My players kept getting annoyed with me when it seemed like every single time they turned a corner it was a deadly encounter. So they sat me down and basically had an intervention with me about telegraphing danger so they dont feel blindsided. It has very much improved player morale and the game overall.
@@HouseDM it is pretty nice. Of my party of 6 players, 4 are DMs themselves with 5+ years of experience and the other 2 have DMed a few one shots so they are all usually great at giving feedback/advice. It's also nice to ask their opinions on difficult rulings and homebrew mechanics. It's nice to have people I trust to know their stuff and I truly respect their opinions on many matters. I consider myself fairly spoiled to have such a group.
@@mrosskne oh they would, they would just regularly underestimate the threat level of encounters because I didn't always telegraph it to them in a fashion they understood.
Funny thought, when we get a tpk it's from a random fight. When the party goes into an encounter they know is going to be hard, they operate like a well oiled machine of death. So I totally agree with this philosophy.
Important to remember, you can also telegraph individual attacks by monsters, especially the big flashy powerful ones. Having the red dragon take its turn, and finishing it by telling the players that smoke is coming from its nostrils and flames are licking out between its teeth is a GREAT way to tell him that it's going to use its Breath Weapon next round. The evil mage grabbing a lodestone and staring dead-eyed at the Rogue, mumbling arcane curses over and over, can let them know that Disintegrate is incoming. This let your players mitigate this incoming threat, by diving behind cover before the dragonfire hits or knocking the component out of the mage's hand. Your players will also feel badass and clever and that's always good.
THIS. Fantastic advice! Your absolutely right that players will feel cool when you telegraph attacks and they can then decide how to deal with that on their next turn. Love it!
I used the telegraphed attacks bit in a Monster Hunter themed game, but those telegraphed attacks were the *big* ones, and there wasn't a save. It just happened in that spot at the start of the monster's turn.
@@ekothesilent9456 It was on a monster-by-monster basis. I'm at work, the only one I can remember off the top of my head was a mix between a Wyvern and a Vulture Bee (AKA Diet Rathian), breath weapon was 10d6, 40' cone, broadcast a round early and lead with the monster landing and rearing up with a loud gurgling noise coming from its throat. Came out as broadcast, it couldn't like turn or anything. Really pushed the players to figure out what it was beforehand.
I remember one DM's story about a bottomless pit. After throwing a light source down it and confirming that it was, in fact, at least several hundred feet deep, the player said "I jump in". He had no way of slowing his descent or anything. He died, and got mad at the DM. Some people are so stupid that you cannot blame yourself for their failure to have fun.
Some characters are smarter/wiser than their players - it is normal for what the character knows and what the player knows to be wildly different. So, just as I might have a player roll to see what their character knows about Umberhulks, I might have a player roll a "stupidity check" AND then a save vs fear to see if their character is actually dumb+brave enough to randomly yeet themselves down a 300+ feet deep hole on that turn - they might hesitate, because the character knows it is likely sure death to just jump in. Using such checks only for moments where the player seems to be deliberately ignoring details that their character would not sends a crystal clear signal to that player and their fellow players... "the DM thinks this is not in character" ...without taking any player's right away to control their own character's actions. If you've never had a player make their character jump into lava (or something equally absurd), then you have a fun time ahead of you as a DM. Sooner or later you get a player who is like this. Curiously I find that this kind of player is the same kind of person who has had 30+ car accidents and is always wearing a band-aid. Such is life.
Consistency is extremely important when DMing. If they Player and DM had agreed that fall damage was limited to the RAW, then I agree with the players frustration. 20D6 maximum. If the game contained homebrew rules and alterations with fall damage not being limited in such a way then I 100% agree with the DM. It all depends on session 0 and DM consistency.
I totally agree that the rule set is a HUGE factor in this! I tried to do an OSR style game in a later edition of D&D and then when I tried to telegraph my players just straight up ignored me and thought it was just "flavor text" or "setting the tone". It totally didn't work because they just fought their way through every problem and they assumed that was what the game was. And they were kind of correct, the info wasn't needed because there was no real threat to their lives or any read set-back or roadblock for ignoring info. Now I run an OSE game and WOW my players LOVE getting their hands on any info they can! They balked at the chance to "buy" rumors about the dungeon once, and then when that lack of knowledge meant they almost died they were happy to pay their hard-earned gold to learn where the ghouls lives and where the treasure is buried, etc. They don't ignore my telegraphing anymore, they actively seek more of it out!
@@mrosskne Videoman kind of goes into this, but it's hard to create actually difficult encounters in games where the PCs have more abilities and counters to them, without it seeming completely unfair and contrary to the design of the game.
Another insightful take! This philosophy also helps ramp up the tension and excitement. Cleary understanding the danger keeps players engaged and on their toes as well.
@@mrosskne I wonder what makes you say this? Cause in my experience they definitely do. If you find that the players are not engaged by what you are doing, you should rarely outright blame the players, and instead think about why they are not engaged. Some people really like roleplaying, some really like combat, some like a serious campaign with intrigue, some just want to goof around and slay monsters. The way House DM and David O'Neil are talking, I would assume their campaigns are about creating an immersive roleplaying experience, where you genuinely care about the specific character you are playing and their well being. Otherwise, it is difficult to build serious tension. I would wager that the tips they are giving is gonna work for the vast majority of players who enjoy that type of campaign, so if your players don't, they might want something different out of the game. Of course, some players just don't care, but those are rare. There is almost always a way to make even the least engaged player have fun
I wouldn't want to tell my players "you're outmatched" outright. I love to reward knowledge skills and roleplay with in-game info ( I mostly play 3.x D&D and its derivatives). The dangerous group of mercenaries 1) notice the party coming from a long ways away and swiftly react to contact 2)correctly assess the threat level posed by the party like the seasoned warriors they are, and react accordingly 3) have gear that's well used, bearing the scars of combat but also skillful repairs, kept in great condition 4) all wear an identical badge or brooch that signifies they're a unit that's practiced in working together 5)move smoothly and calmly to tactically advantageous positions and ready consumables before talking to the party. A knowledge (local) check identifies them as members of the elite guard of a local mercenary lord. A profession (soldier) check reads their medals and sees they're decorated veterans of many conflicts. Time taken to talk to a travelling merchant on the way can reveal that a detachment from the Duke's Own Dragoons brigade passed ahead of the party, which the mercenaries will readily identify themselves as. The PCs can clearly recognize that this crew are not pushovers and demand their respect.
I especially enjoyed the NPC 's fighting each other. Just a couple tips. I would avoid directly saying "you're outmatched". Rather, I would say something like "your gut instincts tell you that you're outmatched". It helps to not break immersion by speaking directly to the player. Another tip would be to allow the players to come across a monster they struggled with recently; only to have a new entity show up and easily dispatch the target. It sets the tone by using a relatable power scale.
Telegraphing Traps is a really cool exercise on thinking how the trap works, and it also makes traps fair, and more of a puzzle than n antagonistic "gotcha!" moment.
Yeah my group hates traps, in the books they are 100% just "do you have a rogue" checks and often do entirely too much damage for how low a CR they have. Seriously there are some CR 2 traps that deal like 10d8, that is nearly 50 average damage. That isn't fun for anyone but a sadistic DM out to kill the party instead of tell a compelling story.
@@HouseDM I think surprise traps work well if the “telegraph” is information. Information brokers could be an invaluable resource, especially if it’s for a megadungeon campaign and there are other NPC (or PC!) adventure groups in the same dungeon selling info to brokers. Information could also be gotten by investigating areas like the engineer’s quarters or similar rooms that would possibly have floorplans and blueprints. Even if the traps aren’t highlighted, their location could be gleamed by a *lack* of information! If an area is scratched out or oddly unlabeled, your players could better prepare for traps while not slowing down their progress in *every* damn room and hallway looking for them. Plus the PCs could seek out someone that used to live or work in the structure they’re exploring, either in or out of the dungeon. Former residents and exiles could have info or in the dungeons intelligent monsters could have information to sell, either for a price or as a bargaining chip to survive encountering the party!
This is honestly something I will be using in my 5th edition campaigns, largely because I use house rules the most important one is if a creature is reduced to 0 hit points and then is brought back from the brink of death they suffer a -1 penalty to all their attack rolls, damage rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. This penalty stacks for each time the creature is brought to 0 hit points and only wears off after that creature takes a short or long rest. Short rest removes a number of penalty points equal to their proficiency bonus, long rest removes all penalties. I also don't allow back to back short rests, there must be a window of at least 4 hours between short rests. This house rule alone makes players really have to think on if a fight is worth it or not, and has lead to some characters being stabilized but left at 0 hit points for a brief few moments if the hostile creatures are more intent on bringing down the active threats than killing already downed threats. I also buffed healing spells to be equivalent to damage spells (and nerfed fireball to its appropriate 6d6), while this makes it slightly more difficult to bring a player to 0 hit points, it allows the healers to do something other than heal ever single turn meaning more players enjoy playing a healer style character. All this said my next campaign takes inspiration from Out of the Abyss but I expand upon it and mold it into my homebrewed world, it's fairly safe to say not all the original characters are likely to survive by the end of the campaign as the fights will be grueling, and they will have to pick and choose at various times if they fight, find another route, or simply attempt to flee.
@@FallenFromGlory Lol not hardly, they are still a powerful class, and one of the most powerful classes for builds even without back to back short rests.
@@nathantanner9433 Limiting like that is also quite weird. Just prevent them from resting using the environment. Not to mention warlocks were designed with plentiful rests in mind. Oh well, you're not my dm, thankfully, so at the end of the day it doesn't really matter.
@@FallenFromGlory How is it weird and yes Warlocks were designed for plentiful rests, I'm well aware of how the class works and the fact that their most powerful ability isn't even their Spell Slots, but rather their cantrips and class features to bolster their natural abilities outside of spell slots. A warlock with Hex and Eldritch Blast is the Baseline for damage per round in my CR rework calculations because it is a good marker for if a build is a decent damage dealer or not. Fact is Warlock's don't need rests to be powerful, Coffeelocks need rests to be broken. I normally encourage my players to find fun and powerful builds that break the game but since you seem to think a Warlock needs more than 2 short rests per day or that I'd for some reason just throw an endless amount of encounters at my players between rests or something (since you think Warlocks need more than 2 short rests per day is why I mention this because guess what, a Warlock doesn't need a rest if they don't burn any spell slots and they don't burn spell slots outside of monster encounters and environment encounters typically), I'm extraordinarily happy your not a player at my table.
@@nathantanner9433 aaaa my reply got deleted okay I'm not typing all that again. Hex is suboptimal by far, and should therefore not be used as baseline, glad you don't want me as a player; those feelings go both ways. The Point of warlocks is to be able to regain abilities quickly between encounters. You're free to homebrew, but this change doesn't affect everyone equally: which is bad.
I always consider that the actual characters are using all of their senses and have experience in the world. The players just get the description from the GM. I've had cases where they wildly underestimate or overestimate bad guys. So I've started telegraphing this a bit more.
This is the way. And yeah, that’s one of the aspects that make gming so challenging. We’re working with everyone’s collective imaginations and some people see things differently than you do. And if language fails us, then what? Telegraphing danger can help overcome this 👊🏼
I love the “Earlier, Yesterday, Moments ago” approach to the intro. I’ve seen it in a number of indie modules and it’s just a great framing device. I do my best to telegraph danger. It’s still something I am learning to better incorporate into my workflow. I try to do it even in my 5e games as I still find it better to let the characters know what’s going on and I tend to carry over lethality levels out of habit even to the 5e environment.
Totally agree about the framing device piece. I forgot where I picked it up from, definitely not my idea, but its really helped me remember/remind my players where we just were and where we're going. Cheers and thanks for watching!
@@HouseDM Hank over at RuneHammer called the "earlier, yesterday, just moments ago" framing the "Milton Method" after he saw it in one of Ben Milton's adventures. Ben reads a ton of stuff, so who knows if he picked it up somewhere else too - I couldn't say. Very cool technique regardless.
@@zen_tewmbs from my understanding, it’s a tool to remind your players what’s just happened. Typically used at the beginning of the session but not exclusively. Last week you did such and such, yesterday you did this, and moments ago this happened. Now, what do you do next? It’s something like that.
@@zen_tewmbs it’s a method used in some modules I have seen to set the scene. It can also be used to set up a session. You just summarize the earlier background, what happened yesterday, and what just happened moments ago. “Earlier, this town sent out messengers pleading for help and you decided to set off to see what you could do, yesterday the area around you changed to woods full of blight and disease, moments ago you walked into the Main Street of the town to find nothing but corpses filling the streets.”
I honestly like all this stuff. It helps with adding flavor into description also. I think my main struggle is... Well best way to put it is being able to back up the front I place. Because honestly nothing feels worse than making the players scared of something and then they go to face it and... they just push it over. And I have gone to extremes sometimes to try and make something both sound like a threat and play like a threat. On paper it's threatening but in practice it comes out just kind of...
Indeed. A tough thing to overcome. I find this to be more of a challenge in 5e than OSR type games. It’s VERY easy to make an encounter scary in OSR. Not so much in 5e.
this is only really a problem in dnd since there is no real way to accurately gauge the strength of an encounter. adding a single at will to a monster might triple the CR, or it might have no effect at all, depending on how the monster uses it and what ability it is.
@@mrosskne This is why I don't think you should try too hard to balance encounters. I kind of think they should be set to unfair from the start, but have enough interesting moving parts to allow the players to find creative ways out of a bind. Badly wanting to make a one shot for level 1s, where the big bad is a Displacer Beast. Have it play out like Alien.
Great post - I much prefer running games without a huge amount of balance. My players can run into anything during their explorations, but if they don't have the sense to avoid annoying dragons, or riling local nobles so much that someone might pay them a visit to throw them out of a window, then they get what they deserve. That said, I do try to make it clear when they're overmatched.
I feel like I would have dissageed with you when I was starting out as a DM. My philosophy was that the players should be smart enough to figure stuff out on their own. After a while, and more than a few character deaths, I began to realise that I was suffering from DM myopia. A condition where you, as the DM with perfect knowledge of the situation, forget that the players only have your description of the world to base their decisions on. So while I don't think of it as telegraphing danger and holding the player hands, I do try my best to give a good description of the scenario so that they have the best chance to make an informed decision. Sometimes the crazy buggers charge in with swords swinging and fireballs blazing, but at least they knew what they were getting into. Also, your narrator voice is top notch! It reminds me a lot of the narrator from the Baldur's Gate PC games 😊
Last night, in the Werewolf the Apocalypse game I play in, were fighting of way through tunnels full of enemies, while some allies were talking a different route through the tunnels. When we found the central ritual chamber, the leader of the bad guys had just entered from the other direction, carrying the head of the leader of our allies. We entered combat anyway, and one of us died. At least we went into it knowing that death was an option.
