I like this trend of people reading all the rules laid out in the Dungeon Master's Guide and being like, "Hey did you know that there are really cool rules in here!"
I swear to god, the same people who claim you should just get the phb and a starter kit because the dmg isn't needed to dm are the same people who ask "why doesn't dnd cover [insert thing it does in fact cover]?"over and over. 😅
May want to have the exhaustion levels fade after a short rest or something, because otherwise it could take multiple days to fully recover from 1 chase sequence, which does not make any sense.
Yeah. Maybe the exhaustion could decrease by one level per however many minutes spend unmoving as well. While I could see someone passing out temporarily from exhaustion, I couldn't see someone be effectively paralyzed from running until sleeping. Maybe if they really injured themselves.
I was thinking that as well. I'd probably lower the base number of Dashes per player, because 3+Con will likely cover most of the chase. Maybe 1+Con or something. I'd then have each level of exhaustion require maybe ten minutes of doing nothing to catch your breath. That's enough that they wouldn't recover in time for a fight, but they don't have to spend a day or more doing nothing
I added Winded as a status effect, essentially level 1 Exhaustion but easier to remove. Getting another application of Winded when you already have it drops your speed to 5ft until removed (usually lasts a minute).
great stuff as always! I've always liked the idea of giving the "environment" a turn in combat after each character in a chase scene, and the environment would have things you have to dodge or bypass. Works against the players and against their opponent!
Exhaustion in general is a rather botched mechanic in my honest opinion, there is only one set way to get rid of it, and it's very first level is disadvantage on all checks, not say, str, dex, and con checks, just all of them, which feels really harsh for a mechanic that should apparently feel like slowly being whittled down, it feels like 5e forced a gritty realism level rule in the system before putting in the version that meshes into the actual flow of 5e. I personally have my own set of effects and do exhaustion removal dependent on the situation, but with a long rest almost always removing all exhaustion. Berserker Barbarian exhaustion is something I have end after a short rest and it's made the class actually playable, running exhaustion is something that goes after a quick breather as well. Makes the game flow much faster, you don't need an almost full week time skip to just rush things along.
Fun little story: First campaign I've DM'd was Dragon of IceSpire Peak. The book has a table for the DM to roll on to determine the Dragon's location each time the party travels, which is a brilliant way to instigate/improvise a chase. My players had been super lucky so far in avoiding the dragon who I'd been inadvertently hyping up out of game by saying "I'm super nervous about how the last fight will go. This thing can pump out some seriously high numbers" (which was true. A high damage roll on breath weapon would 1 shot them). One night they had been sent to clear out an abandoned fortress, and the dice gods blessed me. Immediately set up a chase scene where the fortress was their only means to escape the dragon. Gave em a set number of turns to get past the barred entrance before they got blasted (dragonborn acid breath did the trick), and they got locked in after the dragon froze the entrance. That chase scene and the resulting fight with a squad of ghouls (angry that their home had been invaded and frozen shut) turned out to be one of their favorite moments from the campaign. edits: clarified some wording
0:55 I've done full out runs, and to explain this; when you build up enough endurance to keep a consistent speed because the idea is to keep a good speed, the main problem is having to get over spots, so vaulting, going under, above, etc. Your heart will feel as if it's in your throat as you're trying to keep up pace the faster the speed is that you're running at.
True, and in the case of a Chase sequence consistent speed may well not be enough. You are either running for your life (and even that may not be enough) or trying to catch someone who is going to be doing their best to escape you (possibly at any cost).
Thanks for the vid, got a bit of a conflicting message from it though. 4:12 "this does not have to be a literal map" 4:35 An example with mapless locations that are related to a town 4:55 "If your chase is going to take place in a city or dungeon, you should try to have a full map with scaled distances prepared"
As a DM, a way I once started a successful chase was by having an NPC they loved trying to turn them in to the guards. They couldn't get caught, but also refused to hurt the NPC, so the chase felt very dramatic and even emotional. As a player, I once ended a chase with a whole military battalion going for us by using entangle which stopped the large carts that had been in front of them in a tangled mess, and then casting fog cloud as they struggled to get through so they couldn't track which way we went from there.
