Key Mechanics: Challenge Tuning!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.ย. 2024
- A long overdue thesis on key mechanics to build CHALLENGE into your encounters. No clunky CR's, no math, no confusion! This video features a great creative toolset to help you build more interesting encounters, and fine tune what makes them hard for YOUR group!
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Man, I tried to watch this last night after a 5 hour gaming session and way too many beers....it was confusing and I passed out 10 minutes in. Watching it next day sober? Boom! hella useful, and really deals with one of my major struggles as a DM. The non literal way of thinking about duration is a god damned revelation.
My favorite quote from this video, "Because neither you nor I know what we're doing". Truer words have never been spoken
I think I prefer "this is really common with dragon fights, because they drag on". :3
31:28 This is really common with dragon fights, because they "drag" "on".......
I see what you did there
I don't even know whether he noticed that himself, but he's usually pretty on top of it.
The DM of our group is outstanding and uses all these mechanics, especially disruption. We bitch and moan about it but it really does add a lot to the adventure's challenge. And it doesn't even have to be in a monster encounter. The disruption can simply be that it's raining the whole adventure and by day 2 everyone is soaked. Spell memorization can't happen, shit gets ruined, etc. Great video.
What a way to deconstruct encounters! I don't think there is a better way to put this. I've always had trouble balancing encounters, either providing enemies the party steamroll, or a crazy near death encounter. This is pretty game changing for me, thanks Hankerin.
Woah... it's like a heavy fog has been lifted from my mind. I finally understand what I need to do to craft imaginative and purposeful encounters. THANK YOU! This is easily the most useful DM advice I've EVER acquired. You've definitively and clearly presented the mechanics of a complex system in the most distilled and basic form. Really, this is no small feat. You are truly a master...
This is the single best video I have found for a DM to prepare for encounters. Every DM should have to watch this...
I've been DM-ing for about 7 years now, and before every major fight I still revisit this video for inspiration and calibration. Thanks for the awesome advice, and thanks for sharing it with all of us
First off, your videos always make me feel warm and fuzzy, you're humour is still spot on and your videos continue to be inspiring, and insightful. Feels like I've been with you these whole two years. LoL Secondly, the content of this video is deeply and resoundingly accurate. I've been a DM for a loooooong time, and can attest to these methods us grizzled old veterans have honed over the years. So it was stunning to be able to see you, so intelligently deconstruct this method, put it out there for everyone to be able to digest, and still have me feel like I'm hearing it for the first time.
Strength, Honour, AND TRIPLE D!
I have to say, I’ve been watching GM videos to try to improve my gaming for over a year. I stumbled onto this channel just recently and it’s gold.
I had a group of super easy goblins burning bales of an inebriating plant inside a farmhouse. After a few rounds, not only was the house at risk of collapse, everyone had to roll CON checks to avoid status effects from the smoke.
Thank you so much, I have been trying to understand why a my encounters of late were absolutely boring, drawn out, lacked any real flavor, and I am grateful for your insight!
Pretty much every video of yours is like an epiphany! It's so useful and easy to comprehend! It makes me feel like I should've never eben start DMing without this knowledge!
So enough of the ass kissing.
You rock! Thank you for the advice
I've been kind of doing this without actually doing this by making everything "homebrewed" or with a homebrew twist on it. I'm always tweaking everything. I'm going to watch this vid 100 times to get down your formula because it's brilliant and will help refine my process! Really great! Thank you!
These are awesome key mechanics! You putting this into words and explaining everything is a huge help and will help me make more meaningful and memorable encounters. This channel is the best for insights into D&D. Thank you Hankerin!
Hi Hankerin, I realise I'm responding to a video from 2016, but I just really want to thank you for sharing all this amazing knowledge! I just purchased ICRPG, and it too is just brimming with amazing, tangible and practical ideas that just get my creative juices flowing like they haven't in a loooong time. So cheers!
This is some really next level advice. Awesomely explained and absolutely fantastic stuff!
I just rewatched the Two Towers today, so the Gandalf on Balrog comparison for disruption was extra fresh!
I'm a fairly new DM and you my good sir have blown my mind yet again. Love the visual aids. This way of formulating challenge rating will certainly make my group's game more badass.
You are the D&D mentor I’ve been seeking. Thank you for sharing these axioms.
This video is pure gold! You provided great advice for planning encounters before play and then adjusting on the fly while running said game for your players. Awesome video!
I am a brand new dungeon master, well kind of, I tried once before but my campaign fell flat, a very discouraging setback that kept me from dming, until recently. The last few weeks I have been looking everywhere, reading everything, and brainstorming idea after idea, and i felt like all of my ideas just kept falling flat again.
