Master illusionists HATE her (because Big Magic is anti-bread! it's a conspiracy! WAKE UP, PEOPLE!) 🥖 Thanks to Shadowland Games for sponsoring today's video: www.backerkit.com/c/projects/shadowlands-games-6d6f888f-51c5-4836-89ca-154f1ac76ef2/trickerion-the-roleplaying-game?ref=ginny
3:13 that thing is a custom made tool your dad made for one specific task that the other tools weren't fit for i'm going to guess it's for getting at something in his engine treasure the custom made tools, as they are the mark of the tool user's experience
There’s good dungeon masters, there’s amazing dungeon masters, and then there’s me, who’s ability to dm depends entirely on how much caffeine I’ve had that day.
"Okay," says me, "we're not meeting for 2 weeks, so I have 13 days to prep an awesome next session." "Wait, are we gaming tomorrow? Crap!" says me, 12 days later.
Don't forget the Grendel Option: as the heroes are patting themselves on the back for killing the big, scary monster, that monster's bigger, scarier MOTHER seeks revenge.
Had made a sidestory campaign in which heroes sabotaged a green dragon's lair where the end boss was an adult green dragon, but his mom was there too and she isn't too happy about the players insulting her by killing her assets.
More recent DM here. One of the most fun moments in the past session we had that's flipped the campaign around was how the party's ranger died. It was via insta-kill by a critical hit from an attack of opportunity. The barbarian raged for the first time, the warlock used spells the party didn't know she had access to, and they got out of there as fast as possible to find their mentor figure to do a makeshift necromancy "resurrection." The characters were having one of the worst days of their lives; the players were having a blast. And now the villain, who was only intending to knock them out and steal their stuff (he thinks he's more evil than he is), has to grapple with the fact that he killed someone who he doesn't believe deserved it. Was it intentional? Dear goodness no; I didn't think it was possible for him to deal 66 points of damage in a single blow. But now we get to do one of my favorite things: unpack consequences.
@@benscott4434 It was about our sixth session (and our sessions tend to be incredibly long). The player of the barbarian wanted to wait to rage until a satisfying moment in narrative, which she thought would be far later in the campaign. She was warned that refusing to rage could make combat much more difficult for her, but she stuck with it, and I like how it's playing out so far. The character also works a customer's service job at H&M (Heroes and Monsters).
@@Patch-lz9yi I honestly really think that’s a cool, if potentially hazardous, character choice! And the fact the PC works retail giving her more practice with holding back on raging is a *chef’s kiss* character detail.
Only raging when its narratively satisfying is my favourite way to play Barbarian. My Barbarian/Fighter multiclass was thrown out of the army for anger issues. They carry a huge (runic) greatsword on their back that they only use while raging. The rest of the time they fight with sledgehammer and heavy crossbow. Only when faced with a worthy opponent does he rage, draw the greatsword and have fun.
I think anothe important thing to consider is: What is the goal of combat? Usually, people don't just end people for funsies. A group of bandits does not want to end the party or get ended - all they want is to rush someone, take their stuff, and get away. They have no interest in ending the party if they can instead get their desired valuables. Likewise, once one of them is badly wounded, the rest will run, since none of them want to perish. A group of cultists might want to capture the party for sacrifice and actively try not to end them. However, being zealots, they might fight until their last breath. Or plan to but still flee in panic once one of them perishes. A bar fight will usually end when one side has shown superiority. Nobody wants to go to jail for ending someone. As such, once one side is wounded enough or out of breath, the other side wins and achieves all they wanted. Most fights should not be until one side is completely wiped out - only a handful of enemies should have the goal of ending the party for ending's sake. Also, most NPCs want to survive.
I used the bigger fish to great effect in my final battle. The enemy was a duo of a mummy lord and an evil paladin, and the setup was that the mummy lord was trying to summon their extradimensional patron to the material plane while the paladin protected them. I had a number of rounds required for the summoning ritual for the different power levels I had prepped. The party completely focused on the paladin, which was fair because he was doing a ton of damage to whoever he hit, but there was basically no effort to interrupt the summoning until the paladin was dead, which meant the mummy lord's patron appeared on the battlefield at the middle power level. I had him rip his way onto the material plane with a "Fine, I'll do it myself" monologue, then called session. The cliffhanger tension was delicious, and I was so happy it worked out. That fight will be remembered by my party for years
Honestly those "always checks Twitter first thing in the morning" and "oh no they're hot" tips may sound like a punchline, but those are absolute *gold* for the right campaign, whether modern, light-hearted, or whatever. I can guarantee you that I'm going to use the "oh no they're hot" one and see how fast my players' alignments shift.
I didn't even *mean* to do this and one of my players has OOC'ly made similar comments. ...It also inadvertently revealed that she's an abuse victim. So that's fun. (Yes, she's in therapy, yes, she's no longer with him, yes she's doing better.)
@@sfllaw Agreed. Better to have a good quality Crescent-type wrench instead of that gimmick. Best? A set of box and open-end wrenches. But that starts to get heavy, take up space, and costs $.
Or it could be like how only the dad coyotes go to steal from wolves while mom waits cause the pups have a better chance with a single mom then a single dad, but mrs dragon or whatever can step in if most of the players are bleeding but so's mr dragon
The title in the thumbnail is so perfectly timed: not 3 days ago, the party for whom I DM made it straight to the end of the encounter-series using a first-level spell. The Enchanter in the party pointed at the one guard in the room and said “Unionize.” The guard failed his save, walked outta the room and essentially led the party straight to the boss, where he walked right in and started complaining about the working conditions for the guards in the slave-labor mine. I was so proud of the player.
Another great video. My favorite is the ol' "Fuck it, I'm out!." If the combat has dragged on several rounds too long, some of those wounded pirates are just gonna cheese it back to their spelljammer and fly away. Not every encounter needs to be a fight to death.
I love this advice. However, I would like to offer up the 'I didn't think you would get here so early ' tool. Your players have infiltrated the BBEG's lair and fought the minions arrive before BBEG, and it is a social encounter. BBEG is actually a middle level minion manager who was continuously promoted until they had to run the evil plan and they don't even want to be here.
When I first read this comment, I first thought that this was going to be an advice on preventing players from ganging up on enemies one by one (or taking out the leader before their minions): It's pretty wildly known that HP don't directly represent something physical (like how much blood is still inside your body), but more of a "willingness AND ability to pull through". If you are fighting a group, their morale wouldn't just get affected by how much damage each one individually took, but also by how well the battle is going for the group overall. This comment gave me the idea to implement that using an extra HP pool for the whole group of enemies. (which represents their "for the horde!" attitude.) While there's still hit points in the shared HP pool, damage to an enemy in the group goes to that pool, AND also to the individual that's been hit. Once the pool is empty, any damage to an individual is doubled. - And to compensate for the fact that all damage against that group is doubled you of course have to roughly double the total HP pool of the enemy party; something like putting half of the HP of each monster into the shared HP pool, and multiplying the HP of each monster by 1.5. Also, the shared pool running out would give you a good indicator for when to start considering having the enemy run.
I saw Jeremy Crawford recommend that HP adjustment trick in a podcast on the D&D TH-cam channel, it was eye opening. He even said it was intended by the designers! I've been using it ever since. It allowed me to let a new player get her first kill at a great moment in our game a couple weeks back, the results spoke for themselves :)
Funny flumph story: the Dungeon Scrawlers ran a game for Extra Life a few years ago where it only cost $5 to add a flumph to their Tomb of Horrors game, which was at the end of their 24-hour marathon. By the time they got there, there were 56 flumphs waiting for them.
I like short, but intense combats. Last session, my party was fighting a basilisk, and they won in two rounds, but in those rounds, the basilisk still managed to petrify one of their NPC friends and reduce a PC to 1 HP. I’m still working on encounter building, and I think these tips will definitely come in handy, but I wanted to brag about last session’s success.
I really like the idea of 'minimum' damage done and then calling it at a dramatic moment. Clearly the fight has been happening at least for a little while, then it's all upside. Totally gonna use this. Thank you, Ginny!
Don't forget the ever fun troupe, "wait was that a load bearing boss?" Where killing the boss is only the first half the encounter. The second half is escaping the structure the BBEG is in that was sustained by the BBEG's power and is now falling apart around the characters. Floating sky castle is now falling with the players inside. The planer portal to his realm is now closing threatening to trap the players inside. The mountain stronghold was really a volcano the whole time and now it's erupting... Or the good old Mario version of the castle falling apart over a pit of lava...
11:30 "The villain takes their glasses off and everyone realises they're hot." I have an upcoming Monsterhearts campaign, and I might steal that exact move....
The warlock looks up at you from her vulnerable position prone on the ground, seemingly grasping for any angle to escape this inevitable defeat. "My, you are much stronger than you look," she purrs. "But appearances are so often deceptive. For example, people tell me that without my glasses I'm considerably..." - she removes them and the image of the mousy librarian flickers, before resolving into the blazing white & orange form of an efreet, a bead of fire growing in her hand - "...hotter." Make a Dexterity saving throw.
The jokes per minute in this episode is insane. Your writing is so incredibly fun and snappy! Hope you’re getting 💵💵 for making ad reads people actually want to sit through.