I have recently found your channel and have just been watching all of your videos. You do a great job with both the art and explaining stuff. Keep up the good work!
I LOVE this, the way you explain things is very digestible, with a nice simple art style. All while peppering in seeds for ideas! Can't wait for more of your tips
0:26 "How am I in trouble with the law *already*?" is every campaign I've ever been in in a nutshell (In our first real session, the rogue was the only one who didn't get arrested)
You have no earthly idea how much I needed this. There has been no information across any source I could find, in books or searches online, none, zero, zilch. Thank you so so much!
You could have a chase that results in another chase! The players pursue a monster, which ends up in a cave system, as they get deeper into the cave, they might see the monster get annihilated by the lightning breath of a Behir. One arcana/history check later and a player is screaming at his companions to hoof it, and thus the second chase begins. You could have the Behir stop pursuing at a certain point based on territory, or could even decide it can't be bothered to continue chasing when it already cooked up a meal just moments ago.
Was just planning on using these mechanics for tonights session. Nice Edit: The session was really fun, when they realized the machine that was chasing them down the tunnel was faster than them and they were running out of free bonus dashes, they climbed the machine and kicked the butts of the kobolds that were operating it.
I realized I've been watching your vids as they've been recommended to me. So, after sporadically watching a number of your vids out of order... Here's my sub!
When I'm running a chase a good thing to do is to put all their tokens/minitures next to each other next to a ruler to gage how far they are from their target. It works wonders :3
Literally just found this channel by way of this video… Subscribed I’ve been reading the rules on Chase several times today; I love how genius this game is The part re: the distances… seemed a bit overwhelming but I’ll figure it out 😓 Thank you; about to go through the rest of the videos on your channel
I love the chase rules. When I ran the Death House in Curse of Strahd, I turned the end of the mini adventure into an escape scene, and used the chase rules (customized for the environment and threat) to determine if the party escaped before or went all Monster House and imploded upon itself (I, uh, also customized the outcome). Of course, they survived. Good times!
I actually ran a chase where one of the party had been separated from the rest and was being chased while the rest of the party was rushing to group up with him. Further complicating matters was spider webs that’s slowed the party down but not the pursuing monster. It made for a tense but fun encounter and when the party finally grouped up they were able to drive off the monster. It made a monster that was fairly take-able into a dangerous threat.
I have a set of rules I found and modified that I find fairly fun to use and make interesting chase scenes, its specific enough to account for mechanics, but vague enough for all the flavor you need.
Great vid! The problem I have with chase sequences in D&D is accounting for different characters' speeds. Unless you have a massive grid map, how do you track the relative distance between the gnome with 25ft speed, the monk with 45ft speed, and their quarry with 30ft speed?
The way I did was I had the furthest behind thing be the relative point. In my case it was a machine being operated by kobolds, but in yours it could the hafling or a bandit with a slight limp. I then kept track of how far away each individual was from this furthest back member. Finally I measured how far along the furthest behind thing had gone down my path and at what points it encountered something important, such as at 700ft the tunnel opened up into a wider quarry.
Additionally, some classe get the ability to dash twice in a round, therefore being effectively 50% faster than any other class. This does not make for interesting chases in my opinion and it also streches the limits of imagination
@@MasterAyBee that's a sprint though; if it doesn't accrue fatigue then it is, indeed, a game-breaker for _single_ pursuer chases. So there's either a dilemma of whether to leave slower fellow players behind to get caught, a later clash between players _because_ one was left behind, use multiple pursuers with at least one that can compete with the faster players and leaves the slower players for the rest of the pursuit team, or use a pursuer that is _attracted_ to movement or enjoys a challenge.
@@MasterAyBee There's still a fixed limit to how many dashes the PC can take in a given chase before they make CON checks, so a BA dash is like burning twice as bright for half as long. The Rogue or Monk is more likely to catch up but they'll also hit their limits sooner, plus depending on what you're chasing arriving 50% sooner than your allies might be a dangerous situation to be in.
