Yeah... When HIS Lordship asked us what we had to say for ourselves... I stepped up, ("acting leader of the party for the day"...) and as I was, I saluted, and responded, "WITH all due respect, your Lordship, Oopsie-doodle." It's not to say that went well or down-hill, per say... a couple years hard labor isn't the worst that could've come about... and at least, I was (not being the handsomest face of the party) the face of the party... ish. ;o)
How to be a great Game Master: "double the damage just double it, doesn't matter which system" Cthulhu Keeper: "I'm gonna end this whole parties career"
This is a little out of context. If the party has no problems you should double it, no matter what. A Cthulhu Party that runs through encounters without any hessitation - yeah double it. You did something wrong.
@@_Woody_ yes I know that its a joke and yes I smiled when I read it but it confused me that its used out of any boundaries. Its a joke on something that never existed.
@@davekachel I bet you are the popular one...are you now. Just relax mate, in my head you sound like the "Oh but goblins do only 1d6 damage" impression from the video...😂 No offense Sheldon Cooper😉
It really doesn't. Any RL worth his salt knows you're fudging, and from there, is quite likely to push back, or go the other direction, calling out the fact that you're fudging. All fudging is robbing the party of accomplishment. You want to deal with a Rules Lawyer? Learn the rules, and apply them. Start ramping up the intelligence Quotient of your villains, tailor your encounters better, and give the PCs an actual reason TO CARE about the NPCs, not punishing them constantly for not "playing your way".
@@dragonstryk7280 The rules are not rules. They are, as stated in the bottom of many of the books, suggestions. They offer a structure, and give a skeleton to add flesh to, but that's it. Any thing that is changed, edited, disallowed, created, all are fair as well, so changing Acs, or damage types, or making your own creatures, are all very fair, just as long as it has lore reasons. "'These lizardmen have bred for centuries in volcanic areas, so of course their scales have hardened and they've bred a resistance to fire! How marvelous!' the old wizard marveled to himself" A perfectly valid reason to change Ac, damage resistances, coloration, etc, and best of all, keeps the players learning about the world that's been created.
Talking about the low level bandits attacking the high level party reminds me of Skyrim.. "Hey, you see that guy that just killed a dragon and devoured its soul? Lets mug 'em!"
Great tips! The other one I use is flexible HP. If the combat needs to be extended I add HP to the monsters - if the combat becomes tedious I reduce HP. This can be done at any time during the fight to help pacing.
I "increased the pain" two sessions of go....the party was rescuing kidnapped kids from a bandits swamp camp....I had berserkers and lizard folks in there ...my characters were only lvl 3 at the time. it was fun session...afterwards though one of the players emails me "you know there's a CR guid in the DMG to help you manage encounter difficulty" (he was dead serious). I had to spell it out to him that the difficulty of the camp was on purpose.
@@cloak5857 I agree, though it can be difficult when a GM completely flips a stat block over. My party encountered an ooze, which can melt our armor, weapons, damaged us when we hit it, etc. Normal ooze stuff. But it had hundreds of hit points, difficult enough... And 27 touch AC (which should be lower than normal AC). There was no descriptive or in-universe reason to have 27AC... But it did
@@cloak5857 I did one encounter and increased AC of several NPCs by 1, just to up the encounter difficulty, since I had them level and then realized I'd have to adjust the coming encounter... anyway, a metagamer in the group rolled and said "Ha, a hit" and rolled damage. Then I narrated how he missed and ended up smashing part of object they wanted to get with that damage roll.
Having a legitimately deadly encounter every so often is fine, but at the same point, if it hits the point where it's just a slog, or it comes out of left field, or doesn't feel earned, then it just feels like they're being punished, and guess what? They're right to feel that way. You said it, "Bandit Camp", not "Lizardfolk and Berserkers" camp. The player you mentioned? They WEREN'T having fun, they were feeling punished for following your adventure hook. If it had been a fun session all around, that email wouldn't have happened.
One of my GM's did something like this. We failed our checks, and didn't realize we had set up camp over a massive cavern system. The ground gave way under us and we fell nearly 100ft (we were level 11) and as we were standing up we were attacked by giant scorpions.
Haha, on the video the Kickstarter is at $40k. I watched just 12 hours after you uploaded this, clicked the link, and it's on $100k! That's awesome, signed up already.
ROTFL. Geomancer: Worst Inn Ever. No wake up call. Cold coffee, ran out of cream. Don’t get me started on the thread count of those sheets. I think this calls for more than a bad review. Oh my, a party about to check in? Better to be crushed in the closing crevasse than to be subjected to such poor quality soaps and linens!
I use these little tricks during my games each week and I have to say that they make a world of difference. Very well put, Guy, couldn't have described them better if I had tried.
Guy, thank you for this awesome content, my first campaign is reaching its tenth session tomorrow, and you have helped so much, thanks for providing theese tips for all the newbies DM all around the world. Huge shout out from Brazil!!
Yes. Me too. Allthough, it seems I've lost a few screws over the time. Ah - doesn't matter. Let's follow that creepy guy in the woods to hear, what secret he has to share.
@@metallkopf988 i am in control of my life and that scares me lol. Given the choice between learning for 4 upcoming exams and two dissertations and playing DnD, which one do you think I'd choose?
A good GM like a good torturer should exactly know what his -victims- err players can endure. Then don't go only to 50% - go to 70%. On occasions go to 95% and sometimes make it 105% and pray they survive :D
A nice way to increase/reduce any of the P's, which many good GM's know, is actively using the PC's classes and races in encounters. Examples: Pain: the orc warchief toys with the party (low pain, halved damage) until the elf's hood falls off and the orc hates elves so he fights to kill now (pain up, double damage). Or the hooded one was a half-orc (or even an orc if allowed by the GM) and now the warchief is more eager to maybe even negotiate (pain down). Problem: easier to use in Warhammer or Cthulhu with all the careers but possible in D&D as well with the focus on PC's background choice. Need to find a secret passage known only to thieves and beggars of the city and the law enforcement type (guard in WH, police officer in Cthulhu) decides to ask around. Problem just went massively up due to "no talking with cops" attitude. Or you use the rogue-type character and lower it just for the class choice (to the point of even discarding the persuasion roll whatsoever). Pressure: There is a single candle lighting the underground tunnel, on the verge of burning out and you have no darkivision classes in the party (up) or you are all dwarves and you don't really care (reduced to nothing).Or you have two darkvision characters and two humans. The pressure is still there but not focused of the impossibility of the task in darkness but raised difficulty as the darkvision PC's will need to assist their friends on top of the actual task when the light goes out (mid-tier pressure). It's a subtle (or simetimes not that subtle but still) way of GM rewarding a balanced and diverse party or slightly punishing a not that optimised team in other ways than standard combat mechanics.
The entire time you were giving the example with the stairs and the ogres, I was thinking of that scene in Lord of the Rings where the Fellowship is running from the Balrog and the stairs are collapsing.
These are essential tools for encounter design! My ol' buddy Hankrin Fernail over at Runehammer has a similar video on the 3Ds (instead of Ps, I guess). Watching both of your perspectives on this absolutely critical aspect of Dungeon Mastering is truly a blessing. I think it is also telling about the style of game you run how you always bring it back to role playing encounters and NPCs, not just combat. Well done!
I can't tell you how helpful this video has already been and I've just completed the first session. My characters were all running from one thing or another, not caring or taking much time worry about those around them. My initial story involved some dark necromantic nonsense but I was worried the players would just move on and not feel drawn to it. So I increased the pain and had the necromancer use children for his dark works and it made the players care and, of course, their individual characters as well. One of the most important lessons from your videos, thank you so much! A great tool to drive the story and tell a great tale at the same time.
So I’ve watched countless videos on TH-cam from many different creators to inspire creativity in my game. Something about the way you phrase things, concise with just enough examples to get the wheels turning, made my mind take off like a rocket. Thank you!
Dropped a dollar into the kickstarter because of this video, I know its not much but I'm broke inbetween jobs. This kickstarter looks to be one of the most useful books to buy for dnd as extra material
This sound like everything I feel I've been missing in my encounters, always find it so hard to make them interesting and this have given me so many ideas
As you said, increase the pain but also give narrative explanations. I'd be that whiny player whining about the goblins dealing twice their damage if the GM only describes them as being goblins and nothing more. Nothing worse as a player than seeing ten creatures you know to be weak just for the GM to pull the rug from under your feet by saying "Ah-ha! These goblins are actually secretly trained for war by elites! Take 4d8 piercing damage. Aren't you feeling threatened :^)"
Yeah, I.... never actually feel threatend by stuff like that. I just feel the biggest internal eyeroll, and ratchet down my expectations for the campaign, cause I know I'm not going to get to feel any actual accomplishment anymore, I'm just helping the GM work out his unfinished manuscript.
@@dragonstryk7280 Your comments are all so cynical xD You've really had a bad run in with some dm's, have you tried dming yourself, maybe see if that fixes it?
@@daileygaming9488 I do DM, and I've never pulled this crap. Like, let's take the goblin example used in the OP. That's not a threat. That's a DM tacking on a bunch of extra damage because they fundamentally misunderstand what makes a proper challenge. The AH-HA approach is just unsatisfying, because it's clear to the players that you're just making shit up, and that they can never ACTUALLY get to be truly powerful, because the world levels up with them. Also, where can I get this "Training by elites" that's gonna let me quadruple my base damage or more. Oh wait, they don't exist, cause it's just some made up bullshit so that you can increase their damage, without the players potentially getting access to a weapon or magic item that does that kind of damage.