To rip off an old Presidents of the USA song... It's flumph, it's flumph, it's flumph, they're in my head... It's flumph, it's flumph, it's flumph, now the party's dead...
I'm old enough to remember the first home computer D&D-type text-only games. When you entered a dungeon room with a monster or group of monsters, the game always gave you the options "(F)ight, (R)un or (B)ribe?". Apparently even brainless undead like gold. Lots of lovely gold.
i played in one campaign that had us tracking down a dragon that had been terrorising the surrounding countryside. when we finally find it's lair, it seems there was some battle there recently. it had a big cult following it, and it looks like they had been fighting someone. turns out that before we arrived there was a massive uprising, and honestly? i think i was more intimidated fighting the people that *killed* the dragon than i would've been fighting the dragon itself aha
Can also mix & match these - a fun combo to squeeze in once in a blue moon is the hybrid of "there's always a bigger fish" and "surprise ally" - the mutual enemy.
"I'll let you live" can be one of the trickier tools to implement without the players feeling like it's a cop out. I'd reframe it not as the villain CHOOSING to let the PCs live (either by capturing or letting them go for whatever reason), but as giving the villain a reason that they HAVE to leave, even though this fight isn't over. Have a lieutenant contact them in the middle of combat to say that they are needed for [insert next part of the evil plan], then have the villain turn to the party with an "I'll finish you off next time!" or "Seems luck is on your side today [evil laugh]," before teleporting away. You know, cartoon villain stuff. The other tool that can be tricky for similar reasons is being saved by an NPC. The most important thing when utilizing this tool is to do it in such a way that the PLAYERS still feel like they're the heroes of this story. My approach is to always keep in mind that when an NPC is going to assist, I need to make sure that they pass the baton back to the PCs when they're done. - If it's a big boss battle, and you've employed minions like in the earlier tip, you can have the NPC ally show up and start fighting the minions, telling the party that "I'll hold these ones off; you go finish the job!" - Or if there aren't any minions to clear off the board, you could have the boss react to getting hit with a magic arrow or a surprise cave-in or whatever, and when the PCs turn around they see their NPC ally holding the bow/scroll, who then says, "that should slow it down; now's your chance to strike!" - And if this isn't a boss battle, but instead a travel/dungeon encounter that's gotten out of hand, have the NPC ally show up via teleportation or maybe a Shadowfax-esque super/magic horse that runs impossibly fast, dealing a death blow to the monster, and saying to the PCs, "I'm glad I found you, because I need your help! Meet me at [adventure location] for [new plot hook]." And then they teleport/ride away, and the party now has something to do once they finish their current objective. * For bonus DM points, when the party goes to meet the NPC at [adventure location], have them learn that their friend has gone missing, so the PCs get to go save THEM. Now THAT'S passing the Baton of Heroism back to the players! Since learning about combat-tuning tools like these, it's really shaped the way that I think about designing encounters from the outset. Now when I'm putting any encounter together - in prep or on the fly at the table - I have it in my mind that I want to have at least one thing I can do to turn the heat up, and one thing I can do to turn the heat down. These don't have to be detailed; just knowing "there are minions in the next room" will make it so that when I describe the villain to the players, I can mention that there's a whistle hanging from his belt, or something. It's not an important detail, so it's just mentioned as one of the several details they see, but then if the villain blows that whistle and some minions show up ready to fight, the players are going to feel like this was your evil plan all along, and they will love you for it. But if you only mention the whistle once amongst other details, and don't make a big deal of it, they won't remember it after the fact if it never gets blown. People don't naturally notice foreshadowing until the thing actually happens, and then they gasp and go "ooohhhhhh". So often, I feel like the biggest trick to DMing is filling the world with little details that mean nothing until the players do something that makes them mean EVERYTHING.
Amazing advice. I hope you don't mind if I steal this, I'm a new-ish DM and I have so much anxiety when it comes to homebrewing or customizing other people's stuff. This will help soooo much! ❤😊
@@Rainbowboy-sv5fw That's awesome that you found it helpful. Yes, please feel free to steal, steal, steal, haha. We all do. I always like to say that life is a team sport. Happy gaming!
I want to add a tip: always have 1-3 “TPK scenarios” ready to go in the event of a TPK. The game isn’t over just cuz the party is at 0 hp. Here are some of my go-to scenarios: 1.) most obvious, the party wakes up tied up and in a prison made by the opponents. They want to question them, eat them, or both? 2.) the party enters the ethereal plane upon death and they are ghosts! Maybe a person stumbles upon their bodies and if the party can somehow communicate with them, they can manage to revive the party. 3.)a devil appears and makes a deal with them in exchange for a second chance at life. possibly leading to a side quest or later adventure. 4.) the party arrived in “heaven” or “hell” and there’s some sort of (literal) clerical error and “oh, you aren’t due here for another 10 days.” They get sent back to their bodies but know that something is supposed to kill then in 10 days….
Great advice, so many people just approach combat as "my hands are tied here" because a stat block says X and encounters are always fights to the death. This is a world of make believe, at best the rules (especially stat blocks) are more like recommendations. You have your whole imagination to play with! ❤
A key time when I had to do this was when players found a late-game optional encounter several levels early and dove into it. A CR 18 custom-built Colossal mecha-centipede with 6 ranged weapons and a burrow speed. They were stuck in the sand and getting shot down by excessive ranged firepower. I got this back on the right track by having a player notice that the centipede's weapon mounts were rusted out and potentially vulnerable. They jumped on this, and started stripping weapons off, reducing the damage dealt to manageable levels. One of them also asked if he could target the antennae, making it less accurate. No TPK, and I still got to use my custom centipede monster. ❤
One piece of advice with presenting the 'reveal a superpower' tool is to make the villain pissed off they have to do it. Not the smug anime "Until now I was only using 10% of my power" bullshit, a real "Dammit, do you know how hard I worked to keep this a secret!?" kind of response. The villain getting genuinely mad about something is often more than enough to balance out any frustration the players may have about the fight suddenly getting harder, and they often feel like they got a small win against a recurring villain because they've forced them to show their hand.
Yo, that Hit Point range thing is a great way to phrase it. That's basically what I already do but I've just been describing it as deciding when it's best for the villain to die and the way you put it makes it sound so much more reasonable to people who care about staying to the stats.
As an old school "grognard" I am personally of the mindset that all fights should be deadly, and that all parties involved in the game should be willing to embrace their failures. If your character dies to a random troll, then the rest of the party should look to avenge that player chasing that troll down. And the GM might want to make that troll into a BBEG because of their victory (i.e. Shadows of Mordors Nemesis System).
That could work really well in open-world sandbox style games where the narrative develops around what the players choose to do. However, I think this video’s advice comes from the mindset of there being a “story plot” that has to either be fulfilled or failed in a satisfying way. Dont get me wrong, I agree with you, and im not even a grognard(started with 5e), but I think this stuff is aimed at the crowd that wants to roleplay as Tiefling baristas.
@@Wesley_Youre_a_Rabbit It might be a bit of old man / old player mindset on this, but the advice also advocates a tiny bit of main character syndrome. The idea that the fight needs to be of signifigance when a character dies reflects that element (from personal interpretation).
@@Dlnqntt Yeah it’s certainly, at the very least, a “story arc”-driven mindset, which includes MC syndrome. Every big thing has to serve a predetermined plot. If you go into a game with that mindset/expectation, of course you’re gonna be dissatisfied when your character dies in a random encounter. It’s almost setting yourself up for disappointment unless the GM breaks their neck to keep the characters alive. 5e D&D, and Nuevo-game culture in general, places ALOT of expectation on GMs while also diminishing their power.
One trick I pulled in my last session is what I call "going out with a bang". The bad guy revealed in their last turn that they were wearing a bomb-vest, and it's on a one-turn timer. (This was in Outgunned, an Action Movie TTRPG, but I'm sure you can adapt it to fantasy) It doesn't have to be a bomb, just any kind of failsafe that ensures the action doesn't end when the villain goes down. Maybe the lair starts collapsing, or it's flooded with lava. Or the villain's boss, the even greater villain is alerted, and is now on the way here.
A couple of ones that I have used against my players, one of which they remember fondly, the other, they never worked out. 1) The (low-level) party was walking along a road through a forest, when they heard something crashing through the undergrowth coming towards them. They quickly position themselves with melee fighters at the front and ranged characters and spell casters to the rear. When the large bear came crashing out of the undergrowth, the prepared attacks had killed it before it even had chance to react. Then, as the archers had moved forward to retrieve their arrows, the large troll that had been chasing the bear comes crashing into them. 2) the party had been hunting down a lich, having spent several months taking out her minions and gathering information, and eventually they tracked her to her lair. The fight was vicious with several characters near death when the lich collapsed and turned to dust. A couple of weeks later, they heard that the lich had risen again. They track her down again and defeat her again, with her body, again turning to dust when she is defeated. This repeated a good half-a-dozen times. What the players never worked out was that the lich was fighting using an projected image (illusion) of herself, with a programmed illusion to create the dust effect when the illusion was defeated, and at that point the lich, who was hidden, just turned invisible and walked away. Under the system that we use, the protected image spell will make any spells that the caster uses appear to come from the illusion rather than the actual caster.