My DM ran a chase for us by the rules of the DMG and it did _not_ go well. We felt like there were no options besides just dashing over and over again, the complications ended up being too much (though that was his fault for throwing too many at us), the rules neutered the rogue's Cunning Action dash ability because only one action and no bonus action are allowed, and it just in general didn't feel like there was any strategy or tactics that made a difference. I have yet to figure out a better way, but I think something closer to a contested skill challenge would work better-putting the Athletics and Acrobatics skills to better use, keeping track of the number of steps of distance to the quarry the pursuers need to get (rather than exact numbers), and making sure the complications of the chase make sense and are predetermined (instead of randomly rolled) would be a good start. I've been playing Assassin's Creed lately, and there's just got to be a way to mimic that amazing heart-pounding feeling of being chased in the streets and finally escaping.
Something I like to do is have a NPC who's entire purpose is to die. I establish that they are much stronger than the any of the characters in the party, it works well going on monster hunts. Once the monster is found it easily murderers the NPC, who may even give the command to flee. This immediately let's the party know they are out matched. The chase after wards is usually exilerating and brutal if a character is caught and most likely killed. Having the party separated and lost in the wilderness while a great beast haunts them is also a fun consequence of a good chase. If the party survives, they become absolutely hell bent on killing the thing which makes for more fun quests as they learn about the monster, what's it's weaknesses are and how to stalk and kill it. Makes good use of the rangers underused tracking skills as well.
I had a chase planned into a session which worked really well. rather then a full map I created 6 sections with different hazards to deal with that ended in the 5th section after some clever use of spells and a flaming badger.
I'm dming my first campaign, and I have a plan to have the group investigate a massive ship high in the tree tops, with a solid tree trunk piercing through the hull. They'd gradually climb the tree, fight some harpies, and reach the ship full of treasure! Oh, and there will be a huge Roc nest built within it. So being chased down a tree and throughout a forest and plain is gonna be fun
Thanks for the video/advice. It just happens to be i was planning to have my players try to escape a sinking ship from the lower decks to the top deck. As extra incentive to run the ship is being consumed by a giant slime monster.
Good chase mechanics (and players who remember that fleeing is an option) is great for dungeons / encounters where traps or other effects remove someone from the party and he or she must now deal with proceeding alone until he/she can find their party members again.
i like running chases as a skill challenge personally. i think it lets a player get creative with their abilities instead of just rolling a con check every so often
My players are currently about to head into essentially a moving hedgemaze, keeping the pace to get to the end before the path gets lost would be an amazing use of this mechanic. Especially once the deer find them..
There's also the Complications tables. Dragon Heist includes a chase but it hamstrings the rules by trying to railroad the players into failing and even then my group caught them pretty fast.
I think the reason why exhuastion is so underused, is because it punishes you hard for days. A deadly encounter with a dragon, where 3 of the 5 players a knocked unconcious, one of them 3 times because he keeps being healed. 1 died and got ressurected, and the las players only had 2 and 5 hit points remaining respectively. Long rest and we are fine. A chase after a thief, if you use the exhastion mechanic could take up to 5 days to fully recover from. Even with magical aid like the greater restoration spell, it quickly becomes expensive. DnD is designed to be high fantasy, where the story doesn't grind to a halt over something as silly as being wounded, but exhaustion works differently. My suggetion. Exhaustion reduces by 1 level with a short rest, and fully with a long rest. Lesser restoration might also cure a level of exhaustion. If you implement these rules, you can throw exhaustion around much more librally, and it won't grind your adventure to a halt.
Agreed, which is why I use a modified version of the One D&D Exhaustion: -Exhaustion has 11 levels, rather than 6. -For each level of Exhaustion, they suffer a -1 penalty to all attacks, skill checks, saving throws, etc. -For every two levels of Exhaustion, they suffer a -5 ft. penalty to all speeds (to a min. of 5 ft because you should be able to drag your feet at a minimum; you're not dead until you're dead!) Note: I would say that magically-induced Flight or something like that is an exception and would never be reduced because it has nothing to do with anything about you. The speed is in the magic itself, which was already cast and is passively active. (That would be a pathetically Chaotic Evil DM move to restrict magical flight with Exhaustion.) -At 11+, you die (no save). -If you are revived, if you had 11 or more levels of Exhaustion at death, you revive at 10 levels; otherwise you revive with the amount you had when you died. (Your body is alive as you were just before you died, not fully restored to a Long Rest. Unless the spell/effect says so.) I haven't decided how best to recover from Exhaustion... I rather feel that a Short Rest should heal 1 level and a Long Rest should heal 5 levels. (I know that "logic" would say that a Long Rest should heal 8 levels, but honestly I think that if someone has that much exhaustion it SHOULD potentially impact them the following day with some Exhaustion left over. That's 5 or less, still enough to easily recover in a single day while still imposing some fair challenge for racking up that much.)
