't very alive afterwards, but you get the point)
and
* drowning that damn hobgoblin cook in his own cauldron...
Was half hoping this would be an April Fool's video. Oh well, guess I'll just have to rewatch the chicken foot vid
That's the catch I guess
I kept waiting for a punchline, thinking I just didn't get it.
I tried the declaring actions with my Shadowrun game and it worked great and the players loved it, thanks for the idea
Great to hear it worked for your group.
The round-end summary is a very nice idea. I adopted a bit of a variation of that in the form of a sort of "Epilogue-turn". Originally, it was a time-cutting measure for NPC-allies and non-combatants on the round, where instead of constantly dragging the pace down having to control them during the flow of initiative, I used the end of the round as a time for them to do a fixed amount of damage or a small action with no rolls required and doing all their relevant reactions to the round at that moment. Then I started doing that even when NPC allies weren't involved with the enemies. A round in which a goblin-horde got sliced in numbers would at the end of the round make a morale-check to see how many fled the scene or a mercenary with some movement left from their turn that just saw a player get downed on that round would end it by dashing to the body and holding him/her at knife-point. I would also give players opportunities to do stuff as well. A player that was in the grasp of a monster that just took a bunch of damage that round would get an extra chance to escape the grapple or the player that just killed 3 minions in a single turn would get a free intimidate roll to try and scare off some goons or provoke the boss-man. It's very much stuff I do by feel, but especially deep into a combat, when everyone is just going into auto-pilot, I use the time saved on descriptions to get some colour in there and make combat a bit more dynamic. Most importantly though, it gave a moment to retroactively inject details into the round that might have been lost on me simply trying to keep the combat-pace flowing.
Love the cameo of Callisto at 12:30 - my favorite villain.
The "overly descriptive" description was actually outstanding. We don't want that every action but uh... pretty cool nonetheless!
When you were talking about tactics of the enemies, that one has a special place to me. I know a lot of GMs that don't put it as part of their prep work to actually look at whatever creature they're putting in the encounter, so the encounter against 4 goblins works the exact same way as an encounter against 4 giants.
While this is towards TTRPGs, the importance of players providing descriptions, the very first tip, is invaluable.
I used to run bunch of builders, a very specific kind of PBP online games and NOTHING is taking you out of the whole experience and the fun it usually brings is a player that just flatly describes actions with "Build an armory" or "Research agriculture" declarations. Not only the entire burden of providing descriptions is on you, but when they either get a fumble or a critical success, there is literally nothing to work with, as you have to come up with things on your own. It quickly becomes just tedious to provide descriptors that the player reduces to noting down the progress in numerals.
And same goes back to the game session. If players provide no description beyond "I hit the closest one" (which became a stock phase up here, to the point there is a card game parodying that mindset), there is nothing to work with. Eventually you are overburdened by filling up for the player or stop to care yourself, because your player(s) clearly don't.
My tip from my experience on both sides of the GM/DM screen. Don't argue over every little +1 bonus, and KNOW YOUR CHARACTERS!!! An experienced GM can be hampered by bad players and vice versa.
I had a Shadowrun experience where the player got mad I didn't grant him the +10 bonus he derailed the game to hunt through the book to find every bonus the book ever suggested for a single low level interrogation. This was a story critical investigation. They would have had to fail spectacularly for me to not give it to them. I personally don't like it when people play "spread sheet" mode. I'm more of a story over rules guy. This player was new so while it was painful, we all tried to teach him about play styles and how we did things. He was a good friend, just not very imaginative.
Speeding up combat. Okay, when it comes to action description, I find players tend to do the thing they're best at. So, instead of describing the same action over and over the same way, I tend to have them deliver a catch phrase, retort, insult, or other quick RP to the bad guy in question. That tend to build tension as the villain will usually say something to either insult the player back in a way that hits a particular button. That, in turn, really motivates that player to keep going.
Unintelligent monsters will act according to their nature. Oozes and Carrion Crawlers will consume what they kill, some monsters might finish off what they knock down and so on. Intelligent monsters can be much much worse. Do NOT fall to a Ghoul...you will be eaten either now or later. Dragons will drop boulders or trees on grounded foes, and breathe upon them while flying. Giants will throw PCs around like pillows, or push walls over on them. There's no reason a Fire Giant will not soak a boulder in pitch and light it before throwing it, igniting everything it touches as it bounds along. Essentially, they will act to the best of their ability. I've had a Chimera grapple a player character and fly upward, dropping it to the ground below like a crow or seagull would do to nuts and shellfish. If a dumb as shit seagull can do it, a Chimera can too. (Side note, Wizards are not built for 20d6 damage...but then again, Wizards that Lightning Bolt a Chimera at point blank range are looking for it.)
