Keep homebrewing those encounters so you understand how difficult the encounters you throw at your party are! Balance is an art, just saying not to get to "crunchy" with it :) 💜 Become a Patron: www.patreon.com/thedungeoncoach
@@unwithering5313 there are certainly people and creatures at every power level. But the town guards just aren't going to be able to keep up past level 5 or so. Numbers only count for so much, bounded accuracy or no. Sometimes the dice just roll low
@@SeeAche I made theories on why those characters had those things they shouldn't have had, I am wondering if they would retain any of that if they joined the party (hypothetically).
@@unwithering5313 well I've got plenty of legendary people, monsters, and items. Hell there's an entire guild where the top hundred are basically empyrions (don't remember how it's spelled). But they're doing there own thing and if you want to hire them it'll cost more than most small kingdoms. But just because a party is level 13 doesn't mean Goblin hills becomes Storm Giant hills. Though A couple of trolls might want to dominate some gobos.
I'd argue that balancing isn't about getting the numbers just right. It's about making sure that each encounter is roughly as dangerous as you want it to be. It's about not making mooks too strong or bosses too weak. It's about knowing when to let the players face something far above their capabilites, and making sure they have a way to escape when they do. It's about making sure that every party member can contribute in the big set-piece battles. It's about making sure they aren't worn down too quickly as they descend into the dungeon depths. To use your own example, your players had ways of dealing with the creeping darkness and the time dilation. They'd fought time wraiths and the clones before and were presumably familiar with how they worked. Sure, the fight was extremely stacked against them, but it was all things they could manage and be prepared for. That's exactly how you balance an encounter. I think you recognise this as well, since your gripe is specifically about rigorously calculating how a combat could go. I just don't think it's right to say "Don't balance your encounters" when what you mean is "Don't worry so much about getting it just right".
Exactly what I was about to say. If you want a hard or easy encounter, that is balancing your encounter to that mindset. So it's not "don't balance at all". It's don't always throw your players the same difficulty of combat.
As long as it isn't some impossible power trip TPK fest and as long as the players are having fun then every other problem in the campaign doesn't feel like a drag.
Something I've personally been doing nowadays when making encounters is that it's more sane for me as a DM to just pick a monster or a stat-block that just seems the most interesting or fits the narrative I'm trying to set up for the story and just see how the players react to it. If it proves to be something very high level, it can be fun to see if my players try to escape or how they manage to creatively think their way out of the situation.
I loved just hearing the snippet about the multi-1000 HP boss fight lol, reminds me of the very fun (definitely unbalanced) first campaign I played in :)
Early on in my series of loosely connected one shots, my players did a great deed for a ghost. Later on when they were about to get into a potentially overwhelming encounter, the ghost would appear to one of them and say "Great danger lies ahead! Be fully prepared!" I totally stole that from the old CRPG "Curse of the Azure Bonds" btw. But it always led to some great discussions about planning tactics, including the option to run away and return later. :) Also, this is my vote for a TPK-alternatives video.
I once pitted my party against a homebrewed Zombie Horde monster that was slowly but inexorably marching up to the town they were in. They were capable of seeing it from the clifftop they were on but only the Bard archer could hit them. So they Voltroned themselves to boost the Bard's Attack and Damage to have him take down the zombie horde before it reached the city gates and he ran out of the special arrows that could harm the undead.
Holy cow I am amazed how every video you find ways to make me look at my DMing from another perspective. You are amazing you know that?!?! I'm a new DM, I started my campaign after finding your channel and decided to go for it using your ideas to help me learn and get better. You have made me realize that I've been trying to balance encounters so much that I ended up making my players fight an ancient black dragon and they ended up stomping it unintentionally because I tried to hard to balance it. The next fight my players dealt with was an enemy wizard from the backstory for my party sorcerer and his enemy wizard wanted him alone. I designed the fight to keep all the other players away so he could focus solely on the sorcerer. It ended up making it really off balanced fight against my players that I thought was about to lead to a tpk until the party paladin came out of nowhere, managing to break away from his enemies and taking a lot of aoos to do so, came in and crit the boss so that the sorcerer could finish him off. It was set so far against my players and they still barely managed a win, when I thought they were about to either run or die, and it made it such an epic and beautiful fight. Thank you for making me realize this so I can try to do this more in the future!
@@TheDungeonCoach much love coach, your the reason I started DMing, and your the one who helps keep me in check as a DM and makes sure I don't lose sight of the big picture. I hope one day I'll be in a position to be a patreon subscriber but until then I still love to watch your videos.
DMs can avoid burnout by learning to streamline their prep. Combat is one of the biggest time sinks for DMs, so I completely agree with the Dungeon Coach. There was a video from Taking20 that similarly suggested that balancing encounters should be reconsidered. Amen to all of it!
The more and more you DM the more you’ll fine tune that gut feeling of whats too much. Its a muscle like every other part of DMing, the more you use it the better youll get at “balancing combat” without worrying about it. Thats been my experience atleast. Love ya DC! Great stuff recently
Probably my second favourite vid of yours. Your philosophy sings to me and the ridiculous stuff i put my players through. Never stop mate, you are the beacon of dnd for me and others that i know
@@TheDungeonCoach you are most welcome - you're a part od what fired me up and inspired me to start building and sharing my own dnd content. In 1-5 years i plan on providing inspiration back to you to match what you do for me.
I’m a new DM and this is so helpful! I was here searching for ‘how to balance your encounters’ videos, but stumbled onto this. I don’t have to worry so much now! Thank youuu ❤❤ subbing now
I just started a Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign as DM. I am a giver, so my players get to have a lot of nice things, such as rare Bows and Shields, homebrew Armor- and Shield variants, a pet Guard Drake, special alloy and poison to put on weapons to give effects and/or extra damage. What happens is that the books encounters etc. become visibly easier. What do i do against it? Enemys have Hit Points that you can roll, so i just give them some more than the middle number the Monster Manual suggests. Or some of them also get those alloys. Or have stronger enemys to begin with (a knight istead of a veteran, or 6 Goblins but 1 Goblin suddenly has a crossbow instead of slings or can cast magic). Or just dont let them rest for a bit, so they run low on healt and spell slots. My players so far always liked it.
Warning from shop keeper in the nearest town not to face the dragon head-on (DM warns players). Players take dragon head-on and die. Balancing awareness of character invincibility vs vulnerability is so difficult do! Thanks for the insight, Dungeon Coach!!
Yes! My players in my groups have loved my encounters despite them almost always being in the monster's favor (the players are usually dealing with an uphill battle until about lvl 4-6 at which point things fluctuate more). My players rarely run away, but my players always state how much more rewarding they find the fights when they overcome them so I've kept doing it. Though yes, I agree with him make sure there's clear signs that something they're about to approach is going to be extremely challenging and that there's a way out (escape route) if needed.
Great video and great tips Coach! I watch this channel for these great tips to upgrade my games, but I’d definitely watch a video of you telling the story of that epic battle you described
My players set out on a rescue mission and did figure out a way to bypass the heavily guarded enemy fortress. At the end of it, they backstabbed the bad guy who thought they were allies, and the fight began. The party was 6 level 4 player characters. The bad guy was a modified CR12 Archmage with a few henchmen. One of them almost died, but I forgot I gave the barbarian a helmet that allows him to teleport into an attack to protect other people and push the protected person to another square. I was surprised, and happy he did so. They succeeded, and because they played nice with a certain faction, they had some backup to aid their escape after the rescue.
So I'm a very new DM and I had set up an early major villain encounter, I had been hoping that they would barely be able to drive him off ending up incredibly wounded in the process. Instead they were trouncing him. I was fairly flustered but then I had an idea of the villain draining one of his minions to fight a bit longer. It ended up being a better choice since it helped show how evil and ruthless the villain was. So it worked put better for me that they were thrashing him. Of course for the next encounter I'll have to buff him a bit.
Thank you for saying that sometimes you players need to crush an easy opponent. If you are level 20 heroes or the Realm why is every random encounter so hard. Let them build up some confidence (then crush them)
Super Video! I juste discovered your channel, and I loved the Limbo breakdown ans I really wanna see more videos like that, I did not find anything like this on youtube and I would be super interested in a video on the Astral Plane!