One of the easiest ways to keep track of a chase, IMO, is to put everyone's name in the initiative order, as you do, and write a number next to everyone's. The number next to the chasee is how far the chase is to the next location and the number next to the chaser is how far you to the chasee. When the chasee moves decrease his number and increase everyone else's, when the chaser moves decrease there number. This also allows, for example, a chasee to knock over a cart of cabbages, force everyone to make dex saves and determine how much they are individually slowed down by.
My current Table started with theater of the Mind so it used to feel like roleplay all the time in those days we just had fun and people trusted me to keep track of things. Eventually only one player was annoying enough to want to change that. She didn't like theater of the Mind because it was too dependent on the dungeon master. Which eventually meant that I had to map everything out, which further limited our playgroup because now the players just play Within the context of the map and they don't want to leave the map until they're done with a quest or something. She really limited the group for everybody. I'll give you an example. When we were using theater of the mind the party purchased two horses and they immediately decided to start racing them. Two players on each of the horse and they decided to go racing down the busy streets of the city they were in. We gave them a series of animal handling checks for the player characters, or dexterity or Athletics for the horse depending on what they wanted to do. They raced neck-and-neck with animal handling for the first round, and then the second round they began to trip people and try to throw them in front of the horse behind the lead horse. The third-round somebody failed on their animal handling check causing their horse to Wipeout into a cabbage shop which eventually got the guards riled up and started having them start running up trying to grab these people and rip them off the horse. It was good fun. They managed to handle writing the one horse out most of the way because they stop racing recklessly to beat each other and started racing away from the guards in a more safe manner. One of the two on the main horse failed his dexterity save us the gate was closing and got cracked on the face with it. He fell off the horse but the horses momentum carried him outside before he fell off and he had to go to run after the other horse in a comedic fashion
So I've done some chasing and being chased during games of humans versus zombies and I think, while these mechanics can work for a short chase, I think there might need to be some additions for a longer one. Especially for chases that don't just end the instant the chasers catch up or they lose track of the chasee. There might be some attacking and dodging followed by a continued chase, you can get a second wind, or, if someone hides, they're not just gone, they'll have to somehow get out of their hiding spot without being spotted.
We had a dm for a oneshot that didn't use the chase mechanics for a chase scene. We spent there easily 6-7 hours instead of the expected 4 and I've avoided them since. The NPC turned invisible, but since we could still spot him (different abilities that cave us his general direction) he had to sprint to not get caught. So he did. For over 2 hours.
As a starting DM (all my players are also new) I am actually going to start the game with a chase my Warlock Goblin was messing with people in the forest for fun (backstory) so when the game starts a Satyr Ranger on a mount fox and a Draconic Paladin (protector of the nearby settlement) are going after him, the ranger is mounted so he can shoot arrows (with disadvantage cause of the movement) if within range and since the mount fox is faster than a goblin so my PC will probably be forced to hide or fight, once caught I'll bring him to a tavern for a bounty where he'll meet the other characters. I think the 3 man chase start is a good way to give everyone a feel of how battles go, cause it got a little of everything
I ran a chase seen in an underwater air tunnel. Tunnel was littered with dark tentacles that what try to attack the party. They had to make DEX saves while running and if failed they got hit for 1d4 necrotic damage and their movement speed slowed by 5ft giving the monster the ability to gain on them quicker. It was fun and intense.