First time watching you. I like your vibe. Calm and concise in explaining your philosophy. Also the fact that i mostly agree with you ofc helps. Thumbs up from a DM enjoyer.
I would say that telegraphing danger is even more important in more "drama-focused" (and not "combat-focused") RPGs. This helps you to squeeze a lot of feels from simple setup and (possibly) avoid combat all together. I'm planning to use it today in my Werewolf the Apocalypse game. Wish me luck :D
I agree. I tend to run very political based games. Whether it is village politics of Stonetop, or my current game set in a city-state that is about to break out in civil war, social risks and rewards are very much part of my campaigns. Often, for telegraphing sake, I use description of body language...of what is being said without words.. because that is information we all pick up on in real life, all the time. You can walk into a room, take one look at your spouse and know you are in trouble! Maybe not why you are in trouble...but you know. So, if the daughter of the Royal House, who usually treats you with kindness, her face has betrayal and disappointment written all over it.... someone has been slandering the PCs... and then of course, the golden question arises: "What do you do?"
@@HouseDM I also wanted to say that your video inspired one of my own. I've been designing my own sword and sorcery game and one of the things that I've stumbled across during playtest is being very transparent, at the table, about HOW I'm coming up with the Difficulty Level of a task or Move. I think this dovetails quite nicely with your telegraphing. Sorta similar arrows in the GM quiver.
@@StornCook ooooh yes. 100% agree. This is one of the many reasons I never use a GM screen. I think it’s important to be transparent about the rules and especially the subjective/arbitrary aspect of setting DC’s for things.
What a video to stumble on. I play a lot of "lethal" games where any violent encounter is usually the player's fault (i.e don't antagonise the mad wizard and he won't strike). But I never considered overtly pointing if an encounter *could* go bad. My players aren't the sort to complain often but I'll definitely bring this up! I try my best to telegraph but sometimes... Could improve communication during play with more warning signs. Cheers.
I often run games with players who could really benefit from that extra warning. I no longer assume my players just have the same knowledge of what’s in my notes and how strong a creature is compared to their character. So far, it’s been great!
Cool video. Just found this channel but I suspect Im going to love it. Dying as a PC never felt bad to me. We could almost always weave it into something cool as one player sacrifices for the others. Nothing more heroic than that.
As someone who has never played dnd and is trying to learn to dm for people who have also never played. I watch this and my first thoughts are "Im never going to be this good of a storyteller
The one character death I've ever had was 100% due to misapprehension of danger. We thought we'd cleared the dungeon, so we split into groups of two to collect the remaining loot. Cue my character opening the door to what looked (due to map dimensions) like a small closet... which was actually a prison block where two Redbrand Ruffians had set an ambush. The rest is history.
This was great! I'm glad this video floated to my recommends. During one particularly tough encounter, where my players were facing down a Ghost Dragon, I had to stop them at one point as they all turned to fight the dragon and said "Ok, hang on, stop. If you all run this thing down, you're probably going to die". Probably kind of immersion breaking, but it got them to actually think about what they were doing (the dragon was incidental to their actual objective), and also got them to be creative and think up environmental options for causing damage. So sometimes a heavy hand is ok, too!
Absolutely! Sometimes that blood rage kicks in and you gotta propose that question, “what’s our quest objective again and does this fight help us get there?”
Really cool seeing this idea getting out there, this is a huge part of the rpg I’m writing! The example I like to think of is a party of three all sneaking through a heavily guarded area. the situation in which two pcs roll stealth and succeed and one rolls stealth and fails effectively leaving the party spotted (typical dming for the encounter) is a completely different scenario then the situation in which two players KNOW they can sneak by and all players KNOW the third player cant. Now instead of rolling blind into a failing situation they can make so many more choices. The two sneaky pcs could engineer a distraction for the third. Two could stealth kill some guards. The third pc could be a great distraction for the other two, they could all do the classic steal two uniforms and pretend to be taking the third pc as a prisoner. Having players roll into a fail is just a feel bad when they didn’t know the likelihood of outcome, and even when they do succeed won’t feel as good when they actually had no idea of the difficulty.
I don't know who you are and this is the first time I've seen your channel. I'm a rookie DM and am very interested in making dnd feel impactful, in a way that's not normally felt. You are a hero with impressive skills but if you don't use your wits or have a survival instinct, you will perish. That all said, I love your straight to the point take, without an insane amount of production, and the down-to-earth style of "this is how and why I think this matters". Liked, subscribed, and await more DM content from you! Nice work!
Just found this channel today, definitely subscribing! Super soothing voice to listen to, but you don't speak too slow or overcomplicate the information, easy to understand as well.
I learned this over time myself, and it is excellent advice for new and even experienced DM's. I've had new groups figure it out and avoid needless deaths, and advanced groups ignore it and die (at their own admittance that it was a bad idea), it's a very good thing to know and apply as a DM. Thanks for pointing it out , DM's have an insane difficulty with juggling 'every' aspect of the game, so any advice that can help, small as it may seem, is super helpful.
Hey Shockblade I'm glad to hear that. I think your absolutely right and my goal is to give GM's the tools to run better games, easier. Cheers and thanks for watching!
I have watched this so many times! I love it, but you need to upload another video... get crackin'! I also said I would support you more, so here I am! One of many kittens in space.
Good tips. Another major benefit to this tyle of DM'ing is it would build tension rather than just being surprised all of a sudden when something bad happens. Good stories know how to build tension. It would be funny to have different soundtracks you play in the background 😆
Thank for spreading this idea. Ben from Questing Beast also discussed something similar about not hiding traps but telling/describing to players a trap so it can be creatively solved. This is very similar but with encounters. I’ve been doing both for EZD6 and it’s been working brilliantly
A real that I've heard about and have used is the click rule. When a player triggers a trap I ask them what they do, and their actions determine if they might avoid the trap all together or if they have a disadvantage. And I'm also a fan of the puzzle traps
@@destinpatterson1644 yeah I’ve heard about and used the click rule before. It’s cool and works great especially if you have a heavily trapped dungeon.
Very good video. I find that people are very.... passionate about this topic. I find that pointing out organizations or monsters that are above any beyond the players current level gives them goals and in game reasons to progress. All of my players know that dragons are not to be taken lightly. I still use the 12 age category system and they are far more powerful than they are in the 5E books. I don't usually display the power of a dragon at low level. Around 8-12 is a good time. The nuance and even a basic change in vocal inflection can change how the encounter is perceived. I love the song Paint it Black (especially the West World version). I will have the party scouting an area and tell them that you are getting a bad feeling. I will play the song low in the background. The WW version has a long intro that slowly gets louder. As soon as my players realize that it is playing they are all on high alert. In game they are being alerted by the lack of animal movement or a strange smell in the air. For the players, they feel like they are in a movie or video game where the boss music is playing.
Subscribed! I've played old-school gaming. Telegraphing danger is very much the opposite of old-school gaming. In the old days, players had to assume that any fight could be their last. Paranoia was the standard. That's not to say that telegraphing an increase in danger is a bad idea, or that it doesn't have its place in a game. It's just that you can't go around tossing in words like "old-school" when they don't apply to give your content some kind of credibility. In the 70s and 80s, your indication that the going was getting tougher was when two fighters, a cleric, and a thief died.
Imma be real, when I saw the thumbnail I thought you would literally hold up that card in game to let them know which is why I was so intrigued by you making a vid about it
Good video, thanks, definitely agree telegraphing danger is crucial. On the challenge/balance thing, I do think in a game like 5E where combat is its own little mini game and so much of players’ characters revolve around it, balance is important. What bothers me is the sheer size of the power spectrum. Phrases like “dangerous, battle-hardened mercenaries” are completely relative to PC level. In a linear campaign where you’re just putting encounters in front of the PCs in order as you go along it doesn’t really matter, but in a more sandbox style of campaign there’s no obvious way to let the players know if that phrase means “a challenging but doable fight for you right now” or “mathematically impossible until you level up eight more times”.
I like your style, man. Great tips. I'm starting a semi-homebrew Diablo 2-5e port (based off the original 3.0 sourcebook) and it's almost all straightforward combat abilities, so learning how to run combat is my focus right now.
Good video. I would argue this is very important for trap also. The "Gotcha!" element of traps, ussualy only create distrust on the dungeon/game/DM. Changes the behaivor of player to be constatly checking empty rooms and hallways to a halt. It is not fun to play at all! If you telegraph the danger, even the trap mechanism (they saw it action in advance), then you can make a SERIOUS deadly trap, and let the players decide how to creativly solve it/skip it
Tremendous content! I mostly run DCC which doesn't concern itself with silly concepts like "encounter balance" so newer players could really benefit from a bit of a warning like this. Subbed!
I always do that in my games. I've been fortunate enough to have a core group who understands their characters are filling in the storyline of the outline I presented, and don't metagame what their characters wouldn't know. I tell them flat out, "There's a Black Dragon as the boss monster, there's no possible way you can defeat her." They have a blast trying to get to her, then figuring out what to do when they find her! LOL Anyways, great video, thank you. You actually EARNED my like and subscribe.
I loved your closing remarks regarding 5e being (if I may paraphrase) basically too easy for the PCs. I've played D&D since I got the original white box with three small rulebooks in it in the mid-70s, so I was baptised by Old School games - I liked fighters, so my PCs died...a lot. ;) Had a bit of hiatus from the game as a bunch of my gaming buddies had families, moved away, etc., but started up again with 3.0, with some of my buddies and their kids and wives. :) 3.5 fixed a lot of 3.0 issues, and we gradually adopted a number of house rules to tailor 3.5 to our tastes. 4e didn't interest us, and by the time 5e came along, we'd decided we'd given WotC enough moolah - I've played it, and it is a decent game to bring in new blood, but it didn't feel dangerous - so we're still playing 3.5, and we know full well that adventuring can be dangerous! "Going negative and dying" in 3.5 just feels a lot scarier than making death saves in 5e where if you get up with a small number of hp, just going back to 0 if hit again. I have PCs actively fighting defensively or using total defense in order to get out of combat when low on hp, not laughing because they know they aren't going to die from a single hit... As the primary GM, I do try to provide clues as to the danger level, but I don't have to work too hard at that, as my players know I am perfectly willing to include challenges that are extremely difficult, and they are willing to ask questions, look for such clues, etc. They also know that sometimes you can talk to creatures you meet. Your example of the mercenaries was a good one - parties that just attack every creature they meet will find that isn't the best strategy...and it isn't like some video games where everything has a friend or foe identifier... ;) Many creatures in my games have their own motivations and jobs, and they don't want to die uselessly to a band of adventurers any more than the PCs want to die! One thing I have done, but very rarely, is when the PCs miss the clues regarding how dangerous a creature is, especially if the creature opposes their mission but isn't actually evil, is have the creature fight using nonlethal damage while actually engaging the PCs in conversation. Kind of like Fezzik vs The Man In Black...
People say death saves in 5e aren't a big deal, but the monsters can still attack a downed player to make them auto fail really fast. I mean in a world where some people can use healing magic, I think even bandits might know that if they don't double tap they haven't taken care of the threat. And few creatures looking for a meal are going to sit and continue fighting everyone around when they've already taken someone down and can just grab take out.
@@kamikeserpentail3778 yes - and in previous editions the enemy could attack downed characters, and the downed person would die just as quickly. So that argument doesn't say death saves are just as bad - it just says both games are just as deadly if the monsters attack downed foes. But in 3.5, say, it is a lot easier to go from walking around with only a few hp left to just dead with a single hit. Which means characters with low hp are more likely to act in a manner consistent with the "oh my gid, another hit could kill me" - fighting defensively and suchlike. And a character that is negative doesn't always get up from a single cure spell - but if they do, again, they act in a manner consistent with being fragile. Less heroic, perhaps. In my opinion, more realistic, which is desirable, not because a fantasy game needs to be realistic in all aspects, but because being close to death should be scary for a character. Yes, in a world where magical healing exists, intelligent foes should know that a downed foe could get up again, and if it makes tactical sense, might finish them off with another "tap". Yes, a monster just looking for food might grab and run. But those things happen just as much in previous game systems with different mechanics. I'm talking about what happens in other cases, cases where a downed character isn't finushed off. In 5e, if you have a charactee at 0, any healing will get them up, and all they worry about if they get hit again they might go to 0 and repeat the process, and many characters with low hp rely on this fact and don't worry one bit, they just keep hacking away. In 3.5, low hp won't just go to 0 with most hits, they might go to dead, or far enough negative that a single cure might not get them up. I'm ignoring the "massive damage" rules from both systems that can kill a characted outright - both do occasionally come into play, but very seldom. I'm talking about ordinary monsters having the capability of taking the character not just down but out with a single blow, and it doesn't even need to be critical. For example, an ogre in 3.5 does 2d8+7 damage with its large greatclub. That's 16 points on an average hit. That means against a character with 6 hp or less, if hit by an ogre's greatclub, they can expect to die outright. A maximum non-critical hit would be 23 points - that happens 1 out of 64 rolls, meaning a character could have as many as 13 hp and be at risk of death from a lucky blow! So if a character is facing an ogre and has been knocked down to hp in the single digits, death from one more blow is a very real possibility. And it is the fact that low hp means death could come from a single normal non-critical blow that makes low hp scary, that causes players to have to decide whether to take that risk in order to stay fully on the attack or to consider more defensive tactics, either giving up some offense to gain better defense or even to withdraw from combat. And if death can fairly easily happen with a single blow, there is also less of an imperative to double-tap a fallen foe. In 5e, death from a normal blow may still be possible, but it is a LOT less likely, as almost all normal blows will just drop a character to 0. How often does death from massive damage happen in 5e? In 3.5, damage doesn't need to be massive to kill...
Yup. it is always good to let players know that you do have difficult encounters planned that they are not necessarily mean to take head-on. It helps if you and your players have a good understanding of what constitutes acting on meta knowledge and what is just you getting information that your character would certainly know and be able to act on (always helps to have one extremely smart/knowledgeable character just to have an excuse to know a lot of things). Recently me, a martial for life at my table due to everyone else liking casters, had the opportunity to play a caster and I played a wizard in pathfinder 1e. This was a roughly 2 year running game that ended a couple months back and I was told I played the most wizardy wizard he had ever GMed for. How did I make that happen? By constantly asking questions about the lore of the world and conforming if my character would know about an area and what dangers awaited and I did what any good wizard should do, I prepared for every eventuality even if it was unlikely to happen. Why? Because my character knows about the dangers the party may encounter and has the ability and resources to prepare countermeasures ahead of time. I think I had maybe 4 or 5 direct damage dealing spells prepared but everything else was buffs, debuffs, control, and debuff-removers (also he was a magic item specialist so a lot of situational items to counter environmental effects when spells alone would not suffice). Good times, oh and my character almost always _tried_ to talk his way out of encounters and constantly tried to recruit anyone with a hint of magical aptitude to become his apprentice. I renamed my diplomacy, which used Int instead of Cha, "Diplomancy" because he rolled so well. Good times, and none of it would have been possible without an open communication with the GM about what we may encounter. And yes, about a third of the things I prepared for never happened. I think he had a bag of holding full of consumable magic items for eventualities than never came to be or were avoided. Think I ended up with every first through sixth level spell and all transmutation spells (as well as some homebrew spells I was allowed to make along the way to do specific things that no other spell could do) other than those from my two forbidden schools and I think I used almost every spell I knew at least once (even if only as a crafting component). Thessalonian Greed School (that's right, no enchantments or illusions) may not be the best choice, but it has the most opportunity for creativity of all the school selections; two free copies of a transmutation spell of every level per day you know on top of your normal prepared spells is no joke.