While searching for advice from different sources on what to do, I came across your videos, and have been binge watching the hell out of them, I have gotten more useful information from each of your videos than anywhere else, and this video takes the cake, well maybe right behind the use of timers, but thank you so much for making these, you have given me the tools I can use to produce the kinds of scenarios I could only imagine.
I love your point about high HP actually taking duration control away from the DM.
I never let the players know when I have to tune things. If things are going all cattywampus I step back and think about what twist I can logically throw in. Bathroom breaks make great regroup moments and the more you tell your group you have to fix things the less they trust your ideas. Whereas several times I have gotten compliments for an awesome twist that threw them for a loop.
I've been crafting encounters every day this week. This stuff is fantastic brain fuel.
this is still one of your best videos on dungeon/ encounter mechanics.
yep...can't do these every day... thanks!
this advice, is so good. looking back at my last session, the players were just going from room to room.. i wish i had thought of a timer and stuff
Ive always had trouble making balanced encounters. This is GOLD! Thank you!
Loving your key mechanics, this episode reminds me of the time my players encountered a gulthias tree ripe with fruit which spawned various blight. Duration and disruption were on high!
I think a better way to define Disruption other than "Disruption: the design of the spacial factors at play in an encounter" would be "Disruption: the design of the *Consitions* at play in an encounter" cause it's not limited by places and things; Be on fire would be a disruption
Hankerin in 2016: 2:04 "You know I hate long intros."
Hankerin in 2017: (30 minutes into the video) "That was quite an intro."
To be fair I don't think he rambles any more now, he just has more projects to ramble about. Which is good for him!
Still true though! (and more so a year later)
Absolutely amazing video Hankerin. Worth every single minute I spent watching it a couple years ago, and now that I see myself coming back to it looking for inspiration and invaluable DM knowledge I have to say it: you made an incredible and insightful content. Keep up the good work, great content it's like an old wine: it becomes even more valuable as the time goes by.
I like the idea of using the One-to-Six level of danger - it means as DMs we can also just roll a D6 for each of the 3-Ds just to spice things up and make things interesting :)
I have a lot of role players so I added a fourth : dialogue. So I make an active effort to make more challenging social encounters or it can just be a smash fest. Helps keep it diverse.
I love your D&D mechanics videos, they're so informative and really help me out as a DM. Keep up the awesome work!
I love your channel! You are funny, and your ideas about DMing are so creative. You have a more action-packed and cinematic style than some of the other folks doing videos on D&D and DMing. Keep up the great stuff!
This is fantastic, I've been DM'ing for a few years now, and this is extremely helpful to add variety to encounters, and help to keep them interesting.
Really Hankerin? Do dragon fights really have a tendency to... drag on??
Sooo much important info in this one !! Loved it
I return to this video every now and then for support. Pure GOLD
This is an awesome video. Thank you for really going under the hood for developing challenging encounters that don't rely on simply adjusting the target number of dice rolls.
The parts that I really benefited from were from Disruption and Duration, since I run games that have more frequent damage spikes on their own, like Savage Worlds and Mutants & Masterminds, thus making them more lethal overall (although hero points/bennies help keep the players in the fight longer). Shit, Disruption and Duration are especially helpful for supers games and, as levels go up, D&D tends to behave more like a supers game.
"and when they poop their pants... *thumbs up*" lol you killed me
Someone needs to make a .gif of that thumbs-up :)
Done.
Show!
I loved that too! 😁
Same
This is fantastic advice... I know many an online stream that could benefit from these levers.
Okay epic video man. Your vids are always entertaining and I borrow an idea here or there but this video totally opened the curtain on memorable encounters. Over the years we all have run or played fights with these elements but your take on this made it easy to understand. Keep up the good work.
Great helpful video. I’m too mathematically focused on CR.
great functional mechanics tools demo!
Holy shit dude, this is high concept. Great work and I look forward to bingeing your entire channel.
Hankerin, get a damn link in your description, we want to buy your book.
Also : Effin great video, probably need to rewatch this (or twice)
HAHAH salute
great vid mate, im very happy that i stumbled upon your channel, this gave me some inspiration on how to tweek my encounters futher more
always loved the idea of hard challanges. so far i tweeked my encounters with consumables or time pressure by other means.
like an encounter we had was a group of bandits held hostages in the nearby Woods. The mayor's son of this town are one of these hostages.
they tried to sneak in but failed as a sentry spotted them. the battle were on and the bandits were losing even after some of them had quaffed some potions of stoneskin, giants strength and so on.
i introduced a 'time limit' by letting them do a preception test, they heard the leader scream out an order to 2 of them to start killing the hostages.
eitherway awesome vid and i can 2nd the honesty part.
hence i dm with open dice ;-)
You should consider putting all of this advice into a book for DMing/GMing.