@@dragonstryk7280 If you want to keep them fighting, keep them on the same characters, or they want to keep playing those characters, allowing them to be "truly powerful" will inevitably become boring. But always fighting for your life, feeling like there's a chance to fail, means the game always feels fresh. And changing monsters and parts of their lore and description for areas allows every encounter to feel more interesting. You ever fought a venomous radwolf? Neither had i, then my dm made it, crossed a wolf with a spider, then used the radiation rules of gamma world to spice it up. Fighting that was awesome, we were 16th level, yet we struggled to keep up with it, it's abilities forced us to rethink our "slash and make cash" approach, we started trapping, baiting, and playing better each time we encountered something tougher. Hell, there was a time where we fought harpies that had been made bigger, and looked meaner, thing hit hard, and targeted specific members of our party with psionic attacks, then on we made strategies to deal with psionicists, acquired magic items, etc. Each time the "pain and problems" increased we developed as players, and my players developed as well in my own homebrew games. So changing these creatures, redescribing them, or even redesigning them, makes for a whole new set of adventures. Increasing the damage and stuff helps, but redesigning them, new abilities, strengths, and weaknesses is a more fun way to go. I also disagreed with the flat "double the damage" approach, but changing it to "Double the damage, and here's why" is very interesting and fun.
@@daileygaming9488 Actually, no, it doesnt. You're wrong on both points. Getting to FEEL really powerful can be fun, and knowing that every single thing in the world levels up with you means the levels are meaningless. It's not simply one way or another. I mean, for what you're saying to be correct, every martial arts movie on the earth would have to be boring, as well as almost every action movie, fantasy movie, a whole mess of sci-fi, the list goes on. Except they don't.
What if there's a relatively powerful beast attacking during a combat encounter? Something stealthing around the tall grass and picking off ally and enemy alike. Something that's several levels above the party that can one-shot the bandits and the squishier PCs.
I was innately doing this in my latest campaign. I hadn’t DMed since 2008 and my old group kept asking me to take them on another homebrew adventure. I spent an ungodly amount of money (happily) and prepared to take them into a 5e fantasy. Every encounter began to be rated on the cusp of hard and deadly due to how powerful their group teamwork has become. And then I started making some of the monsters hit twice as hard and even began to decide how much HP they had on the fly. Now the group is convinced their decisions save their life and that on several occasions a total party wipe was all but inevitable...until so and so did such and such...or until that one monster missed a killing blow...or whatever it may be. They have no idea I’m behind the screen taking them to the cusp of success and failure and teetering them off the edge by design. However, I also feel I simply cannot wipe them or permakill-maim their corpses when I’m fudging the rules in this direction. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if my nightmare mode homebrew shenanigans caused permanent severe harm to the group. So, although they feel that they are not going to make it, they are actually immortal and guaranteed success in this environment. Bloody, scary, unbelievable success...but guaranteed nonetheless. So I have decided to keep some encounters vanilla and let the rules and the dice tell the story. I tweak them to be the same difficulty as my flex encounters to the best of my ability but when half the party is unconscious on the ground, even I don’t know if they are going to make it. Does that sound like acceptable GM behavior to you? Thanks for your great content :-)
I've often given my intelligent races PC classes, feats, or even a random legendary action to spice things up. Also hybrid monsters are great fun: A pack of feral troglodytes chasing you through the underdark? Perhaps... But these ones just happen to be cultists of Kyuss, The worm that walks, and are far more dangerous
A bunch of stupid bandits ambushing a powerful party doesn't have to reveal a powerful boss in the end to increase the pain. They can just get slaughtered easily by the PCs - so easily in fact, that the carnage they create might make some of the players stop and think of their power and the use of annihilating a group of people that just wanted their money. It's a more RP approach than a battling one, but powerdrunk murderhobos can go down a dark path and only realise when it's too late and some REAL pain comes after them.
Saw one where the DM had a group of murder hobos and at the very end for the last boss, they found out THEY were the bad guys all along slaughtering what the Big Bad Necromancer had been using to save everyone (:
@@rynp9853 yes an it was one of the worst GM stories I’ve heard everyone but the GM wanted one thing and the GM acts like a big jerk because oh I’m the GM so you have to do what I want and like what I like. That story is the Poster story for that one player as GM.
Guy, I keep coming back to this video and reviewing the material to master it. Last D&D session, my party was begging for a short rest. I think I finally got it right. Thank you for your contribution to the TTRPG community.
I came over from the Pewdiepie Minecraft Let's Play. I paused that. Would do it again in a heartbeat. This is probably the only channel that i drop everything else for as soon as i see a notification.
This video basically saved my campaign! I knew something was off, but couldn´t put my fingers on it and this really helped (my players will thank you!)
Making good use of the 2e book "Player's Option: Combat & Tactics" helps tremendously in the PAIN department, especially if you up the severity of critical hits by 1 category (the justification being that in the existing system, you can't even sever a human head with a longsword, though I'm fairly certain this was possible in real life), and nix saving throws against critical hits entirely, since it's always possible to role "no unusual effect". Then, most battles actually feel like a life and death struggle, and the PCs can suffer debilitating injuries from foes they don't expect to be able to hurt them. Of course, they can also inflict these injuries on their foes.
Damn, I watched the first part about pain... This is... really true. And really painfully true. I hope it will help me detached myself from a script to run a session. I have trouble writing a narrative like thick enough to be confident enough to go with it. Any video from this Great Game Master on this topic, guys?
In the current campain my players are in, the final boss is a pain machine. The normal enemies are really weak (intentional, the final boss is breaking free of their confinement and their influence is still spreading, so the enemies aren't at full potential yet). If they take too long prepping, damage values will start going up. (I threw them into the setting of Hollow Knight, post Ending 1. They showed up just as the infection started to re-emerge)
I have only done half of a one..twoshot as a dm, so as a new gm this was an incredibly useful video. Thanks guy; this is getting me motivated to dm more so I can try out this advice.
The Monster Manual is a manual for rule lawyers, and a guide for storytellers. I don’t tell them the die I roll, I just tell them the kind of damage and how much. And I always lead with “this is dnd, nothing is what it seems when comes to monsters, be wary”. If they ask why, I just say “because my world is an Onion it has layers”
I've found that just arbitrarily increasing your damage will make players annoyed and they'll start to recognize the pattern. I would avoid messing with the mechanics too much and instead mess with the situation. Increased amount of enemies, enemies with more powerful weapons/spells, and unique environments to make things more challenging are way better options than just arbitrarily doubling damage when you want to make your players scared.
Mind you he did say you should give narrative explanations as to why these enemies are causing more havoc than usual. I think the problem with adding too many enemies is that you have to roll their turns, which takes away PC turns and can be boring; Unless they have tools exclusive for crowd control which will quickly deal with it, that's even less fun than adjusting this sort of stuff on the fly to compensate. And yeah about the weapons part, since most games do not reveal NPC equipment/stats until players inspect for it so you can definitely sneak some new stuff into their arsenal mid combat that would create a problem, in the event they are just murder boning everything.
In my games I really like high-pain approach with occasional extreme pain approach. My worlds are brutal, where only the tough will leave. Lone farmer encountered? Well, if he is alone he needs to have something that enables him to stay alone and safe. Maybe he is not a farmer, maybe he is something else or has something up his sleeve. Small tavern on the outskirts of nowhere, with friendly bartender? Well guess what - you are not the only ones that though of robbing and killing him, he defended against much, much worse. There are still easy encounters, but there is always potential for the things to go in a bad direction. Loved the video, thanks Guy.
I did something similar in my last session. The players had plundered an old burial mound for magical items. A centaur they had met previously was waiting for them outside, quite upset that they were grave robbing. He told them they were to hunt with him that night of they were more than petty thieves. The party agreed and followed him into the Neverwinter Wood where they relaxed for a while and he gave them this "tea". Well the tea was actually ayahuasca-like in nature. They were tripped and I asked them to make a group tracking (survival) check against the stealth roll of a giant elk. With each failure they had to make a Con save or take a point of exhaustion. Once they reached level 2 exhaustion only half of the party could make the tracking check. It was intense and they managed to find the giant elk and kill it before it could flee. Had they failed, they would have woken up without the magic items in the middle of a spooky forest. It got intense, especially with 2 of the players suffering a bad trip (failed sanity check)
In my opinion , the only time is acceptable to cheat as a DM is when you are correcting your own oversights. That might include encounters that are too difficult or too easy. But it should never include punishing a player for playing well. Or saving a player for playing poorly. It can be tempting to try and fill every little lull with a hint or an out. But you should most often resist that. Allow your players to become better players. Allow them to rise to occasions, rather than lowering occasions to them... Unless, as I said, it was your fault to begin with.
Double the damage in Dark Heresy/Deathwatch... oh boi.... Seriously though while I know I've done this subconsciously in my sessions I never really categorized or thought about them in this way. definitely going to be keeping this in mind for futures sessions!
The bug bear watching his comrade fall, as a bloody pile of flesh, enrages. Rushing over and picking up the mace swinging at you with both hands. 21 and a 16 to hit.