Wow. What an incredible story! I think the wizard is such a cool class for all the reasons you stated, not as a damage dealer but as a toolkit. Also lol to diplomancy. Brilliant. Thanks for sharing!
One thing I rarely see discuss about combat lethality is how players LIKE to fight. I'm playing a forbidden lands campaign right now and even though they know they can die from any single hit, they keep on attacking monsters because fight scene are FUN and tense! But maybe it IS because its lethality they enjoy it so much. Even though I've been telegraphing Danger in and out of game (sometimes I just tell the players the adversary they fight is very strong and they might all die from this fight), they never back out of a fight. I guess that's fine as long as your players are ok with rolling new characters now and then. So far I had a 1 pc death every 3 sessions or so. 😱😁
See that’s awesome because your players love that level of excitement and lethality! I have played with players who get VERY upset if their character dies. But when character creation is quick, easy, and fun, they are more okay with the death especially if they knew the fight was going to be lethal like what you’re saying. Thanks for commenting!
Hey man, maybe your players think you run meat-grinders. As long as they are enjoying it and you are also enjoying it (DM enjoyment matters too!) it's fine.
I think thats video game mentallity where everything resolve with fighting. To sad a Lot of tables don't appreciate other type of resolutions, If i want battle every time rolling doce I preffer a boardgame
I wrote a game system where it became a core mechanic for the group to know the exact (equivalent of) DCs and possible consequences of the challange. Since then I like to give the group more informations in all systems to make informed decisions. It is awesome! Can only recommend it :)
@@HouseDM only heard of ICRPG, but never red it. I used a ressource management system with a dice pool system (ecpanding dice from abilities for a skill to increase the chance of sucess). So it was very important to telegraph challanges to know the odds.
In Spycraft and Spycraft 2 (basically a hack of D&D 3) missions were rated as Threat Level White, Yellow, Red, or Black, which changed the available gear for requisition and how much gear you could bring. If i remember correctly, Spycraft 2 had mechanisms for basically designating a scene as extra lethal of less lethal and it would change the consequences of running out of vitality points
Great Vid! It has me thinking (as a new DM)... for 5e D&D at least, instead of having the players roll a perception check to see just how hardened and tough a group of enemies look / how difficult the terrain is, they could roll a general insight check. This would give the characters some discrepancy in how dangerous they each perceive the current threat. A cautious, wise cleric holding back a trigger happy "every one is weaker than me!" barbarian. I'm sure this way has some drawbacks, but I feel like it would create some good character moments.
The best session ever (according to one of my players) was last week's, where I had given them a week warned in advance that, because their life-support failed on their Spelljammer ship, they had one hour to MacGyver to avoid all of their characters and crew being killed by explosive decompression in the vacuum of space. That is, they had one IRL hour - pausing the clock to explain rules - before space sucked everything out. And they had a week to prepare. I was very proud of them for making it, although all the crew did not make it, and the only attack rolls that were made were with a harpoon to keep the Barbarian from flying off the ship in zero g.
I have been running/playing since the late 70s. I learned to reward socializing, it is an excellent way to telegraph the possible futures abd challenges to players. (It also rewards those who like roleplaying as well as those who invest in social skills.) There's nothing like the grizzled barkeep with a murky past and a recently arrived minstrel telling similar tales to make a party take notice. The analogs work everywhere; Vampire, Werewolf, Shadowrun, Legend of the Five Rings. There is nothing wrong with giving the party clues or warnings if it can be logically done.
Really important tool, thank you for reminding me of this I've not been utilizing it enough. The two monsters fighting next to the exit is such a great problem for the party to solve as well!
Totally stealing this move for my 2 games I’m running. One is Prof DM’s re skin of The Keep on The Borderlands, and since I’m not changing the 5e rules for HP, I’m using exhaustion way more. Coupled with full HP being attained only after medical attention in a fortified area, I hope to get lethality back on my 5e table.
I'd never use a phrase like "You are outmatched" because my players would see that as a challenge. I find if you don;t spend a lot of time on over describing the stuff that's less important, when you start describing the important stuff, they start to realise that its important. I've been doing it long enough to realise that if you try to describe a scene that goes on for more than 30 seconds and involves ongoing action. Players get annoyed that they can't do something while you are waffling about the smell of the wet stone and the clash of the combatants weapons as they... stand by watching your scene play out? What you can get away with in those situations is specific descriptions of threatening enemies. With the three mercenaries I would go further than "They look tough and a couple of them have scars". To genuinely be a threat to a party of mid level PCs in a normal game (Or 1st level PCs in 5E) they would probably need some good gear to help them out. So describe that stuff... and give each of them a unique look. Then throw in a line or something that makes the players think and come to their own conclusions... something like "Most mercenaries in this part of the country equip themselves with the plunder of their beaten foes... most of the time their armour is slightly too big, or too small. Everything these warriors are wearing fits like a glove. You wonder; how many people must they have killed to be able to pick and choose like that?"
This works in all types of games, not just those that are highly lethal. I ran a game recently using Fate Core (not a very lethal system at all) where the party found their path blocked by the villain, who basically had a superweapon on his person at that instant. I made sure to reveal this up front, and to use the moments before the battle to establish that he was clearly quite confident he could take all three of them easily. In practice, this might not have been true. Fate Core is a forgiving system, and I expect the PCs could have defeated him if they went for the brute force option. But that telegraphing changed the texture of the scene, and the players made the much more interesting decision to split up- two of them escaping and heading for their true objective while one stayed behind to distract the villain and buy them time. It led to this incredible standoff where the one character who stayed behind was hopelessly outmatched but holding his ground anyway, knowingly making a heroic sacrifice to save his friends.
This is nice, I did warn my players in and out of game a few times about dangers but I sometimes use that as a lure more then a warning at this point because My players want to be challenged and have fun in and out of combat
@@mrosskne I’ll take that as a compliment! I studied psychology in school and practice quite a bit of mindfulness. I also truly believe that actually listening to your players is the key to a successful and fun game sesh 👍🏼
I think this will depend on the players as well - I would not for any of the players I've ever had go as far as saying 'you are outmatched' before either side do anything. Drop the hints these guys look competent in whatever way suits the moment and let the characters make up their own mind. If they choose to go full on reckless murderhobo and get slaughtered that is on them, and they should learn the NPC won't pull punches and just let them win (most of the time anyway). So perhaps from then on they study potential threats from a distance, perhaps they attempt an ambush, maybe attempt to talk, or sneak past, or perhaps the chaotic muppet of the group will do something silly. The latter being often the most fun - either the other PC's notice and stop them or have to decide if they are going to help, hide or run as whatever chaos has just been let loose unfolds on the probably very confused NPC... And I try to make sure that sometimes even folks that are not a challenge to them can still look tough enough at a glance - afterall a squad of well trained soldiers with well maintained and freshly issued gear and the fresh bunch of rookies that have just been issued their first real weapons can look very similar and the PC's should be debating the course of action among themselves without all the information all the time. That creates some actual tension and uncertainty in the players and an opportunity to really play into their charecter - is this a real threat or not, does their charecter feel overconfident, scared etc? Which when they know the real threats are lethal means they and you can have great fun as they carefully try to sneak past the practically harmless but slightly scaring looking monstrosity - success and they are happy, challenge overcome, fail and they get to have that sigh of relief moment that this wasn't so as bad as they feared.
@@HouseDM he was great! I RP'd that he still always ducked through doorways because he was previously 7ft tall, with another few inches of horns past that. It was awesome fun!
I like having environmental telegraphing, like if there's a giant wandering around the area I can talk about his footprints, or the sheep carcass lying nearby with a big bite taken out of it. Directly telling your players that the encounter is dangerous is good too, but I like giving the players time to think about the threat and how they might deal with it before it appears on screen.
Recently i ran a campaign for a party including a couple newer players (watched a lot of crit role, never played) In starting area it was established that a dragon lived in a nearby mountain. Even after countless warnings from villagers of how deadly it was, the lvl 3 party descided to ignore their escort job they were hired for, and GO GET THAT DRAGONS HORD! Needless to say, it did not go well, and after a near OHK, their epic battle they had planned turned out to be more of a chase sequence. Through many sessions of adventuring, the whole time they were were always thinking about when they were strong enough to come back and show the dragon what for. It was extrememly rewarding for the party, im definitely going to continue putting high level monsters scattered around early areas. Makes the world feel more lived in, and gives the party a goal thats PERSONAL
Interesting... getting ready for an Metro/Tokyo: Otherscape game and I could definitely see this coming into play for such a narrative focused rules system.
Here's what I do in my 5e games. Using something similar to the "new" exhaustion rules (minus 1 to d20 rolls per level up to 5, lose of 5 ft speed for levels 6, disadvantage for level 7... all cumulative... and remaining unconscious at level 9 of exhaustion) for every time they are brought back from death saves and 1 level after the fight if none was taken during. It keeps a sense of danger for battle and death, but is not too punishing (I'd never allow reaching 10 levels of exhaustion and death) and can still be healed or have a fighting chance in battle. But it makes players think if they want to fight, sneak, or negotiate and reins in the yoyo deaths tanks and healers like to play. Of course good description helps.
I play a lot of games that either are more rules-light, like Monster Hearts and other PbtA games, or that have very quick, lethal combats, like Vampire the Masquerade, so I always use these kinds of strategies in my games. One of the most effective times I think I've used it was in a Monster Hearts game that involved a plot where a powerful cult had secretly founded the town and needed sacrifices to maintain their power. The PCs decided that one of the first things they were going to do was break into the mansion of the town's founder, who was later openly revealed to be a serial killer and which was currently a local history museum, during the middle of the night with zero preparation or planning. Obviously the cult still used this place in secret and there were plenty of hidden things in the house and barging in recklessly was a great way for the cult to immediately catch on to who they were and make things infinitely more difficult for the players. The cult mainly used their power to make the land extremely fertile and prosperous, so their magic was very tied to the land itself. One of the PCs got their powers from the same source of the cult, so I narrated that that PC saw moving, humanoid silhouettes made of mushrooms circling the mansion when they got close, and they radiated such power and menace that it gave her a headache and she nearly passed out. The PC who got the headache was sufficiently spooked and said they should abandon the plan and do something else because it was likely too dangerous. However, there was another overly-optimistic player that said that this was their best lead to finding out what was happening here and that, if they all just stuck together, they'd be fine. This somehow convinced them, and the group went in and got very quickly stomped and were forced to flee. The PC who saw the mushroom silhouettes was using a character known as a Queen which is very specifically designed to resolve around tight control over their Gang members, Gangs being a feature that most other Skins have to earn through Advancements but which the Queen gets automatically at character creation, and she lost one of her Gang as they were escaping. Honestly, that move was the beginning of the end and the entire rest of the campaign was one dramatic dumpster fire as all of the PCs allowed their own personal issues and petty infighting to systematically destroy any chance of survival. But, I telegraphed the danger very clearly, they knew that something like that might happen, and Monster Hearts is meant to be a very melodramatic game with lots of messy, teenage angst anyway, so we all had a lot of fun reveling in the glorious messes they created. However, if I hadn't made it clear from the very beginning that that one decision at the start of the game could be as disastrous as it was, it would have probably felt like I was kneecapping them from the start rather than giving them the option of choosing the tone they wanted to set for the rest of the campaign.
Great video with lots of great points. But, can I add a couple things as a nurse (may seem random, I know): I can't stand the use of potions or goodberries being forcefed to unconcious players. It seems likeit would have a high chance of causing aspiration and additional harm. Yes, maybe that's me trying to apply real world logic to a fantasy setting, but it breaks verisimilitude for me. But I also agree death saves and being brought back up to 100% fighting force by 1 hp multiple times is a fairly poor system. The D&D One system of exhaustion (I believe -1 to save/attack/ability checks per level of exhaustion) is a system that I think I'd apply to going unconcious if I DM going forward. If you go unconcious multiple times you will be severaly limited in your performance, which feels realistic. I also like the alternate rules for healing, where a night's sleep is a short rest, and it takes a week in town to get a full rest. It changes the balance away from most spellcasters (a good thing arguably), and makes HP precious and HP dice a used currency. Sorry for the rant.
As a 5e DM, I have learned how to use monsters very creatively to turn a simple group of 4 or so unmodified kenku into a deadly group against 4 level 4 players without modifying anything besides using what the players can do; aka, if the players can throw a rock, the kenku can too. Not their class abilities or racials, but anything reasonable that the kenku should be able to do with it’s 2 arms, 2 legs, and a head. Additionally using terrain is another big thing. It’s all about strategic planning before the session; if the players can fly, give one of the birds a bow and some arrows, if they have ranged weapons, some cover, if the players have spells that can effect around corners, a magic item even if unrelated to countering that spell, like a scroll of insert random spell here, can make for a pretty dangerous kenku which has a few casting options, it’s about outsmarting the players during a fight enough to make the players consider backing off, even if at the end, the players will win regardless. I have had a kill and managed a few times to drop them to 0 hit points, even with using OP homebrew that buffed players. My players have slowly become more cautious and although I don’t have many kills, I still have the ability to say “I can kill on accident , and although rare, I never have fudged a dice.”
I chopped a paladin's leg last game, it felt really good on both sides. Players become bored at some time being unkillable (6th players, 11 level at the moment), and that dismembering added a new level of emotions. And when your cleric is multiclassing party understands that they won't get that Regeneration from him and has to deal with the problem somehow in the future. I tried to telegraph the danger, it didn't work because of their power level. It was fun until level 9-10 sessions rushing into a deadly encounter and win it but everything has an end
This is why I love the 40k ttrpgs. A "balanced encounter" could absolutely wind up in a TPK if the players aren't taking it seriously. They know everything they do could kill them and it really forces them to run risk analysis on most of their decisions outside of combat.