I think it was a Runesmith video somewhere, but placing emphasis on how much time a person's takes is more important than perfect numbers. This isn't necessarily confined to only combat. If you do really like numbers then there have been a few mentions of this 30% - 70% win/lose rate that has been mentioned by Gygax himself (in a book if I recall), a rat study on play fighting big vs. small, and one of Wotc's poll during DnD next asking about the desirable range of accuracy. So if you wanted something to succeed or hit easily then the DC/AC is 6 (+ proficiency of player if you're playing 5e) for 30%, and if you wanted a harder challenge then the DC/AC is 14 (+ proficiency of player if you're playing 5e) for 70%. You can get more noodly than this of course, but more specific to the rat study found that if the smaller rat didn't win at least 30% of the time they'd stop playing, so the bigger rat more than likely let's them win as both rats have a desire to play for their development. This isn't to say having too tough or too hard of a game is bad: Dark Souls vs. Animal Crossing. Good luck!
Yes. I would like to get some cool inspiration about how to avoid TPKs that don't feel like I am holding my punches. Especially considering that I will DM Curse of Strahd soon where PCs are harder to replace and I make it harder by using hit dice healing during long rests and my PCs probably only get half their spellslots back on a LR. I want a more grittier D&D experience. ;)
"I want a more grittier D&D experience. ;)" Have you tried Pathfinder? Among a zillion other things, unlike in 5E, you don't magically restore to full health after being mauled nearly to death by just having a good night's sleep. Characters only heal up so much each long rest, and things like medicine checks and caring for the hurt or sick mean more. So if the characters get their asses handed to them, it might take a week to recover their wounds. And if they're on a time-sensitive mission to get themselves or something somewhere in a few days...well.
@@stevenseufert2520 @Steven Seufert No. Heard more "bad things than good about pathfinder. But I will check their resting rules out. Thanks for the tip.
I really like these advice videos where you give tips on things that actually translate to other RPG systems. I’m working on a Cogent Roleplay campaign and I need those helpful tips! Thanks!
I played a campaign where we only managed to win one single combat; barely. Either we lost and just managed to survive or the combats kind of won themselves without us doing anything.
Fairness come from a genuine notion that you want your encounters to be engaging and keep your players on the edge of there sit. Like chess where the players need to be focused and strategize there next move to help the team. But like you said balencing encounters is bad because it robs players out of the choices they made. For example if they want to explore a place that the DM had worn multiple times that is deadly for them. They should feel the consequences of there actions. Another example is that if players decide to go back to a place that was at the start of there adventure where the creatures are low level they should feel like badasses that take the enemy under one strike. And like I mentioned before balance encounters is not the only thing that makes fights entertaining. There should be the story elements to the fight and little side objectives that makes the encounter more fun. Also sometimes the fight objective is not really defeat the enemy but try to survive for a certain amount of turns will your being hunted by a Vampire Lord that is tired of you guys messing around his plans. But at the end, balencing encounters are fine time to time as well as none balence encounters.
My Gm (not dnd) kept on increasing the modifiers on the orcs we were fighting as we gained power. I ended up talking to him about it, and found out it never occurred to him what was happening lol. I was like bro, what a the point of all this power we're getting if random orcs are getting stronger too? Next couple sessions he over corrected and went far too easy lol. Worked that back out though, it was a good learning experience for him, and me.
@@ExeErdna our game doesn't scale like d&d, so it wasn't necessarily super drastic. (Highest equivalent level a PC could get is probably 4th, idk it's hard to translate.) It was more like, we got special armor then the orcs hit modifier went up. We increased our hit mod, their armor went up. Kind of an arms race of sorts, with no in world explanation.
I'm having some trouble with getting my players to think of doing anything but hit and get hit until someone falls. I have an encounter waiting in the wings to show them the folly of that strategy, an enemy that further overwhelms the party every round. My expectation is that the party will start off as cocky as ever, then become more and more afraid, as what they thought was a single enemy ends up swarming around them. They'll escape or they'll be taken, but either way the story will continue.
"Oh, they all died horribly and the Lich sacrificed his daughter. Now he rules over my world with an iron fist." -Coach That's how I expect it should have turned out and might have made for the best ending.
I have been a DM/GM for 25+ years. Here is my tip for knowing how long any encounter is gonna last and how hard it is. Balancing it. You need to know the AverageTotal HP they can do per rd . With their normal attacks. If they all hit avg dam= This goes both ways, how much will the Mobs do Average per rd to the players. if they all get hit avg dam= Knowing your players characters is key to knowing what to throw against them. Adjust any stat up or down as you see fit thats needed for your game. The dice and player choice is what changes the outcomes of encounters. They are the goofs messing with the balance :)
That sounds like Don Turnbull's old Monstermark System from White Dwarf back in the late 1970s. It's good as a guideline but it gets a *lot* more complicated when you have to start factoring in magic and special abilities. D&D 5e, with it's increasingly high damage output at higher levels, also makes it very "swingy" in combat. A few good rolls in terms of critical hits (esp. from Rogues w/ Sneak Attack and the like) can completely throw all those calculations out of the window.
@@FrostSpike Thats right it IS a guideline. What is the AVERAGE. They Normally do about how much damage a rd. Then base off of that. Then the dice taketh or giveth.
Thats so right, i have two groups of 5th lvl players, and I stoped to balance after 3rd lvl, that helped me to build a few Heroic encounters with goblins and skelets and throw a few scary monsters that They should avoid. Suprisingly They prepare so well with enc almost 3 times harder than it should be (CR) that They win almost with esee XD
You could just, not mechanically balance it, but dynamically change things to be easier or harder. Like, if the dragon usually attacks twice, have it attack once. Or if the darkness spreads 5ft per round, now it spreads 15ft this round. Players might notice that, but they don't know if that was the initial plan or not.
I have very little experience with DnD. But as a DM I can relate to the balanced, slow and boring fight. I didnt understand then what was wrong with it, but now I do. Not balancing things will be very freeing for me. Much less thing to worry about.
Could you record a game session between your group, like Critical Role or Ghosts of Saltmarsh? It would be very entertaining and helpful to see all of your awesome advice put into practice all at once. Not only that, but the examples you use from your games just get me pumped to play with my group (fairly new and inexperienced). I can only attempt to imagine how entertaining and inspiring it would be to watch your games, and follow you guys through a campaign. Even just a short 10 session one, like Ghosts of Saltmarsh.
O.O How did you predict the ending to my campaign ... I have a Lich that is riding a Dracolich as a mount and right before that the players have to fight versions of themselves to earn favour of the gods to help.
3.0 and the d20 system as a whole really exasperated the idea that "all are equal". I come from running Rifts games where not even the classes are balanced with each other. I used to wonder why that was until I started running 3.x for such a long time. Then I grew to appreciate the "don't expect video game results" notion that the Palladium system offered.
Help me Dungeon Coach! I'm thinking of making a separate HP system for PCs. PCs will still have attack and damage rolls against enemies. But being the DM, I have a lot on my plate. I'm making a website for randomly generated monsters, environments, weather, loot. So I'm thinking of just giving PCs less HP, when an enemy hits a PC, it usually does a flat 1HP or more on a crit. Less math, less rolling for me, the DM.
Im about to post a video soon about monsters dont follow the same rules as players... BUT this is maybe a little much in my opinion. You want the game to feel FAIR and mechanically similar, especially for such a HUGE part of the game. I would also be nervous understanding how to adjust / blaance on the fly when you have TWO different systems going on each side of the table
You can simplify combat by giving pcs and npcs 4 wound points. 1 hit - 1 wound point. Question is what your players would think about this implementation
@@TheDungeonCoach It also has ramifications for potions and healing spells which I also simplified for restoring HP - static numbers without any modifiers or proficiency added unless certain feats are taken. I completely modularized feats. I did a lot of crazy stuff with this system. It's been a lot of work.
Wounds and vigor, use it in pathfinder, and pathfinder is heavilly based on 3.5, give it a look. It conveys the risk of combat perfectly, and works great. Give it a try.
Hey DC, I know your busy but on your last video I left a really long coment I was hoping you read it but I'm not sure if you did, if you didn't I'm going to post it again on here. I know its a bit long, but you inspired me to create my own homebrews P.S. I'd love to hear about that multi lich fight
I saw the recent video on bards that you had and I really loved the idea but I thought it was missing a little something. [Now keep in mind I've NEVER played d&d and I don't own any players handbooks so I don't actually have an idea on how this works, BUUTTT I have been watching alot of critical role and scanlan is probably the greatest bard to ever live (I know it sounds like an opinion but you know its a fact!)]