I tend to homebrew the vast majority of my monsters, so metagaming is usually low. I also roll my dice openly, so my players know I hold nothing back. Trust me, they tend to be more engaged. The only exception to this are dice rolls that no player should know if they pass automatically. Rolls like Perception, Investigation, Stealth, Persuasion, Intimidation and Deception are rolled in an elevated tray. They player still rolls their own dice in this tray, but cannot see what they did. Everyone THINKS they're hidden. If you doubt this, play paintball or a game of hide and seek with a kid. Everyone THINKS they're persuasive. Ask a salesman. this also ends the metagaming of "I rolled a 20. I see everything" routine. I also use Passive Perception as a DM tool, not a player excuse. Less time bickering is more time playing.
Initiative and indecision are intertwined. I place wooden clothespins on the top of my DMs screen with the character names on both sides. When the players roll initiative, they are placed in order on the top of the screen. The monster tracker only goes up once it acts. Each player has 60 seconds to make a decision. If they cannot act, they lose their turn. This is discussed in session zero, so they're pre-warned. They are also informed to have a "default action" (Fire bolt, shoot their gun, etc.) such that if they cannot decide and time is about to run out, they will be asked if they want to use their "default", dodge, or lose their turn.
I'll also use the plastic retainer rings from 4L milk jugs to track concentration spells. Each player as a set of two in a particular colour. One goes on their clothespin, one goes on the target of their concentration. Quicker access to visual information is less time arguing if you're concentrating on a spell.
When it comes to tracking hit points, I'll vary what a monster may have. I allow damage that is very close to killing it (like 5 or less) to kill it anyway. There's nothing more disappointing to a player than to have their epic strike fail to drop a monster, only to have the next guy in line roll minimum damage and do so. Let the player shine and speed things up. At low levels, things like Goblins, Kobolds and Skeletons are treated like minions - one shot, one kill. Again, speeds up combat and give the players a feeling of empowerment.
I tend not to recount every round, but if the fight has gone on for a few rounds, I will do a recount. Also, I tend to have the players recount the entirety of the last game session when we start anew, as it informs me what story hooks took and where their interests are.
All of this tends to make my combats more dramatic and tend to speed up game play.
a lot of really good ideas here! thanks for sharing!
Your videos move the entire hobby forward.
Heres a cool thing I do when I describe missed attacks. As an actual fighter, I'm able to describe things and paint little scenes because I've experienced actual combat (not to the death of course)
Depending on how big the gap was for a miss, I always like having some kind of interesting melee exchanges that happen.
Hit die misses big: "you swiftly dash forwards and slash with your sword. The monster predicts your move easily and steps backwards to avoid it"
Or
" your attack was easily read, the warrior aggressively bats your weapon away with its shield."
Near miss: "you attack with your staff and the enemy contests with their weapon, many attempts are defended by his quick reflexes."
Or
"Your attack was able to get through the enemy's defensive stance, however your dagger cuts across the leather armor, causing no damage."
Sometimes just to be a bit flashy, you can turn a single attack and narratively change it to many glancing blows and deflects for excitement.
Great stuff man, looking forward to using some of this stuff for my next game.
Keep it up dawg!
Good advice. I never cared for declared actions, personally. It always got confusing for me. We used it for The Price of Freedom.
Always good to see a Seth video! Love your work, keep it up!! Also love the links to parts of the video.
Yes I was hoping you would make another one of these. We need way more of these types of videos from ya bro keep up the great vids man
Dweebles is back, and apparently foreshadowing for a painted Hook Horror...
I like that that first bit is actually encouraged in Exalted (it’s been in every edition but I’m mainly referring to 3e here) - as long as you give the action a description then you actually get a light mechanical bonus to the action.
As always, love your videos Seth. Brings a calmness to my hectic days 😁
YES!!! I have always hoped we would get another one of these! Thank you so much for giving us this!
Hmm an actual video posted on April fools
I'll watch and enjoy it but I've got my eye on you
Awesome tips Seth!
Thanks a heap for all the effort you put into your videos, making them both more enjoyable as well as illustrated with examples on the topic.
Double rolls are probably the first thing I always teach to new players in my current group (or the hobby at large), no matter which side of table I am, because it speeds things up enormously. I tend to run for groups that are 6-7 players, and double rolls are one of the reasons why it's even feasible and allows to keep the momentum going. The only downside of double rolls is that you MUST provide all the surplus dice needed for that, and color-coded, too - people rarely come up with their own dice sets here and if they do, it's just single color anyway.
And one of the joys of HEX and thus Ubiquity-based games is that you don't have to make "double rolls", it's already part of the game rules and if you hit, you can already know how hard. People often complain about the combat being "too abstract", but I would always take "abstract" over "every single action takes 2 separate rolls and there is just no way to go down below a minute per players, even if they know what they are doing and are trained in double rolls". And that without even touching the Continuous Combat rules, which put the already fast combat loop into an even higher gear.