@House DM they're brutal compared to dnd. When your average hp is 11 at character creation and only goes up by a max of 10 if you choose to increase it, you're squishy as hell
I'm currently a player in a Pathfinder 2e Abomination Vaults campaign. At certain points there's a lot of encounters where it's essentially a single enemy but they're so much higher leveled compared to us that the party is pretty much powerless against them, and I always felt like if you wanted to keep the difficulty of said encounters in the adventure the same, you could do it so long as you find an immersive way to warn the players as to how dangerous it really is.
I'm a huge fan of telegraphing danger for different locations or encounters, especially when it makes sense for the characters too. In one of the campaigns I'm in right now, we had a PC die while trying to drag two unconscious PCs back to a field hospital in the back lines, while the last two of us stayed back to fight as long as we could to help keep the frontline from breaking. None of us knew that there were assassins inside the capitol city walls going around planting what were literally described to us as nailbombs in said hospitals and blowing them up. There only other explosions in the battle were from a cart full of blackpowder barrels we had yet to detonate at that point, so you'd think we'd hear these explosions in the back lines and think to ourselves what's causing them when the invaders don't have cannons; the two of us who still had the hit points to fight on even heard such an explosion later from a long ways away. But no, Raddick got jumped out of nowhere by an assassin when he was alone dragging two downed PCs and had 12 hit points himself, and was killed. The explosion that the other two of us heard was Paul, one of the downed PCs who was brought back up by an NPC from the party who stayed back from the fighting, detonating the nailbomb he noticed stuffed into Raddick's eviscerated chest cavity so that nobody would get blown up trying to move him. The whole situation was really fucked and lead to some shakiness where everyone blamed ME for making the decision to keep fighting and trying to buy some time, and he went through two different characters in the next two sessions, one of them being a joke character, because he was so invested in that first character that he didn't know what else to play. As a new player, he doesn't exactly have a ton of ideas for new characters that interest him, but recently I talked with him for a few hours to help him in his efforts to make a character that fits a particular aesthetic and playstyle. Whole thing was a big mess and one of the most unexpected and unfair yet entirely underplayed deaths I've experienced in my 5 years of near-constant weekly D&D sessions.
I was running a quest that involved a CR2 miniboss that my players inadvertently walked straight into. I let the wizard take a "not 1 check" (a check with a DC so low only a 1 could fail it) to look at it and determine "if we fight this right now, it will kill us". So they left it alone until they leveled, after which, I made it a wandering monster since they disturbed its lair. It helped the flavor, as the CR2 minibusses was happily eating civilians.
One thing that's also a big benefit - if you telegraph a PK level danger and the party solves the problem in some way that allows them to bypass it, or even if they just decide to turn back, they feel like they've escaped death. This is important because it makes the players feel the agency they have. A DM can have plenty of traps and possible encounters prepared, can be ready to improvise and react to whatever the players do to have the most organic session, but if the players don't _know_ what they avoided, they _will_ feel like they're partly on rails, especially if you have an overarching story line they follow. I'm saying this as player, not a DM, just to clarify. After a really long campaign and some reflection, I felt kind of bad for the few instanced we gave a less-than-great feedback to our DM, even though he insisted we weren't on rails and were free to do whatever, even later illustrated what would roughly happen should we have made different choices. We just weren't aware and felt like we need to push on with the story to save the world and stuff.
Had this happen to my game a little while ago, I literally described the valley pass as "ambushy" and my players proceeded to confidently walk in with no plan, had a player death but I was absolved of any guilt as the players all thought their own plan (or lack there of) was terrible. This was also the second consecutive ambush and the previous one was just as deadly (although no one died), so they knew what they were getting into.
I’m curious what kind of plan you were hoping they’d come up with 🤔 But yeah, you warned them. Also props to your players for driving the story forward! Even with death.
@@HouseDM They spent about 2 hours planning to build an explosive cart that they would follow so that when it got ambushed they could ambush the ambushers, but that cost a tiny amount of gold that they refused to spend so then they tried making a runic trap in the cart but the spell they had wouldn't be able to move with the cart so they just gave up, all piled into the cart, had no one scout and just hoped for the best. The cart got attacked by an earth elemental and smashed with them inside, an insect plague and some nasty barbarians and the players were routed with one death. They did a pretty heroic escape sequence once one of the players died which was pretty cool. I have DMed them (all new players initially) for about 4 years now, I have stopped trying to anticipate what they will do, and most of the problems I present to them, I don't have solutions. It is a lot of adapting to their decisions, the only real things I prep are major quests, background villain plotting, and monster stat blocks.
@@Battleturtleful No solutions, just problems. This is the way. But also, why wouldn’t the rune move with the cart. That seems like a narratively awesome idea!
@@HouseDM It was a great idea, the player who thought of it reread their spell and realized it wouldn't work before I could let it just happen (it also turned to to be this person who's character died). This wasn't a particularly good death in the narrative, it was after all just an ambush, but it was quite funny as the character rolled 4 1s on 5 d20 rolls that fight. It was like he was destined to die. We still laugh about how absolutely terrible his luck was. Even during the game night, everyone's face was ear to ear grinning while things were hitting the fan.
Depending on the encounter, me as a Dm tries to warn the players using the environment. Slash marks are giving the size of the creature or the remains of a specific creature shows them the possible CR of the enounter. Nearly always the players are catching the hints.
I was thinking of my own wound/damage system. What if damage creates wounds dependng on how much damage it causes (minor, major, severe, critical, Fatal). The more severe the wound, the longer it takes to heal and the more intensive care is needed. HP becomes one's Healing Points which they spend to begin healing their wounds/maintain their current state, which the damage representing how much HP they need to spend to heal the wound. The teirs of wounds are descriptive and up to the DM in how they may effect rolls and such. If you lack HP, that means your wounds are unable to receive healing and your health takes a turn for the worst as all your wounds fester and upgrade to the next tier.
Just did that a few hours ago. I'm playing Dragon of Icespire Peak with a few coworkers. Two are level 2, one is level 3, another is level 1 (joined today). They had their first encounter with the dragon today. It wasn't by accident. I had planned for this and also had told them in the weeks before the session, that they will be encountering the dragon. They encountered the dragon when walking out of the dwarven ruins for that one quest. None of them speaks Draconic, so they didn't understand the dragon when it called them "dragon enemies". It then just said "dragon slayer" in Common. They had found the hidden treasure with the 15 gem stones and gifted them to dragon. The bard rolled a nat 20 for a total of 23 or 24 when trying to tell the dragon, that there are much more gems inside the cave. Well, in the cave there's that small pass-through, where I said the dragon wouldn't fit through. The bard then rolled pretty terribly trying to bullshit the dragon once again. They also had followed the dragon into the cave for whatever reason. So, angry breath attack ensued. That dragon's breath attack deals 10D8 + stuff damage. Probably none of them would have survived that. I telegraphed the attack by letting them know, that they can see icy mist forming at the back of the dragon's throat. At this point I also told them, that I'm giving them one last chance to get away and how much damage the attack normally does. They were able to get away in time. I made them do a total of 3 dex saves to dodge three breath attacks. The encounter wasn't a fight, I used the dragon more as a deadly environmental hazard. Yes, the usual save for that attack is con, not dex, but I made them try and dodge the attack instead of just take it. To that end, a successful save, didn't take any damage and a failure only took 1D8. Was still enough to scare the living shit out of them. They just told me they loved the session and the dragon encounter and how I played the dragon. What more can I ask for? :D
My next level to this is allowing the players to feel like they discovered the danger themselves. With the mercenaries I would say they have big symbols on their cloaks. When the players ask if they recognize the symbols, ask them all to do an easy history check. One of them is probably going to get it. If they do I would tell them that it is the symbol of a feared mercenary group known for being terrifying warriors and incredibly dangerous. If they fail they still learn that it looks like some sort of organization but they don't know which and then emphasize what you talked about. This ties the mercenaries to a deeper sense of lore and also lets the players feel like they are figuring out the danger themselves and coming to their own conclusion.
Love this. I’d even go so far as to say the roll isn’t necessary if a member of the party would have a reasonable reason why they would recognize the symbols or know of such lore.
I basically do this, but without going meta, which I personally prefer. My favorite way that I did it: I had an elite squad of mooks sent to seek and destroy the party, and were informed by their scout the parties objective would be inside a cave-we'll call it cave A. Elite mook squad went here to deal with them. The party ends up finding the objective cave, where a few injured Ettin were resting, tending to their wounds. The party decided to engage to get into the cave and managed to scrape through, but it was a tough fight. After getting to their objective inside the cave and making their exit, they are approached by a stranger-it turns out to be the brother of one of the characters, who had gone missing during his backstory. He informs the characters they are in imminent danger-a crack team has been sent to destroy them they are NOT ready to fight. He had diverted them to cave A to buy the party time to get through cave B, and he witnessed them slaughter nearly a dozen Ettin to get into cave A with ease-the surviving Ettin fled to cave B, the actual objective location... Knowing this team of mooks took down a dozen Ettin from full health, killing most of them and having the rest flee to the other cave-where the party barely handled these injured creatures-told the players everything they needed to know. If they decide at this point to fight the squad, both in and out of character it's 100% on them knowing they are outmatched.
I remember my first time playing dnd as a player. New to the game, but with a decent understanding of mechanics because I had DMd a session once. Literally just helping fellow noob friends through character creation and a session 1 with some social aspects and a puzzle. But no fight. The dice were not kind to me that day, my druid child was dead as soon as they had been created, as in in two hours. They did rescue the party from a tpk, so they were a true hero and damn was the story telling great, but damn do I fear going into death saving throws.
One of my favorite moments as a DM is when my players were considering ambushing a rich looking merchant wagon train. "As you situate yourself on the cliff, you see (notice check) a dozen bandits hidden in the tall grass, well concealed and ready to strike the wagons as they rumble through an area of the road narrowed by the river on the far side. At a shrill whistle from their apparent leader, they rise from their concealed positions in unison with readied crossbows. Before they release a single bolt you see their holes appear in their head and brain and bone spray backward as though a cannon ball had struck them in the face. The only movement you see from the caravan is one wagon rocking slightly side to side as though a heavy wind had temporarily shaken it." .... "Ok, so the DM just told us we're dead if we ambush this caravan and if we do it's our own fault. What's our new plan?"
Telegraphing danger is key if you're dealing with inexperienced players that don't have any frame of reference for how powerful particular creatures or monsters are. And if they're the least bit pragmatic in their approach it will usually work the vast majority of the time. But there is also value in not artificially protecting your players from their own bad decisions. I DMd a campaign years ago for a group in which not one of them had ever played any rpg before, let alone that specific one. Part of the initial introduction had them see a raging battle going on just for flavor that would provide some background for some elements of the story to come. They were absolutely not intended to even entertain the idea of involving themselves in it. I telegraphed the hell out of the danger there. But regardless of how many times or how strenuously I expressed just how suicidal it was for them to involve themselves in it they just kept pressing to do just that. At a certain point it became clear they weren't going to heed any of my warnings and I had run out of creative ways to try to dissuade them. It ended up being a tpk, but we just rerolled and started over since it was literally just minutes into the very first session and they really hadn't experienced any of the campaign yet. But they absolutely learned from that to pick up on cues that were clearly indicating a particular level of danger or challenge. That ended up being the most enjoyable group I ever DMd for from that point on. I'm not a fan of the approach of protecting players from themselves. Inform them sure. Reiterate it if necessary. But if you fudge dice rolls or invent some intervention on the spot that miraculously saves them from what should have been certain death then they're just going to expect that all the time and there is never going to be any real sense of danger.
In the second starter set there is a dungeon location axeholm that has three ways to enter and the most obvious going theough the front door will have then entire dungeon except the boss meet you there creating a single deadly encounter i think tge math might put it at twice deadly. I havent ran the campaign yet iven been preping it bur the other two ways to enter are not explicitly told qnd have to be thought of cleverly.
My players kept getting annoyed with me when it seemed like every single time they turned a corner it was a deadly encounter. So they sat me down and basically had an intervention with me about telegraphing danger so they dont feel blindsided. It has very much improved player morale and the game overall.
This is wonderful to hear. How nice it must be to have players who communicate effectively with you!
@@HouseDM it is pretty nice. Of my party of 6 players, 4 are DMs themselves with 5+ years of experience and the other 2 have DMed a few one shots so they are all usually great at giving feedback/advice.
It's also nice to ask their opinions on difficult rulings and homebrew mechanics. It's nice to have people I trust to know their stuff and I truly respect their opinions on many matters.
I consider myself fairly spoiled to have such a group.
@@jasonutty52 honestly sounds like a dream 😅
so they never scouted or attempted to gain information in any way?
@@mrosskne oh they would, they would just regularly underestimate the threat level of encounters because I didn't always telegraph it to them in a fashion they understood.
Funny thought, when we get a tpk it's from a random fight. When the party goes into an encounter they know is going to be hard, they operate like a well oiled machine of death. So I totally agree with this philosophy.
This is the way.
Handy hint if your players are stupid!
Important to remember, you can also telegraph individual attacks by monsters, especially the big flashy powerful ones. Having the red dragon take its turn, and finishing it by telling the players that smoke is coming from its nostrils and flames are licking out between its teeth is a GREAT way to tell him that it's going to use its Breath Weapon next round. The evil mage grabbing a lodestone and staring dead-eyed at the Rogue, mumbling arcane curses over and over, can let them know that Disintegrate is incoming. This let your players mitigate this incoming threat, by diving behind cover before the dragonfire hits or knocking the component out of the mage's hand. Your players will also feel badass and clever and that's always good.
THIS. Fantastic advice! Your absolutely right that players will feel cool when you telegraph attacks and they can then decide how to deal with that on their next turn. Love it!
These top couple comments are legendary advice for a DM. The amount of flavor that will add to the currently somewhat boring hp war will be nice.
I used the telegraphed attacks bit in a Monster Hunter themed game, but those telegraphed attacks were the *big* ones, and there wasn't a save. It just happened in that spot at the start of the monster's turn.
@@TheWrongDMs bro did you make it? I need the rullllessssss
@@ekothesilent9456 It was on a monster-by-monster basis. I'm at work, the only one I can remember off the top of my head was a mix between a Wyvern and a Vulture Bee (AKA Diet Rathian), breath weapon was 10d6, 40' cone, broadcast a round early and lead with the monster landing and rearing up with a loud gurgling noise coming from its throat. Came out as broadcast, it couldn't like turn or anything. Really pushed the players to figure out what it was beforehand.
I remember one DM's story about a bottomless pit. After throwing a light source down it and confirming that it was, in fact, at least several hundred feet deep, the player said "I jump in". He had no way of slowing his descent or anything. He died, and got mad at the DM.
Some people are so stupid that you cannot blame yourself for their failure to have fun.
Oh sheesh. Yeah if that was my player, I would’ve told them they will die if they do that. To make it clear.