But I noticed that bards only got 5 inspirations?? (Atleast thats how CR did it) Which is crazy to me because its not like bards ever run out of creativity! Thats just crazy! So here's what i came up with: Bards keep their inspirations but, they also have unlimited, what I call 'Muse Inspirations'. So instead of a d6 or d10, bards give another player a d4 as a bonus action, but these have NO limit. However, it only last for about 10 minutes. But the players max out at one 'Muse' per player. Now the other thing I added and I'm REALLY proud about this, is that same player that recieved a 'Muse Inspiration' can either use it or spend THEIR bonus action to give it BACK TO THE BARD!!! 🤯🤯🤯
Now these DO stack so if a bard gave a muse inspiration to everyone in the party they can all spend a bonus action giving it back to the bard then giving the bard inspiration pretty much guarenting an automatic success. One of my personal requirements is that they players has to come up with something to give it back kind of like the bard does shen they initially give it to the player.
I realize this is kind of like a form of guidance kind of like jester and caduceus use but this would be specific to the bard imagine how epic this would've been during the fight with vecna and he inspired all of his team and one by one they would have given it back to him so he could've used it to read the tome. It would've been even more EPIC! Anyway what are your thoughts??
Hey dungeon coach! I have been watching all of your videos and I wanted to know about an older video. It was your video on the spell duel and counterspell homebrew. Did you ever try out the spell duel system because it sounded very interesting. Thank you!!
I am fleshing out a spell duel system for the Kickstarter book and if it hits the stretch goal we’re gonna go ALL OUT and test it all out for the dueling system 👌🏼👌🏼
Coming from videogames, the Gothic series strongly influenced my gaming preferences. There you start as a nobody and become an unstoppable killing machine in the end, but along the way you always know where you fit into the power hierarchy of the world because that is CONSISTENT. This consistency is extremely important, so players know what to expect and can act accordingly. It also makes success more satisfying because you earned it, instead of simply going through the motions in a situation crafted for you to beat it. In D&D this works even better than in videogames, because you can improvise with many different narrative possibilities and outcomes, meaning death isn't the only fail state. So yes, put in a Balrog that the low level party has to flee in an epic chase scene and use the environment to their advantage. Create a huge bandit camp that's too big for a frontal attack, so the players have to get help from nearby towns, or infiltrate the camp in a multi-step plan to kill the leader so the rest surrenders. There are many awesome scenarios that can arise from "unbalanced" encounters. In games that scaled encounters to the player, I soon stopped caring and just threw myself at every encounter because I knew I could beat them.
I rarely balance combat for my players. I throw at them whatever fits the story and/or the environment. I throw them easy and hard encounters at them: whatever makes sense to the reality of the moment. My players know that not every encounter/combat is to the end but sometimes they need to approach it like Kenny Rogers “Gambler” song. “You've got to know when to hold 'em Know when to fold 'em Know when to walk away And know when to run”. That keeps it realistic.
I generally assume that the correct level of balance for my players is +5 levels above them. Don't think I've had a death in a while, but I've knocked them down a few times. It really gives them a chance to be creative and actually be rewarded for it.
This video was confusing to me until I realized that when you say "balancing combat" you're talking about making it even. Making a fight easy or extremely challenging is also "balancing" combat since you still have to take the party's capabilities into account. I also wish you would give more examples of how to communicate an encounter's difficulty when something is beyond a party's capability vs something that is challenging, but possible. It seems to be a very fine line...
For anyone who came to this and thought "I'm going to hard", I just threw a mind flayer at my party of 5 level 4 players and they did pretty good (1 cleric, druid, rogue, and 2 fighters). After that encounter, I'm more likely to throw more at them then I originally intended.....and because my campaign only levels up for plot encounters so I want them to really earn that level up that normally takes forever. I'm also going to be giving them legendary weapons and armour sooner than later, so I want a big ass Kaiju fight by the end.
The number one rule for "balance" is that YOUR PLAYERS DON'T KNOW EVERY ELEMENT. Are they losing? Reinforcements can happen. Maybe a crit, on top of extra damage, opens a vulnerability. Did someone miss, reveal information behind the thing they hit instead. Lower the HP of this enemy, and if they are below half, have them call a retreat. Reward inspiration if something was especially rad or helpful to someone else. Have an ally or event or project change the game to boost the party or hinder the biggest threat. Are they winning? Call upon a new form. Or pull off a new big move. Call reinforcements. Or just let them take the W. Encounter balance is like Myer Briggs or astrology. The numbers and events can always be dilated to tell the better story, and whatever is canon by the book should be used as a mental pitch for you to reflect on writing.
My current campaign is a 4 pc superhero game. I'm planning on having the party fight some eldritch monster that teleports them to Faerun with its death-cry. They'll have to go through the entire continent, saving people and having adventures until they discover Sigil and find a way home. The strongest PC has superman-level strength and even greater telekinesis. He could easily solo the 5e Demogorgon. Rather than nerf the PCs, I think it'll be more fun to have them annihilate almost everything in a couple of rounds, so that when they finally fight something that can actually put up a fight, its a big deal. Like the 400hp 5e Demo is going to be just an avatar or has "summoning sickness" from crossing dimensions. The 'real' Demo has 1000+ hp and is way stronger. The start is going to be Out of the Abyss, where they'll wake up in the Underdark, no idea where they are, and captured by drow who take away the tech user's equipment for reverse-engineering. It's going to be a major culture shock for them to find themselves on an alternate-universe earth where magic and monsters are common, but they have abilities that rival the strongest of gods. They'll have the potential to catapult the FR into the future, eradicating evil on a cosmic scale, or screw everything up into a dystopian nightmare.
No problem here. I'm a first time DM, and recently, after 3 sessions, my players "finished" the Oneshot we were playing, which we decided to use as starting point for a campaign. They were hired to clear out/find out what's going on in a former Asylum, that was abandoned about 100 years ago, and is rumored to be haunted. A rich merchant now wants to rebuild it into a manor, but the workers he sent all disappeared. First Session, they had mainly social encounters and looked through most of the abandoned building, as well as finding a boy, that went missing, locked up in one room. Oh, and they found a few skeletal remains of people in a Well, all with a round hole in their skulls. Session 2, they went back to the Asylum, after bringing the boy back to his father, and had their first encounter: while looking through the remaining rooms, they were attacked by one of the missing workers (Zombie stats), and then by an Illithid, that tried to flee, leading them to discover a hidden door. Both the worker and the Illithid had a hole in their skull, a net of silver wire on their brains. Here they decided to go back to the town to sleep and regain HP. 3rd Session, another friend joined, so another PC was introduced. So, the Party now consisted of a Changeling Arcane Trickster Rogue, a Tabaxi Hunter Ranger, a Kobold Celestial Warlock, a Dragonborn Zealot Barbarian and the new players Gnome Wild Magic Sorcerer with his Faerie Dragon companion/familiar. They returned to the Asylum, acompanied by a Elf Swashbuckler send by the mayor, entered the secret door, found an underground room filled with sacks and boxes, and couldn't resist looting immediatelly, making noise and alarming the enemies next door of their presence, resulting in them getting immediatelly mindblasted by another Illithid upon opening the door. The Gnome was the only one that saved, and I halfed the mindblast damage, as otherwise about 2/3 of them would have had 0 HP before the encounter even really started. So I decided that the Illithid retreated, laying another ambush, while the Party tried to free themselves from being stunned, finally following and being ambushed by the Illithid, 2 Guards, 3 workers and a Spellcaster. Through dumb luck, a few interesting ideas and interesting interpretations of rules, they managed to barely survive, kill the Illithid, a Guard and a Worker, incapacitating the remaining "Zombies" and capturing the Spellcaster, who got his hands and feet chopped off in one swoop and then was knocked out by the Dragonborn. The Spellcaster was the only one without a hole in his skull and was identified as one of the local temples priests. I nerfed the Illithids pretty hard, lowering their ACs and halving their HPs to reflect their already damaged nature, and just barely avoided a TPK. This was all at Level 3 by the way. Can't wait to see what's next.