Thanks for all the great tips I've watched a bunch of ur videos for some time now I have been the a dm who has been forced into the role due to the lose of our past two dms moving away , so anything to help enrich the game play for tips is great. I Really have started to like the role as dm and writing the adventures
Skeleton Knights do only 2d8 damage. Well... I'll add multi-attack... or on top of that of each attack even 1d6 necrotic damage. Meaning 4d8 bludgening+2d6 necrotic per round...per Skeleton.... at lvl 3-4 Inside, or near their stronghold, enemies get improved critical hit range. Instead of 20 it now occurs on 19....or even 18 at later levels. And the warlord orc/chieftain gets a bonus action to give his allies nearby increased chance to gain moral. Meaning adv. to save against Wisdom effects or something to become more resilient vs the PC's. The goblins were quite the fight at lvl 2. At lvl 7 they went up some mountains. moving through a forest that had some really feral/fey stuff going on. Meaning tougher feral goblins riding on giant spiders attacking the PC's. And yet my players keep asking for more pain, even after they lost 2 PC's along the way hehe :O
Pain is normal for my games. Example 1, cocky bandits figure they can punch the PCs. They find it doesn't work. So, some of them pull out a concealed weapon they were carrying. Others, they run off to set up ambushes and traps. Those with weapons do more damage, those ready to ambush are creating a favorable situation where they can trip, disarm, or similar. Example 2, a demon was too powerful for one of them. Demon is characterized by a love of torment. Instead of outright killing the player, the demon decides to toy with the player. Of course, the player got lucky and outwitted the demon to escape. Though, the demon grew arrogant in his game of torture, so it became easier to outsmart. A good way to reduce pain, imho. As for emotion, I don't worry. Simply put, my players know I keep track of there reputation. Not just "you are perceived as good..." Sort of thing. As a matter of fact next game I'm going to have an NPC go to them due to reputation. Long story short, PCs sword is broken and had bad luck finding someone to fix it. Said PC has a holy sword, but still wants the other sword fixed. Basically a claymore. As to why the NPC will help, sewer monster about to eat a dog, PC risks life saving the dog, now the sword will be fixed as a thank you. All due to reputation, which in turn helps a lot with the emotional element of roleplay. Although I do love this video, I will disagree with one thing. The open field. Problems can occur fighting in an open field. Nearby bandits may overhear the commotion and become opportunistic. Hungry predators, even diseased rats, may be looking for an easy meal. A lone mage could be practicing dark arts in secret and decide the combatants will make good spell practice. Bad news if that mage is sneaking along the outside, setting up a deadly ritual. The weather may change into a difficult storm. I honestly only ever did the weather change, with a roll to change per minute of combat. Honestly, an open field will turn into an intense battle ground if there's strong winds and muddied ground effecting the flow of combat. Don't expect an open field to be simple, as the players don't know what is going on outside that field. It's also bad luck if the supposed empty field has rings of mushrooms that no one noticed. I doubt most fairies would take kindly to combat so close.
Speaking of goblins. We're doing a Starfinder campaign, and our most recent major battle was with space goblins. Holy crap, it was fun, but hard. My drow has the least amount of hp of our group, but he was right in the thick of the battle. But. It wasn't our normal GM playing the goblins, it was her brother (Who happens to be my boyfriend lol!) and oh it was so much fun. He used 3 of the highest level serums to keep healing himself, covered in goblin slime and blood, his own blood, bits of acid pockmarked his armour, everything! But now, we're going on to a new story with our same characters--lower level armour, no serums, and lower level weapons. Not only that, but it's Signal of Screams--a horror campaign. I'm scared witless lol!
As much as I love Guy, that grammatical slip was so strong that I had to rewind and listen with my eyes covered to hear what he was telling us. Next week at GrammarNaziAnonymous-"Hi! I'm Todliche, and I have a problem"
A great idea for increasing pressure is the Time Pool (AKA the Tension Pool). It's literally a bowl full of dice in the middle of the table that the players can see growing as in-game time passes. Anything the party does that chews up time (searching every inch of a room, tapping every flagstone with a 10-foot pole, taking rests etc.) adds to the pile. The more dangerous the situation, the smaller the die. Once there are six dice in that bowl, the next time the players do something that eats up time causes all the dice to be rolled. If any die comes up a 1, a Bad Thing happens. Probably a random encounter, but it's not limited to that. EDIT: As regards the "upping the pain" thing, that's complete bullshit. What would you say if a _player_ just decided their longsword did 2d8 damage? You'd call it cheating and you'd be right. If you screwed up and the encounter wasn't as challenging as you thought it would be, just let it slide and analyse what went "wrong" between sessions. By all means, redesign encounters if you decide they're too easy, but don't buff NPCs _during_ encounters. It's cheating.
Sometimes, you do need to re-do encounters mid fight. If you misjudged the power of them, or forgot the PC's had a specific item. Or you just wanted it to be a more badass encounter. Gm's need to cheat from time to time. You run the entire world, but you don't always have time to manage things as well as a real god could. You misjudge things. If they're smashing a fight you thought would be really hard, change things up. My party were fighting this guy that was a celestial guardian of portals in the world. Meant to be badass enough to stop anything trying to get in. They were smashing it down to single digit HP within 2 rounds. So, when it went down, i added something, a thing I'd seen earlier for Celestial Warlocks. Blast of radiant light, and it gets back up at 1/2 Hp, with an aura causing blindness (save to resist it). That 1 change really made the encounter so much better, instead of just smashing him down then opening the door, they were suprirised when he stood back up and did some damage. I've also done it the other way. A fight that i thought would be fairly easy, they start getting wrecked themselves. If a creaturte fired a disintegrate, and rolled max damage, but you didn't intend to kill a PC today (i personally only like killing them when it has some narrative weight or they did something really dumb), just bump down that damage to just 1 or 2 shy of killing them. They have 78 health, you did 80 damage. React as you normally would, but then tell them '77 damage. So fucking close' Being the GM is about keeping things entertaining and engaging. If a fight that was meant to be challenging is a cakewalk, mix it up. I'd say don't just double the damage, add something interesting to it. Maybe the guy actually had a bit of magic, or a scroll, and summons in some help or does a fireball to do some damage to the group. If you do it right, the PC's will never know that you didn't plan it that way from the start.
@@Canadian_Zac So why design encounters at all? I mean, if you aren't going to let the PCs win until you say so, why do your monsters have HP and AC and Attack Bonuses and Saving Throws? This is an honest question that _has_ an answer.
@@nickwilliams8302 They can win at any point. But, If i intended for it to be a bit harder, I'll quickly modify it to make the fight better. Doesn't happen too often. But if you make the BBEG, build them up as a huge fight, then they walk in and just curbstomp them into the floor, then everything will feel anti-climatic. If you build something up as a good fight, you need to make it a good fight. And they have HP, Ac, and the like because I'm not writing a book. I'm running a game. most encounters, if they smash something i thought would be harder, I'll just go with the dice. But if the fight is going stupidly easy/hard the I'll modify it to work better. If i was an actual god (which is essentially what the GM is in a D&D world) then I'd have been able to perfectly balance everything to make it tough/easy/whatever difficulty I'd intended. But I'm not. You mess up sometimes and make things too weak, so need to change it on the fly. Your job as the GM is to make things fun. If things stop being fun because you miscalculated something, you change the calculous on the fly to make it fun again.
I've been doing this in my current game, the players have been fighting blood mages the mages use con as their spell casting stat. This also let's them use hit dice to up cast spells instead of using stronger spell slots. Now they are planning ways to fight the blood mages to catch them off guard before they can spend hit dice and power themselves up. Now because they changed tatics and instead of openly fighting the cult they are trying to sabotage their resources, the bbeg has started to screw with the party showing them that this competition is a contact sport screw with my plan I screw with yours.
It might do GMs some good to try running a Powered by the Apocalypse game a few times. That system virtually forces you to think in terms of the 3 P's. PbtA is unique in terms of WHEN you are able to do so, but once you are in that mindset, adapting it to your preferred game shouldn't be too much of a problem.
You remind me of my old GM who I loved playing my Dragonborn sorcerer with 🤣 even when everyone else was talking and getting along I knew he had something up his sleeve and Yrel(PC) always stayed focused because of that. Lol
Why? If the players are having little issues with the encounter currently and for some reason or other the damage increases, giving out more rewards might lead to the same thing happening more frequently which reduces the effect of this particular device. While I generally agree that bigger problems should have bigger rewards, I don't think there should be some direct mathematical connection between those two. If you feel like doubling the rewards is the correct move for the narrative you want to tell, do so, but having this as a general rule would hinder narrative freedom and might even cause more problems down the line. Just as there is nothing keeping you from making changes on the fly, there is nothing forcing you to give these specific rewards for the situation. As the GM you are on top of things and you should give rewards that fit the needs of the story and yourself over rewards following some rigid rules.
IMO the reward should stay the same but if the party is clever enough they may try to negotiate a bonus for non-typical type of a task afterwards (a mid-tier persuasion/haggle roll, say DC 15 provided they carry proof of the trouble - either a weapon that was painful, a head of unsuspected difficult monster or simply do it mechanically if any of the party has fallen unconscious they'd probably have visible damage on their bodies). Of course not a double reward but rather a 20-30% extra on top of the agreed reward (or a useful item like a potion, amulet, rare magic component etc).