@@theosink2222 No, the players had leveled-up between each time they met the lich giving them more options, and the lich was in a different lair with different minions, plus the lich's casting level increased over time as well, giving her different spells. So where it was the same lich, the encounter was completely different each time.
"No seriously, WTF is this???" The dad in me in spite of not being one "It's actually a really awesome "universal wrench", but it is a LITTLE big for a lot of household tasks IMO (but you're gonna need it if you ever need to deal with a plumbing fixture)... Keep that one in case anything big comes up, get a couple in smaller sizes, and you'll be able to do a LOT..... ALSO... Get a pair of vice grips, they're not ideal for tightening nuts or bolts, BUT they will work in a pinch and bridge the gaps affordable and easily... in addition.... Oh.... Sorry... I think I just figured out what "old man 'tism" looks like....
The thingie is a self-adjusting wrench. It will tighten around any nut you use it on, provided you're torqueing it in the right direction, and will slip when you move it the other directions. Its the perfect wrench for dasmantling things when you can't anticipate what kind of wrench you'll need.
Lots of great stuff here. My favorite bit is waiting for a dramatic moment for the foe to die in between min and max HP. Love it. Thanks for all the great content. I am glad the algorithm dug this up and recycled it to my feed.
"Just let them die a little early." Honestly, this is the only thing from fourth edition that I truly loved. Minions in fourth just had one HP. You just had to hit them. You hit them, they die. It meant that they were threatening, because they still were full monsters and would do a lot of damage if they hit the players. It provided a huge action economy bonus to the enemies, and cost the players resources, but they never felt overwhelming. I still use this rule today, where it makes sense. This is phenomenal advice, and thank you for sharing it.
These are all great tips, I frequently make up new enemy abilities on the fly, I love to do a "phase change" in a fight, the boss realizes things aren't as easy as they expected, they tap into some other power, I add some environmental effects, make up a couple of new abilities on the fly, maybe summon a couple of minions, and no one knows that's not what I planned all along. Granted I also pre plan a lot of phase changes because I think they're fun, so people come to expect it at this point. My own tip is that I try to make most battles that I want to feel impactful a little harder than I feel like they need to be, as when we get into the fight, I can always just pull a few punches, fake a miss occasionally if I need to. I don't go overboard doing this but its easy to say an attack did a little less damage than it did, leaving a player with just a few HP instead of KOing them. On the flip side it would feel very bad to fudge things to increase damage and fake hits, which is why I'd rather make it a little harder, knowing I can tweak things in my players favor later if needed (though more then than not they do just fine anyway)
Two extra things I want to add to this, 1) Another way for an important villain who's stomping the heroes to "let them live" in a way that feels believable is, when they knock someone unconscious, they grab the body and threaten to finish the job unless the party surrenders and let's the villain leave, this can also be used for a villain who's losing a fight to try to get a way to escape with their life that doen't feel cheap as long as you don't do it all the time. 2) Consider the context of the fight if you feel you need to scale up a villain, if the party entered the boss arena through the front door and one rounded the villain, that might me a bit of an anticlimax, but if they snuck into the villain's lair and got the jump on them that let them blow up the villain before they get a turn, that's a satisfying vitory because the challenge wasn't the battle, it was finding an opportunity to get the jump in the first place. (aside: smh smh my head how dare you say the villain would only be hot with glasses off)
1. Activate superpower. 3:16 If a boss fight is too easy, activate a new ability that the players can see how to deactivate. e.g.'s turns on a shield, or takes high ground 2. Know your party['s strengths] 4:02 If the fight is too hard, use attacks they are good at countering. e.g.'s fires projectiles at monk, use fire against tieflings 3. Use the buddy system 5:44 Action economy means that 5 against 1 will never be a fair fight. Summon minions, or bring in a mid-fight partner. Should cost the baddie something (turn, spell) 4. Fewer buddies. 6:28 Works the other way too: You can sacrifice minions in a fight that's too hard. [Idea: combine with #1. Sacrifice minion(s) to gain a power up that the party can disable.] 5. Flexible hit points. 6:45 Once the boss has taken a minimum amount of damage, let them die when it "feels right" narratively. Tip: For a harder (but not longer) battle, make your enemy deal more damage, rather than take more damage. 6. There's always a bigger fish. @7:59 Use sparingly. If a hard fight turns out to be a pushover, pretend the "real" hard fight is still coming. 7. Kryptonite 8:43 Give the enemy a built-in weakness (or retroactively add one mid-fight, like a vulnerability to a certain damage type). 8. Run away. 9:25 Let the players run off a hurt enemy, so they can "win" a fight, but they can come back for a harder fight later. Try to retreat dramatically. 9. "I'll let you live" 10:08 When you are hitting too hard, find an excuse to dismiss or capture the party. 10. Change the environment. 10:37 Create terrain that works to your advantage. Use cover or elements that would affect the party more than the monster (or vice versa). 11. "This isn't even my final form:" 11:14 Works best for BBEG. 12. Surprise ally. 11:58 An NPC swoops in to save the day with _just_ enough help to nudge the win. Needs a good narrative setup to work. [Could also be powerful weapon that the party already had, but learns to "unlock" mid-fight.]
Good stuff, Ginny D! I’m glad to hear you suggest some of these things! I’ve thought some of them and I am glad to hear a D&D expert confirm that I’m on the right track. Especially with the HP thing!!
I love the allusions to the toolbox, cause this is the sort of video that I will bookmark and come back to time and time again whenever I want to review what I can do to make encounters cooler and feel more dynamic and impactful. 10/10
Introducing an extra few NPCs to reinforce mid-combat is always my preferred solution, both hostile and friendly; it's something integral to Lancer's base rules for adjusting the NPC difficulty. If things are going south as well, having an NPC step in to help can also be a great excuse for minions to become preoccupied and effectively removed from the battle as well, if you need to thin out the numbers slightly. And of course, support NPCs that can offer allies some buffs are also always welcome and won't usually steal the party's thunder. One technique that I don't think was mentioned was to use the environment as well. At the start of a round when things have been going bad, you can call out the unstable flooring or Red Explosive Barrel™ that are conveniently in a spot they can take advantage of but were too distracted to notice til now. Balance concerns can also be mitigated a little bit if the goal isn't to just defeat the enemies, but to accomplish some task: hold a zone by the end of a certain round, get an item, defeat a specific target, survive X rounds, etc.
i know the disclaimers before sponsored segments are tongue-in-cheek, but, genuinely, you have some of the most entertaining ad reads i've ever seen! i love piecing together who/what the sponsor is and how they relate to the skit
Oh I can't believe I'm this early! I guess I'm taking this occasion as an opportunity to tell you how much you helped me grow, evolve and simply get more conscious as a DnD Player and DM - thanks for being awesome, Ginny!!!
I Love ALL Ginny Di videos! I think that's a 'one size fits all' adjustable wrench. For when you don't know the size of the nut or bolt you're trying to loosen or tighten.
I have a dungeon that I've been running for about 40 years. It's called "On Strike!" . The party arrives at the dungeon, and finds a whole bunch of monsters picketing out in front of the entrance. The monsters are on strike! They offer no resistance to the adventurers. In fact, a few of them might even offer to give them a guided tour, pointing out treasure piles and traps. They make their way down to the deepest depths of the dungeon, which by now has been revealed to be a major deathtrap. . A bunch of guys and monsters are sitting at a big table, cheering. "The strike is over! Everyone back to work!" . Now the party has to try to escape, with an entire dungeon full of monsters who aren't surprised and full of fresh new enthusiasm.
these tips are amazing !! so often i just hear the "don't even count the hitpoints" tip and nothing else, but these seem varied and extremely helpful, especially the limiters on that hitpoint tip! also, the graphics are so good. the enlarged, translucent number behind the name of the tip?? chef's kiss
there's a neat trick you can borrow from other systems that will help make most of these changes feel legitimate: the "crisis" system. once an enemy reaches half their HP, they transform in a way that could be beneficial or detrimental. if you introduce this system early on, it then becomes way more believeable why the BBEG can suddenly summon buddies out of nowhere, or why they've got a new ability etc.
Excellent video. I’ve used a few those in the past, but the hit point range one really hit home. Going to use that one soon. Also, that sponsored ad transition.
Watched this when it came out and coming back to report in. It became needed. I screwed up the CR calculation and was tearing my party to shreds with an elemental and a bunch of mephits. Decided to have the mephits start flying at the elemental and sacrafice themselves to heal it but secretly, they weren't giving it any health at all. The players were paniced like "WHAT? NO! YOU DON'T HEAL, *WE* HEAL" so the fight stayed super tense despite actually getting way easier. So thank you
This was one of the best videos. Solid approach, immediate examples, and practical. Going to be using some of these! I found the "upgrade" of a BBEG more intuitive before this, but always struggled with the "flumph tpk" by chance thing.
Love the advice of using the min and max HP to determine when an NPC has been defeated! That should help rein in the instinct to just let the party have the kill at the first thematically appropriate opportunity.