Some characters are smarter/wiser than their players - it is normal for what the character knows and what the player knows to be wildly different. So, just as I might have a player roll to see what their character knows about Umberhulks, I might have a player roll a "stupidity check" AND then a save vs fear to see if their character is actually dumb+brave enough to randomly yeet themselves down a 300+ feet deep hole on that turn - they might hesitate, because the character knows it is likely sure death to just jump in. Using such checks only for moments where the player seems to be deliberately ignoring details that their character would not sends a crystal clear signal to that player and their fellow players... "the DM thinks this is not in character" ...without taking any player's right away to control their own character's actions.
If you've never had a player make their character jump into lava (or something equally absurd), then you have a fun time ahead of you as a DM. Sooner or later you get a player who is like this. Curiously I find that this kind of player is the same kind of person who has had 30+ car accidents and is always wearing a band-aid. Such is life.
Just looking at the player when they throw the light source in and saying, "you have no doubt that a fall here would be fatal." should be enough, lol.
Consistency is extremely important when DMing. If they Player and DM had agreed that fall damage was limited to the RAW, then I agree with the players frustration. 20D6 maximum. If the game contained homebrew rules and alterations with fall damage not being limited in such a way then I 100% agree with the DM. It all depends on session 0 and DM consistency.
@@satanielgaming he also mightve just not had 120 hp lol
This is why I love meta-knowledge; sometimes I don't need to do more than tell them what monster left its tracks amidst the bones.
Absolutely! Most people can “infer” things. Thanks for watching!
That's why there are no spoilers or metagaming....
I totally agree that the rule set is a HUGE factor in this! I tried to do an OSR style game in a later edition of D&D and then when I tried to telegraph my players just straight up ignored me and thought it was just "flavor text" or "setting the tone". It totally didn't work because they just fought their way through every problem and they assumed that was what the game was. And they were kind of correct, the info wasn't needed because there was no real threat to their lives or any read set-back or roadblock for ignoring info.
Now I run an OSE game and WOW my players LOVE getting their hands on any info they can! They balked at the chance to "buy" rumors about the dungeon once, and then when that lack of knowledge meant they almost died they were happy to pay their hard-earned gold to learn where the ghouls lives and where the treasure is buried, etc. They don't ignore my telegraphing anymore, they actively seek more of it out!
it's not a system issue. why didn't you create encounters that were actually difficult?
@@mrosskne Videoman kind of goes into this, but it's hard to create actually difficult encounters in games where the PCs have more abilities and counters to them, without it seeming completely unfair and contrary to the design of the game.
@@seigeengine difficulty isn't about abilities.
@@mrosskne If you're too stupid to follow the discussion, recognize that you are inadequate and be humble.
yeah if you pklay dnd and you show your party something they can fight they mostly think they are supposed to fight it and be able to win it
Another insightful take! This philosophy also helps ramp up the tension and excitement. Cleary understanding the danger keeps players engaged and on their toes as well.
This! 100% this.
they won't listen or care
Dangit. Just posted about the same thing before I saw this comment.
@@mrosskne I wonder what makes you say this? Cause in my experience they definitely do. If you find that the players are not engaged by what you are doing, you should rarely outright blame the players, and instead think about why they are not engaged. Some people really like roleplaying, some really like combat, some like a serious campaign with intrigue, some just want to goof around and slay monsters.
The way House DM and David O'Neil are talking, I would assume their campaigns are about creating an immersive roleplaying experience, where you genuinely care about the specific character you are playing and their well being. Otherwise, it is difficult to build serious tension. I would wager that the tips they are giving is gonna work for the vast majority of players who enjoy that type of campaign, so if your players don't, they might want something different out of the game.
Of course, some players just don't care, but those are rare. There is almost always a way to make even the least engaged player have fun
I wouldn't want to tell my players "you're outmatched" outright. I love to reward knowledge skills and roleplay with in-game info ( I mostly play 3.x D&D and its derivatives). The dangerous group of mercenaries 1) notice the party coming from a long ways away and swiftly react to contact 2)correctly assess the threat level posed by the party like the seasoned warriors they are, and react accordingly 3) have gear that's well used, bearing the scars of combat but also skillful repairs, kept in great condition 4) all wear an identical badge or brooch that signifies they're a unit that's practiced in working together 5)move smoothly and calmly to tactically advantageous positions and ready consumables before talking to the party. A knowledge (local) check identifies them as members of the elite guard of a local mercenary lord. A profession (soldier) check reads their medals and sees they're decorated veterans of many conflicts. Time taken to talk to a travelling merchant on the way can reveal that a detachment from the Duke's Own Dragoons brigade passed ahead of the party, which the mercenaries will readily identify themselves as. The PCs can clearly recognize that this crew are not pushovers and demand their respect.
I especially enjoyed the NPC 's fighting each other. Just a couple tips.
I would avoid directly saying "you're outmatched". Rather, I would say something like "your gut instincts tell you that you're outmatched". It helps to not break immersion by speaking directly to the player.
Another tip would be to allow the players to come across a monster they struggled with recently; only to have a new entity show up and easily dispatch the target. It sets the tone by using a relatable power scale.
"there's always a bigger fish"
Yep, these "you're outmatched" and "best to leave them to it" bits sounded more like 4th wall breaking than telegraphing...
Telegraphing Traps is a really cool exercise on thinking how the trap works, and it also makes traps fair, and more of a puzzle than n antagonistic "gotcha!" moment.
Exactly! I’d rather traps be a puzzle to solve in initiative rather than this “gotcha” mindset. Cheers!
Yeah my group hates traps, in the books they are 100% just "do you have a rogue" checks and often do entirely too much damage for how low a CR they have. Seriously there are some CR 2 traps that deal like 10d8, that is nearly 50 average damage. That isn't fun for anyone but a sadistic DM out to kill the party instead of tell a compelling story.
@@ShiningDarknes this^
@@HouseDM I think surprise traps work well if the “telegraph” is information. Information brokers could be an invaluable resource, especially if it’s for a megadungeon campaign and there are other NPC (or PC!) adventure groups in the same dungeon selling info to brokers.
Information could also be gotten by investigating areas like the engineer’s quarters or similar rooms that would possibly have floorplans and blueprints. Even if the traps aren’t highlighted, their location could be gleamed by a *lack* of information! If an area is scratched out or oddly unlabeled, your players could better prepare for traps while not slowing down their progress in *every* damn room and hallway looking for them.
Plus the PCs could seek out someone that used to live or work in the structure they’re exploring, either in or out of the dungeon. Former residents and exiles could have info or in the dungeons intelligent monsters could have information to sell, either for a price or as a bargaining chip to survive encountering the party!
Thanks for the great advice!
"The more dangerous a threat, the more obvious it should be." -Electric Bastionland, p239
This is honestly something I will be using in my 5th edition campaigns, largely because I use house rules the most important one is if a creature is reduced to 0 hit points and then is brought back from the brink of death they suffer a -1 penalty to all their attack rolls, damage rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. This penalty stacks for each time the creature is brought to 0 hit points and only wears off after that creature takes a short or long rest. Short rest removes a number of penalty points equal to their proficiency bonus, long rest removes all penalties. I also don't allow back to back short rests, there must be a window of at least 4 hours between short rests.
This house rule alone makes players really have to think on if a fight is worth it or not, and has lead to some characters being stabilized but left at 0 hit points for a brief few moments if the hostile creatures are more intent on bringing down the active threats than killing already downed threats. I also buffed healing spells to be equivalent to damage spells (and nerfed fireball to its appropriate 6d6), while this makes it slightly more difficult to bring a player to 0 hit points, it allows the healers to do something other than heal ever single turn meaning more players enjoy playing a healer style character. All this said my next campaign takes inspiration from Out of the Abyss but I expand upon it and mold it into my homebrewed world, it's fairly safe to say not all the original characters are likely to survive by the end of the campaign as the fights will be grueling, and they will have to pick and choose at various times if they fight, find another route, or simply attempt to flee.
rip warlocks
@@FallenFromGlory Lol not hardly, they are still a powerful class, and one of the most powerful classes for builds even without back to back short rests.
@@nathantanner9433 Limiting like that is also quite weird. Just prevent them from resting using the environment. Not to mention warlocks were designed with plentiful rests in mind. Oh well, you're not my dm, thankfully, so at the end of the day it doesn't really matter.
@@FallenFromGlory How is it weird and yes Warlocks were designed for plentiful rests, I'm well aware of how the class works and the fact that their most powerful ability isn't even their Spell Slots, but rather their cantrips and class features to bolster their natural abilities outside of spell slots. A warlock with Hex and Eldritch Blast is the Baseline for damage per round in my CR rework calculations because it is a good marker for if a build is a decent damage dealer or not. Fact is Warlock's don't need rests to be powerful, Coffeelocks need rests to be broken. I normally encourage my players to find fun and powerful builds that break the game but since you seem to think a Warlock needs more than 2 short rests per day or that I'd for some reason just throw an endless amount of encounters at my players between rests or something (since you think Warlocks need more than 2 short rests per day is why I mention this because guess what, a Warlock doesn't need a rest if they don't burn any spell slots and they don't burn spell slots outside of monster encounters and environment encounters typically), I'm extraordinarily happy your not a player at my table.
@@nathantanner9433 aaaa my reply got deleted okay I'm not typing all that again. Hex is suboptimal by far, and should therefore not be used as baseline, glad you don't want me as a player; those feelings go both ways. The Point of warlocks is to be able to regain abilities quickly between encounters. You're free to homebrew, but this change doesn't affect everyone equally: which is bad.
I always consider that the actual characters are using all of their senses and have experience in the world. The players just get the description from the GM. I've had cases where they wildly underestimate or overestimate bad guys. So I've started telegraphing this a bit more.
This is the way. And yeah, that’s one of the aspects that make gming so challenging. We’re working with everyone’s collective imaginations and some people see things differently than you do. And if language fails us, then what? Telegraphing danger can help overcome this 👊🏼
I love the “Earlier, Yesterday, Moments ago” approach to the intro. I’ve seen it in a number of indie modules and it’s just a great framing device.
I do my best to telegraph danger. It’s still something I am learning to better incorporate into my workflow. I try to do it even in my 5e games as I still find it better to let the characters know what’s going on and I tend to carry over lethality levels out of habit even to the 5e environment.
Totally agree about the framing device piece. I forgot where I picked it up from, definitely not my idea, but its really helped me remember/remind my players where we just were and where we're going. Cheers and thanks for watching!
@@HouseDM Hank over at RuneHammer called the "earlier, yesterday, just moments ago" framing the "Milton Method" after he saw it in one of Ben Milton's adventures. Ben reads a ton of stuff, so who knows if he picked it up somewhere else too - I couldn't say. Very cool technique regardless.
What is that approach? My googlefu is failing me.
@@zen_tewmbs from my understanding, it’s a tool to remind your players what’s just happened. Typically used at the beginning of the session but not exclusively. Last week you did such and such, yesterday you did this, and moments ago this happened. Now, what do you do next? It’s something like that.
@@zen_tewmbs it’s a method used in some modules I have seen to set the scene. It can also be used to set up a session. You just summarize the earlier background, what happened yesterday, and what just happened moments ago. “Earlier, this town sent out messengers pleading for help and you decided to set off to see what you could do, yesterday the area around you changed to woods full of blight and disease, moments ago you walked into the Main Street of the town to find nothing but corpses filling the streets.”
I honestly like all this stuff. It helps with adding flavor into description also. I think my main struggle is... Well best way to put it is being able to back up the front I place. Because honestly nothing feels worse than making the players scared of something and then they go to face it and... they just push it over. And I have gone to extremes sometimes to try and make something both sound like a threat and play like a threat. On paper it's threatening but in practice it comes out just kind of...
Indeed. A tough thing to overcome. I find this to be more of a challenge in 5e than OSR type games. It’s VERY easy to make an encounter scary in OSR. Not so much in 5e.
this is only really a problem in dnd since there is no real way to accurately gauge the strength of an encounter. adding a single at will to a monster might triple the CR, or it might have no effect at all, depending on how the monster uses it and what ability it is.
@@mrosskne This is why I don't think you should try too hard to balance encounters.
I kind of think they should be set to unfair from the start, but have enough interesting moving parts to allow the players to find creative ways out of a bind.
Badly wanting to make a one shot for level 1s, where the big bad is a Displacer Beast.
Have it play out like Alien.
@@kamikeserpentail3778 I've had a lot more fun since I stopped playing games that divide challenges into discrete encounters like a video game
Great post - I much prefer running games without a huge amount of balance. My players can run into anything during their explorations, but if they don't have the sense to avoid annoying dragons, or riling local nobles so much that someone might pay them a visit to throw them out of a window, then they get what they deserve. That said, I do try to make it clear when they're overmatched.
I feel like I would have dissageed with you when I was starting out as a DM. My philosophy was that the players should be smart enough to figure stuff out on their own. After a while, and more than a few character deaths, I began to realise that I was suffering from DM myopia. A condition where you, as the DM with perfect knowledge of the situation, forget that the players only have your description of the world to base their decisions on. So while I don't think of it as telegraphing danger and holding the player hands, I do try my best to give a good description of the scenario so that they have the best chance to make an informed decision. Sometimes the crazy buggers charge in with swords swinging and fireballs blazing, but at least they knew what they were getting into.
Also, your narrator voice is top notch! It reminds me a lot of the narrator from the Baldur's Gate PC games 😊
Last night, in the Werewolf the Apocalypse game I play in, were fighting of way through tunnels full of enemies, while some allies were talking a different route through the tunnels. When we found the central ritual chamber, the leader of the bad guys had just entered from the other direction, carrying the head of the leader of our allies. We entered combat anyway, and one of us died. At least we went into it knowing that death was an option.
YES! I'm running Werewolf right now...its just a joy.
First time watching you. I like your vibe. Calm and concise in explaining your philosophy. Also the fact that i mostly agree with you ofc helps. Thumbs up from a DM enjoyer.
Hey thanks Vivien! Really appreciate that and your positivity. Cheers!
I would say that telegraphing danger is even more important in more "drama-focused" (and not "combat-focused") RPGs.
This helps you to squeeze a lot of feels from simple setup and (possibly) avoid combat all together.
I'm planning to use it today in my Werewolf the Apocalypse game. Wish me luck :D
Hell yeah! Good luck!
I agree. I tend to run very political based games. Whether it is village politics of Stonetop, or my current game set in a city-state that is about to break out in civil war, social risks and rewards are very much part of my campaigns. Often, for telegraphing sake, I use description of body language...of what is being said without words.. because that is information we all pick up on in real life, all the time. You can walk into a room, take one look at your spouse and know you are in trouble! Maybe not why you are in trouble...but you know.
So, if the daughter of the Royal House, who usually treats you with kindness, her face has betrayal and disappointment written all over it.... someone has been slandering the PCs... and then of course, the golden question arises: "What do you do?"
@@StornCook love this!