For covering, you can just use a big piece of paper with an appropriate hole in it Paper isn't heavy, so most of the weight would be the tape, if such is needed
I like the battle worn idea. I might want to run a one shot were taking the dash action, attack, or Casting a Spell action does the same thing. You can only use any combination of these actions 3 plus your constitution modifier times in a row before you must start making constitution checks of DC 10 or take a point of exhaustion. I might do a short rest reduces exhaustion by 1. And a long rest recovers all levels of exhaustion. Might make combat a bit faster and more nuanced.
Excellent! I love chases and i never actually thought about putting a limit on how many rounds of dashing a creature can go without running out of constitution but i love that this gives healthier actors an advantage due to their physique. Id also say that a creature with a higher speed gets a bonus on their chase roll, +1 per every 10 feet faster
I'd say you don't necessarily even need exact distances. Just decide on how many rounds you really want the scene to last (Or even just 'how long'). Play it by ear. You can get quite abstract with it. I've run quite a few chase and 'moving combat' scenes (On horse/wagon back, ect). An exact distance can be useful if you have a failure plan (IE the party should have X rounds to do this, if success, do A, if fail, do B). I've got a whole houseruled system I won't get into here, all I'll say is when you're planning out this encounter, really play it out in your head, and think about what it will be like.
One major part of chase sequences that weren't covered here are complications. After each chase participant's turn, they roll a d20 to determine what happens to the next player in the initiative order based on a random roll table. Lots of things can happen, like a street carriage cutting you off, running into a pack of stray dogs, or even stepping on a wasp nest. The DMG has tables for chase complications in urban and wild environments. In my experience, it's best to have the DM roll for chase complications. My players figured out the roll table pretty quickly.
Recently, my charcter ran into some shenanigans. She wanted to read from a cursed tome that made you obsessed by it, but only was understandable if you were cursed. She got the party's cleric to stand next to her, and to be ready to cast Remove Curse after a while. While cursed, my DM informed me that I now saw my cleric friend as a danger, since she wanted to separate me from the sweet, sweet knowledge contained in the book... And that's when I remembered that I had Misty Step prepared. Cue desperate chase in the city streets. After a few turns, someone mentionned the official chase rules (which I didn't know existed), and we hastily implemented them to spice up this impromptu, improvised chase scene worthy of a Loony Tunes cartoon. Fun times...
There are 4 potential problems with running,which can be addressed, but must be consciously addressed to prevent from happening; 1) Opportunity Attacks. If someone leaves your melee range, you can attack them unless they use an action to disengage. If you aren't a rogue, it's difficult to be able to disengage AND dash in the same turn. If you don't dash, then unless your speed is higher than your pursuers, they can simply catch up to you and take swings again, essentially just getting free hits. If you dash instead of disengaging, then you take an opportunity attack, but your pursuer can still catch up by dashing, and be back in range to take ANOTHER opportunity attack if you attempt to run without disengaging again. Unless you can break out of this failure loop, it's not even worth treating this as a chase. In order to break away, something must happen to break visual, (opportunity attacks can't be taken without seeing targets) allowing no opportunity attacks to be taken even while dashing. 2) With speed differences of certain races and classes, the outcome of a chase is often generally known as soon as it begins. Providing means of obstacles and unexpected shortcut gambles are important to throw uncertainty in the mix, which is important for making the chase worth attempting at all. 3) Spells/Ranged Attack distances are significantly higher than what any creature can move, often making the easier option to keep pace as much as possible, while also taking potshots even as they lag behind. It's important to remember to encourage creatures to run before they reach the point where they can't take any more hits at all, as between opportunity attacks and ranged attacks, they might still have to take more hits before they can manage to make a clean break. Having obstacles and many opportunities to turn corners and break line of sight is also important. Don't forget that crowds DO technically count as partial or even half cover. (and in many cases can wind up hitting the crowd if you miss by too little) 4) Exhaustion is worse than damage. 6 hits of exhaustion kill you outright. Needing to rest for an entire week because you ran too hard in the span of 5 minutes is downright INSANE, and many players don't realize how insane until too late. Try to avoid chases where getting caught is certain death, so that "giving up" is actually a feasible course of action. I personally recommend homebrewing that chases only induce "Temporary Exhaustion" that stacks on top of regular exhaustion (count both, and if it totals to 6, you're dead) but can have one level removed on a short rest, provided you make a con save during the short rest. A long rest provides 8 opportunities to make the same con saves to reduce exhaustion, with any temporary exhaustion levels remaining at the end of the long rest becoming regular exhaustion levels (which will have 1 automatically cleared each long rest, no con save required)
To adress your first point, characters participating in a chase cannot make opportunity attacks. A small but important detail to keep in mind, so this would not be an issue.