I'm a huge fan of creatures that develop a new ability / attack as their hit points drop. Loved it in 4th Ed (and have ported into my 5E game things like Dragon Breath Weapon recharges automatically when they hit 1/2 HP). Easy enough to improvise in the middle of a boss battle, and my favourite planned version of this was a home brew Tur-Drake-n (literally changed forms as it got whittled down from giant turkey to wyrmling to a cockatrice)
I have a couple other quickie tips to add: Not attacking a downed player because they believe the character is already dead. We roll on foundry so its all above board on HP at least, but you can private roll perception and have the bbeg make a comment about "now to join your dead friend..." or something. In Foundry I often have "more powerful" backup abilities, that use a Bloodied state to trigger. Doesn't stop the one-round-wonder-team beatdown, but it's good to have more powerful abilities if they get to half health and havn't provided the desired challenge. Lastly, you can always attempt playing smarter. I tend to do this based off a creature's intelligence score and "suggested" (dirty word these days it seems) alignment. Evil creatures that are smart, WILL finish off players if possible, but i do tend to let my players know that because we're all in for long-term campaigns. Anyway, figured i'd contribute. Great video Ginny. All really solid advice.
as a party we had a big encounter on the way. the room had one door. We had a homebrew tree token that would just spawn a tree anywhere. We used Tiny hut to seal the only exit airtight. We spawned a tree in the room and ignited it. It was epic hahah
I always think of how to fix the combat *after* the combat. So I listened to this video and immediately made a reference card for too easy / too hard combat strategies and I’m so excited to have this on hand next time! Bless you Ginny Di!!!
Your advice is usually so helpful. As a still-mostly-baby DM, thanks for helping me make small adjustments that have big impacts on my players' experience
Thank you so much for making these videos you are saving my life!!!!!! My first session is in a week and im getting more confident because of your wonderful empathy and advice
The wrench at 3:14 is an adjustable multi wrench. You can use it to tighten or loosen hex nuts of different size by engaging the swiveling piece around the nut.
As always, love your videos and the thoughts you have on storytelling and creating compelling narratives for combat or action. They are useful even just as a general creative writer.
It's hard to overstate how useful these particular tips are for dming combat! ❤ I've been DMing for a Very Long Time(tm), and I've only just gotten some of the on the spot pivoting skills you're talking about in the last year or two. 😅
That's a lot of references to flumph-related TPKs....which sounds like a great backstory for an NPC. The last living survivor of the Great Flumphing of 1307. A lot of good-ish kobolds died that day.
Your ads are the best! We don't hate it as much as you think we do! (well maybe some people are dumb and hate it, but if they really wanted to support you and see you succeed, they'd understand that this gives you the $$ to keep doing this stuff)
Hi Ginny. Somehow I’ve only recently discovered your channel. I love the happy energy you bring to them and I’m learning a lot of useful tips from you. Thank you!
We have a group of modrones that act like a happy frenzied mob of minions. They get in impossible situations were they win battles just because of their numbers. Their batch produced a glitchling that acts like Mike Wizowsky. Hes the only modrone that speaks common. So the minions made him their leader. He tries to talk them out of their shenanigans. But most of the time they just hoist him up against better judgment and carry him off to go Pot-o-pon a red dragon or something.. Where he just watches in horror while the minions laugh and slaughter everthing in the way. Then he usually stands there afterwards saying "Well I'll be damned. They did it."
Honestly i needed this, I'm about to run my first like mini boss/combat encounters in my Rp based campaign and the timing couldnt be better for this video
I remember the "ill let you live" tool shows up in Curse of Strahd. Basically during a lot of the beginning where he's testing the party but doesn't want to kill them.
there are really inspirational ideas, thank you! I'm going to keep them in mind when planning encounters so they feel natural if needed, but also I might use some anyway! They'll keep the comabt interesting and varied if the players regulary face a changing battelfield, or different numbers of enemies etc
One tactic I use, especially for random encounters: not every battle has to be one to the death. I don't know about you, but if I'm seconds from dying I'm going to try to get out of there. Most NPCs I feel share this sentiment. Unless its the Big Bad, sometimes I just have some of them run away. Oh, and I still reward players with XP as if they killed them. Because, it was their actions which caused the beastie to run off.
I loved Mythic Odysseys of Theros setting book. They had a fun system of two staged bosses! This was great in one of our playgroups, as they were very efficient players with powerful builds on their characters. If your players are struggling, I recommend finding ways to not necessarily do direct damage! We had a new group who were struggling to hit or deal damage to a monster - so I decided to have the monster "throw them around", changing the dynamic encounter, and breaking up the monotony. It ended up being a very memorable encounter, and they didn't feel bad for taking a ton of damage from the monster!
I mentioned this before but we had the "Gate" incident. Our rouge misses for months and this session back he is in a cage on the other wide of the gate infront of the mayors manor with guards. Cleric charges and attacks the gate. This was not a planed encounter for level 4s and it goes bad. Random arrow with a note land near the ranger so we know were to go after we escape. Again not planned so the EM gave us a option. But we got out...except the Paladin who was gone and quit due to a new job.
I watched this and suddenly realized I'd never subscribed to your work. That's been corrected now. Love what you do. And in this case, loved your warning about NPCs swooping in -- I just watched .... um, that superhero movie about the guy who can talk to fish discovering an old place that had been misplaced ... and HATED all the Deus ex Mera moments.
I think one of the meanest sentences I've recently heard (not so mutch about combat but about initiating combat) DM "You walking throught the narrow winding alleyways of the grand bazaar - exotic spices, creatures, weapons, fabrics on every table, praised by the merchants selling them. Suddenly you feel a tug on your belt." Player "I grab my purse" DM *rolls* "There's 6 Gold pieces missing. And you can see a shady figure walking away..." Player "I attack the thieve!" DM "Very well. The thieve uses a legendary resistance. Now roll initiative!"
I had never once considered the idea of using the hit point range of min to max, what a fantastic idea. I've definitely had to adjust HP on the fly before (both up and down) and what a great benchmark for letting the creature feel like it's at the right level of toughness and even allowing for variation in HP without going overboard.
In the last session I ran the party handled the boss encounter without any issue, and I was absolutely kicking myself for not planning a second form or something. These are some great tips!!
Master illusionists HATE her (because Big Magic is anti-bread! it's a conspiracy! WAKE UP, PEOPLE!) 🥖
Thanks to Shadowland Games for sponsoring today's video: www.backerkit.com/c/projects/shadowlands-games-6d6f888f-51c5-4836-89ca-154f1ac76ef2/trickerion-the-roleplaying-game?ref=ginny
3:13
that thing is a custom made tool your dad made for one specific task that the other tools weren't fit for
i'm going to guess it's for getting at something in his engine
treasure the custom made tools, as they are the mark of the tool user's experience
Ginny Di cosplaying Zatanna is something I didn't know I needed
Ah the baker's burden, art is pain 😄
@@kooolainebulger8117 called a universal box wrench
They can't wake up - too many carbs! :)
There’s good dungeon masters, there’s amazing dungeon masters, and then there’s me, who’s ability to dm depends entirely on how much caffeine I’ve had that day.
I do always get good and caffeinated before a session! But keep that between us, I can’t spill all my secrets 👀
that's every dm
@@GinnyDiI caffeinate, take a short power nap, and then a short walk (especially if I spent time before the session prepping or tweaking things)
"Okay," says me, "we're not meeting for 2 weeks, so I have 13 days to prep an awesome next session."
"Wait, are we gaming tomorrow? Crap!" says me, 12 days later.
@@GinnyDi How much is too much?
"No one wants to be TPK'd by flumphs..."
Words inscribed on my warlock's tombstone.
rip 🙏💀
** Presses F to pay respects. **
Hey, Flumphs are great!
The Balrog went down in 2 rounds, but the random encounter with giant slugs nearly TK'd the whole party. True story.
Hey! I was going to write that! 😆
Don't forget the Grendel Option: as the heroes are patting themselves on the back for killing the big, scary monster, that monster's bigger, scarier MOTHER seeks revenge.
If the villain running off to it’s mummy doesn’t work either… oh look, there’s a dragon now!
Thinking about it now… hang on, is Beowulf a DnD campaign?!??
@@kwest9747 the all powerful "definitely not vecna" lich running to their even scarier mom is very funny to me
@@atlasdwyer8220 The big bad was a troll! No, a sea hag!, No, a dragon! yeah!
Had made a sidestory campaign in which heroes sabotaged a green dragon's lair where the end boss was an adult green dragon, but his mom was there too and she isn't too happy about the players insulting her by killing her assets.
More recent DM here. One of the most fun moments in the past session we had that's flipped the campaign around was how the party's ranger died. It was via insta-kill by a critical hit from an attack of opportunity.
The barbarian raged for the first time, the warlock used spells the party didn't know she had access to, and they got out of there as fast as possible to find their mentor figure to do a makeshift necromancy "resurrection." The characters were having one of the worst days of their lives; the players were having a blast. And now the villain, who was only intending to knock them out and steal their stuff (he thinks he's more evil than he is), has to grapple with the fact that he killed someone who he doesn't believe deserved it.