@@HouseDM I also wanted to say that your video inspired one of my own. I've been designing my own sword and sorcery game and one of the things that I've stumbled across during playtest is being very transparent, at the table, about HOW I'm coming up with the Difficulty Level of a task or Move.
I think this dovetails quite nicely with your telegraphing. Sorta similar arrows in the GM quiver.
@@StornCook ooooh yes. 100% agree. This is one of the many reasons I never use a GM screen. I think it’s important to be transparent about the rules and especially the subjective/arbitrary aspect of setting DC’s for things.
What a video to stumble on. I play a lot of "lethal" games where any violent encounter is usually the player's fault (i.e don't antagonise the mad wizard and he won't strike).
But I never considered overtly pointing if an encounter *could* go bad. My players aren't the sort to complain often but I'll definitely bring this up! I try my best to telegraph but sometimes... Could improve communication during play with more warning signs. Cheers.
I often run games with players who could really benefit from that extra warning. I no longer assume my players just have the same knowledge of what’s in my notes and how strong a creature is compared to their character. So far, it’s been great!
Cool video. Just found this channel but I suspect Im going to love it. Dying as a PC never felt bad to me. We could almost always weave it into something cool as one player sacrifices for the others. Nothing more heroic than that.
As someone who has never played dnd and is trying to learn to dm for people who have also never played. I watch this and my first thoughts are "Im never going to be this good of a storyteller
You will be great!!! Just do your best!!
The one character death I've ever had was 100% due to misapprehension of danger. We thought we'd cleared the dungeon, so we split into groups of two to collect the remaining loot. Cue my character opening the door to what looked (due to map dimensions) like a small closet... which was actually a prison block where two Redbrand Ruffians had set an ambush. The rest is history.
This was great! I'm glad this video floated to my recommends.
During one particularly tough encounter, where my players were facing down a Ghost Dragon, I had to stop them at one point as they all turned to fight the dragon and said "Ok, hang on, stop. If you all run this thing down, you're probably going to die". Probably kind of immersion breaking, but it got them to actually think about what they were doing (the dragon was incidental to their actual objective), and also got them to be creative and think up environmental options for causing damage. So sometimes a heavy hand is ok, too!
Absolutely! Sometimes that blood rage kicks in and you gotta propose that question, “what’s our quest objective again and does this fight help us get there?”
I'm just getting back into DMing after about a year break. Happy to find your channel.
Hey Janeen! That’s awesome to hear. Welcome back to the hobby!
Really cool seeing this idea getting out there, this is a huge part of the rpg I’m writing! The example I like to think of is a party of three all sneaking through a heavily guarded area. the situation in which two pcs roll stealth and succeed and one rolls stealth and fails effectively leaving the party spotted (typical dming for the encounter) is a completely different scenario then the situation in which two players KNOW they can sneak by and all players KNOW the third player cant. Now instead of rolling blind into a failing situation they can make so many more choices. The two sneaky pcs could engineer a distraction for the third. Two could stealth kill some guards. The third pc could be a great distraction for the other two, they could all do the classic steal two uniforms and pretend to be taking the third pc as a prisoner. Having players roll into a fail is just a feel bad when they didn’t know the likelihood of outcome, and even when they do succeed won’t feel as good when they actually had no idea of the difficulty.
I don't know who you are and this is the first time I've seen your channel. I'm a rookie DM and am very interested in making dnd feel impactful, in a way that's not normally felt. You are a hero with impressive skills but if you don't use your wits or have a survival instinct, you will perish. That all said, I love your straight to the point take, without an insane amount of production, and the down-to-earth style of "this is how and why I think this matters". Liked, subscribed, and await more DM content from you! Nice work!
Just found this channel today, definitely subscribing! Super soothing voice to listen to, but you don't speak too slow or overcomplicate the information, easy to understand as well.
Hey thanks Vanguardbreaker! Glad you enjoy my pacing and voice hah. Cheers!
Great point. Super easy to understand and apply. Thanks.
"Encounter balance" is just codeword for having fights that players always win.
I know right? Wish it weren’t so.
Great point
It's pretty nice to have a fight that you simply have to nope out of once in a while, but it is encumbent on a DM to let the party do that.
Nobody wants to take a fair fight. Everybody wants to crush their enemies decisively. NPCs included.
Would you prefer TPK?
I learned this over time myself, and it is excellent advice for new and even experienced DM's. I've had new groups figure it out and avoid needless deaths, and advanced groups ignore it and die (at their own admittance that it was a bad idea), it's a very good thing to know and apply as a DM.
Thanks for pointing it out , DM's have an insane difficulty with juggling 'every' aspect of the game, so any advice that can help, small as it may seem, is super helpful.
Hey Shockblade I'm glad to hear that. I think your absolutely right and my goal is to give GM's the tools to run better games, easier. Cheers and thanks for watching!
I have watched this so many times! I love it, but you need to upload another video... get crackin'! I also said I would support you more, so here I am! One of many kittens in space.
I like that you just straight up say "You're outmatched". Don't leave room for ambiguity when the PCs are about to make a deadly mistake
Every time I’ve let my party know something’s dangerous, they took it as a challenge and charged in without preparing.
Good tips. Another major benefit to this tyle of DM'ing is it would build tension rather than just being surprised all of a sudden when something bad happens. Good stories know how to build tension. It would be funny to have different soundtracks you play in the background 😆
Thank for spreading this idea. Ben from Questing Beast also discussed something similar about not hiding traps but telling/describing to players a trap so it can be creatively solved. This is very similar but with encounters. I’ve been doing both for EZD6 and it’s been working brilliantly
That was a great video! I love his ideas on traps. The "gotcha" moment is great for real life traps but not so much for gaming. Cheers Drew!
A real that I've heard about and have used is the click rule. When a player triggers a trap I ask them what they do, and their actions determine if they might avoid the trap all together or if they have a disadvantage. And I'm also a fan of the puzzle traps
@@destinpatterson1644 yeah I’ve heard about and used the click rule before. It’s cool and works great especially if you have a heavily trapped dungeon.
Very good video. I find that people are very.... passionate about this topic. I find that pointing out organizations or monsters that are above any beyond the players current level gives them goals and in game reasons to progress. All of my players know that dragons are not to be taken lightly. I still use the 12 age category system and they are far more powerful than they are in the 5E books. I don't usually display the power of a dragon at low level. Around 8-12 is a good time. The nuance and even a basic change in vocal inflection can change how the encounter is perceived. I love the song Paint it Black (especially the West World version). I will have the party scouting an area and tell them that you are getting a bad feeling. I will play the song low in the background. The WW version has a long intro that slowly gets louder. As soon as my players realize that it is playing they are all on high alert. In game they are being alerted by the lack of animal movement or a strange smell in the air. For the players, they feel like they are in a movie or video game where the boss music is playing.
Subscribed! I've played old-school gaming. Telegraphing danger is very much the opposite of old-school gaming. In the old days, players had to assume that any fight could be their last. Paranoia was the standard. That's not to say that telegraphing an increase in danger is a bad idea, or that it doesn't have its place in a game. It's just that you can't go around tossing in words like "old-school" when they don't apply to give your content some kind of credibility. In the 70s and 80s, your indication that the going was getting tougher was when two fighters, a cleric, and a thief died.
Imma be real, when I saw the thumbnail I thought you would literally hold up that card in game to let them know which is why I was so intrigued by you making a vid about it
Lol honestly, that’s a solid idea. I can use an index card at the table and just hold that up when there’s a deadly encounter 🤣
Good video, thanks, definitely agree telegraphing danger is crucial. On the challenge/balance thing, I do think in a game like 5E where combat is its own little mini game and so much of players’ characters revolve around it, balance is important. What bothers me is the sheer size of the power spectrum. Phrases like “dangerous, battle-hardened mercenaries” are completely relative to PC level. In a linear campaign where you’re just putting encounters in front of the PCs in order as you go along it doesn’t really matter, but in a more sandbox style of campaign there’s no obvious way to let the players know if that phrase means “a challenging but doable fight for you right now” or “mathematically impossible until you level up eight more times”.
"The time commitment of creating a new character"
Me, having a detailed sheet ready in 30 minutes.
Might be a record.
I like your style, man. Great tips. I'm starting a semi-homebrew Diablo 2-5e port (based off the original 3.0 sourcebook) and it's almost all straightforward combat abilities, so learning how to run combat is my focus right now.
I'm interested in the think you asked if I was interested in! (A discussion on what a "fair" challenge is, that is.)
Fantastic! I’ll be working on this video in the coming weeks 👍🏼
Good video. I would argue this is very important for trap also. The "Gotcha!" element of traps, ussualy only create distrust on the dungeon/game/DM. Changes the behaivor of player to be constatly checking empty rooms and hallways to a halt. It is not fun to play at all!
If you telegraph the danger, even the trap mechanism (they saw it action in advance), then you can make a SERIOUS deadly trap, and let the players decide how to creativly solve it/skip it
Tremendous content! I mostly run DCC which doesn't concern itself with silly concepts like "encounter balance" so newer players could really benefit from a bit of a warning like this. Subbed!
Hey Matt! Glad to have you!
I always do that in my games. I've been fortunate enough to have a core group who understands their characters are filling in the storyline of the outline I presented, and don't metagame what their characters wouldn't know. I tell them flat out, "There's a Black Dragon as the boss monster, there's no possible way you can defeat her." They have a blast trying to get to her, then figuring out what to do when they find her! LOL
Anyways, great video, thank you. You actually EARNED my like and subscribe.
Hey thanks for that! Glad you enjoyed the video and I’ll continue to do my best to earn your attention 😉
Sounds like you got a solid group too 👊🏼
Awesome video House!
Thanks a ton Hellvector!
I loved your closing remarks regarding 5e being (if I may paraphrase) basically too easy for the PCs. I've played D&D since I got the original white box with three small rulebooks in it in the mid-70s, so I was baptised by Old School games - I liked fighters, so my PCs died...a lot. ;)
Had a bit of hiatus from the game as a bunch of my gaming buddies had families, moved away, etc., but started up again with 3.0, with some of my buddies and their kids and wives. :)
3.5 fixed a lot of 3.0 issues, and we gradually adopted a number of house rules to tailor 3.5 to our tastes. 4e didn't interest us, and by the time 5e came along, we'd decided we'd given WotC enough moolah - I've played it, and it is a decent game to bring in new blood, but it didn't feel dangerous - so we're still playing 3.5, and we know full well that adventuring can be dangerous!
"Going negative and dying" in 3.5 just feels a lot scarier than making death saves in 5e where if you get up with a small number of hp, just going back to 0 if hit again. I have PCs actively fighting defensively or using total defense in order to get out of combat when low on hp, not laughing because they know they aren't going to die from a single hit...
As the primary GM, I do try to provide clues as to the danger level, but I don't have to work too hard at that, as my players know I am perfectly willing to include challenges that are extremely difficult, and they are willing to ask questions, look for such clues, etc.
They also know that sometimes you can talk to creatures you meet. Your example of the mercenaries was a good one - parties that just attack every creature they meet will find that isn't the best strategy...and it isn't like some video games where everything has a friend or foe identifier... ;) Many creatures in my games have their own motivations and jobs, and they don't want to die uselessly to a band of adventurers any more than the PCs want to die!
One thing I have done, but very rarely, is when the PCs miss the clues regarding how dangerous a creature is, especially if the creature opposes their mission but isn't actually evil, is have the creature fight using nonlethal damage while actually engaging the PCs in conversation. Kind of like Fezzik vs The Man In Black...
People say death saves in 5e aren't a big deal, but the monsters can still attack a downed player to make them auto fail really fast.
I mean in a world where some people can use healing magic, I think even bandits might know that if they don't double tap they haven't taken care of the threat.
And few creatures looking for a meal are going to sit and continue fighting everyone around when they've already taken someone down and can just grab take out.
@@kamikeserpentail3778 yes - and in previous editions the enemy could attack downed characters, and the downed person would die just as quickly. So that argument doesn't say death saves are just as bad - it just says both games are just as deadly if the monsters attack downed foes.
But in 3.5, say, it is a lot easier to go from walking around with only a few hp left to just dead with a single hit. Which means characters with low hp are more likely to act in a manner consistent with the "oh my gid, another hit could kill me" - fighting defensively and suchlike. And a character that is negative doesn't always get up from a single cure spell - but if they do, again, they act in a manner consistent with being fragile.
Less heroic, perhaps. In my opinion, more realistic, which is desirable, not because a fantasy game needs to be realistic in all aspects, but because being close to death should be scary for a character. Yes, in a world where magical healing exists, intelligent foes should know that a downed foe could get up again, and if it makes tactical sense, might finish them off with another "tap". Yes, a monster just looking for food might grab and run.
But those things happen just as much in previous game systems with different mechanics. I'm talking about what happens in other cases, cases where a downed character isn't finushed off. In 5e, if you have a charactee at 0, any healing will get them up, and all they worry about if they get hit again they might go to 0 and repeat the process, and many characters with low hp rely on this fact and don't worry one bit, they just keep hacking away. In 3.5, low hp won't just go to 0 with most hits, they might go to dead, or far enough negative that a single cure might not get them up.
I'm ignoring the "massive damage" rules from both systems that can kill a characted outright - both do occasionally come into play, but very seldom. I'm talking about ordinary monsters having the capability of taking the character not just down but out with a single blow, and it doesn't even need to be critical. For example, an ogre in 3.5 does 2d8+7 damage with its large greatclub. That's 16 points on an average hit. That means against a character with 6 hp or less, if hit by an ogre's greatclub, they can expect to die outright. A maximum non-critical hit would be 23 points - that happens 1 out of 64 rolls, meaning a character could have as many as 13 hp and be at risk of death from a lucky blow! So if a character is facing an ogre and has been knocked down to hp in the single digits, death from one more blow is a very real possibility.
And it is the fact that low hp means death could come from a single normal non-critical blow that makes low hp scary, that causes players to have to decide whether to take that risk in order to stay fully on the attack or to consider more defensive tactics, either giving up some offense to gain better defense or even to withdraw from combat. And if death can fairly easily happen with a single blow, there is also less of an imperative to double-tap a fallen foe.
In 5e, death from a normal blow may still be possible, but it is a LOT less likely, as almost all normal blows will just drop a character to 0. How often does death from massive damage happen in 5e? In 3.5, damage doesn't need to be massive to kill...
Yup. it is always good to let players know that you do have difficult encounters planned that they are not necessarily mean to take head-on. It helps if you and your players have a good understanding of what constitutes acting on meta knowledge and what is just you getting information that your character would certainly know and be able to act on (always helps to have one extremely smart/knowledgeable character just to have an excuse to know a lot of things).