@@LuxuriaU - sure, but you have to get far enough away to begin with before you can even be considered to be in a "chase" the act of trying to get far enough away to begin "the chase" is where you're constantly incurring those opportunity attacks.
@@GreyAcumen there is no defined distance required to start a chase. It is entirely up to the DM when an encounter constitutes as a chase. Each table may decide individually, but nonetheless, it makes the opportunity attack point moot. Even then, nine times out of ten, a chase is a predetermined affair. I've only experienced a small handful of impromptu chases arise out of combat, which is the scenario you're putting forth. All in all, if a DM is having this issue, it is entirely their fault for ruling the mechanics the way you put them forward, especially baring in mind there is no written/mechanical reason to do things that way. At the end of the day, each table is subjective. Okay how you'd like and what is most fun for you. But it is unfair to the system, and misinformative to present this issue as a rule as written flaw.
@@LuxuriaU - even the video mentions "the beginning of the chase sequence, in which one party runs, and the other pursues" which implicitly defines a chase as something that begins AFTER both of those prerequisites happen. (after all, if you run, but they don't pursue, then a chase sequence doesn't happen) This means the opportunity attacks would occur in every instance except for a chase being started BEFORE combat ever happened. The lack of "ability to run away AFTER combat has already happened" has been understood as a flaw in D&D, as the game is geared in such a way that fighting to the death is actually the more sensible thing to do. I was running on the assumption that "hey, there's the option to do a chase!" was already addressing this flaw. This is basically a catch 22. Even if the actual chase mechanics themselves aren't the source of the flaw, that just passes the buck back to 5e as a whole, in that there are no options to get from combat TO a chase sequence without taking opportunity attacks.
the exhaustion rule is interesting, but as it can affect for to broadly my table has Conditional or Temporary exhaustion that can be extended based on levels (points) & then extended into true points of exhaustion if the temporary levels (points) exceed the max amount per player build.
Brilliant. I've had enemies with the ability to reason fleeing from bad and counters for a while now but always just had them get away when they reach the edge of the map. Max I make tend to be larger so it works, but I've never been satisfied with it. This is much better. I tweaked the exhaustion some though. It's much too punishing for someone just running for a few rounds. Especially since by-the-books, you'd run yourself to death unreasonably quickly.
It's a great idea, but like most things in D&D, the players are just given way too many tools to completely undo a potential challenge thrown at them. If they were for some reason needing to chase someone, they could just slap a "Hold Person" on them. Or better yet, Polymorph them into a turtle, or themselves into something fast like a tiger. They could Dimension Door themselves right in front of the person they're chasing. Or they could just straight up shoot the runner in the leg with an arrow. Combat is considered 6 seconds, and you can move 30 feet (or whatever your speed) in that 6 seconds, as well as do a bonus action, as well as draw an arrow and shoot it. That's a lot in 6 seconds, so imagine how quick your character is at drawing and shooting. Soon as someone decides to bolt you can get a shot at them. I still consider myself fairly new to GMing, and I really enjoy the concept of D&D, but one of my biggest frustrations has been finding challenges for players only for the game to give them abilities that don't reduce the challenge, but outright remove it.
This is a problem with MANY challenges in Dnd: diseases, poisons, curses (a low level paladin/cleric and all these stuff are gone), physical obstacle (aarakokra can fly limitless, there are low level teleports spells, the "knock" spells and much more), survival (create food and water and the background feat of the outlander, which is like foraging food for the entire group without skill checks. (??)) Also there're the spells you saied. Something I really liked when I was exploring new systems and games (my group and I growed tired of dnd for these problems and more), it's Pathfinder 2e. Pf2 skills do not overcome these challenges in a blink of an eye, but they do help the party overcome them. For example, "Remove Diseases" does not remove the disease right away, but it allows you to counteract the disease with a check. Or they can give you bonuses to checks or much more limited time periods. And obviously PCs at high levels have a much easier time solving these obstacles, always staying in the mood of high fantasy heroes. (sorry for bad english)
@@lorenzosaracino9912 your English is fantastic. I understood everything you were saying. The more I play DnD, the more I see the rules and written spells as simple guidelines. All those spells don't HAVE to be in your world and available to your players. Because if they were, as we've both seen, they take away so many challenges. I'd like to run a campaign where there is little to no magic. That way when you run into somebody who has magic, it'll be a very dangerous encounter. Instead, the players will have various tools and gadgets they can use.