I agree 100%. I've always felt that any intelligent race (be they considered monsters or otherwise) should have the ability to (in D&D terms) go up in levels and thus be more powerful. Why not have level 25 orcs if you need them. Even in Tolkien, there were the Uruk Hai -- essentially high-level orcs.
One thing I did during one of my earlier sessions I DM’d was have my party go in a rescue mission for a merchant. They find the caravan and one survivor who informed them of gnolls. The party finds the trail of a second wagon, which led them to a small encounter with bandits who traded their lives for information. They find the bandit hideout, run into a losing scenario, only to find that a small pack of four gnolls entered the fight. Knowing that gnolls are all about violence, the party convinced the bandits to help. Gnolls mop up most of the bandits pretty good, wizard goes down, cleric and last two bandits take out the final gnoll. The party then successfully manages to convince the bandit leader they will pay a ten gold ransom (instead of the 1000) for the merchant and make off with the second wagon. That was just a really good persuasion nat20 roll vs the bandit’s 10.
If you want a really good random encounter table, I'd recomend looking at Low Fantasy Gaming. Rulebook is free to download on their site. Has combat encounters, environmental effects, and some talking stuff. Some are outlines of things that you can work off of. Half of the story i have going on in a Low Fantasy Gaming gaming I'm running has been made off the cuff from inspiration from the things.
A lot of times what I like to do to create pressure is make it so that it's unclear exactly what the stakes are or how much time they have. For example, lets say they went off on a tangent for a while, and when they come back the people they were fighting against have advanced in their objectives in some way, creating havoc that they now have to deal with. By providing consequences for both their actions and their inactions, the PCs will naturally feel pressure to deal with threats as quickly as they can because they literally don't know what the consequences will be for allowing them to run unopposed (although obviously they should have something of an idea, just not the full picture).
Seems like the perfect place to mention a homebrewed ability for undead that I came up with (original idea is the T'lan Imass from Steven Erikson's Malazan series, editing by /r/Rhymes_in_couplet) Basically the idea is to make undead that can at will turn themselves into a cloud of dust and back, even doing so in combat: (This is written for compatibility with 5th edition, but can be adjusted appropriately. Actions: --Dust Cloud: As an action the creature can enter its dust form, becoming an amorphous cloud of dust. While in this form its speed is halved and it has resistance to all damage except radiant, as well as immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. --Reform (Dust Form Only): The creature reverts to it's true form. --Dust Strike (Dust form only): The creature uses its action to return to it's true form and make a single melee attack against an enemy within 5' of where it reformed. This attack has advantage. If the target has a way to detect you without seeing, or has truesight, you do not gain the advantage given by this feature. Reactions: --Collapse: After taking damage the creature may use its reaction to enter its dust form as if it had used the dust cloud action. The originals in the book are more powerful in that they can if they're quick enough, dodge attacks with Collapse and their dust form is basically immune to anything that doesn't completely futz with the magic that makes them work...which isn't much...or immersion in enough water that they drift so far apart that they can't reform (like, say, an ocean), but that's a little too punishing for where I want to use them.
@@The_Custos My only experience with 2nd edition vampires are Bhodi and her clan in Baldur's Gate 2 - I'm very late to the D&D world proper. I think those ones mainly used it to retreat to their coffins once defeated? Here, I'm thinking more of using it offensive - striking hard and then dissolving into dust as the enemy counters. As I said, the originals are super OP about it, but that works in a book where they're largely a plot device; in a game, you need to consider balance.
Go to 4:00 to skip the Kickstarter pitch. Maybe you could create 2 versions of this video? One with the pitch and then another without the pitch to put up after the Kickstarter is over?
Great vid as always. Could you do a video on exploration?? I've got the NPC interaction and combat down, but my exploration feels very bland. You go here, you do that, make a roll blah blah blah
Double the damage - doesn't work in stuff like shaowrun where you have a small amount of "HP" and higher damage-counts. Aside from that guns have roughly the same impact no matter who shoots them, going from 7 to 14 damage would put a pistol in the damage-range of sniperrifles. For that reason, I advise making the combat more complicated. Put civilans in there who shall not get shot, make the enemies more competent than they seem. Suprise mage, put one in. Adhere more to the "Problems" part in shadowrun.
Well, when i felt that the party dispatched an underscaled miniboss too easily, i sent a killteam after them with a sorcerer who can divine their location at any time. One died (with the possibility of ressurection) and the rest had to flee. But when the sorcerer cornered a lone PC, his magicks backfired on him and the rest of the kill team, so in the fight the PC barely survived, and the whole party could recover.
I had to do this for a party of level 2's. They had alerted the cavern to their presence and were dropped a couple of times mid combat. I ended up making the Bugbear Chieftain be a sadistic bastard that would grapple the party and toss them into a fire bit to watch them crawl out.
Hey Guy, love the video here and totally agree! That being said, how would you (or anyone) deal with players who complain about that pain and pressure? The GM is a new GM in this game, and the player was complaining that his ace hacking attack he had spent optimising didn't work. Thing is, it's to be expected (imo) that in a game where the player can stack bonuses, the enemy can too, and throughout the campaign it has been gradually & consistently shown that the enemy is also very good in hacking and therefore very good in defending against hacking attacks. Now, it's not that the hacker player is now useless, because he did provide a really great support to the tank so that the tank won't be vulnerable to the enemy's hacking attacks either. And the GM revealed that he could hack attack the minions that didn't have the same hacking defences. Granted the player didn't know this, and he was focused so much on the main enemy. I guess my question is, how to prevent this kind of thing from happening, where putting problems made the player thinks that the enemy is too powerful and that the game has become unfun for them? EDIT: Thing is, rest of the party seems cool with that amount of pain, so simply just lowering it would be unfun imo, esp since those enemies are weak to my build... I was just separated from the party at the time so I couldn't really help.
@@vyncentelwyn4304 Thank you for this! Gonna say to the DM that *if* he complains next time to make sure to have encounters where he's the MVP lol. He's done it twice now, once was alright maybe he had a bad day, twice started to look like a pattern. It's a bit weird though, because I've been playing with him a few times, and he's in the same big group that usually play D&D together, and he didn't seem to be a powergamer, really. But most of those games has been 5e low-level sessions, and this is the first time I'm seeing him act this way in a more crunchy, minmax-able game...
Find us at GenCon this weeked, for more details check here: www.greatgamemaster.com/dm/event/2019/great-gm-at-gencon-2019/
People providing palatable parables promoting positive personable participating. Is the best I can do with p.
Parables. This was the word you were looking for
"We defeated the masked bandits easily...killed them all. Unfortunately, one of them turned out to be the lost princess we were looking for."
Quest for Glory?
That's a real "Weekend at Bernie's" moment for the PC's!
"There she is, my liege, in the courtyard, waving!"
(Be a funny side quest.)
*Ranger with favoured enemy humans feels bad at being so good at his job.*
Yeah... When HIS Lordship asked us what we had to say for ourselves... I stepped up, ("acting leader of the party for the day"...) and as I was, I saluted, and responded, "WITH all due respect, your Lordship, Oopsie-doodle."
It's not to say that went well or down-hill, per say... a couple years hard labor isn't the worst that could've come about... and at least, I was (not being the handsomest face of the party) the face of the party... ish. ;o)
How to be a great Game Master: "double the damage just double it, doesn't matter which system"
Cthulhu Keeper: "I'm gonna end this whole parties career"
Too true. XD
This is a little out of context. If the party has no problems you should double it, no matter what. A Cthulhu Party that runs through encounters without any hessitation - yeah double it. You did something wrong.
@@davekachel
This was a joke 😒
@@_Woody_ yes I know that its a joke and yes I smiled when I read it but it confused me that its used out of any boundaries.
Its a joke on something that never existed.
@@davekachel
I bet you are the popular one...are you now.
Just relax mate, in my head you sound like the "Oh but goblins do only 1d6 damage" impression from the video...😂
No offense Sheldon Cooper😉
That is the best method for dealing with a rules lawyer I've ever heard
Poison gas using advanced hydras really humbled me.
It really doesn't. Any RL worth his salt knows you're fudging, and from there, is quite likely to push back, or go the other direction, calling out the fact that you're fudging. All fudging is robbing the party of accomplishment. You want to deal with a Rules Lawyer? Learn the rules, and apply them. Start ramping up the intelligence Quotient of your villains, tailor your encounters better, and give the PCs an actual reason TO CARE about the NPCs, not punishing them constantly for not "playing your way".
We will good thing the RLs I have dealt with are scrubs who only read the phb and just want the attention that comes with feeling superior.
Timestamp?
@@dragonstryk7280 The rules are not rules. They are, as stated in the bottom of many of the books, suggestions. They offer a structure, and give a skeleton to add flesh to, but that's it. Any thing that is changed, edited, disallowed, created, all are fair as well, so changing Acs, or damage types, or making your own creatures, are all very fair, just as long as it has lore reasons. "'These lizardmen have bred for centuries in volcanic areas, so of course their scales have hardened and they've bred a resistance to fire! How marvelous!' the old wizard marveled to himself" A perfectly valid reason to change Ac, damage resistances, coloration, etc, and best of all, keeps the players learning about the world that's been created.