It is all contained in the ICRPG CORE. On amazon and DTRPG
That was very inspiring! Made me notice I was doing waaaay to low duration control, hence the feeling the characters are way too powerful.
This is the kind of stuff you should find in dungeon master's guide, not the crap they decided to put in.
So true; it should definitely be in the DMG. I've always had way too low duration control and it does make the characters seem too OP.
Same for me!
Thanks for uploading awesome vids. 10D8 will avg 45 btw. Avg will always be (1+2+3+...n)/n where n is how many sides the die has, then multiply that by how many of that particular die you roll.
Awesome. Looking forward to running several D&D&D triple T inspired encounters with my buddies kids tomorrow morn playing Warrens and Waffles like a big ol'badass!
I just started watching some of your past videos, and just subscribed! You are quite funny, and the "Three T" model of encounter creation has already helped my D&D game a lot. Looking forward to more videos!
Thank you so much for this! I'm new to DMing and have been struggling with creating balenced yet challenging encounters. Looking forward to using this!
+1 Good advice. The 3Ds tuning will work especially well with inexperienced players who may not know what to expect during D&D encounters. The problem is with veteran players who know all your tricks as a DM. They're aware their DM will always tweak encounters to make them challenging but not too deadly. The game becomes predictable and routine, and suspension of disbelief disappears. Not sure if there's an easy solution, but one possibility is to avoid/minimize DM tweaking and instead let the players themselves choose how challenging they want their encounters to be by giving them a sandbox campaign setting to play in. Give them a map with labelled location names that tip off the difficulty of each adventure. For example: Goblin outpost, Ogre lair, and Lair of the Lich King. The players then dial up the challenge rating of their adventures when they're ready & want to gain XPs. If they go after the Lich King before they're prepared, then it's their own fault they got themselves killed.
anyone who overgames or gets bored by what's happening at the table isnt a 'verteran' they're a troll burnout and must be ejected until they remember their inner joy. boom. otherwise, love the ideas!
In pathfinder we have encounter tiers for everything. Seems to work. Great video
I really needed this video, my players always seem have a hard time, I think I have been turning the damage up to six, disruption to 4 and duration up to 2. it ends up being tiring, these ideas will help balance better, to get a rhythm. Plus 'The CR Is a Lie'
Plus these mechanics are adjustable to different groups, some groups only care about loot, some RP, and some just want to dungeon crawl. My group has two rangers, they demolish open battle maps, it takes much higher 'CR' to challenge them, but when in close quarters the group needs to something with less 'CR'. thanks again for the ideas meng
Great stuff! I want the Bugbear Horn of Alerting as my ringtone.
First thing that came in to my mind with the idea of using "6Dam 1Dis 1Dur / 1Dam 6Dis 1Dur / 1Dam 1Dis 6Dur" was:
Get into the end of an chamber, there is an powerful fucking monster killer eater of souls.
When you kill the monster, a magical gem in his chest breaks and with this, the own room starts to crumble and the players see an treasure at a hard area to go.
If the players get to the area and get the treasure, they notice that the entrance to this place will be forever blocked by something and need to leave fucking fast or they will have an slow death inside of this place
Prob the best vid so far! Thanks!
perf! adding an earthquake being caused by a titan sized worm underground to the dungeon in my next session. Going to make it wayyy better! now i have disruption and duration instead of just damage :P Also will cause a cool story hook as the worm is spawning these bugs that the party has been fighting for a while but dont know where they come from. They will see it when they get low in the dungeon and it will clear an escape rout for them (if they dont get spotted by it).
Excellent vid Hankerin!! This is why you are the king.
I like to adjust one more parameter and that is how personal the encounter can be, my players love those but I am pretty sure the PCs don't. Example to that a simple low damage encounter in the form of an animated corpse or afflicted one :
1- A villager from the same village as the PCs or a PC.
2- A friend.
3- A long lost sibling.
4- A loved one.
Now this combat encounter could be trivial but it can very personal.
I would call this a method of disruption. Same goes for let's say a pc deathly afraid of spiders. Throw a giant spider at the party even if it's CR is below the parties abilities they have to deal with their fighter running off with tears in his eyes. Disruption with roleplay flavor.
Late to this channel. Superb stuff. Here on Deficient Master’s request.
Amazing Video Hankerin! I love your content! This will be used for sure! keep on keppin on!