@@handles438 Oh good for the English, I'm alwasy unsure about that :) hmmm I think dnd (5e) with little or no magic is a desire for disaster hahah there's little space for no-magic healing and no magic things in general. Everything is scaled with magic in mind. I dont't think dnd works best with many conversions and homebrew rules so I can recommend you to try other fantasy system like Blades in the Dark, Warhammer Fantasy , Runequest, Burning Wheel or generic tollkit systems like Savage Worlds or GURPS. Better play in a system that fit your playstyle and setting than wasting time making homebrew rules without knowing how to balance everything
I handle it this way, pretty simple, when you leave a battle scene, or enter a chase outside of combat, chaser and chased roll athletics or accrobatics agaisn't each other, if the chased succeed, they are free, if they failed, they provoke an attack of opportunity, that's it.
@@masterthedungeon I also recommend Roll20's VTT system. the basic Fog Of War is in the free system, but the Pro edition's Dynamic Lighting is super great!
Me and my friends are playing our new d&d campaign today. Our characters are going to start on a heist mission for gold and magic items. We then will start a chase scene where the characters will have to run away from the guards and police and will have to use their wits and abilities to evade, distract, and defeat the guards. The characters goal is to make it to the nearby forest and escape through a tree portal to my character’s master’s house. My character is a wizard/Artificer who is a apprentice to a grand wizard craftsman who lives on the river Styx.
I like this trend of people reading all the rules laid out in the Dungeon Master's Guide and being like, "Hey did you know that there are really cool rules in here!"
Rules? In MY rulebook?
More likely than you think
sadly, many of us never read the actual books. The trick is you don't actually need the rules. The problem is we only read the minimum.
They've also got more statistics in there that are super useful, specifically a San stat.
@@princessmalyI found a good screen is in order
I swear to god, the same people who claim you should just get the phb and a starter kit because the dmg isn't needed to dm are the same people who ask "why doesn't dnd cover [insert thing it does in fact cover]?"over and over. 😅
May want to have the exhaustion levels fade after a short rest or something, because otherwise it could take multiple days to fully recover from 1 chase sequence, which does not make any sense.
Yeah. Maybe the exhaustion could decrease by one level per however many minutes spend unmoving as well. While I could see someone passing out temporarily from exhaustion, I couldn't see someone be effectively paralyzed from running until sleeping. Maybe if they really injured themselves.
I was thinking that as well. I'd probably lower the base number of Dashes per player, because 3+Con will likely cover most of the chase. Maybe 1+Con or something. I'd then have each level of exhaustion require maybe ten minutes of doing nothing to catch your breath. That's enough that they wouldn't recover in time for a fight, but they don't have to spend a day or more doing nothing
I added Winded as a status effect, essentially level 1 Exhaustion but easier to remove. Getting another application of Winded when you already have it drops your speed to 5ft until removed (usually lasts a minute).
Proper rest should halve it, then proper nutrition should make it 0 - in my opinion
The DMG already has a rule for this.
"A creature can remove the levels of exhaustion it gained during the chase by finishing a short or long rest."
great stuff as always! I've always liked the idea of giving the "environment" a turn in combat after each character in a chase scene, and the environment would have things you have to dodge or bypass. Works against the players and against their opponent!
That's a wonderful idea!
I think this is what the Complications table is for, which wasnt mentioned in the video
A complications table for chase scenes? D&D munchkin edition might have something useful to me after all.
A door swings open, juke to the side, hop the crate, gain a bit on them, Caltrops.