Ha! I don't have to try to do this; I can never seem to get a balanced encounter!😂 And don't get me started on CR! I'd need to go back to Algebra Class to figure that sh*t out!! I follow the Hope and Pray Method😅
Rule of 5, Now that their in endgame, I bump the CR by 5. My party can easily take on cr-14 cr-15 being only level 10. My players are mid maxers, and they all over 40 years of experience between them. The builds they make are nasty. Sometimes you just send it I worry about balance in the sense of, is this fun and does it make sense. Its my world, I promise you they're not the strongest and they will find out :)
The one point I will offer in "perfectly balanced" encounters' favors is that it can still lead to great moments if balanced in certain ways For example, I made a boss for a level 5 party which was very balanced for what they could handle. Perhaps a bit too balanced, though; I never took critical hits into account. Mostly because crits had a 5% chance of occurring, and mathematically speaking, that's a rare event (occurring 5% or less of the time) and should not be accounted for. So, when combat came around, and the boss rolls a critical hit, the balance I had was instead replaced with the party now scrambling to keep themselves alive just long enough to take them out. It eventually resulted in a success, but the final blow also knocked the last conscious player unconscious because spike damage, so if it weren't for one of the healers Nat 20-ing thir first death save, my death-advese players could have died. And this was only the first major boss. They now have a taste of how difficult I will make major encounters. And now there is a seed of fear implanted into their minds, for they know not who the second boss will be, what their gimmick is, etc. (The next boss is a condition-inflicting zombie who is vulnerable to radiant damage, reflects radiant damage back at the source (at twice the power, due to its vulnerablility) unless magically suppressed, and needs to be dropped to 0 HP a total of 12 times before its final) I've made it clear that I will make combat difficult and I won't pull any punches, but I don't think they really got it until this fight.
My issue with DMs homebrewing too much is that they unwind all the gameplay balance of 5E. 5E went through a couple years of playtesting as D&D Next. Overall, 5E monsters have more HD/hp than previous editions because their AC are lower. WotC's decision was that they wanted players to hit more often (it's not fun always missing) while not have to bother calculate all the "to hit" modifier stacks infamous in 3.5E. Of course that meant monsters needed more hit points but not too many where combat drags out (over 10 rounds is too long). By adding new homebrew rules that makes PCs stronger it imbalances things where the DM has to make the monsters stronger to give the PCs a challenge. This is the viscous cycle, like Europeans introducing new animals to Australia and needing to introduce predators to deal with those new pests... The rule of the thumb for homebrewing rules to replace/modify 5E rules: Do you have to and why?
Makes me think of the pf campaign I'm in. My dm makes encounters with the assumptions that we'll die and he REALLY makes us work for our next level. If you don't power game in that game, you'll have a bad time. Gimmicky characters make that world go round.
Yeah...I don't use balance. Even the campaign ending scenario in Strahd's castle is going to be some grave guard (skeletons with levels and magic items) a bunch of "hordes of skeletons" minions, some thrall vampires (equivalent to vampire spawn), vampires with world modified abilities (brides of strahd, actual vampires and buffed) a varghulf (custom boss monster added from warhammer fantasy, made CR23) and actually Viktor or well Strahd modded for a deadly CR28 with 5 lv20 characters. Not at the same time for most of them, naturally that would be foolish, but I'm not going to go easy on them and knowing how much my players like souls games they will love it (they already are).
The idea of warning the players about something coming out of the game and saying, "yo, this fight is stacked against you," is called telegraphing. It's used in film and novels, as well, to help the viewer track and expect plot twists. An example of subtle use is the Sixth Sense.
TLDR: Balance your combat so the odds are not overly stacked up against the players, but while keeping it exciting. But give them an easier combat ocasionally to make them feel strong.
Unbalanced encounters were the key to D&D's early success. You roamed a dungeon or hex map and encountered whatever was there. Too tough for you? Run away, dummy. With balanced encounters came murder hoboes, since they can solve everything with a sword because everything is scaled to their ability to swing a sword.
Question about the 5.5... how much will be using ideas from this version (which includes your Ranger fix video variant) of 5.5: drive.google.com/folderview?id=16MAnT5LowYnSXX_-CjkrLk41H-8NlHQH
Just like achieving a Black Belt isn't the end of Martial Arts it is the begging, Lvl 20 should be where the Adventure and difficulty begins. I agree that if a unintentional TPK is eminent adjusting in some way is something DMs fail to consider or do. P.S. "Many Thousands" of HP plus Legendary AND Lair actions vs maybe couple Hundred each PC, Glad your not my DM. LOL. Great content thanks for your efforts in the name of keeping gaming fun.
Between the online game broadcast and POD cast games I watch/listen too, I have grown to highly dislike the Legendary/Lair actions as to me when EVERY single antagonist/BBEG has them it's getting old. I think that part of 5e is being over used and used where not needed or intended by the game. I think Lvls 15-20 is where they belong more toward 20.
If all you do as a DM is balance every encounter to the level of the party essentially rendering the challenge as a flat line, there is literally no point in leveling up. The guys at Neverwinter (And I know its taboo to compare video games with TT...) spent ages trying to build scaling into low level content so that wherever a character went, they met a "Character Appropriate Challenge". It took months, probably well over a year of constant player feedback that, you know what... sometimes even HEROES occasionally like to be able to go stomp all over a bunch of low level goons like they are taking a flamethrower to a field of dry grass, for them to catch on! It's a bit of fun and cathartic for the players. But if they get that free hit every now and again, they should expect to be outclassed by their opponents every now and again too. This is something that comes with experience as a DM. I've never been a fan of "Challenge Ratings" as a metric, since no two parties are ever alike, and even if they are the players controlling them are wildly different across groups. As a DM you will learn over time what is a good balance for your own players and their characters. Use CR as a guide only. Because when the party get wiped by something the books say they should be able to handle, they won't appreciate YOU telling them that they "should have been able to cope with it" Especially if it has a special attack or defence that you as the DM never gave them the means to overcome... One of the best bits of advice I would offer, (given to me over 30 years ago) is that when setting the Big Bad Battle at the end of an adventure, remember to factor in resource depletion when deciding on the level of challenge.
Keep homebrewing those encounters so you understand how difficult the encounters you throw at your party are! Balance is an art, just saying not to get to "crunchy" with it :)
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Remember, the world doesn't scale to the party's level.
This... is SO well said, I should have said that!!!
So no giving mere humanoids legendary resistances and more HP than they logically should have just because the party are past 10th level.
@@unwithering5313 there are certainly people and creatures at every power level. But the town guards just aren't going to be able to keep up past level 5 or so. Numbers only count for so much, bounded accuracy or no. Sometimes the dice just roll low
@@SeeAche I made theories on why those characters had those things they shouldn't have had, I am wondering if they would retain any of that if they joined the party (hypothetically).
@@unwithering5313 well I've got plenty of legendary people, monsters, and items. Hell there's an entire guild where the top hundred are basically empyrions (don't remember how it's spelled). But they're doing there own thing and if you want to hire them it'll cost more than most small kingdoms. But just because a party is level 13 doesn't mean Goblin hills becomes Storm Giant hills. Though A couple of trolls might want to dominate some gobos.
I'd argue that balancing isn't about getting the numbers just right. It's about making sure that each encounter is roughly as dangerous as you want it to be. It's about not making mooks too strong or bosses too weak. It's about knowing when to let the players face something far above their capabilites, and making sure they have a way to escape when they do. It's about making sure that every party member can contribute in the big set-piece battles. It's about making sure they aren't worn down too quickly as they descend into the dungeon depths.
To use your own example, your players had ways of dealing with the creeping darkness and the time dilation. They'd fought time wraiths and the clones before and were presumably familiar with how they worked. Sure, the fight was extremely stacked against them, but it was all things they could manage and be prepared for. That's exactly how you balance an encounter.
I think you recognise this as well, since your gripe is specifically about rigorously calculating how a combat could go. I just don't think it's right to say "Don't balance your encounters" when what you mean is "Don't worry so much about getting it just right".
One of the rare comments where you actually learn something.
Exactly what I was about to say. If you want a hard or easy encounter, that is balancing your encounter to that mindset. So it's not "don't balance at all". It's don't always throw your players the same difficulty of combat.
As long as it isn't some impossible power trip TPK fest and as long as the players are having fun then every other problem in the campaign doesn't feel like a drag.