"that old woman is going to die...in like 5 years of old age" lmao! love it
Talking about the low level bandits attacking the high level party reminds me of Skyrim.. "Hey, you see that guy that just killed a dragon and devoured its soul? Lets mug 'em!"
"He's getting tired!! I can tell by how fast he's ripping off its bones and jumping around at random."
Viva
Great tips! The other one I use is flexible HP. If the combat needs to be extended I add HP to the monsters - if the combat becomes tedious I reduce HP. This can be done at any time during the fight to help pacing.
This is something I love about the D&D communities, lots of cool support, resource sharing and all round encouragement.
I "increased the pain" two sessions of go....the party was rescuing kidnapped kids from a bandits swamp camp....I had berserkers and lizard folks in there ...my characters were only lvl 3 at the time. it was fun session...afterwards though one of the players emails me "you know there's a CR guid in the DMG to help you manage encounter difficulty" (he was dead serious). I had to spell it out to him that the difficulty of the camp was on purpose.
My favorite phrase is to sarcastically respond
"But did you die?!"
I hate backseat GMing like that, "Uhh wolves only have 14 AC so actually I should've hit" They have whatever AC I say they have lol
@@cloak5857 I agree, though it can be difficult when a GM completely flips a stat block over. My party encountered an ooze, which can melt our armor, weapons, damaged us when we hit it, etc. Normal ooze stuff. But it had hundreds of hit points, difficult enough... And 27 touch AC (which should be lower than normal AC). There was no descriptive or in-universe reason to have 27AC... But it did
@@cloak5857 I did one encounter and increased AC of several NPCs by 1, just to up the encounter difficulty, since I had them level and then realized I'd have to adjust the coming encounter... anyway, a metagamer in the group rolled and said "Ha, a hit" and rolled damage. Then I narrated how he missed and ended up smashing part of object they wanted to get with that damage roll.
Having a legitimately deadly encounter every so often is fine, but at the same point, if it hits the point where it's just a slog, or it comes out of left field, or doesn't feel earned, then it just feels like they're being punished, and guess what? They're right to feel that way. You said it, "Bandit Camp", not "Lizardfolk and Berserkers" camp.
The player you mentioned? They WEREN'T having fun, they were feeling punished for following your adventure hook. If it had been a fun session all around, that email wouldn't have happened.
Interupt their rests in 5e
You monster lol
Short rests don't work anymore because you're all cursed by bbeg
One of my GM's did something like this. We failed our checks, and didn't realize we had set up camp over a massive cavern system. The ground gave way under us and we fell nearly 100ft (we were level 11) and as we were standing up we were attacked by giant scorpions.
@@reginarainer9740 I like this, I really do. Collapsing cave system coming.
@@reginarainer9740 Wild Cunning looking pretty good now isn't it??
Haha, on the video the Kickstarter is at $40k. I watched just 12 hours after you uploaded this, clicked the link, and it's on $100k! That's awesome, signed up already.
In Russia DMs play always like this. By default. Double the pain. Maximize the pressure. Make NPCs unignorable.
In mother russia characters play you
@@dj_vanx In mother Russia, Dungeon delves YOU.
ROTFL. Geomancer: Worst Inn Ever. No wake up call. Cold coffee, ran out of cream. Don’t get me started on the thread count of those sheets. I think this calls for more than a bad review. Oh my, a party about to check in? Better to be crushed in the closing crevasse than to be subjected to such poor quality soaps and linens!
I use these little tricks during my games each week and I have to say that they make a world of difference. Very well put, Guy, couldn't have described them better if I had tried.
Guy, thank you for this awesome content, my first campaign is reaching its tenth session tomorrow, and you have helped so much, thanks for providing theese tips for all the newbies DM all around the world. Huge shout out from Brazil!!
I swear every video I watch from this channel gives me another tool in my toolbox.
Well, that is the point.
Yes. Me too. Allthough, it seems I've lost a few screws over the time.
Ah - doesn't matter. Let's follow that creepy guy in the woods to hear, what secret he has to share.
Another tool in my toolbox that I'll never get to use cause I don't have time for D&D and neither do my friends
@@magiv4205 are you not in control of your life? Take the time...
@@metallkopf988 i am in control of my life and that scares me lol. Given the choice between learning for 4 upcoming exams and two dissertations and playing DnD, which one do you think I'd choose?
A good GM like a good torturer should exactly know what his -victims- err players can endure. Then don't go only to 50% - go to 70%. On occasions go to 95% and sometimes make it 105% and pray they survive :D
*Ah. Are you coming down into the pit? Wesley's got his strength back. I'm starting him on the machine tonight.*
A nice way to increase/reduce any of the P's, which many good GM's know, is actively using the PC's classes and races in encounters.
Examples:
Pain: the orc warchief toys with the party (low pain, halved damage) until the elf's hood falls off and the orc hates elves so he fights to kill now (pain up, double damage). Or the hooded one was a half-orc (or even an orc if allowed by the GM) and now the warchief is more eager to maybe even negotiate (pain down).
Problem: easier to use in Warhammer or Cthulhu with all the careers but possible in D&D as well with the focus on PC's background choice. Need to find a secret passage known only to thieves and beggars of the city and the law enforcement type (guard in WH, police officer in Cthulhu) decides to ask around. Problem just went massively up due to "no talking with cops" attitude. Or you use the rogue-type character and lower it just for the class choice (to the point of even discarding the persuasion roll whatsoever).
Pressure: There is a single candle lighting the underground tunnel, on the verge of burning out and you have no darkivision classes in the party (up) or you are all dwarves and you don't really care (reduced to nothing).Or you have two darkvision characters and two humans. The pressure is still there but not focused of the impossibility of the task in darkness but raised difficulty as the darkvision PC's will need to assist their friends on top of the actual task when the light goes out (mid-tier pressure).
It's a subtle (or simetimes not that subtle but still) way of GM rewarding a balanced and diverse party or slightly punishing a not that optimised team in other ways than standard combat mechanics.
Sold. 1st rule of Matt Colville DMing, STEAL EVERYTHING!
The entire time you were giving the example with the stairs and the ogres, I was thinking of that scene in Lord of the Rings where the Fellowship is running from the Balrog and the stairs are collapsing.
These are essential tools for encounter design! My ol' buddy Hankrin Fernail over at Runehammer has a similar video on the 3Ds (instead of Ps, I guess). Watching both of your perspectives on this absolutely critical aspect of Dungeon Mastering is truly a blessing. I think it is also telling about the style of game you run how you always bring it back to role playing encounters and NPCs, not just combat. Well done!
I need some "Double the Damage" merch
I can't tell you how helpful this video has already been and I've just completed the first session. My characters were all running from one thing or another, not caring or taking much time worry about those around them. My initial story involved some dark necromantic nonsense but I was worried the players would just move on and not feel drawn to it. So I increased the pain and had the necromancer use children for his dark works and it made the players care and, of course, their individual characters as well. One of the most important lessons from your videos, thank you so much! A great tool to drive the story and tell a great tale at the same time.
So I’ve watched countless videos on TH-cam from many different creators to inspire creativity in my game. Something about the way you phrase things, concise with just enough examples to get the wheels turning, made my mind take off like a rocket. Thank you!
Dropped a dollar into the kickstarter because of this video, I know its not much but I'm broke inbetween jobs. This kickstarter looks to be one of the most useful books to buy for dnd as extra material
This sound like everything I feel I've been missing in my encounters, always find it so hard to make them interesting and this have given me so many ideas
As you said, increase the pain but also give narrative explanations. I'd be that whiny player whining about the goblins dealing twice their damage if the GM only describes them as being goblins and nothing more.
Nothing worse as a player than seeing ten creatures you know to be weak just for the GM to pull the rug from under your feet by saying "Ah-ha! These goblins are actually secretly trained for war by elites! Take 4d8 piercing damage. Aren't you feeling threatened :^)"
Yeah, I.... never actually feel threatend by stuff like that. I just feel the biggest internal eyeroll, and ratchet down my expectations for the campaign, cause I know I'm not going to get to feel any actual accomplishment anymore, I'm just helping the GM work out his unfinished manuscript.
@@dragonstryk7280 Your comments are all so cynical xD You've really had a bad run in with some dm's, have you tried dming yourself, maybe see if that fixes it?
@@daileygaming9488 I do DM, and I've never pulled this crap. Like, let's take the goblin example used in the OP.
That's not a threat. That's a DM tacking on a bunch of extra damage because they fundamentally misunderstand what makes a proper challenge.
The AH-HA approach is just unsatisfying, because it's clear to the players that you're just making shit up, and that they can never ACTUALLY get to be truly powerful, because the world levels up with them.
Also, where can I get this "Training by elites" that's gonna let me quadruple my base damage or more. Oh wait, they don't exist, cause it's just some made up bullshit so that you can increase their damage, without the players potentially getting access to a weapon or magic item that does that kind of damage.