Recently me, a martial for life at my table due to everyone else liking casters, had the opportunity to play a caster and I played a wizard in pathfinder 1e. This was a roughly 2 year running game that ended a couple months back and I was told I played the most wizardy wizard he had ever GMed for. How did I make that happen? By constantly asking questions about the lore of the world and conforming if my character would know about an area and what dangers awaited and I did what any good wizard should do, I prepared for every eventuality even if it was unlikely to happen. Why? Because my character knows about the dangers the party may encounter and has the ability and resources to prepare countermeasures ahead of time. I think I had maybe 4 or 5 direct damage dealing spells prepared but everything else was buffs, debuffs, control, and debuff-removers (also he was a magic item specialist so a lot of situational items to counter environmental effects when spells alone would not suffice). Good times, oh and my character almost always _tried_ to talk his way out of encounters and constantly tried to recruit anyone with a hint of magical aptitude to become his apprentice. I renamed my diplomacy, which used Int instead of Cha, "Diplomancy" because he rolled so well.
Good times, and none of it would have been possible without an open communication with the GM about what we may encounter. And yes, about a third of the things I prepared for never happened. I think he had a bag of holding full of consumable magic items for eventualities than never came to be or were avoided. Think I ended up with every first through sixth level spell and all transmutation spells (as well as some homebrew spells I was allowed to make along the way to do specific things that no other spell could do) other than those from my two forbidden schools and I think I used almost every spell I knew at least once (even if only as a crafting component).
Thessalonian Greed School (that's right, no enchantments or illusions) may not be the best choice, but it has the most opportunity for creativity of all the school selections; two free copies of a transmutation spell of every level per day you know on top of your normal prepared spells is no joke.
Wow. What an incredible story! I think the wizard is such a cool class for all the reasons you stated, not as a damage dealer but as a toolkit. Also lol to diplomancy. Brilliant.
Thanks for sharing!
Love this idea, and I think it's applicable in a lot of games, even 5E (though I love me some OSR for the exact same reasons as you like them!)
Hell yeah! Thanks for commenting Jamie!
One thing I rarely see discuss about combat lethality is how players LIKE to fight. I'm playing a forbidden lands campaign right now and even though they know they can die from any single hit, they keep on attacking monsters because fight scene are FUN and tense! But maybe it IS because its lethality they enjoy it so much.
Even though I've been telegraphing Danger in and out of game (sometimes I just tell the players the adversary they fight is very strong and they might all die from this fight), they never back out of a fight.
I guess that's fine as long as your players are ok with rolling new characters now and then.
So far I had a 1 pc death every 3 sessions or so. 😱😁
See that’s awesome because your players love that level of excitement and lethality! I have played with players who get VERY upset if their character dies. But when character creation is quick, easy, and fun, they are more okay with the death especially if they knew the fight was going to be lethal like what you’re saying.
Thanks for commenting!
Hey man, maybe your players think you run meat-grinders. As long as they are enjoying it and you are also enjoying it (DM enjoyment matters too!) it's fine.
I think thats video game mentallity where everything resolve with fighting. To sad a Lot of tables don't appreciate other type of resolutions, If i want battle every time rolling doce I preffer a boardgame
I wrote a game system where it became a core mechanic for the group to know the exact (equivalent of) DCs and possible consequences of the challange. Since then I like to give the group more informations in all systems to make informed decisions. It is awesome! Can only recommend it :)
Awesome! It sounds kind of like the room DC concept from ICRPG. You think it’s similar?
@@HouseDM only heard of ICRPG, but never red it. I used a ressource management system with a dice pool system (ecpanding dice from abilities for a skill to increase the chance of sucess). So it was very important to telegraph challanges to know the odds.
Great vid and ways to ramp tension & danger
In Spycraft and Spycraft 2 (basically a hack of D&D 3) missions were rated as Threat Level White, Yellow, Red, or Black, which changed the available gear for requisition and how much gear you could bring. If i remember correctly, Spycraft 2 had mechanisms for basically designating a scene as extra lethal of less lethal and it would change the consequences of running out of vitality points
Great Vid! It has me thinking (as a new DM)... for 5e D&D at least, instead of having the players roll a perception check to see just how hardened and tough a group of enemies look / how difficult the terrain is, they could roll a general insight check. This would give the characters some discrepancy in how dangerous they each perceive the current threat. A cautious, wise cleric holding back a trigger happy "every one is weaker than me!" barbarian.
I'm sure this way has some drawbacks, but I feel like it would create some good character moments.
Insight works too! Thanks for watching!
The best session ever (according to one of my players) was last week's, where I had given them a week warned in advance that, because their life-support failed on their Spelljammer ship, they had one hour to MacGyver to avoid all of their characters and crew being killed by explosive decompression in the vacuum of space. That is, they had one IRL hour - pausing the clock to explain rules - before space sucked everything out. And they had a week to prepare.
I was very proud of them for making it, although all the crew did not make it, and the only attack rolls that were made were with a harpoon to keep the Barbarian from flying off the ship in zero g.
I have been running/playing since the late 70s. I learned to reward socializing, it is an excellent way to telegraph the possible futures abd challenges to players. (It also rewards those who like roleplaying as well as those who invest in social skills.)
There's nothing like the grizzled barkeep with a murky past and a recently arrived minstrel telling similar tales to make a party take notice.
The analogs work everywhere; Vampire, Werewolf, Shadowrun, Legend of the Five Rings. There is nothing wrong with giving the party clues or warnings if it can be logically done.
Really important tool, thank you for reminding me of this I've not been utilizing it enough. The two monsters fighting next to the exit is such a great problem for the party to solve as well!
Hell yeah! Glad you think so.
Nicely explained!
Thanks Scott!
Really dig all of your videos! I would love to see a video regarding fair encounters!!
Looks like I'll likely be adding this one to my list. Thanks for the compliment Curtis!
Totally stealing this move for my 2 games I’m running. One is Prof DM’s re skin of The Keep on The Borderlands, and since I’m not changing the 5e rules for HP, I’m using exhaustion way more. Coupled with full HP being attained only after medical attention in a fortified area, I hope to get lethality back on my 5e table.
I'd never use a phrase like "You are outmatched" because my players would see that as a challenge.
I find if you don;t spend a lot of time on over describing the stuff that's less important, when you start describing the important stuff, they start to realise that its important.
I've been doing it long enough to realise that if you try to describe a scene that goes on for more than 30 seconds and involves ongoing action. Players get annoyed that they can't do something while you are waffling about the smell of the wet stone and the clash of the combatants weapons as they... stand by watching your scene play out?
What you can get away with in those situations is specific descriptions of threatening enemies.
With the three mercenaries I would go further than "They look tough and a couple of them have scars".
To genuinely be a threat to a party of mid level PCs in a normal game (Or 1st level PCs in 5E) they would probably need some good gear to help them out. So describe that stuff... and give each of them a unique look. Then throw in a line or something that makes the players think and come to their own conclusions... something like "Most mercenaries in this part of the country equip themselves with the plunder of their beaten foes... most of the time their armour is slightly too big, or too small. Everything these warriors are wearing fits like a glove. You wonder; how many people must they have killed to be able to pick and choose like that?"
This works in all types of games, not just those that are highly lethal. I ran a game recently using Fate Core (not a very lethal system at all) where the party found their path blocked by the villain, who basically had a superweapon on his person at that instant. I made sure to reveal this up front, and to use the moments before the battle to establish that he was clearly quite confident he could take all three of them easily.
In practice, this might not have been true. Fate Core is a forgiving system, and I expect the PCs could have defeated him if they went for the brute force option. But that telegraphing changed the texture of the scene, and the players made the much more interesting decision to split up- two of them escaping and heading for their true objective while one stayed behind to distract the villain and buy them time. It led to this incredible standoff where the one character who stayed behind was hopelessly outmatched but holding his ground anyway, knowingly making a heroic sacrifice to save his friends.
you are epic i am subed for the last 3-4 months and i love your vids especially the crafting one's
Hey thanks Dark Gamer! Glad you’re enjoying my videos. Crafting is such a fun part of the hobby for me. Glad you enjoy it too!
This is nice, I did warn my players in and out of game a few times about dangers but I sometimes use that as a lure more then a warning at this point because My players want to be challenged and have fun in and out of combat
Without challenge, what’s the point right?
@@HouseDM Yep, the hard part is finding that balance which we DMs try
finally an actually listenable tabletop channel
Hah thanks Mike! What about it makes it more listenable than others?
@@HouseDM you seem like you would actually get the hint if somebody you were talking to was showing that they weren't interested in the subject.
@@mrosskne I’ll take that as a compliment! I studied psychology in school and practice quite a bit of mindfulness. I also truly believe that actually listening to your players is the key to a successful and fun game sesh 👍🏼
This was a good video on an important gamemaster tool that often goes underutilized.
Thank you BGD! I agree.
I think this will depend on the players as well - I would not for any of the players I've ever had go as far as saying 'you are outmatched' before either side do anything. Drop the hints these guys look competent in whatever way suits the moment and let the characters make up their own mind. If they choose to go full on reckless murderhobo and get slaughtered that is on them, and they should learn the NPC won't pull punches and just let them win (most of the time anyway).
So perhaps from then on they study potential threats from a distance, perhaps they attempt an ambush, maybe attempt to talk, or sneak past, or perhaps the chaotic muppet of the group will do something silly. The latter being often the most fun - either the other PC's notice and stop them or have to decide if they are going to help, hide or run as whatever chaos has just been let loose unfolds on the probably very confused NPC...
And I try to make sure that sometimes even folks that are not a challenge to them can still look tough enough at a glance - afterall a squad of well trained soldiers with well maintained and freshly issued gear and the fresh bunch of rookies that have just been issued their first real weapons can look very similar and the PC's should be debating the course of action among themselves without all the information all the time. That creates some actual tension and uncertainty in the players and an opportunity to really play into their charecter - is this a real threat or not, does their charecter feel overconfident, scared etc? Which when they know the real threats are lethal means they and you can have great fun as they carefully try to sneak past the practically harmless but slightly scaring looking monstrosity - success and they are happy, challenge overcome, fail and they get to have that sigh of relief moment that this wasn't so as bad as they feared.
Your 5e DMs were nicer than mine! Several times a campaign I feared for my character and their companions!
But did your character ever die? 🙃
@@HouseDM Yup! My Hellboy facsimile got merced by a razorfiend in one shot. Party had him reincarnated, only he came back as a dwarf.
@@HouseDM I also have killed several characters. Two permanently, two temporarily.
@@JinbaHGS nice. Dwarves are the best.
@@HouseDM he was great! I RP'd that he still always ducked through doorways because he was previously 7ft tall, with another few inches of horns past that. It was awesome fun!
I like having environmental telegraphing, like if there's a giant wandering around the area I can talk about his footprints, or the sheep carcass lying nearby with a big bite taken out of it. Directly telling your players that the encounter is dangerous is good too, but I like giving the players time to think about the threat and how they might deal with it before it appears on screen.
Recently i ran a campaign for a party including a couple newer players (watched a lot of crit role, never played)
In starting area it was established that a dragon lived in a nearby mountain. Even after countless warnings from villagers of how deadly it was, the lvl 3 party descided to ignore their escort job they were hired for, and GO GET THAT DRAGONS HORD! Needless to say, it did not go well, and after a near OHK, their epic battle they had planned turned out to be more of a chase sequence.
Through many sessions of adventuring, the whole time they were were always thinking about when they were strong enough to come back and show the dragon what for.
It was extrememly rewarding for the party, im definitely going to continue putting high level monsters scattered around early areas. Makes the world feel more lived in, and gives the party a goal thats PERSONAL
Interesting... getting ready for an Metro/Tokyo: Otherscape game and I could definitely see this coming into play for such a narrative focused rules system.
Here's what I do in my 5e games. Using something similar to the "new" exhaustion rules (minus 1 to d20 rolls per level up to 5, lose of 5 ft speed for levels 6, disadvantage for level 7... all cumulative... and remaining unconscious at level 9 of exhaustion) for every time they are brought back from death saves and 1 level after the fight if none was taken during. It keeps a sense of danger for battle and death, but is not too punishing (I'd never allow reaching 10 levels of exhaustion and death) and can still be healed or have a fighting chance in battle. But it makes players think if they want to fight, sneak, or negotiate and reins in the yoyo deaths tanks and healers like to play.
Of course good description helps.
I play a lot of games that either are more rules-light, like Monster Hearts and other PbtA games, or that have very quick, lethal combats, like Vampire the Masquerade, so I always use these kinds of strategies in my games. One of the most effective times I think I've used it was in a Monster Hearts game that involved a plot where a powerful cult had secretly founded the town and needed sacrifices to maintain their power. The PCs decided that one of the first things they were going to do was break into the mansion of the town's founder, who was later openly revealed to be a serial killer and which was currently a local history museum, during the middle of the night with zero preparation or planning. Obviously the cult still used this place in secret and there were plenty of hidden things in the house and barging in recklessly was a great way for the cult to immediately catch on to who they were and make things infinitely more difficult for the players. The cult mainly used their power to make the land extremely fertile and prosperous, so their magic was very tied to the land itself. One of the PCs got their powers from the same source of the cult, so I narrated that that PC saw moving, humanoid silhouettes made of mushrooms circling the mansion when they got close, and they radiated such power and menace that it gave her a headache and she nearly passed out.
The PC who got the headache was sufficiently spooked and said they should abandon the plan and do something else because it was likely too dangerous. However, there was another overly-optimistic player that said that this was their best lead to finding out what was happening here and that, if they all just stuck together, they'd be fine. This somehow convinced them, and the group went in and got very quickly stomped and were forced to flee. The PC who saw the mushroom silhouettes was using a character known as a Queen which is very specifically designed to resolve around tight control over their Gang members, Gangs being a feature that most other Skins have to earn through Advancements but which the Queen gets automatically at character creation, and she lost one of her Gang as they were escaping.
Honestly, that move was the beginning of the end and the entire rest of the campaign was one dramatic dumpster fire as all of the PCs allowed their own personal issues and petty infighting to systematically destroy any chance of survival. But, I telegraphed the danger very clearly, they knew that something like that might happen, and Monster Hearts is meant to be a very melodramatic game with lots of messy, teenage angst anyway, so we all had a lot of fun reveling in the glorious messes they created. However, if I hadn't made it clear from the very beginning that that one decision at the start of the game could be as disastrous as it was, it would have probably felt like I was kneecapping them from the start rather than giving them the option of choosing the tone they wanted to set for the rest of the campaign.
Great video with lots of great points.
But, can I add a couple things as a nurse (may seem random, I know): I can't stand the use of potions or goodberries being forcefed to unconcious players. It seems likeit would have a high chance of causing aspiration and additional harm. Yes, maybe that's me trying to apply real world logic to a fantasy setting, but it breaks verisimilitude for me. But I also agree death saves and being brought back up to 100% fighting force by 1 hp multiple times is a fairly poor system. The D&D One system of exhaustion (I believe -1 to save/attack/ability checks per level of exhaustion) is a system that I think I'd apply to going unconcious if I DM going forward. If you go unconcious multiple times you will be severaly limited in your performance, which feels realistic. I also like the alternate rules for healing, where a night's sleep is a short rest, and it takes a week in town to get a full rest. It changes the balance away from most spellcasters (a good thing arguably), and makes HP precious and HP dice a used currency. Sorry for the rant.