Was it intentional? Dear goodness no; I didn't think it was possible for him to deal 66 points of damage in a single blow. But now we get to do one of my favorite things: unpack consequences.
Was this in the first or second session? Otherwise why had the barbarian never raged before?
@@benscott4434 It was about our sixth session (and our sessions tend to be incredibly long). The player of the barbarian wanted to wait to rage until a satisfying moment in narrative, which she thought would be far later in the campaign. She was warned that refusing to rage could make combat much more difficult for her, but she stuck with it, and I like how it's playing out so far. The character also works a customer's service job at H&M (Heroes and Monsters).
@@Patch-lz9yi I honestly really think that’s a cool, if potentially hazardous, character choice! And the fact the PC works retail giving her more practice with holding back on raging is a *chef’s kiss* character detail.
ah dnds second worst bbeg, consequences
Only raging when its narratively satisfying is my favourite way to play Barbarian.
My Barbarian/Fighter multiclass was thrown out of the army for anger issues. They carry a huge (runic) greatsword on their back that they only use while raging. The rest of the time they fight with sledgehammer and heavy crossbow. Only when faced with a worthy opponent does he rage, draw the greatsword and have fun.
I think anothe important thing to consider is: What is the goal of combat?
Usually, people don't just end people for funsies. A group of bandits does not want to end the party or get ended - all they want is to rush someone, take their stuff, and get away. They have no interest in ending the party if they can instead get their desired valuables. Likewise, once one of them is badly wounded, the rest will run, since none of them want to perish.
A group of cultists might want to capture the party for sacrifice and actively try not to end them. However, being zealots, they might fight until their last breath. Or plan to but still flee in panic once one of them perishes.
A bar fight will usually end when one side has shown superiority. Nobody wants to go to jail for ending someone. As such, once one side is wounded enough or out of breath, the other side wins and achieves all they wanted.
Most fights should not be until one side is completely wiped out - only a handful of enemies should have the goal of ending the party for ending's sake. Also, most NPCs want to survive.
I used the bigger fish to great effect in my final battle. The enemy was a duo of a mummy lord and an evil paladin, and the setup was that the mummy lord was trying to summon their extradimensional patron to the material plane while the paladin protected them. I had a number of rounds required for the summoning ritual for the different power levels I had prepped. The party completely focused on the paladin, which was fair because he was doing a ton of damage to whoever he hit, but there was basically no effort to interrupt the summoning until the paladin was dead, which meant the mummy lord's patron appeared on the battlefield at the middle power level. I had him rip his way onto the material plane with a "Fine, I'll do it myself" monologue, then called session. The cliffhanger tension was delicious, and I was so happy it worked out. That fight will be remembered by my party for years
Using this
@@natekyoken929 Me too.
Honestly those "always checks Twitter first thing in the morning" and "oh no they're hot" tips may sound like a punchline, but those are absolute *gold* for the right campaign, whether modern, light-hearted, or whatever. I can guarantee you that I'm going to use the "oh no they're hot" one and see how fast my players' alignments shift.
Also known as the, "oh no, the villain is hot, there goes my moral compass" problem.
Villain with tragic backstory and morally questionable coping: Eh
Villain with absolutely no logic, completely heinous, but hot: Oh no
I didn't even *mean* to do this and one of my players has OOC'ly made similar comments.
...It also inadvertently revealed that she's an abuse victim. So that's fun. (Yes, she's in therapy, yes, she's no longer with him, yes she's doing better.)
@@kasane1337*whispers* Combine them. . .
@@tiph3802 You just want more Astarions, don't you.
The dad in me is saying “One day you will need, well at least one of those wrenches.”
Great video these are excellent tools.
i misread that as wenches.
The Supa-Wrench at 3:14 is not very good, though.
@@sfllaw Agreed. Better to have a good quality Crescent-type wrench instead of that gimmick.
Best? A set of box and open-end wrenches. But that starts to get heavy, take up space, and costs $.
Partner joining in the fight later: "Honey I'm home from getting grocer- BY THE NINE HELLS?!?"
Or it could be like how only the dad coyotes go to steal from wolves while mom waits cause the pups have a better chance with a single mom then a single dad, but mrs dragon or whatever can step in if most of the players are bleeding but so's mr dragon
The title in the thumbnail is so perfectly timed: not 3 days ago, the party for whom I DM made it straight to the end of the encounter-series using a first-level spell. The Enchanter in the party pointed at the one guard in the room and said “Unionize.” The guard failed his save, walked outta the room and essentially led the party straight to the boss, where he walked right in and started complaining about the working conditions for the guards in the slave-labor mine. I was so proud of the player.
that sounds amazing, i NEED to try that
Another great video. My favorite is the ol' "Fuck it, I'm out!." If the combat has dragged on several rounds too long, some of those wounded pirates are just gonna cheese it back to their spelljammer and fly away. Not every encounter needs to be a fight to death.
Aye, smart opponents should flee. Even wild animals should flee.
Make the fights where the enemy WILL NOT FLEE,all the more Impactful.
I love this advice. However, I would like to offer up the 'I didn't think you would get here so early ' tool. Your players have infiltrated the BBEG's lair and fought the minions arrive before BBEG, and it is a social encounter. BBEG is actually a middle level minion manager who was continuously promoted until they had to run the evil plan and they don't even want to be here.
The "whole HP pool" tip is genius! :O I'm going to use that! Thanks for the tips!
You're so welcome!
I was coming here to say the same thing. This is getting used immediately.
When I first read this comment, I first thought that this was going to be an advice on preventing players from ganging up on enemies one by one (or taking out the leader before their minions):
It's pretty wildly known that HP don't directly represent something physical (like how much blood is still inside your body), but more of a "willingness AND ability to pull through". If you are fighting a group, their morale wouldn't just get affected by how much damage each one individually took, but also by how well the battle is going for the group overall.
This comment gave me the idea to implement that using an extra HP pool for the whole group of enemies. (which represents their "for the horde!" attitude.) While there's still hit points in the shared HP pool, damage to an enemy in the group goes to that pool, AND also to the individual that's been hit. Once the pool is empty, any damage to an individual is doubled. - And to compensate for the fact that all damage against that group is doubled you of course have to roughly double the total HP pool of the enemy party; something like putting half of the HP of each monster into the shared HP pool, and multiplying the HP of each monster by 1.5.
Also, the shared pool running out would give you a good indicator for when to start considering having the enemy run.
YASSSSSSS
I saw Jeremy Crawford recommend that HP adjustment trick in a podcast on the D&D TH-cam channel, it was eye opening. He even said it was intended by the designers! I've been using it ever since. It allowed me to let a new player get her first kill at a great moment in our game a couple weeks back, the results spoke for themselves :)
Funny flumph story: the Dungeon Scrawlers ran a game for Extra Life a few years ago where it only cost $5 to add a flumph to their Tomb of Horrors game, which was at the end of their 24-hour marathon.
By the time they got there, there were 56 flumphs waiting for them.
*oh no*
I get the feeling that the Flumpf Incident isn't a hypothetical, but a traumatic memory....
Did someone say Flumph?! 👀
Always trust a Flumpf... to TPK. 😮
I've only just now realized that flumph isn't just another word for minion like flunky 😂
I like short, but intense combats. Last session, my party was fighting a basilisk, and they won in two rounds, but in those rounds, the basilisk still managed to petrify one of their NPC friends and reduce a PC to 1 HP. I’m still working on encounter building, and I think these tips will definitely come in handy, but I wanted to brag about last session’s success.
I really like the idea of 'minimum' damage done and then calling it at a dramatic moment. Clearly the fight has been happening at least for a little while, then it's all upside. Totally gonna use this. Thank you, Ginny!
Don't forget the ever fun troupe, "wait was that a load bearing boss?" Where killing the boss is only the first half the encounter. The second half is escaping the structure the BBEG is in that was sustained by the BBEG's power and is now falling apart around the characters. Floating sky castle is now falling with the players inside. The planer portal to his realm is now closing threatening to trap the players inside. The mountain stronghold was really a volcano the whole time and now it's erupting... Or the good old Mario version of the castle falling apart over a pit of lava...
11:30 "The villain takes their glasses off and everyone realises they're hot." I have an upcoming Monsterhearts campaign, and I might steal that exact move....
evil bard villain?
"Why Miss Circe ...
You're beautiful!"
The warlock looks up at you from her vulnerable position prone on the ground, seemingly grasping for any angle to escape this inevitable defeat. "My, you are much stronger than you look," she purrs. "But appearances are so often deceptive. For example, people tell me that without my glasses I'm considerably..." - she removes them and the image of the mousy librarian flickers, before resolving into the blazing white & orange form of an efreet, a bead of fire growing in her hand - "...hotter." Make a Dexterity saving throw.
3:15 For those curious (like myself), the mystery tool is apparently an adjustable wrench, it's just you adjust it from the other way around
Thank you. I had to scroll a bit to find this answer.
I've been an aircraft mechanic for 11 years and had no clue wtf that was thank you lol
I've got a double ended one of these, it is neat, but a touch finicky to use. It adjusts sizes automatically, and it even ratchets,
I knew how to use it but couldn't remember the name.
thought it was a fancy bottle opener
The jokes per minute in this episode is insane. Your writing is so incredibly fun and snappy! Hope you’re getting 💵💵 for making ad reads people actually want to sit through.