@@dragonstryk7280 If you want to keep them fighting, keep them on the same characters, or they want to keep playing those characters, allowing them to be "truly powerful" will inevitably become boring. But always fighting for your life, feeling like there's a chance to fail, means the game always feels fresh. And changing monsters and parts of their lore and description for areas allows every encounter to feel more interesting. You ever fought a venomous radwolf? Neither had i, then my dm made it, crossed a wolf with a spider, then used the radiation rules of gamma world to spice it up. Fighting that was awesome, we were 16th level, yet we struggled to keep up with it, it's abilities forced us to rethink our "slash and make cash" approach, we started trapping, baiting, and playing better each time we encountered something tougher. Hell, there was a time where we fought harpies that had been made bigger, and looked meaner, thing hit hard, and targeted specific members of our party with psionic attacks, then on we made strategies to deal with psionicists, acquired magic items, etc. Each time the "pain and problems" increased we developed as players, and my players developed as well in my own homebrew games. So changing these creatures, redescribing them, or even redesigning them, makes for a whole new set of adventures. Increasing the damage and stuff helps, but redesigning them, new abilities, strengths, and weaknesses is a more fun way to go. I also disagreed with the flat "double the damage" approach, but changing it to "Double the damage, and here's why" is very interesting and fun.
@@daileygaming9488 Actually, no, it doesnt. You're wrong on both points. Getting to FEEL really powerful can be fun, and knowing that every single thing in the world levels up with you means the levels are meaningless. It's not simply one way or another.
I mean, for what you're saying to be correct, every martial arts movie on the earth would have to be boring, as well as almost every action movie, fantasy movie, a whole mess of sci-fi, the list goes on. Except they don't.
What if there's a relatively powerful beast attacking during a combat encounter? Something stealthing around the tall grass and picking off ally and enemy alike.
Something that's several levels above the party that can one-shot the bandits and the squishier PCs.
As a new GM, I find that this is your most helpful video yet! Thanks for the great advice!
Great vid, Guy. Thanks.
FYI - don't know if you can edit your vids, but the "to's" should be "too's" on your bulleted lists.
I was innately doing this in my latest campaign. I hadn’t DMed since 2008 and my old group kept asking me to take them on another homebrew adventure.
I spent an ungodly amount of money (happily) and prepared to take them into a 5e fantasy.
Every encounter began to be rated on the cusp of hard and deadly due to how powerful their group teamwork has become. And then I started making some of the monsters hit twice as hard and even began to decide how much HP they had on the fly.
Now the group is convinced their decisions save their life and that on several occasions a total party wipe was all but inevitable...until so and so did such and such...or until that one monster missed a killing blow...or whatever it may be.
They have no idea I’m behind the screen taking them to the cusp of success and failure and teetering them off the edge by design.
However, I also feel I simply cannot wipe them or permakill-maim their corpses when I’m fudging the rules in this direction. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if my nightmare mode homebrew shenanigans caused permanent severe harm to the group.
So, although they feel that they are not going to make it, they are actually immortal and guaranteed success in this environment. Bloody, scary, unbelievable success...but guaranteed nonetheless.
So I have decided to keep some encounters vanilla and let the rules and the dice tell the story. I tweak them to be the same difficulty as my flex encounters to the best of my ability but when half the party is unconscious on the ground, even I don’t know if they are going to make it.
Does that sound like acceptable GM behavior to you?
Thanks for your great content :-)
I'm DM'ing my first 4e campaign and your videos are simply awesome!! thanks!
"You are not there to kill the party..."
Me, standing upon a mountain of corpses from past PC's: "oh... well..."
As a new DM that recently found this channel and is starting his first campaign in a week this video couldnt have been better timed. Thanks!
I've often given my intelligent races PC classes, feats, or even a random legendary action to spice things up. Also hybrid monsters are great fun: A pack of feral troglodytes chasing you through the underdark? Perhaps... But these ones just happen to be cultists of Kyuss, The worm that walks, and are far more dangerous
A bunch of stupid bandits ambushing a powerful party doesn't have to reveal a powerful boss in the end to increase the pain. They can just get slaughtered easily by the PCs - so easily in fact, that the carnage they create might make some of the players stop and think of their power and the use of annihilating a group of people that just wanted their money. It's a more RP approach than a battling one, but powerdrunk murderhobos can go down a dark path and only realise when it's too late and some REAL pain comes after them.
Or have the bandits beg for mercy. See how the party handles that.
Saw one where the DM had a group of murder hobos and at the very end for the last boss, they found out THEY were the bad guys all along slaughtering what the Big Bad Necromancer had been using to save everyone (:
@@rynp9853 yes an it was one of the worst GM stories I’ve heard everyone but the GM wanted one thing and the GM acts like a big jerk because oh I’m the GM so you have to do what I want and like what I like. That story is the Poster story for that one player as GM.
Reminds me of KoDT lol
Guy, I keep coming back to this video and reviewing the material to master it. Last D&D session, my party was begging for a short rest. I think I finally got it right. Thank you for your contribution to the TTRPG community.
Me: changes young dragon to adult dragon just to bring the pain
Best dnd videos ever 😂 both for learning and enjoying unless its puffin. But that stuff is just madly funny now and again.
I came over from the Pewdiepie Minecraft Let's Play. I paused that. Would do it again in a heartbeat.
This is probably the only channel that i drop everything else for as soon as i see a notification.
You clearly made the right decision. In fact, you should never go back. Watch a good Minecraft TH-camr instead.
@@emc246 he's not good at the game, but he's a funny guy. It's fun to see him struggle.
The gygax quote about survivability really resonated with how I play my games
Ah so you're why our DM thought endless waves 65HP Hobgoblins was a good idea.
This video basically saved my campaign! I knew something was off, but couldn´t put my fingers on it and this really helped (my players will thank you!)
Making good use of the 2e book "Player's Option: Combat & Tactics" helps tremendously in the PAIN department, especially if you up the severity of critical hits by 1 category (the justification being that in the existing system, you can't even sever a human head with a longsword, though I'm fairly certain this was possible in real life), and nix saving throws against critical hits entirely, since it's always possible to role "no unusual effect". Then, most battles actually feel like a life and death struggle, and the PCs can suffer debilitating injuries from foes they don't expect to be able to hurt them. Of course, they can also inflict these injuries on their foes.
Video starts at 3:42
Damn, I watched the first part about pain... This is... really true. And really painfully true. I hope it will help me detached myself from a script to run a session. I have trouble writing a narrative like thick enough to be confident enough to go with it.
Any video from this Great Game Master on this topic, guys?
Thank you. This must be one of the most helpfull video's on youtube on how upgrade your gm skills
In the current campain my players are in, the final boss is a pain machine. The normal enemies are really weak (intentional, the final boss is breaking free of their confinement and their influence is still spreading, so the enemies aren't at full potential yet). If they take too long prepping, damage values will start going up.
(I threw them into the setting of Hollow Knight, post Ending 1. They showed up just as the infection started to re-emerge)
MiningwithPudding that sounds fun. Where do I join the bug army haha
@@unclevivid9028 Well, first you need to embrace the LAUMP...
Yet another wonderful video from a great GM. Also, I need more sketchy back alley Guy in my life
I have only done half of a one..twoshot as a dm, so as a new gm this was an incredibly useful video. Thanks guy; this is getting me motivated to dm more so I can try out this advice.
I LOVE your work thanks for everything you do.
But!
It’s ‘PC’s too strong’ not ‘to’
Smack your editor.
The Monster Manual is a manual for rule lawyers, and a guide for storytellers. I don’t tell them the die I roll, I just tell them the kind of damage and how much. And I always lead with “this is dnd, nothing is what it seems when comes to monsters, be wary”. If they ask why, I just say “because my world is an Onion it has layers”
I've found that just arbitrarily increasing your damage will make players annoyed and they'll start to recognize the pattern. I would avoid messing with the mechanics too much and instead mess with the situation. Increased amount of enemies, enemies with more powerful weapons/spells, and unique environments to make things more challenging are way better options than just arbitrarily doubling damage when you want to make your players scared.
Mind you he did say you should give narrative explanations as to why these enemies are causing more havoc than usual. I think the problem with adding too many enemies is that you have to roll their turns, which takes away PC turns and can be boring; Unless they have tools exclusive for crowd control which will quickly deal with it, that's even less fun than adjusting this sort of stuff on the fly to compensate. And yeah about the weapons part, since most games do not reveal NPC equipment/stats until players inspect for it so you can definitely sneak some new stuff into their arsenal mid combat that would create a problem, in the event they are just murder boning everything.
In my games I really like high-pain approach with occasional extreme pain approach. My worlds are brutal, where only the tough will leave. Lone farmer encountered? Well, if he is alone he needs to have something that enables him to stay alone and safe. Maybe he is not a farmer, maybe he is something else or has something up his sleeve. Small tavern on the outskirts of nowhere, with friendly bartender? Well guess what - you are not the only ones that though of robbing and killing him, he defended against much, much worse.
There are still easy encounters, but there is always potential for the things to go in a bad direction.
Loved the video, thanks Guy.
Good tips
Learning more each time
Good stuff
I did something similar in my last session. The players had plundered an old burial mound for magical items. A centaur they had met previously was waiting for them outside, quite upset that they were grave robbing. He told them they were to hunt with him that night of they were more than petty thieves.
The party agreed and followed him into the Neverwinter Wood where they relaxed for a while and he gave them this "tea". Well the tea was actually ayahuasca-like in nature. They were tripped and I asked them to make a group tracking (survival) check against the stealth roll of a giant elk. With each failure they had to make a Con save or take a point of exhaustion. Once they reached level 2 exhaustion only half of the party could make the tracking check. It was intense and they managed to find the giant elk and kill it before it could flee.