Something I've personally been doing nowadays when making encounters is that it's more sane for me as a DM to just pick a monster or a stat-block that just seems the most interesting or fits the narrative I'm trying to set up for the story and just see how the players react to it. If it proves to be something very high level, it can be fun to see if my players try to escape or how they manage to creatively think their way out of the situation.
I loved just hearing the snippet about the multi-1000 HP boss fight lol, reminds me of the very fun (definitely unbalanced) first campaign I played in :)
Oh hey! Small world
Early on in my series of loosely connected one shots, my players did a great deed for a ghost. Later on when they were about to get into a potentially overwhelming encounter, the ghost would appear to one of them and say "Great danger lies ahead! Be fully prepared!" I totally stole that from the old CRPG "Curse of the Azure Bonds" btw. But it always led to some great discussions about planning tactics, including the option to run away and return later. :)
Also, this is my vote for a TPK-alternatives video.
I once pitted my party against a homebrewed Zombie Horde monster that was slowly but inexorably marching up to the town they were in. They were capable of seeing it from the clifftop they were on but only the Bard archer could hit them. So they Voltroned themselves to boost the Bard's Attack and Damage to have him take down the zombie horde before it reached the city gates and he ran out of the special arrows that could harm the undead.
I wanna hear that story of that crazy final fight.
I’ll have to tell it on a live stream some time!
Holy cow I am amazed how every video you find ways to make me look at my DMing from another perspective. You are amazing you know that?!?! I'm a new DM, I started my campaign after finding your channel and decided to go for it using your ideas to help me learn and get better. You have made me realize that I've been trying to balance encounters so much that I ended up making my players fight an ancient black dragon and they ended up stomping it unintentionally because I tried to hard to balance it. The next fight my players dealt with was an enemy wizard from the backstory for my party sorcerer and his enemy wizard wanted him alone. I designed the fight to keep all the other players away so he could focus solely on the sorcerer. It ended up making it really off balanced fight against my players that I thought was about to lead to a tpk until the party paladin came out of nowhere, managing to break away from his enemies and taking a lot of aoos to do so, came in and crit the boss so that the sorcerer could finish him off. It was set so far against my players and they still barely managed a win, when I thought they were about to either run or die, and it made it such an epic and beautiful fight. Thank you for making me realize this so I can try to do this more in the future!
Wow! Your comment is exactly why I do what I do! Thank you so much for that! It really fuels my fire!! WHOOOO 💜
@@TheDungeonCoach much love coach, your the reason I started DMing, and your the one who helps keep me in check as a DM and makes sure I don't lose sight of the big picture. I hope one day I'll be in a position to be a patreon subscriber but until then I still love to watch your videos.
DMs can avoid burnout by learning to streamline their prep. Combat is one of the biggest time sinks for DMs, so I completely agree with the Dungeon Coach. There was a video from Taking20 that similarly suggested that balancing encounters should be reconsidered. Amen to all of it!
Ohhh anther D&D book that I'll have to add to my toolkit!
Heck yea man! More info soon to come!
A very sensible perspective. Great video topic.
The more and more you DM the more you’ll fine tune that gut feeling of whats too much. Its a muscle like every other part of DMing, the more you use it the better youll get at “balancing combat” without worrying about it. Thats been my experience atleast. Love ya DC! Great stuff recently
100% a muscle! Totally agree!!
Probably my second favourite vid of yours. Your philosophy sings to me and the ridiculous stuff i put my players through.
Never stop mate, you are the beacon of dnd for me and others that i know
Wow the beacon of dnd... that’s honestly so inspiring to me that you think that highly of what I do! Thank you so much for sharing! It fires me up!!
@@TheDungeonCoach you are most welcome - you're a part od what fired me up and inspired me to start building and sharing my own dnd content. In 1-5 years i plan on providing inspiration back to you to match what you do for me.
I’m a new DM and this is so helpful! I was here searching for ‘how to balance your encounters’ videos, but stumbled onto this. I don’t have to worry so much now! Thank youuu ❤❤ subbing now
The game already isnt balanced, so just roll with it haha!
Agreed!!
I just started a Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign as DM. I am a giver, so my players get to have a lot of nice things, such as rare Bows and Shields, homebrew Armor- and Shield variants, a pet Guard Drake, special alloy and poison to put on weapons to give effects and/or extra damage. What happens is that the books encounters etc. become visibly easier.
What do i do against it? Enemys have Hit Points that you can roll, so i just give them some more than the middle number the Monster Manual suggests. Or some of them also get those alloys. Or have stronger enemys to begin with (a knight istead of a veteran, or 6 Goblins but 1 Goblin suddenly has a crossbow instead of slings or can cast magic). Or just dont let them rest for a bit, so they run low on healt and spell slots.
My players so far always liked it.
Warning from shop keeper in the nearest town not to face the dragon head-on (DM warns players). Players take dragon head-on and die. Balancing awareness of character invincibility vs vulnerability is so difficult do! Thanks for the insight, Dungeon Coach!!
I love your view and opinions on things, it is a nice refreshing view on DND, THANK YOU!
Keep up the great work.
You made the best comparison between balanced combats and equal teams in sports. Great stuff 👏👍
Yes! My players in my groups have loved my encounters despite them almost always being in the monster's favor (the players are usually dealing with an uphill battle until about lvl 4-6 at which point things fluctuate more). My players rarely run away, but my players always state how much more rewarding they find the fights when they overcome them so I've kept doing it. Though yes, I agree with him make sure there's clear signs that something they're about to approach is going to be extremely challenging and that there's a way out (escape route) if needed.
Another great video! Also, I would love to hear about that ending, it sounds amazing!
Thanks! I didnt know if it was going to be a HOT topic or not lol
Oh wow, that sounds absolutely amazing. I would love to see a video series where you dramatize your games.
Dramatize is a good word!
Great video and great tips Coach! I watch this channel for these great tips to upgrade my games, but I’d definitely watch a video of you telling the story of that epic battle you described
Lots of people are saying this! Might just have to do one!!
My players set out on a rescue mission and did figure out a way to bypass the heavily guarded enemy fortress. At the end of it, they backstabbed the bad guy who thought they were allies, and the fight began.
The party was 6 level 4 player characters. The bad guy was a modified CR12 Archmage with a few henchmen. One of them almost died, but I forgot I gave the barbarian a helmet that allows him to teleport into an attack to protect other people and push the protected person to another square. I was surprised, and happy he did so.
They succeeded, and because they played nice with a certain faction, they had some backup to aid their escape after the rescue.
Coach never apologize for puns!!
Hahaha glad you thought they were punny
Still would love to hear more stories from your old campaigns and fully about that final fight you mentioned in this video!
So I'm a very new DM and I had set up an early major villain encounter, I had been hoping that they would barely be able to drive him off ending up incredibly wounded in the process. Instead they were trouncing him. I was fairly flustered but then I had an idea of the villain draining one of his minions to fight a bit longer. It ended up being a better choice since it helped show how evil and ruthless the villain was. So it worked put better for me that they were thrashing him. Of course for the next encounter I'll have to buff him a bit.
Heyo Coach,
Commenting for that algorithm!
HEYOOOO commenting for the appreciation!
@@TheDungeonCoach
Replying to say I hope all is well and keep kicking butt coach :)
Do you ever feel like you're homebrewing too much to where your players (or even the DM) can't keep track of the mechanics and it comes off weird?
As a DM always have a Homebrew notes. If you don't hold the Homebrew as equal to RAW the players certainly won't.
If that ever happens... then yes that would be a problem and you should dial something down 👌🏼
I find this a hard balance, as homebrew adds a lot
Thank you for saying that sometimes you players need to crush an easy opponent. If you are level 20 heroes or the Realm why is every random encounter so hard. Let them build up some confidence (then crush them)
But hard to do that to me when I assume the campaign is riddled with 'oblivion scaling'
Super Video! I juste discovered your channel, and I loved the Limbo breakdown ans I really wanna see more videos like that, I did not find anything like this on youtube and I would be super interested in a video on the Astral Plane!
Balance is very important in dnd.
But so is the presence of unbalance.
I think it was a Runesmith video somewhere, but placing emphasis on how much time a person's takes is more important than perfect numbers. This isn't necessarily confined to only combat.