Agreed, the first bread pun actually made me laugh so I had to keep watching
A well written pun will work on me every time lol
Calling dibs on Brutally Massacred by Flumphs as a band name!
Dang I was gonna use that
I think we have the beginnings of a band right here 👀
To rip off an old Presidents of the USA song...
It's flumph, it's flumph, it's flumph, they're in my head...
It's flumph, it's flumph, it's flumph, now the party's dead...
Minions going on strike or otherwise betraying their leader is hilarious 😂
I'm old enough to remember the first home computer D&D-type text-only games. When you entered a dungeon room with a monster or group of monsters, the game always gave you the options "(F)ight, (R)un or (B)ribe?". Apparently even brainless undead like gold. Lots of lovely gold.
i played in one campaign that had us tracking down a dragon that had been terrorising the surrounding countryside. when we finally find it's lair, it seems there was some battle there recently. it had a big cult following it, and it looks like they had been fighting someone. turns out that before we arrived there was a massive uprising, and honestly? i think i was more intimidated fighting the people that *killed* the dragon than i would've been fighting the dragon itself aha
“…although at least it saves you from a shopping session” 😂
man, I was hoping someone would empathize with that 🙌
@@GinnyDi Always. 🤣🤣😅
@@GinnyDi I let others shop and I grab a nap 😂
@@meredithsalt8397damned elf! 😂
I have nearly wiped 2 parties with randomly rolled packs of wolves...
Can also mix & match these - a fun combo to squeeze in once in a blue moon is the hybrid of "there's always a bigger fish" and "surprise ally" - the mutual enemy.
"I'll let you live" can be one of the trickier tools to implement without the players feeling like it's a cop out. I'd reframe it not as the villain CHOOSING to let the PCs live (either by capturing or letting them go for whatever reason), but as giving the villain a reason that they HAVE to leave, even though this fight isn't over. Have a lieutenant contact them in the middle of combat to say that they are needed for [insert next part of the evil plan], then have the villain turn to the party with an "I'll finish you off next time!" or "Seems luck is on your side today [evil laugh]," before teleporting away. You know, cartoon villain stuff.
The other tool that can be tricky for similar reasons is being saved by an NPC. The most important thing when utilizing this tool is to do it in such a way that the PLAYERS still feel like they're the heroes of this story. My approach is to always keep in mind that when an NPC is going to assist, I need to make sure that they pass the baton back to the PCs when they're done.
- If it's a big boss battle, and you've employed minions like in the earlier tip, you can have the NPC ally show up and start fighting the minions, telling the party that "I'll hold these ones off; you go finish the job!"
- Or if there aren't any minions to clear off the board, you could have the boss react to getting hit with a magic arrow or a surprise cave-in or whatever, and when the PCs turn around they see their NPC ally holding the bow/scroll, who then says, "that should slow it down; now's your chance to strike!"
- And if this isn't a boss battle, but instead a travel/dungeon encounter that's gotten out of hand, have the NPC ally show up via teleportation or maybe a Shadowfax-esque super/magic horse that runs impossibly fast, dealing a death blow to the monster, and saying to the PCs, "I'm glad I found you, because I need your help! Meet me at [adventure location] for [new plot hook]." And then they teleport/ride away, and the party now has something to do once they finish their current objective.
* For bonus DM points, when the party goes to meet the NPC at [adventure location], have them learn that their friend has gone missing, so the PCs get to go save THEM. Now THAT'S passing the Baton of Heroism back to the players!
Since learning about combat-tuning tools like these, it's really shaped the way that I think about designing encounters from the outset. Now when I'm putting any encounter together - in prep or on the fly at the table - I have it in my mind that I want to have at least one thing I can do to turn the heat up, and one thing I can do to turn the heat down. These don't have to be detailed; just knowing "there are minions in the next room" will make it so that when I describe the villain to the players, I can mention that there's a whistle hanging from his belt, or something. It's not an important detail, so it's just mentioned as one of the several details they see, but then if the villain blows that whistle and some minions show up ready to fight, the players are going to feel like this was your evil plan all along, and they will love you for it. But if you only mention the whistle once amongst other details, and don't make a big deal of it, they won't remember it after the fact if it never gets blown. People don't naturally notice foreshadowing until the thing actually happens, and then they gasp and go "ooohhhhhh".
So often, I feel like the biggest trick to DMing is filling the world with little details that mean nothing until the players do something that makes them mean EVERYTHING.
Amazing advice. I hope you don't mind if I steal this, I'm a new-ish DM and I have so much anxiety when it comes to homebrewing or customizing other people's stuff. This will help soooo much! ❤😊
@@Rainbowboy-sv5fw That's awesome that you found it helpful. Yes, please feel free to steal, steal, steal, haha. We all do.
I always like to say that life is a team sport. Happy gaming!
@@GregMcNeish Thank you! I feel much the same.
“Set up a Monty Python reference: trust me, they’ll take the bait!”
Can confirm this one. Works EVERYTIME
Oooo! I really love the "using the hit point total and saving thier death for a dramatic moment"! That's brillant and I've never heard of that before!
I want to add a tip: always have 1-3 “TPK scenarios” ready to go in the event of a TPK. The game isn’t over just cuz the party is at 0 hp. Here are some of my go-to scenarios:
1.) most obvious, the party wakes up tied up and in a prison made by the opponents. They want to question them, eat them, or both?
2.) the party enters the ethereal plane upon death and they are ghosts! Maybe a person stumbles upon their bodies and if the party can somehow communicate with them, they can manage to revive the party.
3.)a devil appears and makes a deal with them in exchange for a second chance at life. possibly leading to a side quest or later adventure.
4.) the party arrived in “heaven” or “hell” and there’s some sort of (literal) clerical error and “oh, you aren’t due here for another 10 days.” They get sent back to their bodies but know that something is supposed to kill then in 10 days….
Watching the video when Ginny's commercial was ironically interrupted by a TH-cam commercial.
Yep, the timing was perfect.
Great advice, so many people just approach combat as "my hands are tied here" because a stat block says X and encounters are always fights to the death.
This is a world of make believe, at best the rules (especially stat blocks) are more like recommendations. You have your whole imagination to play with! ❤
A key time when I had to do this was when players found a late-game optional encounter several levels early and dove into it.
A CR 18 custom-built Colossal mecha-centipede with 6 ranged weapons and a burrow speed. They were stuck in the sand and getting shot down by excessive ranged firepower.
I got this back on the right track by having a player notice that the centipede's weapon mounts were rusted out and potentially vulnerable.
They jumped on this, and started stripping weapons off, reducing the damage dealt to manageable levels.
One of them also asked if he could target the antennae, making it less accurate.
No TPK, and I still got to use my custom centipede monster. ❤
One piece of advice with presenting the 'reveal a superpower' tool is to make the villain pissed off they have to do it. Not the smug anime "Until now I was only using 10% of my power" bullshit, a real "Dammit, do you know how hard I worked to keep this a secret!?" kind of response. The villain getting genuinely mad about something is often more than enough to balance out any frustration the players may have about the fight suddenly getting harder, and they often feel like they got a small win against a recurring villain because they've forced them to show their hand.
Yo, that Hit Point range thing is a great way to phrase it. That's basically what I already do but I've just been describing it as deciding when it's best for the villain to die and the way you put it makes it sound so much more reasonable to people who care about staying to the stats.
As an old school "grognard" I am personally of the mindset that all fights should be deadly, and that all parties involved in the game should be willing to embrace their failures. If your character dies to a random troll, then the rest of the party should look to avenge that player chasing that troll down. And the GM might want to make that troll into a BBEG because of their victory (i.e. Shadows of Mordors Nemesis System).
That could work really well in open-world sandbox style games where the narrative develops around what the players choose to do. However, I think this video’s advice comes from the mindset of there being a “story plot” that has to either be fulfilled or failed in a satisfying way. Dont get me wrong, I agree with you, and im not even a grognard(started with 5e), but I think this stuff is aimed at the crowd that wants to roleplay as Tiefling baristas.
@@Wesley_Youre_a_Rabbit It might be a bit of old man / old player mindset on this, but the advice also advocates a tiny bit of main character syndrome. The idea that the fight needs to be of signifigance when a character dies reflects that element (from personal interpretation).
@@Dlnqntt Yeah it’s certainly, at the very least, a “story arc”-driven mindset, which includes MC syndrome. Every big thing has to serve a predetermined plot. If you go into a game with that mindset/expectation, of course you’re gonna be dissatisfied when your character dies in a random encounter. It’s almost setting yourself up for disappointment unless the GM breaks their neck to keep the characters alive. 5e D&D, and Nuevo-game culture in general, places ALOT of expectation on GMs while also diminishing their power.
One trick I pulled in my last session is what I call "going out with a bang".
The bad guy revealed in their last turn that they were wearing a bomb-vest, and it's on a one-turn timer. (This was in Outgunned, an Action Movie TTRPG, but I'm sure you can adapt it to fantasy)
It doesn't have to be a bomb, just any kind of failsafe that ensures the action doesn't end when the villain goes down. Maybe the lair starts collapsing, or it's flooded with lava. Or the villain's boss, the even greater villain is alerted, and is now on the way here.