Yeah, I know, nothing like waxing over a dead game from a dead dev studio. But its approach to combat loop as interaction and truly fast-paced experience was fantastic.
Amazing advice as always :) Something I recently tried and which worked out quit well - I had a combat with a rather huge initial distance between the players and the bad guys. I think it mattered a lot since the players have some extremely big spells to use and the archer can fire up to 600ft away without any penalties.
But a lot of the initial engagements where just the bad guys moving or some of them attacking the local townsfolk who were fleeing for their live and torching some of the buildings (I hoped some players would go to that side of the town to help those people instead of turteling up in the central defensive tower - they decide to rather keep away for as long as possible - so they'll have to deal with a raging fire after the battle...).
Anyway - it came to me that since we have rather uneventful turns we might as well do 3 turns at once - all bad guys just advanced for 3 times their movement and the players who could reach them could fire three times in that time and the players who where setting up some bigger plans could do more than 1/3 of what they wanted at once making everything much more fluid (the druid shapeshifted so the warlock could pick him up and fly on top of a very well positioned building to give them a good position and allow the druid to then cast call lightning from a much better position -> this entire plan took two or three turn because of the size of the battlefield)
With that "fast forward" we actually greatly sped up the rather uneventful turns and "slowed back down" when stuff got more interesting (boulders are now being thrown at buildings anther fire is spreading, the druid trapped on the rooftop with the building on fire)
Awesome video, thanks! I’ve watched several videos of this variety and I felt like you had several unique and helpful ideas I hadn’t heard before.
This seems to be a topic more and more for TTRPGs. You have a lot of great thoughts here. The declaration part I've done before, I took it from the White Wolf system, but it always seems to be forgotten. I'm going to be starting a campaign in the Cypher system by Monte Cook Games. I like how it moves out of the way and allows the PC's to role to Attack and roll for Defense rather than the GM rolling at all. That with the letting the PCs to track the HP of the creature their fighting puts the Players in a lot of control. Great video!
I absolutely adore these advice videos! I get that lots of people enjoy the module reviews too, but these are so much more useful to me! Great advice, Seth, thank you!!
Fantastic advice. I've shared this with a few of my groups and they seemed to enjoy it. Thanks!
I've been running with only one player for a while, and last session just finally got a second, with two more coming in soon.
But that last session had the two players against a large number of enemies. Nine bandits, a bandit captain, and a Minotaur. These are level 3 players, but they have a wide range of NPCs with them (a number which I'll decrease once there are more players, but this specific instant was the big moment in a long run of a gang hideout raid) The Minotaur alone smashed its way through several of the NPCs, which really raised the alarms for the players whose allies are suddenly dropping like flies. I also made a point to keep the Minotaur from really showing any injury because I knew one of the players wanted to use a special item they had on it. It was a magic crystal that had a Moonbeam spell trapped in it, and when they threw it at the Minotaur it dealt the killing damage. The newer player got to kill the bandit captain, so I'm pretty happy with the result. The hardest part was rushing through the NPC and enemy turns to get back to the players. I tried my best, but it might have been a bit long of a wait in the earlier rounds.
Brilliant, sir, as always. You and the Professor are my two references for all things RPG, along with any recommendations you make. Excellent video, succinct and brilliant.
Thank you so much Seth! Absolutely loved it. And the ending, you always make me smile.
Sincerely,
Alicia from Sweden
One thing I like to do is make a battlesheet. This works best with a word processor, but it can be done easily with some graph paper. Keep in mind this is mostly for games that have health points like D&D.
When you’re planning out the session, note down all the different encounters you plan to have. Next to each individual NPC combatant, include small boxes that indicate their health. During combat, as the combatants take damage, you mark that in the boxes to help keep track of who gets damaged and by how much.
Also, make a second page with the stats for each combatant as a fast reference sheet. Index cards work great here.
Of course, this might be a bit overboard to some. You could also just jot down the hit points as track it on a sheet of scrap paper.
28:30 Simply amazing.
Love it when I come home to a new vid keep up the good work! X
Your stuff is more than good; it's essential. I don't know how you can do it week after week. Fantastic video as always.
You are a treasure trove of excellent ideas, Seth!
I really like the all announce in reverse order idea, sounds difficult to pull off though.
Maybe knowing go wouldnt be so bad either, you could chalk it up to judging the toughness/experience of the enemy.
I'm so excited! I was just wishing for a 201 episode recently when re-watching the combat strategy video.
DM: The beast bursts through the window
Me: I whip out my rapier and shout “the sign says no solicitors!”
World building for a big game right now and I was a bit nervous but this video helped me get so much inspiration I typed out a full page of ideas. Love you and your channel Seth! You've made me a more creative and engaging game master 8c ) Thank you!
This is a very thoughtful presentation. Thank you!
Love this stuff. Recapping the round is what I've done for past 40 years of D&D (Holy shit I'm old)