If you do really like numbers then there have been a few mentions of this 30% - 70% win/lose rate that has been mentioned by Gygax himself (in a book if I recall), a rat study on play fighting big vs. small, and one of Wotc's poll during DnD next asking about the desirable range of accuracy. So if you wanted something to succeed or hit easily then the DC/AC is 6 (+ proficiency of player if you're playing 5e) for 30%, and if you wanted a harder challenge then the DC/AC is 14 (+ proficiency of player if you're playing 5e) for 70%.
You can get more noodly than this of course, but more specific to the rat study found that if the smaller rat didn't win at least 30% of the time they'd stop playing, so the bigger rat more than likely let's them win as both rats have a desire to play for their development. This isn't to say having too tough or too hard of a game is bad: Dark Souls vs. Animal Crossing. Good luck!
We need this story. New subscriber.
BOOM then Im gonna throw it into the pool for video votes! LETS GOOO
Yes. I would like to get some cool inspiration about how to avoid TPKs that don't feel like I am holding my punches.
Especially considering that I will DM Curse of Strahd soon where PCs are harder to replace and I make it harder by using hit dice healing during long rests and my PCs probably only get half their spellslots back on a LR. I want a more grittier D&D experience. ;)
"I want a more grittier D&D experience. ;)"
Have you tried Pathfinder?
Among a zillion other things, unlike in 5E, you don't magically restore to full health after being mauled nearly to death by just having a good night's sleep. Characters only heal up so much each long rest, and things like medicine checks and caring for the hurt or sick mean more. So if the characters get their asses handed to them, it might take a week to recover their wounds. And if they're on a time-sensitive mission to get themselves or something somewhere in a few days...well.
@@stevenseufert2520 @Steven Seufert No. Heard more "bad things than good about pathfinder. But I will check their resting rules out. Thanks for the tip.
I really like these advice videos where you give tips on things that actually translate to other RPG systems. I’m working on a Cogent Roleplay campaign and I need those helpful tips! Thanks!
First video...subscribed. This is all very solid advice.
I played a campaign where we only managed to win one single combat; barely.
Either we lost and just managed to survive or the combats kind of won themselves without us doing anything.
Story please!
This helped me balance my new system! Thanks so much!!
Fairness come from a genuine notion that you want your encounters to be engaging and keep your players on the edge of there sit. Like chess where the players need to be focused and strategize there next move to help the team.
But like you said balencing encounters is bad because it robs players out of the choices they made. For example if they want to explore a place that the DM had worn multiple times that is deadly for them. They should feel the consequences of there actions. Another example is that if players decide to go back to a place that was at the start of there adventure where the creatures are low level they should feel like badasses that take the enemy under one strike.
And like I mentioned before balance encounters is not the only thing that makes fights entertaining. There should be the story elements to the fight and little side objectives that makes the encounter more fun. Also sometimes the fight objective is not really defeat the enemy but try to survive for a certain amount of turns will your being hunted by a Vampire Lord that is tired of you guys messing around his plans.
But at the end, balencing encounters are fine time to time as well as none balence encounters.
This whole comment was very well said!
Pppppppp
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You should make a video on sports in DND, it seems it would be a lot of fun having a barbarian playing football, or a warlock playing baseball
My Gm (not dnd) kept on increasing the modifiers on the orcs we were fighting as we gained power.
I ended up talking to him about it, and found out it never occurred to him what was happening lol.
I was like bro, what a the point of all this power we're getting if random orcs are getting stronger too?
Next couple sessions he over corrected and went far too easy lol.
Worked that back out though, it was a good learning experience for him, and me.
Maybe 1-3 elite orcs yet not a whole group, if it's gonna be a whole group it better be a group setup like players.
@@ExeErdna our game doesn't scale like d&d, so it wasn't necessarily super drastic. (Highest equivalent level a PC could get is probably 4th, idk it's hard to translate.)
It was more like, we got special armor then the orcs hit modifier went up. We increased our hit mod, their armor went up. Kind of an arms race of sorts, with no in world explanation.
I'm having some trouble with getting my players to think of doing anything but hit and get hit until someone falls. I have an encounter waiting in the wings to show them the folly of that strategy, an enemy that further overwhelms the party every round. My expectation is that the party will start off as cocky as ever, then become more and more afraid, as what they thought was a single enemy ends up swarming around them. They'll escape or they'll be taken, but either way the story will continue.
I definitely want to hear more about that epic battle.
"Oh, they all died horribly and the Lich sacrificed his daughter. Now he rules over my world with an iron fist." -Coach
That's how I expect it should have turned out and might have made for the best ending.
I have been a DM/GM for 25+ years. Here is my tip for knowing how long any encounter is gonna last and how hard it is. Balancing it.
You need to know the AverageTotal HP they can do per rd . With their normal attacks. If they all hit avg dam=
This goes both ways, how much will the Mobs do Average per rd to the players. if they all get hit avg dam=
Knowing your players characters is key to knowing what to throw against them.
Adjust any stat up or down as you see fit thats needed for your game.
The dice and player choice is what changes the outcomes of encounters. They are the goofs messing with the balance :)
That sounds like Don Turnbull's old Monstermark System from White Dwarf back in the late 1970s. It's good as a guideline but it gets a *lot* more complicated when you have to start factoring in magic and special abilities. D&D 5e, with it's increasingly high damage output at higher levels, also makes it very "swingy" in combat. A few good rolls in terms of critical hits (esp. from Rogues w/ Sneak Attack and the like) can completely throw all those calculations out of the window.
I do these hypotetical round averages too! LOVE that we are synced up on that!
@@FrostSpike Thats right it IS a guideline. What is the AVERAGE. They Normally do about how much damage a rd. Then base off of that. Then the dice taketh or giveth.
Thats so right, i have two groups of 5th lvl players, and I stoped to balance after 3rd lvl, that helped me to build a few Heroic encounters with goblins and skelets and throw a few scary monsters that They should avoid.
Suprisingly They prepare so well with enc almost 3 times harder than it should be (CR) that They win almost with esee XD
You could just, not mechanically balance it, but dynamically change things to be easier or harder.
Like, if the dragon usually attacks twice, have it attack once. Or if the darkness spreads 5ft per round, now it spreads 15ft this round.
Players might notice that, but they don't know if that was the initial plan or not.
I have very little experience with DnD. But as a DM I can relate to the balanced, slow and boring fight. I didnt understand then what was wrong with it, but now I do. Not balancing things will be very freeing for me. Much less thing to worry about.
Could you record a game session between your group, like Critical Role or Ghosts of Saltmarsh?
It would be very entertaining and helpful to see all of your awesome advice put into practice all at once.
Not only that, but the examples you use from your games just get me pumped to play with my group (fairly new and inexperienced). I can only attempt to imagine how entertaining and inspiring it would be to watch your games, and follow you guys through a campaign. Even just a short 10 session one, like Ghosts of Saltmarsh.
O.O How did you predict the ending to my campaign ... I have a Lich that is riding a Dracolich as a mount and right before that the players have to fight versions of themselves to earn favour of the gods to help.
The combination of ever-expanding bloat and the desperate worship at the altar of balance is what ultimately causes most systems to self-immolate.
And here I am worrying about throwing a CR 6 Bodak at a group of 6 level 3 in my CoS game. 😬
Now I want to listen to that final battle!
3.0 and the d20 system as a whole really exasperated the idea that "all are equal". I come from running Rifts games where not even the classes are balanced with each other. I used to wonder why that was until I started running 3.x for such a long time. Then I grew to appreciate the "don't expect video game results" notion that the Palladium system offered.
Help me Dungeon Coach! I'm thinking of making a separate HP system for PCs. PCs will still have attack and damage rolls against enemies. But being the DM, I have a lot on my plate. I'm making a website for randomly generated monsters, environments, weather, loot. So I'm thinking of just giving PCs less HP, when an enemy hits a PC, it usually does a flat 1HP or more on a crit. Less math, less rolling for me, the DM.
Im about to post a video soon about monsters dont follow the same rules as players... BUT this is maybe a little much in my opinion. You want the game to feel FAIR and mechanically similar, especially for such a HUGE part of the game. I would also be nervous understanding how to adjust / blaance on the fly when you have TWO different systems going on each side of the table
@@TheDungeonCoach Fair point. In all honesty, it does feel icky having two different HP systems. I'll buck up. But math is hardddd 😩😩😩
You can simplify combat by giving pcs and npcs 4 wound points. 1 hit - 1 wound point. Question is what your players would think about this implementation
@@TheDungeonCoach It also has ramifications for potions and healing spells which I also simplified for restoring HP - static numbers without any modifiers or proficiency added unless certain feats are taken. I completely modularized feats. I did a lot of crazy stuff with this system. It's been a lot of work.