As a 5e DM, I have learned how to use monsters very creatively to turn a simple group of 4 or so unmodified kenku into a deadly group against 4 level 4 players without modifying anything besides using what the players can do; aka, if the players can throw a rock, the kenku can too. Not their class abilities or racials, but anything reasonable that the kenku should be able to do with it’s 2 arms, 2 legs, and a head. Additionally using terrain is another big thing.
It’s all about strategic planning before the session; if the players can fly, give one of the birds a bow and some arrows, if they have ranged weapons, some cover, if the players have spells that can effect around corners, a magic item even if unrelated to countering that spell, like a scroll of insert random spell here, can make for a pretty dangerous kenku which has a few casting options, it’s about outsmarting the players during a fight enough to make the players consider backing off, even if at the end, the players will win regardless.
I have had a kill and managed a few times to drop them to 0 hit points, even with using OP homebrew that buffed players. My players have slowly become more cautious and although I don’t have many kills, I still have the ability to say “I can kill on accident , and although rare, I never have fudged a dice.”
I chopped a paladin's leg last game, it felt really good on both sides. Players become bored at some time being unkillable (6th players, 11 level at the moment), and that dismembering added a new level of emotions. And when your cleric is multiclassing party understands that they won't get that Regeneration from him and has to deal with the problem somehow in the future.
I tried to telegraph the danger, it didn't work because of their power level. It was fun until level 9-10 sessions rushing into a deadly encounter and win it but everything has an end
you narrate beautifully! Vids on that plx!
This is why I love the 40k ttrpgs. A "balanced encounter" could absolutely wind up in a TPK if the players aren't taking it seriously. They know everything they do could kill them and it really forces them to run risk analysis on most of their decisions outside of combat.
I’ve heard great things about the warhammer ttrpg’s 👍🏼
@House DM they're brutal compared to dnd. When your average hp is 11 at character creation and only goes up by a max of 10 if you choose to increase it, you're squishy as hell
I'm currently a player in a Pathfinder 2e Abomination Vaults campaign. At certain points there's a lot of encounters where it's essentially a single enemy but they're so much higher leveled compared to us that the party is pretty much powerless against them, and I always felt like if you wanted to keep the difficulty of said encounters in the adventure the same, you could do it so long as you find an immersive way to warn the players as to how dangerous it really is.
Absolutely. Or even have a way for them to “win” the encounter without fighting.
I'm a huge fan of telegraphing danger for different locations or encounters, especially when it makes sense for the characters too. In one of the campaigns I'm in right now, we had a PC die while trying to drag two unconscious PCs back to a field hospital in the back lines, while the last two of us stayed back to fight as long as we could to help keep the frontline from breaking. None of us knew that there were assassins inside the capitol city walls going around planting what were literally described to us as nailbombs in said hospitals and blowing them up. There only other explosions in the battle were from a cart full of blackpowder barrels we had yet to detonate at that point, so you'd think we'd hear these explosions in the back lines and think to ourselves what's causing them when the invaders don't have cannons; the two of us who still had the hit points to fight on even heard such an explosion later from a long ways away. But no, Raddick got jumped out of nowhere by an assassin when he was alone dragging two downed PCs and had 12 hit points himself, and was killed. The explosion that the other two of us heard was Paul, one of the downed PCs who was brought back up by an NPC from the party who stayed back from the fighting, detonating the nailbomb he noticed stuffed into Raddick's eviscerated chest cavity so that nobody would get blown up trying to move him. The whole situation was really fucked and lead to some shakiness where everyone blamed ME for making the decision to keep fighting and trying to buy some time, and he went through two different characters in the next two sessions, one of them being a joke character, because he was so invested in that first character that he didn't know what else to play. As a new player, he doesn't exactly have a ton of ideas for new characters that interest him, but recently I talked with him for a few hours to help him in his efforts to make a character that fits a particular aesthetic and playstyle. Whole thing was a big mess and one of the most unexpected and unfair yet entirely underplayed deaths I've experienced in my 5 years of near-constant weekly D&D sessions.
Thank you, this is really helpful :)
I was running a quest that involved a CR2 miniboss that my players inadvertently walked straight into. I let the wizard take a "not 1 check" (a check with a DC so low only a 1 could fail it) to look at it and determine "if we fight this right now, it will kill us". So they left it alone until they leveled, after which, I made it a wandering monster since they disturbed its lair. It helped the flavor, as the CR2 minibusses was happily eating civilians.
One thing that's also a big benefit - if you telegraph a PK level danger and the party solves the problem in some way that allows them to bypass it, or even if they just decide to turn back, they feel like they've escaped death. This is important because it makes the players feel the agency they have. A DM can have plenty of traps and possible encounters prepared, can be ready to improvise and react to whatever the players do to have the most organic session, but if the players don't _know_ what they avoided, they _will_ feel like they're partly on rails, especially if you have an overarching story line they follow.
I'm saying this as player, not a DM, just to clarify. After a really long campaign and some reflection, I felt kind of bad for the few instanced we gave a less-than-great feedback to our DM, even though he insisted we weren't on rails and were free to do whatever, even later illustrated what would roughly happen should we have made different choices. We just weren't aware and felt like we need to push on with the story to save the world and stuff.
Had this happen to my game a little while ago, I literally described the valley pass as "ambushy" and my players proceeded to confidently walk in with no plan, had a player death but I was absolved of any guilt as the players all thought their own plan (or lack there of) was terrible. This was also the second consecutive ambush and the previous one was just as deadly (although no one died), so they knew what they were getting into.
I’m curious what kind of plan you were hoping they’d come up with 🤔 But yeah, you warned them. Also props to your players for driving the story forward! Even with death.
@@HouseDM They spent about 2 hours planning to build an explosive cart that they would follow so that when it got ambushed they could ambush the ambushers, but that cost a tiny amount of gold that they refused to spend so then they tried making a runic trap in the cart but the spell they had wouldn't be able to move with the cart so they just gave up, all piled into the cart, had no one scout and just hoped for the best. The cart got attacked by an earth elemental and smashed with them inside, an insect plague and some nasty barbarians and the players were routed with one death. They did a pretty heroic escape sequence once one of the players died which was pretty cool. I have DMed them (all new players initially) for about 4 years now, I have stopped trying to anticipate what they will do, and most of the problems I present to them, I don't have solutions. It is a lot of adapting to their decisions, the only real things I prep are major quests, background villain plotting, and monster stat blocks.
@@Battleturtleful No solutions, just problems. This is the way. But also, why wouldn’t the rune move with the cart. That seems like a narratively awesome idea!
@@HouseDM It was a great idea, the player who thought of it reread their spell and realized it wouldn't work before I could let it just happen (it also turned to to be this person who's character died). This wasn't a particularly good death in the narrative, it was after all just an ambush, but it was quite funny as the character rolled 4 1s on 5 d20 rolls that fight. It was like he was destined to die. We still laugh about how absolutely terrible his luck was. Even during the game night, everyone's face was ear to ear grinning while things were hitting the fan.
maybe don't walk through the ambush pass?
Depending on the encounter, me as a Dm tries to warn the players using the environment. Slash marks are giving the size of the creature or the remains of a specific creature shows them the possible CR of the enounter. Nearly always the players are catching the hints.
Something I like about certain TTRPG books, is that they have a dedicated section to telegraphing danger.
Thelegraphing to the algorithm that this is a watchable video.
Hey Thanks Frederic!
I was thinking of my own wound/damage system. What if damage creates wounds dependng on how much damage it causes (minor, major, severe, critical, Fatal). The more severe the wound, the longer it takes to heal and the more intensive care is needed. HP becomes one's Healing Points which they spend to begin healing their wounds/maintain their current state, which the damage representing how much HP they need to spend to heal the wound. The teirs of wounds are descriptive and up to the DM in how they may effect rolls and such. If you lack HP, that means your wounds are unable to receive healing and your health takes a turn for the worst as all your wounds fester and upgrade to the next tier.
Just did that a few hours ago. I'm playing Dragon of Icespire Peak with a few coworkers. Two are level 2, one is level 3, another is level 1 (joined today). They had their first encounter with the dragon today. It wasn't by accident. I had planned for this and also had told them in the weeks before the session, that they will be encountering the dragon.
They encountered the dragon when walking out of the dwarven ruins for that one quest. None of them speaks Draconic, so they didn't understand the dragon when it called them "dragon enemies". It then just said "dragon slayer" in Common. They had found the hidden treasure with the 15 gem stones and gifted them to dragon. The bard rolled a nat 20 for a total of 23 or 24 when trying to tell the dragon, that there are much more gems inside the cave. Well, in the cave there's that small pass-through, where I said the dragon wouldn't fit through.
The bard then rolled pretty terribly trying to bullshit the dragon once again. They also had followed the dragon into the cave for whatever reason. So, angry breath attack ensued.
That dragon's breath attack deals 10D8 + stuff damage. Probably none of them would have survived that. I telegraphed the attack by letting them know, that they can see icy mist forming at the back of the dragon's throat. At this point I also told them, that I'm giving them one last chance to get away and how much damage the attack normally does.
They were able to get away in time. I made them do a total of 3 dex saves to dodge three breath attacks. The encounter wasn't a fight, I used the dragon more as a deadly environmental hazard. Yes, the usual save for that attack is con, not dex, but I made them try and dodge the attack instead of just take it. To that end, a successful save, didn't take any damage and a failure only took 1D8. Was still enough to scare the living shit out of them.
They just told me they loved the session and the dragon encounter and how I played the dragon. What more can I ask for? :D
I use that a lot. I have to do so as I don't really balance encounters. On that note I would love to see the that video about balance :)
Hell yeah! Andrija, I'll probably line it up in the queue somewhere around the video about sieges lol.
My next level to this is allowing the players to feel like they discovered the danger themselves. With the mercenaries I would say they have big symbols on their cloaks. When the players ask if they recognize the symbols, ask them all to do an easy history check. One of them is probably going to get it. If they do I would tell them that it is the symbol of a feared mercenary group known for being terrifying warriors and incredibly dangerous. If they fail they still learn that it looks like some sort of organization but they don't know which and then emphasize what you talked about. This ties the mercenaries to a deeper sense of lore and also lets the players feel like they are figuring out the danger themselves and coming to their own conclusion.
Love this. I’d even go so far as to say the roll isn’t necessary if a member of the party would have a reasonable reason why they would recognize the symbols or know of such lore.
I basically do this, but without going meta, which I personally prefer. My favorite way that I did it:
I had an elite squad of mooks sent to seek and destroy the party, and were informed by their scout the parties objective would be inside a cave-we'll call it cave A. Elite mook squad went here to deal with them.
The party ends up finding the objective cave, where a few injured Ettin were resting, tending to their wounds. The party decided to engage to get into the cave and managed to scrape through, but it was a tough fight.
After getting to their objective inside the cave and making their exit, they are approached by a stranger-it turns out to be the brother of one of the characters, who had gone missing during his backstory. He informs the characters they are in imminent danger-a crack team has been sent to destroy them they are NOT ready to fight. He had diverted them to cave A to buy the party time to get through cave B, and he witnessed them slaughter nearly a dozen Ettin to get into cave A with ease-the surviving Ettin fled to cave B, the actual objective location...
Knowing this team of mooks took down a dozen Ettin from full health, killing most of them and having the rest flee to the other cave-where the party barely handled these injured creatures-told the players everything they needed to know. If they decide at this point to fight the squad, both in and out of character it's 100% on them knowing they are outmatched.
I remember my first time playing dnd as a player. New to the game, but with a decent understanding of mechanics because I had DMd a session once. Literally just helping fellow noob friends through character creation and a session 1 with some social aspects and a puzzle. But no fight. The dice were not kind to me that day, my druid child was dead as soon as they had been created, as in in two hours. They did rescue the party from a tpk, so they were a true hero and damn was the story telling great, but damn do I fear going into death saving throws.
Brand new and looking for all kinds of tips to improve 😅 my players enjoy the game, but I need help in "best practices".
Welcome to the hobby Eryk! I’ll add “best practices vid” to my list of other videos to make 😉
this is such a good video! very inspiring. i hope to one day make as negatively wonderful videos as you
One of my favorite moments as a DM is when my players were considering ambushing a rich looking merchant wagon train. "As you situate yourself on the cliff, you see (notice check) a dozen bandits hidden in the tall grass, well concealed and ready to strike the wagons as they rumble through an area of the road narrowed by the river on the far side. At a shrill whistle from their apparent leader, they rise from their concealed positions in unison with readied crossbows. Before they release a single bolt you see their holes appear in their head and brain and bone spray backward as though a cannon ball had struck them in the face. The only movement you see from the caravan is one wagon rocking slightly side to side as though a heavy wind had temporarily shaken it." .... "Ok, so the DM just told us we're dead if we ambush this caravan and if we do it's our own fault. What's our new plan?"
Telegraphing danger is key if you're dealing with inexperienced players that don't have any frame of reference for how powerful particular creatures or monsters are. And if they're the least bit pragmatic in their approach it will usually work the vast majority of the time. But there is also value in not artificially protecting your players from their own bad decisions.
I DMd a campaign years ago for a group in which not one of them had ever played any rpg before, let alone that specific one. Part of the initial introduction had them see a raging battle going on just for flavor that would provide some background for some elements of the story to come. They were absolutely not intended to even entertain the idea of involving themselves in it. I telegraphed the hell out of the danger there. But regardless of how many times or how strenuously I expressed just how suicidal it was for them to involve themselves in it they just kept pressing to do just that. At a certain point it became clear they weren't going to heed any of my warnings and I had run out of creative ways to try to dissuade them. It ended up being a tpk, but we just rerolled and started over since it was literally just minutes into the very first session and they really hadn't experienced any of the campaign yet. But they absolutely learned from that to pick up on cues that were clearly indicating a particular level of danger or challenge. That ended up being the most enjoyable group I ever DMd for from that point on.
I'm not a fan of the approach of protecting players from themselves. Inform them sure. Reiterate it if necessary. But if you fudge dice rolls or invent some intervention on the spot that miraculously saves them from what should have been certain death then they're just going to expect that all the time and there is never going to be any real sense of danger.
In the second starter set there is a dungeon location axeholm that has three ways to enter and the most obvious going theough the front door will have then entire dungeon except the boss meet you there creating a single deadly encounter i think tge math might put it at twice deadly. I havent ran the campaign yet iven been preping it bur the other two ways to enter are not explicitly told qnd have to be thought of cleverly.