Had they failed, they would have woken up without the magic items in the middle of a spooky forest. It got intense, especially with 2 of the players suffering a bad trip (failed sanity check)
In my opinion , the only time is acceptable to cheat as a DM is when you are correcting your own oversights. That might include encounters that are too difficult or too easy. But it should never include punishing a player for playing well. Or saving a player for playing poorly. It can be tempting to try and fill every little lull with a hint or an out. But you should most often resist that. Allow your players to become better players. Allow them to rise to occasions, rather than lowering occasions to them... Unless, as I said, it was your fault to begin with.
Double the damage in Dark Heresy/Deathwatch... oh boi....
Seriously though while I know I've done this subconsciously in my sessions I never really categorized or thought about them in this way. definitely going to be keeping this in mind for futures sessions!
Thanks Guy. Great video on some quick tricks to storytelling and combat.
The bug bear watching his comrade fall, as a bloody pile of flesh, enrages. Rushing over and picking up the mace swinging at you with both hands. 21 and a 16 to hit.
Thanks for this awesome guideline.
Thanks for all the great tips I've watched a bunch of ur videos for some time now I have been the a dm who has been forced into the role due to the lose of our past two dms moving away , so anything to help enrich the game play for tips is great. I Really have started to like the role as dm and writing the adventures
Skeleton Knights do only 2d8 damage. Well... I'll add multi-attack... or on top of that of each attack even 1d6 necrotic damage. Meaning 4d8 bludgening+2d6 necrotic per round...per Skeleton.... at lvl 3-4
Inside, or near their stronghold, enemies get improved critical hit range. Instead of 20 it now occurs on 19....or even 18 at later levels.
And the warlord orc/chieftain gets a bonus action to give his allies nearby increased chance to gain moral. Meaning adv. to save against Wisdom effects or something to become more resilient vs the PC's.
The goblins were quite the fight at lvl 2. At lvl 7 they went up some mountains. moving through a forest that had some really feral/fey stuff going on. Meaning tougher feral goblins riding on giant spiders attacking the PC's.
And yet my players keep asking for more pain, even after they lost 2 PC's along the way hehe :O
Pain is normal for my games. Example 1, cocky bandits figure they can punch the PCs. They find it doesn't work. So, some of them pull out a concealed weapon they were carrying. Others, they run off to set up ambushes and traps. Those with weapons do more damage, those ready to ambush are creating a favorable situation where they can trip, disarm, or similar.
Example 2, a demon was too powerful for one of them. Demon is characterized by a love of torment. Instead of outright killing the player, the demon decides to toy with the player. Of course, the player got lucky and outwitted the demon to escape. Though, the demon grew arrogant in his game of torture, so it became easier to outsmart. A good way to reduce pain, imho.
As for emotion, I don't worry. Simply put, my players know I keep track of there reputation. Not just "you are perceived as good..." Sort of thing. As a matter of fact next game I'm going to have an NPC go to them due to reputation. Long story short, PCs sword is broken and had bad luck finding someone to fix it. Said PC has a holy sword, but still wants the other sword fixed. Basically a claymore. As to why the NPC will help, sewer monster about to eat a dog, PC risks life saving the dog, now the sword will be fixed as a thank you. All due to reputation, which in turn helps a lot with the emotional element of roleplay.
Although I do love this video, I will disagree with one thing. The open field. Problems can occur fighting in an open field. Nearby bandits may overhear the commotion and become opportunistic. Hungry predators, even diseased rats, may be looking for an easy meal. A lone mage could be practicing dark arts in secret and decide the combatants will make good spell practice. Bad news if that mage is sneaking along the outside, setting up a deadly ritual. The weather may change into a difficult storm. I honestly only ever did the weather change, with a roll to change per minute of combat. Honestly, an open field will turn into an intense battle ground if there's strong winds and muddied ground effecting the flow of combat. Don't expect an open field to be simple, as the players don't know what is going on outside that field.
It's also bad luck if the supposed empty field has rings of mushrooms that no one noticed. I doubt most fairies would take kindly to combat so close.
Speaking of goblins. We're doing a Starfinder campaign, and our most recent major battle was with space goblins. Holy crap, it was fun, but hard. My drow has the least amount of hp of our group, but he was right in the thick of the battle. But. It wasn't our normal GM playing the goblins, it was her brother (Who happens to be my boyfriend lol!) and oh it was so much fun. He used 3 of the highest level serums to keep healing himself, covered in goblin slime and blood, his own blood, bits of acid pockmarked his armour, everything! But now, we're going on to a new story with our same characters--lower level armour, no serums, and lower level weapons. Not only that, but it's Signal of Screams--a horror campaign.
I'm scared witless lol!
one of the best DM videos I've seen
You mean TOO strong? TOO weak?
Yeah, that was really painful!
Epheros Aldor it really was a problem for me
As much as I love Guy, that grammatical slip was so strong that I had to rewind and listen with my eyes covered to hear what he was telling us.
Next week at GrammarNaziAnonymous-"Hi! I'm Todliche, and I have a problem"
I was looking to see if someone else noticed
Too and to is my one grammar pet peeve. It he seems so smart I thought maybe English people spell it to.
"Cant think of a P word for story" parable
Poem
Pattern
Pace ... Pacing
Prologue = speech before the response/action
Prelude
Lol these other people's suggestions are way worse than parable
Plot
A great idea for increasing pressure is the Time Pool (AKA the Tension Pool). It's literally a bowl full of dice in the middle of the table that the players can see growing as in-game time passes. Anything the party does that chews up time (searching every inch of a room, tapping every flagstone with a 10-foot pole, taking rests etc.) adds to the pile. The more dangerous the situation, the smaller the die.
Once there are six dice in that bowl, the next time the players do something that eats up time causes all the dice to be rolled. If any die comes up a 1, a Bad Thing happens. Probably a random encounter, but it's not limited to that.
EDIT:
As regards the "upping the pain" thing, that's complete bullshit. What would you say if a _player_ just decided their longsword did 2d8 damage? You'd call it cheating and you'd be right. If you screwed up and the encounter wasn't as challenging as you thought it would be, just let it slide and analyse what went "wrong" between sessions.
By all means, redesign encounters if you decide they're too easy, but don't buff NPCs _during_ encounters. It's cheating.
I love you and absolutely stealing this
@@dj_vanx
In all fairness, not my idea.
theangrygm.com/hacking-time-in-dnd/
Sometimes, you do need to re-do encounters mid fight. If you misjudged the power of them, or forgot the PC's had a specific item. Or you just wanted it to be a more badass encounter.
Gm's need to cheat from time to time. You run the entire world, but you don't always have time to manage things as well as a real god could. You misjudge things.
If they're smashing a fight you thought would be really hard, change things up.
My party were fighting this guy that was a celestial guardian of portals in the world. Meant to be badass enough to stop anything trying to get in. They were smashing it down to single digit HP within 2 rounds. So, when it went down, i added something, a thing I'd seen earlier for Celestial Warlocks. Blast of radiant light, and it gets back up at 1/2 Hp, with an aura causing blindness (save to resist it). That 1 change really made the encounter so much better, instead of just smashing him down then opening the door, they were suprirised when he stood back up and did some damage.
I've also done it the other way. A fight that i thought would be fairly easy, they start getting wrecked themselves. If a creaturte fired a disintegrate, and rolled max damage, but you didn't intend to kill a PC today (i personally only like killing them when it has some narrative weight or they did something really dumb), just bump down that damage to just 1 or 2 shy of killing them. They have 78 health, you did 80 damage. React as you normally would, but then tell them '77 damage. So fucking close'
Being the GM is about keeping things entertaining and engaging. If a fight that was meant to be challenging is a cakewalk, mix it up.
I'd say don't just double the damage, add something interesting to it. Maybe the guy actually had a bit of magic, or a scroll, and summons in some help or does a fireball to do some damage to the group.
If you do it right, the PC's will never know that you didn't plan it that way from the start.
@@Canadian_Zac
So why design encounters at all?
I mean, if you aren't going to let the PCs win until you say so, why do your monsters have HP and AC and Attack Bonuses and Saving Throws?
This is an honest question that _has_ an answer.
@@nickwilliams8302 They can win at any point. But, If i intended for it to be a bit harder, I'll quickly modify it to make the fight better.
Doesn't happen too often. But if you make the BBEG, build them up as a huge fight, then they walk in and just curbstomp them into the floor, then everything will feel anti-climatic.
If you build something up as a good fight, you need to make it a good fight.
And they have HP, Ac, and the like because I'm not writing a book. I'm running a game. most encounters, if they smash something i thought would be harder, I'll just go with the dice. But if the fight is going stupidly easy/hard the I'll modify it to work better.
If i was an actual god (which is essentially what the GM is in a D&D world) then I'd have been able to perfectly balance everything to make it tough/easy/whatever difficulty I'd intended. But I'm not. You mess up sometimes and make things too weak, so need to change it on the fly.
Your job as the GM is to make things fun. If things stop being fun because you miscalculated something, you change the calculous on the fly to make it fun again.
Double the Damage! Regardless of the system!
Dark Heresy: Allow me to Introduce myself...
really good advice and I really like the way to explain it with a set up story.