This is so cinematic! I love it
A couple of ones that I have used against my players, one of which they remember fondly, the other, they never worked out.
1) The (low-level) party was walking along a road through a forest, when they heard something crashing through the undergrowth coming towards them. They quickly position themselves with melee fighters at the front and ranged characters and spell casters to the rear. When the large bear came crashing out of the undergrowth, the prepared attacks had killed it before it even had chance to react. Then, as the archers had moved forward to retrieve their arrows, the large troll that had been chasing the bear comes crashing into them.
2) the party had been hunting down a lich, having spent several months taking out her minions and gathering information, and eventually they tracked her to her lair. The fight was vicious with several characters near death when the lich collapsed and turned to dust. A couple of weeks later, they heard that the lich had risen again. They track her down again and defeat her again, with her body, again turning to dust when she is defeated. This repeated a good half-a-dozen times. What the players never worked out was that the lich was fighting using an projected image (illusion) of herself, with a programmed illusion to create the dust effect when the illusion was defeated, and at that point the lich, who was hidden, just turned invisible and walked away. Under the system that we use, the protected image spell will make any spells that the caster uses appear to come from the illusion rather than the actual caster.
Wait so you did the same encounter 8 times? Did it get stale?
@@theosink2222 No, the players had leveled-up between each time they met the lich giving them more options, and the lich was in a different lair with different minions, plus the lich's casting level increased over time as well, giving her different spells. So where it was the same lich, the encounter was completely different each time.
A bread magician isn't something one considers when thinking about funny skits, but this one does put a smile on my face lmao
"No seriously, WTF is this???"
The dad in me in spite of not being one "It's actually a really awesome "universal wrench", but it is a LITTLE big for a lot of household tasks IMO (but you're gonna need it if you ever need to deal with a plumbing fixture)... Keep that one in case anything big comes up, get a couple in smaller sizes, and you'll be able to do a LOT..... ALSO... Get a pair of vice grips, they're not ideal for tightening nuts or bolts, BUT they will work in a pinch and bridge the gaps affordable and easily... in addition.... Oh.... Sorry... I think I just figured out what "old man 'tism" looks like....
The thingie is a self-adjusting wrench. It will tighten around any nut you use it on, provided you're torqueing it in the right direction, and will slip when you move it the other directions. Its the perfect wrench for dasmantling things when you can't anticipate what kind of wrench you'll need.
I appreciate it when creators flat-out say that they're being paid by their sponsors. It always make me giggle.
Lots of great stuff here. My favorite bit is waiting for a dramatic moment for the foe to die in between min and max HP. Love it. Thanks for all the great content. I am glad the algorithm dug this up and recycled it to my feed.
"Just let them die a little early." Honestly, this is the only thing from fourth edition that I truly loved. Minions in fourth just had one HP. You just had to hit them. You hit them, they die. It meant that they were threatening, because they still were full monsters and would do a lot of damage if they hit the players. It provided a huge action economy bonus to the enemies, and cost the players resources, but they never felt overwhelming. I still use this rule today, where it makes sense. This is phenomenal advice, and thank you for sharing it.
These are all great tips, I frequently make up new enemy abilities on the fly, I love to do a "phase change" in a fight, the boss realizes things aren't as easy as they expected, they tap into some other power, I add some environmental effects, make up a couple of new abilities on the fly, maybe summon a couple of minions, and no one knows that's not what I planned all along. Granted I also pre plan a lot of phase changes because I think they're fun, so people come to expect it at this point.
My own tip is that I try to make most battles that I want to feel impactful a little harder than I feel like they need to be, as when we get into the fight, I can always just pull a few punches, fake a miss occasionally if I need to. I don't go overboard doing this but its easy to say an attack did a little less damage than it did, leaving a player with just a few HP instead of KOing them. On the flip side it would feel very bad to fudge things to increase damage and fake hits, which is why I'd rather make it a little harder, knowing I can tweak things in my players favor later if needed (though more then than not they do just fine anyway)
Great video, I love the hair color choice, very vibrant! Sick earrings too.
Elegantly avoiding a TPK is truly an art form.
The Matt's are never wrong.
Two extra things I want to add to this,
1) Another way for an important villain who's stomping the heroes to "let them live" in a way that feels believable is, when they knock someone unconscious, they grab the body and threaten to finish the job unless the party surrenders and let's the villain leave, this can also be used for a villain who's losing a fight to try to get a way to escape with their life that doen't feel cheap as long as you don't do it all the time.
2) Consider the context of the fight if you feel you need to scale up a villain, if the party entered the boss arena through the front door and one rounded the villain, that might me a bit of an anticlimax, but if they snuck into the villain's lair and got the jump on them that let them blow up the villain before they get a turn, that's a satisfying vitory because the challenge wasn't the battle, it was finding an opportunity to get the jump in the first place.
(aside: smh smh my head how dare you say the villain would only be hot with glasses off)
1. Activate superpower. 3:16 If a boss fight is too easy, activate a new ability that the players can see how to deactivate. e.g.'s turns on a shield, or takes high ground
2. Know your party['s strengths] 4:02 If the fight is too hard, use attacks they are good at countering. e.g.'s fires projectiles at monk, use fire against tieflings
3. Use the buddy system 5:44 Action economy means that 5 against 1 will never be a fair fight. Summon minions, or bring in a mid-fight partner. Should cost the baddie something (turn, spell)
4. Fewer buddies. 6:28 Works the other way too: You can sacrifice minions in a fight that's too hard. [Idea: combine with #1. Sacrifice minion(s) to gain a power up that the party can disable.]
5. Flexible hit points. 6:45 Once the boss has taken a minimum amount of damage, let them die when it "feels right" narratively. Tip: For a harder (but not longer) battle, make your enemy deal more damage, rather than take more damage.
6. There's always a bigger fish. @7:59 Use sparingly. If a hard fight turns out to be a pushover, pretend the "real" hard fight is still coming.
7. Kryptonite 8:43 Give the enemy a built-in weakness (or retroactively add one mid-fight, like a vulnerability to a certain damage type).
8. Run away. 9:25 Let the players run off a hurt enemy, so they can "win" a fight, but they can come back for a harder fight later. Try to retreat dramatically.
9. "I'll let you live" 10:08 When you are hitting too hard, find an excuse to dismiss or capture the party.
10. Change the environment. 10:37 Create terrain that works to your advantage. Use cover or elements that would affect the party more than the monster (or vice versa).
11. "This isn't even my final form:" 11:14 Works best for BBEG.
12. Surprise ally. 11:58 An NPC swoops in to save the day with _just_ enough help to nudge the win. Needs a good narrative setup to work. [Could also be powerful weapon that the party already had, but learns to "unlock" mid-fight.]
Good stuff, Ginny D! I’m glad to hear you suggest some of these things! I’ve thought some of them and I am glad to hear a D&D expert confirm that I’m on the right track. Especially with the HP thing!!
I love the allusions to the toolbox, cause this is the sort of video that I will bookmark and come back to time and time again whenever I want to review what I can do to make encounters cooler and feel more dynamic and impactful. 10/10
Introducing an extra few NPCs to reinforce mid-combat is always my preferred solution, both hostile and friendly; it's something integral to Lancer's base rules for adjusting the NPC difficulty. If things are going south as well, having an NPC step in to help can also be a great excuse for minions to become preoccupied and effectively removed from the battle as well, if you need to thin out the numbers slightly. And of course, support NPCs that can offer allies some buffs are also always welcome and won't usually steal the party's thunder.
One technique that I don't think was mentioned was to use the environment as well. At the start of a round when things have been going bad, you can call out the unstable flooring or Red Explosive Barrel™ that are conveniently in a spot they can take advantage of but were too distracted to notice til now.
Balance concerns can also be mitigated a little bit if the goal isn't to just defeat the enemies, but to accomplish some task: hold a zone by the end of a certain round, get an item, defeat a specific target, survive X rounds, etc.
I legit guffawed at the unexpected "rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain!"
i know the disclaimers before sponsored segments are tongue-in-cheek, but, genuinely, you have some of the most entertaining ad reads i've ever seen! i love piecing together who/what the sponsor is and how they relate to the skit
Oh I can't believe I'm this early! I guess I'm taking this occasion as an opportunity to tell you how much you helped me grow, evolve and simply get more conscious as a DnD Player and DM - thanks for being awesome, Ginny!!!
Welcome! And thank you for the kind words 🥰
I Love ALL Ginny Di videos! I think that's a 'one size fits all' adjustable wrench. For when you don't know the size of the nut or bolt you're trying to loosen or tighten.
I have a dungeon that I've been running for about 40 years. It's called "On Strike!"
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The party arrives at the dungeon, and finds a whole bunch of monsters picketing out in front of the entrance. The monsters are on strike!
They offer no resistance to the adventurers. In fact, a few of them might even offer to give them a guided tour, pointing out treasure piles and traps. They make their way down to the deepest depths of the dungeon, which by now has been revealed to be a major deathtrap.