Wounds and vigor, use it in pathfinder, and pathfinder is heavilly based on 3.5, give it a look. It conveys the risk of combat perfectly, and works great. Give it a try.
Bruh your intro alone just gave me an idea! Get subbed to.
The title of this video alone warrants a like :)
Hey DC, I know your busy but on your last video I left a really long coment I was hoping you read it but I'm not sure if you did, if you didn't I'm going to post it again on here.
I know its a bit long, but you inspired me to create my own homebrews
P.S. I'd love to hear about that multi lich fight
I saw the recent video on bards that you had and I really loved the idea but I thought it was missing a little something.
[Now keep in mind I've NEVER played d&d and I don't own any players handbooks so I don't actually have an idea on how this works, BUUTTT I have been watching alot of critical role and scanlan is probably the greatest bard to ever live (I know it sounds like an opinion but you know its a fact!)]
But I noticed that bards only got 5 inspirations?? (Atleast thats how CR did it)
Which is crazy to me because its not like bards ever run out of creativity! Thats just crazy! So here's what i came up with:
Bards keep their inspirations but, they also have unlimited, what I call 'Muse Inspirations'. So instead of a d6 or d10, bards give another player a d4 as a bonus action, but these have NO limit. However, it only last for about 10 minutes. But the players max out at one 'Muse' per player. Now the other thing I added and I'm REALLY proud about this, is that same player that recieved a 'Muse Inspiration' can either use it or spend THEIR bonus action to give it BACK TO THE BARD!!! 🤯🤯🤯
Now these DO stack so if a bard gave a muse inspiration to everyone in the party they can all spend a bonus action giving it back to the bard then giving the bard inspiration pretty much guarenting an automatic success. One of my personal requirements is that they players has to come up with something to give it back kind of like the bard does shen they initially give it to the player.
I realize this is kind of like a form of guidance kind of like jester and caduceus use but this would be specific to the bard imagine how epic this would've been during the fight with vecna and he inspired all of his team and one by one they would have given it back to him so he could've used it to read the tome. It would've been even more EPIC!
Anyway what are your thoughts??
Hey dungeon coach! I have been watching all of your videos and I wanted to know about an older video. It was your video on the spell duel and counterspell homebrew. Did you ever try out the spell duel system because it sounded very interesting.
Thank you!!
I am fleshing out a spell duel system for the Kickstarter book and if it hits the stretch goal we’re gonna go ALL OUT and test it all out for the dueling system 👌🏼👌🏼
@@TheDungeonCoach thank you sir for responding!
story fights how to the player's deal with big enemies small enemies and hazards?
Ooooo that’s a good idea!
Coming from videogames, the Gothic series strongly influenced my gaming preferences. There you start as a nobody and become an unstoppable killing machine in the end, but along the way you always know where you fit into the power hierarchy of the world because that is CONSISTENT.
This consistency is extremely important, so players know what to expect and can act accordingly. It also makes success more satisfying because you earned it, instead of simply going through the motions in a situation crafted for you to beat it.
In D&D this works even better than in videogames, because you can improvise with many different narrative possibilities and outcomes, meaning death isn't the only fail state. So yes, put in a Balrog that the low level party has to flee in an epic chase scene and use the environment to their advantage. Create a huge bandit camp that's too big for a frontal attack, so the players have to get help from nearby towns, or infiltrate the camp in a multi-step plan to kill the leader so the rest surrenders. There are many awesome scenarios that can arise from "unbalanced" encounters.
In games that scaled encounters to the player, I soon stopped caring and just threw myself at every encounter because I knew I could beat them.
I rarely balance combat for my players. I throw at them whatever fits the story and/or the environment. I throw them easy and hard encounters at them: whatever makes sense to the reality of the moment. My players know that not every encounter/combat is to the end but sometimes they need to approach it like Kenny Rogers “Gambler” song. “You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run”. That keeps it realistic.
AMEN!!!
I generally assume that the correct level of balance for my players is +5 levels above them. Don't think I've had a death in a while, but I've knocked them down a few times. It really gives them a chance to be creative and actually be rewarded for it.
This video was confusing to me until I realized that when you say "balancing combat" you're talking about making it even. Making a fight easy or extremely challenging is also "balancing" combat since you still have to take the party's capabilities into account.
I also wish you would give more examples of how to communicate an encounter's difficulty when something is beyond a party's capability vs something that is challenging, but possible. It seems to be a very fine line...
that ending is similar to what I have planned!
For anyone who came to this and thought "I'm going to hard", I just threw a mind flayer at my party of 5 level 4 players and they did pretty good (1 cleric, druid, rogue, and 2 fighters). After that encounter, I'm more likely to throw more at them then I originally intended.....and because my campaign only levels up for plot encounters so I want them to really earn that level up that normally takes forever. I'm also going to be giving them legendary weapons and armour sooner than later, so I want a big ass Kaiju fight by the end.
I want to hear that story!
Oh damn, first view! I feel special. You’re the man, coach!
Your quick!! Thanks Raul!
this video was really useful, thank you😁😁😁🥪
I would also like to hear about that final battle
The number one rule for "balance" is that YOUR PLAYERS DON'T KNOW EVERY ELEMENT.
Are they losing?
Reinforcements can happen. Maybe a crit, on top of extra damage, opens a vulnerability. Did someone miss, reveal information behind the thing they hit instead. Lower the HP of this enemy, and if they are below half, have them call a retreat. Reward inspiration if something was especially rad or helpful to someone else. Have an ally or event or project change the game to boost the party or hinder the biggest threat.
Are they winning? Call upon a new form. Or pull off a new big move. Call reinforcements. Or just let them take the W.
Encounter balance is like Myer Briggs or astrology. The numbers and events can always be dilated to tell the better story, and whatever is canon by the book should be used as a mental pitch for you to reflect on writing.
My current campaign is a 4 pc superhero game. I'm planning on having the party fight some eldritch monster that teleports them to Faerun with its death-cry. They'll have to go through the entire continent, saving people and having adventures until they discover Sigil and find a way home. The strongest PC has superman-level strength and even greater telekinesis. He could easily solo the 5e Demogorgon. Rather than nerf the PCs, I think it'll be more fun to have them annihilate almost everything in a couple of rounds, so that when they finally fight something that can actually put up a fight, its a big deal. Like the 400hp 5e Demo is going to be just an avatar or has "summoning sickness" from crossing dimensions. The 'real' Demo has 1000+ hp and is way stronger.
The start is going to be Out of the Abyss, where they'll wake up in the Underdark, no idea where they are, and captured by drow who take away the tech user's equipment for reverse-engineering. It's going to be a major culture shock for them to find themselves on an alternate-universe earth where magic and monsters are common, but they have abilities that rival the strongest of gods. They'll have the potential to catapult the FR into the future, eradicating evil on a cosmic scale, or screw everything up into a dystopian nightmare.
No problem here.
I'm a first time DM, and recently, after 3 sessions, my players "finished" the Oneshot we were playing, which we decided to use as starting point for a campaign.
They were hired to clear out/find out what's going on in a former Asylum, that was abandoned about 100 years ago, and is rumored to be haunted. A rich merchant now wants to rebuild it into a manor, but the workers he sent all disappeared.
First Session, they had mainly social encounters and looked through most of the abandoned building, as well as finding a boy, that went missing, locked up in one room. Oh, and they found a few skeletal remains of people in a Well, all with a round hole in their skulls.
Session 2, they went back to the Asylum, after bringing the boy back to his father, and had their first encounter: while looking through the remaining rooms, they were attacked by one of the missing workers (Zombie stats), and then by an Illithid, that tried to flee, leading them to discover a hidden door. Both the worker and the Illithid had a hole in their skull, a net of silver wire on their brains. Here they decided to go back to the town to sleep and regain HP.
3rd Session, another friend joined, so another PC was introduced. So, the Party now consisted of a Changeling Arcane Trickster Rogue, a Tabaxi Hunter Ranger, a Kobold Celestial Warlock, a Dragonborn Zealot Barbarian and the new players Gnome Wild Magic Sorcerer with his Faerie Dragon companion/familiar.