This one is amazingly helpful. Thanks for sharing. 😎
Brilliant episode, and I've put it to use already. I started a Dungeon World campaign using Prisoners of Molok as a starting point. I had preconceived ideas for who Molok might be, but it Dungeon World fashion I let me players tell me who Molok was. I was prepared for Molok to be any type of humanoid really, with the room being a type of cave or dungeon. My players made Molok a Giant Spider and I had to adjust everything on the fly, adjusting Damage down to 1 and Disruption up to about a 4, as Molok's tiny spider minions would shoot webs for slowing and recapturing the party. My Duration Control (I added the word control so I could mentally remember that it's NOT about duration, but the control of it) was always going to be 6. In Dungeon World I'm playing with using a hard move to decrease the timer, so I'm undecided about how large a die to roll. I'm rolling d10 instead of d4 right now but may find that I need to increase that as disruption increases because I'll get to make more moves with more disruption. I would love your thoughts on that please! Great video! I only started watching your show a few weeks ago but have caught up pretty quickly :)
timer reduction are epic! i say go bonkers and roll teh same die for timer and penalty
crazy helpful my dude! keep on playing D&D like a big ole bad ass!
I lost it when he said "Dry-ass talk hole" 😂
Awesome video, just wonderful content!
Outstanding video, best explanation I've come across for this! Thank you for doing this. Any chance of you doing more of these?
absolutely, but they take time to assemble!
Is that a Stonebridge pottery mug I see!? Mug of the true DM.
This is super helpful for Mutants and Masterminds. Supervillains in the middle of the city with a nuclear bomb about to explode!
That happened in my game. I figured out you can use the one cantrip to make fire brighter. So I took a torch and made a flash bang xD our DM had to adapt. 3 of our party beat a 5 person dungeon.
I love that sweet nectar too, you madman!!
The only part of note I (at least partially) disagree with, is damage-sponge fat-HP monsters. Say PC's are fighting in a cavern. Ranger and/or Rogue kites (distracts and goads) the fat boss, then the Barbarian rages against a stalagmite and pushes it from the above ledge to skewer the beast. Similar scenario, but the melee combat dudes kite the boss to a specific part in the cavern, then the Wizard lets loose a bundle of magic missiles to have a stalactite fall down------- either way, the boss with damage sponge levels of HP is a sitting duck smothered in a barrel of fish. Creative strategies can be fun for the players when the environment has advantages for them to work with.
I guess I can say a parking lot fight with a monster who's a HP tank and does scary DPS is dull, but throw in couple ballistae with big harpoons to grapple hook and ride as well as a chandelier with wicked iron spikes decorated with Zelda-esque fire throwing candles, and the fight just got more interesting because the players will want to kick the imps off of the chandelier to get some scorching pest control in the mix. Essentially, the players can turn the chandelier-imp disruption situation into an advantage if they're crazy enough.
I only partially disagree, because not all players will take the crazy bait. As for the rest, this DnD toot is badass and on point. Looking forward to more videos. :)
Love the 3Ds, well worth the wait!
Can you do a vid or live stream just painting minis or such and tell us your first or greatest playing session?
Thanks for the video. They all help my game.
excellent video!
Brilliant. Inspiring. Useful! Thanks!
Great advice as always! I hope you make it to 10k and more! Salute!
I just wana say I watch this once or twice a year
Ok Hank! I just bought your book and red derp shirt off Amazon! Thank you for the pro tips!
When you find a random guy on the youtubes and your brain goes I WANT MORE... damn... that is seldom experienced feeling. Nice video (y)
more of this kind of vid and more ROOOOM DESIIIIGN!
This is a great video, thanks!
so hilarious , omg! Missed your videos man, great job.
You did not even need to ask, I'm so going to get that book!
You sir are a twisted genius of gaming
Dude you are awesome, i just subscribed.
I used to work for a wine merchants chain and we used to have a snifter or 3 in a tea mug late in the day. perfect disguise from nosey customers and ctv cameras in the store. You brought the memories flooding back and made an old fart very happy.
You're ~proud of that~? You remember it fondly? The fuck is wrong with you?
I am planning for the PCs to explore an ancient city ruin. I’m trying to think of ways to engage them, which might be hard if they can just run away from everything in an open cityscape.
I think your Trap Theory video just answered this question for me! 😃
very useful vid. thanks
"The humor on this show used to be of a pretty good caliber" - this line makes me giggle every time I hear it.
This is so good and helpfull video! Cheers
You're the best at being anchored..... aren't you? ;)
(Great vids btw!)
Greatiiiings programs!
snafubar is my new favorite word!
Oh man, a summary in text would be really helpful for reference during prep.
dmg: how hard things hit 1- even the mage isn't afraid of being hit. 6-what just happened to the barbarian's HP?
disruption: crowd control, environmental dangers. 1- just a tank and spank. 6-the floor is made of arms and the boss just Mind controlled the paladin.
duration: impending doom. 1- i could stay in this room all week. 6- the room is locked and full of poison gas... RUN