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A bunch of guys and monsters are sitting at a big table, cheering.
"The strike is over! Everyone back to work!"
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Now the party has to try to escape, with an entire dungeon full of monsters who aren't surprised and full of fresh new enthusiasm.
these tips are amazing !! so often i just hear the "don't even count the hitpoints" tip and nothing else, but these seem varied and extremely helpful, especially the limiters on that hitpoint tip! also, the graphics are so good. the enlarged, translucent number behind the name of the tip?? chef's kiss
I wish I had those earrings so bad, and my ears aren't even pierced
Time to get them pierced. Fantasy earrings are so fun to wear
there's a neat trick you can borrow from other systems that will help make most of these changes feel legitimate: the "crisis" system. once an enemy reaches half their HP, they transform in a way that could be beneficial or detrimental. if you introduce this system early on, it then becomes way more believeable why the BBEG can suddenly summon buddies out of nowhere, or why they've got a new ability etc.
3:15 I had to know so I did an image search. It’s a universal or multi wrench. Don’t have to worry if you need metric or imperial wrenches.
Excellent video. I’ve used a few those in the past, but the hit point range one really hit home. Going to use that one soon.
Also, that sponsored ad transition.
7:42 Lite Fudge. I like it
Yay new video :D
Also I love it when Ginny just pulls some random object into the screen like a sword or wrench lmao
You can’t stress this enough: „selling without telling“ maybe is the most important talent a great GM can have. - thank you for the video.
Watched this when it came out and coming back to report in. It became needed. I screwed up the CR calculation and was tearing my party to shreds with an elemental and a bunch of mephits. Decided to have the mephits start flying at the elemental and sacrafice themselves to heal it but secretly, they weren't giving it any health at all. The players were paniced like "WHAT? NO! YOU DON'T HEAL, *WE* HEAL" so the fight stayed super tense despite actually getting way easier. So thank you
This was one of the best videos. Solid approach, immediate examples, and practical. Going to be using some of these!
I found the "upgrade" of a BBEG more intuitive before this, but always struggled with the "flumph tpk" by chance thing.
Love the advice of using the min and max HP to determine when an NPC has been defeated! That should help rein in the instinct to just let the party have the kill at the first thematically appropriate opportunity.
I'm a huge fan of creatures that develop a new ability / attack as their hit points drop. Loved it in 4th Ed (and have ported into my 5E game things like Dragon Breath Weapon recharges automatically when they hit 1/2 HP). Easy enough to improvise in the middle of a boss battle, and my favourite planned version of this was a home brew Tur-Drake-n (literally changed forms as it got whittled down from giant turkey to wyrmling to a cockatrice)
I have a couple other quickie tips to add: Not attacking a downed player because they believe the character is already dead. We roll on foundry so its all above board on HP at least, but you can private roll perception and have the bbeg make a comment about "now to join your dead friend..." or something. In Foundry I often have "more powerful" backup abilities, that use a Bloodied state to trigger. Doesn't stop the one-round-wonder-team beatdown, but it's good to have more powerful abilities if they get to half health and havn't provided the desired challenge. Lastly, you can always attempt playing smarter. I tend to do this based off a creature's intelligence score and "suggested" (dirty word these days it seems) alignment. Evil creatures that are smart, WILL finish off players if possible, but i do tend to let my players know that because we're all in for long-term campaigns. Anyway, figured i'd contribute. Great video Ginny. All really solid advice.
as a party we had a big encounter on the way.
the room had one door.
We had a homebrew tree token that would just spawn a tree anywhere.
We used Tiny hut to seal the only exit airtight. We spawned a tree in the room and ignited it.
It was epic hahah
Loved the hair matching bow tie!!!! Very nice episode Ginny. Thanks, as always.
That appears to be a self adjusting wrench
I always think of how to fix the combat *after* the combat. So I listened to this video and immediately made a reference card for too easy / too hard combat strategies and I’m so excited to have this on hand next time! Bless you Ginny Di!!!
Staring at your hair the whole video. Its so beautiful 😭 i love that colour and cut its giving MERMAID
Bread magician is everything I have ever wanted in the world.
Your advice is usually so helpful. As a still-mostly-baby DM, thanks for helping me make small adjustments that have big impacts on my players' experience
The HP range method is ingenious - I'll definitely be using this going forward. Thanks for the content!!
Thank you so much for making these videos you are saving my life!!!!!! My first session is in a week and im getting more confident because of your wonderful empathy and advice
The wrench at 3:14 is an adjustable multi wrench. You can use it to tighten or loosen hex nuts of different size by engaging the swiveling piece around the nut.
You make some great advertisements, but this ad was one of your best! I loved it, thank you!
As always, love your videos and the thoughts you have on storytelling and creating compelling narratives for combat or action. They are useful even just as a general creative writer.
It's hard to overstate how useful these particular tips are for dming combat! ❤
I've been DMing for a Very Long Time(tm), and I've only just gotten some of the on the spot pivoting skills you're talking about in the last year or two. 😅
That's a lot of references to flumph-related TPKs....which sounds like a great backstory for an NPC. The last living survivor of the Great Flumphing of 1307. A lot of good-ish kobolds died that day.
I am OBSESSED with how the Bow tie matches your hair at 4:33
Your ads are the best! We don't hate it as much as you think we do! (well maybe some people are dumb and hate it, but if they really wanted to support you and see you succeed, they'd understand that this gives you the $$ to keep doing this stuff)
Also, foam XD
Hi Ginny. Somehow I’ve only recently discovered your channel. I love the happy energy you bring to them and I’m learning a lot of useful tips from you. Thank you!
We have a group of modrones that act like a happy frenzied mob of minions. They get in impossible situations were they win battles just because of their numbers. Their batch produced a glitchling that acts like Mike Wizowsky. Hes the only modrone that speaks common. So the minions made him their leader. He tries to talk them out of their shenanigans. But most of the time they just hoist him up against better judgment and carry him off to go Pot-o-pon a red dragon or something.. Where he just watches in horror while the minions laugh and slaughter everthing in the way. Then he usually stands there afterwards saying "Well I'll be damned. They did it."
Honestly i needed this, I'm about to run my first like mini boss/combat encounters in my Rp based campaign and the timing couldnt be better for this video
I remember the "ill let you live" tool shows up in Curse of Strahd. Basically during a lot of the beginning where he's testing the party but doesn't want to kill them.
there are really inspirational ideas, thank you! I'm going to keep them in mind when planning encounters so they feel natural if needed, but also I might use some anyway! They'll keep the comabt interesting and varied if the players regulary face a changing battelfield, or different numbers of enemies etc
One tactic I use, especially for random encounters: not every battle has to be one to the death. I don't know about you, but if I'm seconds from dying I'm going to try to get out of there. Most NPCs I feel share this sentiment. Unless its the Big Bad, sometimes I just have some of them run away. Oh, and I still reward players with XP as if they killed them. Because, it was their actions which caused the beastie to run off.
I loved Mythic Odysseys of Theros setting book. They had a fun system of two staged bosses! This was great in one of our playgroups, as they were very efficient players with powerful builds on their characters.
If your players are struggling, I recommend finding ways to not necessarily do direct damage! We had a new group who were struggling to hit or deal damage to a monster - so I decided to have the monster "throw them around", changing the dynamic encounter, and breaking up the monotony. It ended up being a very memorable encounter, and they didn't feel bad for taking a ton of damage from the monster!
I mentioned this before but we had the "Gate" incident. Our rouge misses for months and this session back he is in a cage on the other wide of the gate infront of the mayors manor with guards. Cleric charges and attacks the gate. This was not a planed encounter for level 4s and it goes bad. Random arrow with a note land near the ranger so we know were to go after we escape. Again not planned so the EM gave us a option. But we got out...except the Paladin who was gone and quit due to a new job.
This! Everything you just said is the right way to balance encounters. This video is more useful than the entire D&D CR system.
I watched this and suddenly realized I'd never subscribed to your work. That's been corrected now. Love what you do. And in this case, loved your warning about NPCs swooping in -- I just watched .... um, that superhero movie about the guy who can talk to fish discovering an old place that had been misplaced ... and HATED all the Deus ex Mera moments.
I think one of the meanest sentences I've recently heard (not so mutch about combat but about initiating combat)
DM "You walking throught the narrow winding alleyways of the grand bazaar - exotic spices, creatures, weapons, fabrics on every table, praised by the merchants selling them.
Suddenly you feel a tug on your belt."
Player "I grab my purse"
DM *rolls* "There's 6 Gold pieces missing. And you can see a shady figure walking away..."
Player "I attack the thieve!"
DM "Very well. The thieve uses a legendary resistance. Now roll initiative!"
I had never once considered the idea of using the hit point range of min to max, what a fantastic idea. I've definitely had to adjust HP on the fly before (both up and down) and what a great benchmark for letting the creature feel like it's at the right level of toughness and even allowing for variation in HP without going overboard.
In the last session I ran the party handled the boss encounter without any issue, and I was absolutely kicking myself for not planning a second form or something. These are some great tips!!
It's an adjustable wrench, particularly useful for stripped or partially-stripped nuts and bolts.