I've been doing this in my current game, the players have been fighting blood mages the mages use con as their spell casting stat. This also let's them use hit dice to up cast spells instead of using stronger spell slots. Now they are planning ways to fight the blood mages to catch them off guard before they can spend hit dice and power themselves up.
Now because they changed tatics and instead of openly fighting the cult they are trying to sabotage their resources, the bbeg has started to screw with the party showing them that this competition is a contact sport screw with my plan I screw with yours.
It might do GMs some good to try running a Powered by the Apocalypse game a few times. That system virtually forces you to think in terms of the 3 P's. PbtA is unique in terms of WHEN you are able to do so, but once you are in that mindset, adapting it to your preferred game shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Brilliant ideas, easy to remember and include! Thank you!
You remind me of my old GM who I loved playing my Dragonborn sorcerer with 🤣 even when everyone else was talking and getting along I knew he had something up his sleeve and Yrel(PC) always stayed focused because of that. Lol
Loving your content...really graduate level DM stuff here
Parable, that's the word you were looking for.
Or... Plot? Lol
One caveat to increasing monster damage is you MUST increase rewards. Treasure, xp, social rewards must also be doubled
Why? If the players are having little issues with the encounter currently and for some reason or other the damage increases, giving out more rewards might lead to the same thing happening more frequently which reduces the effect of this particular device. While I generally agree that bigger problems should have bigger rewards, I don't think there should be some direct mathematical connection between those two. If you feel like doubling the rewards is the correct move for the narrative you want to tell, do so, but having this as a general rule would hinder narrative freedom and might even cause more problems down the line.
Just as there is nothing keeping you from making changes on the fly, there is nothing forcing you to give these specific rewards for the situation. As the GM you are on top of things and you should give rewards that fit the needs of the story and yourself over rewards following some rigid rules.
IMO the reward should stay the same but if the party is clever enough they may try to negotiate a bonus for non-typical type of a task afterwards (a mid-tier persuasion/haggle roll, say DC 15 provided they carry proof of the trouble - either a weapon that was painful, a head of unsuspected difficult monster or simply do it mechanically if any of the party has fallen unconscious they'd probably have visible damage on their bodies). Of course not a double reward but rather a 20-30% extra on top of the agreed reward (or a useful item like a potion, amulet, rare magic component etc).
This is super helpful need to keep this in mind I'm about to be going it a magic nuckish site and really gives me a few ideas
I agree 100%. I've always felt that any intelligent race (be they considered monsters or otherwise) should have the ability to (in D&D terms) go up in levels and thus be more powerful. Why not have level 25 orcs if you need them. Even in Tolkien, there were the Uruk Hai -- essentially high-level orcs.
Man, this is gold content. Thanks man!
One thing I did during one of my earlier sessions I DM’d was have my party go in a rescue mission for a merchant. They find the caravan and one survivor who informed them of gnolls. The party finds the trail of a second wagon, which led them to a small encounter with bandits who traded their lives for information. They find the bandit hideout, run into a losing scenario, only to find that a small pack of four gnolls entered the fight. Knowing that gnolls are all about violence, the party convinced the bandits to help. Gnolls mop up most of the bandits pretty good, wizard goes down, cleric and last two bandits take out the final gnoll. The party then successfully manages to convince the bandit leader they will pay a ten gold ransom (instead of the 1000) for the merchant and make off with the second wagon. That was just a really good persuasion nat20 roll vs the bandit’s 10.
Superb content and examples. Keep producing high level content.
If you want a really good random encounter table, I'd recomend looking at Low Fantasy Gaming. Rulebook is free to download on their site.
Has combat encounters, environmental effects, and some talking stuff.
Some are outlines of things that you can work off of. Half of the story i have going on in a Low Fantasy Gaming gaming I'm running has been made off the cuff from inspiration from the things.
Fantastic! I took notes!
A lot of times what I like to do to create pressure is make it so that it's unclear exactly what the stakes are or how much time they have. For example, lets say they went off on a tangent for a while, and when they come back the people they were fighting against have advanced in their objectives in some way, creating havoc that they now have to deal with. By providing consequences for both their actions and their inactions, the PCs will naturally feel pressure to deal with threats as quickly as they can because they literally don't know what the consequences will be for allowing them to run unopposed (although obviously they should have something of an idea, just not the full picture).
What you're describing is very similar to 'The flow' in game design.
The “P word” you were looking for was “parables”
Thanks for this video, a lot of helpful tips and info!
Seems like the perfect place to mention a homebrewed ability for undead that I came up with (original idea is the T'lan Imass from Steven Erikson's Malazan series, editing by /r/Rhymes_in_couplet)
Basically the idea is to make undead that can at will turn themselves into a cloud of dust and back, even doing so in combat:
(This is written for compatibility with 5th edition, but can be adjusted appropriately.
Actions:
--Dust Cloud: As an action the creature can enter its dust form, becoming an amorphous cloud of dust. While in this form its speed is halved and it has resistance to all damage except radiant, as well as immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.
--Reform (Dust Form Only): The creature reverts to it's true form.
--Dust Strike (Dust form only): The creature uses its action to return to it's true form and make a single melee attack against an enemy within 5' of where it reformed. This attack has advantage. If the target has a way to detect you without seeing, or has truesight, you do not gain the advantage given by this feature.
Reactions:
--Collapse: After taking damage the creature may use its reaction to enter its dust form as if it had used the dust cloud action.
The originals in the book are more powerful in that they can if they're quick enough, dodge attacks with Collapse and their dust form is basically immune to anything that doesn't completely futz with the magic that makes them work...which isn't much...or immersion in enough water that they drift so far apart that they can't reform (like, say, an ocean), but that's a little too punishing for where I want to use them.
Ah, like vampires in 2nd ed?
@@The_Custos My only experience with 2nd edition vampires are Bhodi and her clan in Baldur's Gate 2 - I'm very late to the D&D world proper. I think those ones mainly used it to retreat to their coffins once defeated? Here, I'm thinking more of using it offensive - striking hard and then dissolving into dust as the enemy counters. As I said, the originals are super OP about it, but that works in a book where they're largely a plot device; in a game, you need to consider balance.
Go to 4:00 to skip the Kickstarter pitch.
Maybe you could create 2 versions of this video? One with the pitch and then another without the pitch to put up after the Kickstarter is over?
Great vid as always.
Could you do a video on exploration?? I've got the NPC interaction and combat down, but my exploration feels very bland. You go here, you do that, make a roll blah blah blah
I believe he has one, did it last year I think
Double the damage - doesn't work in stuff like shaowrun where you have a small amount of "HP" and higher damage-counts. Aside from that guns have roughly the same impact no matter who shoots them, going from 7 to 14 damage would put a pistol in the damage-range of sniperrifles.
For that reason, I advise making the combat more complicated. Put civilans in there who shall not get shot, make the enemies more competent than they seem. Suprise mage, put one in. Adhere more to the "Problems" part in shadowrun.
Well, when i felt that the party dispatched an underscaled miniboss too easily, i sent a killteam after them with a sorcerer who can divine their location at any time. One died (with the possibility of ressurection) and the rest had to flee. But when the sorcerer cornered a lone PC, his magicks backfired on him and the rest of the kill team, so in the fight the PC barely survived, and the whole party could recover.
This video made me remember an old phrase. Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. The 6 P's
I had to do this for a party of level 2's. They had alerted the cavern to their presence and were dropped a couple of times mid combat. I ended up making the Bugbear Chieftain be a sadistic bastard that would grapple the party and toss them into a fire bit to watch them crawl out.
How to be a Great Game Master; " the principles pertaining to the perseverance of people who tell other people parables."
Double the damage, me about to throw a modified pit fiend at my lvl 14 party, "hmm that sounds like a good idea!"
Hi! Great tips, really inspiring. Thanks
Hey Guy, love the video here and totally agree! That being said, how would you (or anyone) deal with players who complain about that pain and pressure? The GM is a new GM in this game, and the player was complaining that his ace hacking attack he had spent optimising didn't work. Thing is, it's to be expected (imo) that in a game where the player can stack bonuses, the enemy can too, and throughout the campaign it has been gradually & consistently shown that the enemy is also very good in hacking and therefore very good in defending against hacking attacks.
Now, it's not that the hacker player is now useless, because he did provide a really great support to the tank so that the tank won't be vulnerable to the enemy's hacking attacks either. And the GM revealed that he could hack attack the minions that didn't have the same hacking defences. Granted the player didn't know this, and he was focused so much on the main enemy.
I guess my question is, how to prevent this kind of thing from happening, where putting problems made the player thinks that the enemy is too powerful and that the game has become unfun for them?
EDIT: Thing is, rest of the party seems cool with that amount of pain, so simply just lowering it would be unfun imo, esp since those enemies are weak to my build... I was just separated from the party at the time so I couldn't really help.
@@vyncentelwyn4304 Thank you for this! Gonna say to the DM that *if* he complains next time to make sure to have encounters where he's the MVP lol. He's done it twice now, once was alright maybe he had a bad day, twice started to look like a pattern.
It's a bit weird though, because I've been playing with him a few times, and he's in the same big group that usually play D&D together, and he didn't seem to be a powergamer, really. But most of those games has been 5e low-level sessions, and this is the first time I'm seeing him act this way in a more crunchy, minmax-able game...