They returned to the Asylum, acompanied by a Elf Swashbuckler send by the mayor, entered the secret door, found an underground room filled with sacks and boxes, and couldn't resist looting immediatelly, making noise and alarming the enemies next door of their presence, resulting in them getting immediatelly mindblasted by another Illithid upon opening the door. The Gnome was the only one that saved, and I halfed the mindblast damage, as otherwise about 2/3 of them would have had 0 HP before the encounter even really started.
So I decided that the Illithid retreated, laying another ambush, while the Party tried to free themselves from being stunned, finally following and being ambushed by the Illithid, 2 Guards, 3 workers and a Spellcaster. Through dumb luck, a few interesting ideas and interesting interpretations of rules, they managed to barely survive, kill the Illithid, a Guard and a Worker, incapacitating the remaining "Zombies" and capturing the Spellcaster, who got his hands and feet chopped off in one swoop and then was knocked out by the Dragonborn. The Spellcaster was the only one without a hole in his skull and was identified as one of the local temples priests.
I nerfed the Illithids pretty hard, lowering their ACs and halving their HPs to reflect their already damaged nature, and just barely avoided a TPK. This was all at Level 3 by the way.
Can't wait to see what's next.
Duuude I need to know how actually was that final fight
Ha! I don't have to try to do this; I can never seem to get a balanced encounter!😂 And don't get me started on CR! I'd need to go back to Algebra Class to figure that sh*t out!! I follow the Hope and Pray Method😅
Rule of 5, Now that their in endgame, I bump the CR by 5. My party can easily take on cr-14 cr-15 being only level 10. My players are mid maxers, and they all over 40 years of experience between them. The builds they make are nasty. Sometimes you just send it
I worry about balance in the sense of, is this fun and does it make sense. Its my world, I promise you they're not the strongest and they will find out :)
The one point I will offer in "perfectly balanced" encounters' favors is that it can still lead to great moments if balanced in certain ways
For example, I made a boss for a level 5 party which was very balanced for what they could handle. Perhaps a bit too balanced, though; I never took critical hits into account. Mostly because crits had a 5% chance of occurring, and mathematically speaking, that's a rare event (occurring 5% or less of the time) and should not be accounted for.
So, when combat came around, and the boss rolls a critical hit, the balance I had was instead replaced with the party now scrambling to keep themselves alive just long enough to take them out. It eventually resulted in a success, but the final blow also knocked the last conscious player unconscious because spike damage, so if it weren't for one of the healers Nat 20-ing thir first death save, my death-advese players could have died.
And this was only the first major boss. They now have a taste of how difficult I will make major encounters. And now there is a seed of fear implanted into their minds, for they know not who the second boss will be, what their gimmick is, etc.
(The next boss is a condition-inflicting zombie who is vulnerable to radiant damage, reflects radiant damage back at the source (at twice the power, due to its vulnerablility) unless magically suppressed, and needs to be dropped to 0 HP a total of 12 times before its final)
I've made it clear that I will make combat difficult and I won't pull any punches, but I don't think they really got it until this fight.
My issue with DMs homebrewing too much is that they unwind all the gameplay balance of 5E. 5E went through a couple years of playtesting as D&D Next.
Overall, 5E monsters have more HD/hp than previous editions because their AC are lower. WotC's decision was that they wanted players to hit more often (it's not fun always missing) while not have to bother calculate all the "to hit" modifier stacks infamous in 3.5E. Of course that meant monsters needed more hit points but not too many where combat drags out (over 10 rounds is too long).
By adding new homebrew rules that makes PCs stronger it imbalances things where the DM has to make the monsters stronger to give the PCs a challenge. This is the viscous cycle, like Europeans introducing new animals to Australia and needing to introduce predators to deal with those new pests...
The rule of the thumb for homebrewing rules to replace/modify 5E rules: Do you have to and why?
Makes me think of the pf campaign I'm in. My dm makes encounters with the assumptions that we'll die and he REALLY makes us work for our next level. If you don't power game in that game, you'll have a bad time. Gimmicky characters make that world go round.
At some point you just have a feeling
lol that DM gut feeling!
You should definitely tell us your dnd group stories. Call it something like “Fireside Stories” or “Tales from the Road” or something like that.
Yeah...I don't use balance. Even the campaign ending scenario in Strahd's castle is going to be some grave guard (skeletons with levels and magic items) a bunch of "hordes of skeletons" minions, some thrall vampires (equivalent to vampire spawn), vampires with world modified abilities (brides of strahd, actual vampires and buffed) a varghulf (custom boss monster added from warhammer fantasy, made CR23) and actually Viktor or well Strahd modded for a deadly CR28 with 5 lv20 characters.
Not at the same time for most of them, naturally that would be foolish, but I'm not going to go easy on them and knowing how much my players like souls games they will love it (they already are).
The idea of warning the players about something coming out of the game and saying, "yo, this fight is stacked against you," is called telegraphing. It's used in film and novels, as well, to help the viewer track and expect plot twists. An example of subtle use is the Sixth Sense.
So this is the first time I've heard you say what you taught, my thoughts were math or social studies. Fellow math teacher over here.
Math teacher brothers!! Haha nice!
Yes math brothers. I'm high school, ALG I and finance literacy, you?
Alternatives to tpk video please
TLDR: Balance your combat so the odds are not overly stacked up against the players, but while keeping it exciting. But give them an easier combat ocasionally to make them feel strong.
More Stories! fo sho!
Preach my man!
Unbalanced encounters were the key to D&D's early success. You roamed a dungeon or hex map and encountered whatever was there. Too tough for you? Run away, dummy. With balanced encounters came murder hoboes, since they can solve everything with a sword because everything is scaled to their ability to swing a sword.
Question about the 5.5... how much will be using ideas from this version (which includes your Ranger fix video variant) of 5.5:
drive.google.com/folderview?id=16MAnT5LowYnSXX_-CjkrLk41H-8NlHQH
Thank you
Just like achieving a Black Belt isn't the end of Martial Arts it is the begging, Lvl 20 should be where the Adventure and difficulty begins. I agree that if a unintentional TPK is eminent adjusting in some way is something DMs fail to consider or do. P.S. "Many Thousands" of HP plus Legendary AND Lair actions vs maybe couple Hundred each PC, Glad your not my DM. LOL. Great content thanks for your efforts in the name of keeping gaming fun.
Yes players can surprise you, but more often then not it's because of a foolish action not a well thought out plan.
STOP balancing puns and content just throw em in there 😂 😂
new series called coach's story time, maybe also dungeon rants, i'm down
Between the online game broadcast and POD cast games I watch/listen too, I have grown to highly dislike the Legendary/Lair actions as to me when EVERY single antagonist/BBEG has them it's getting old. I think that part of 5e is being over used and used where not needed or intended by the game. I think Lvls 15-20 is where they belong more toward 20.
My party members are legitimately the most unsurprising combatants. I don’t think this advice is for then. 😭
If all you do as a DM is balance every encounter to the level of the party essentially rendering the challenge as a flat line, there is literally no point in leveling up.
The guys at Neverwinter (And I know its taboo to compare video games with TT...) spent ages trying to build scaling into low level content so that wherever a character went, they met a "Character Appropriate Challenge". It took months, probably well over a year of constant player feedback that, you know what... sometimes even HEROES occasionally like to be able to go stomp all over a bunch of low level goons like they are taking a flamethrower to a field of dry grass, for them to catch on!
It's a bit of fun and cathartic for the players.
But if they get that free hit every now and again, they should expect to be outclassed by their opponents every now and again too.
This is something that comes with experience as a DM. I've never been a fan of "Challenge Ratings" as a metric, since no two parties are ever alike, and even if they are the players controlling them are wildly different across groups.
As a DM you will learn over time what is a good balance for your own players and their characters.
Use CR as a guide only. Because when the party get wiped by something the books say they should be able to handle, they won't appreciate YOU telling them that they "should have been able to cope with it" Especially if it has a special attack or defence that you as the DM never gave them the means to overcome...
One of the best bits of advice I would offer, (given to me over 30 years ago) is that when setting the Big Bad Battle at the end of an adventure, remember to factor in resource depletion when deciding on the level of challenge.
me who trew a ancient obsidian dracolich at my two player campaign at lvl 4...
WHAT A BEAST! 💪🏼💜
Encounters should be way to easy and way to hard