Exhaustion in general is a rather botched mechanic in my honest opinion, there is only one set way to get rid of it, and it's very first level is disadvantage on all checks, not say, str, dex, and con checks, just all of them, which feels really harsh for a mechanic that should apparently feel like slowly being whittled down, it feels like 5e forced a gritty realism level rule in the system before putting in the version that meshes into the actual flow of 5e.
I personally have my own set of effects and do exhaustion removal dependent on the situation, but with a long rest almost always removing all exhaustion.
Berserker Barbarian exhaustion is something I have end after a short rest and it's made the class actually playable, running exhaustion is something that goes after a quick breather as well.
Makes the game flow much faster, you don't need an almost full week time skip to just rush things along.
Fun little story: First campaign I've DM'd was Dragon of IceSpire Peak. The book has a table for the DM to roll on to determine the Dragon's location each time the party travels, which is a brilliant way to instigate/improvise a chase.
My players had been super lucky so far in avoiding the dragon who I'd been inadvertently hyping up out of game by saying "I'm super nervous about how the last fight will go. This thing can pump out some seriously high numbers" (which was true. A high damage roll on breath weapon would 1 shot them).
One night they had been sent to clear out an abandoned fortress, and the dice gods blessed me. Immediately set up a chase scene where the fortress was their only means to escape the dragon. Gave em a set number of turns to get past the barred entrance before they got blasted (dragonborn acid breath did the trick), and they got locked in after the dragon froze the entrance.
That chase scene and the resulting fight with a squad of ghouls (angry that their home had been invaded and frozen shut) turned out to be one of their favorite moments from the campaign.
edits: clarified some wording
I'd never considered just making a list of locations and distances beforehand. It's so simple yet works really well
0:55 I've done full out runs, and to explain this; when you build up enough endurance to keep a consistent speed because the idea is to keep a good speed, the main problem is having to get over spots, so vaulting, going under, above, etc. Your heart will feel as if it's in your throat as you're trying to keep up pace the faster the speed is that you're running at.
True, and in the case of a Chase sequence consistent speed may well not be enough.
You are either running for your life (and even that may not be enough) or trying to catch someone who is going to be doing their best to escape you (possibly at any cost).
Thanks for the vid, got a bit of a conflicting message from it though.
4:12 "this does not have to be a literal map"
4:35 An example with mapless locations that are related to a town
4:55 "If your chase is going to take place in a city or dungeon, you should try to have a full map with scaled distances prepared"
What a coincidence! I just started working on a short campaign today that has a lot of chases in it. So thanks for the tips, they were really helpful
Good luck!
As a DM, a way I once started a successful chase was by having an NPC they loved trying to turn them in to the guards. They couldn't get caught, but also refused to hurt the NPC, so the chase felt very dramatic and even emotional.
As a player, I once ended a chase with a whole military battalion going for us by using entangle which stopped the large carts that had been in front of them in a tangled mess, and then casting fog cloud as they struggled to get through so they couldn't track which way we went from there.
I have recently found your channel and have just been watching all of your videos. You do a great job with both the art and explaining stuff. Keep up the good work!
Thanks and welcome!
I LOVE this, the way you explain things is very digestible, with a nice simple art style. All while peppering in seeds for ideas! Can't wait for more of your tips
0:26 "How am I in trouble with the law *already*?" is every campaign I've ever been in in a nutshell
(In our first real session, the rogue was the only one who didn't get arrested)
Chases are great, but be aware that it can easily result in a split party, and that can result in PC death... which is why they're great.
Depending on the case, splitting the party during a chase may actually be more efficient, which is why I love the idea
You have no earthly idea how much I needed this. There has been no information across any source I could find, in books or searches online, none, zero, zilch. Thank you so so much!
You could have a chase that results in another chase! The players pursue a monster, which ends up in a cave system, as they get deeper into the cave, they might see the monster get annihilated by the lightning breath of a Behir. One arcana/history check later and a player is screaming at his companions to hoof it, and thus the second chase begins. You could have the Behir stop pursuing at a certain point based on territory, or could even decide it can't be bothered to continue chasing when it already cooked up a meal just moments ago.
“There’s always a bigger fish” - Obi Wan Kenobi
Scooby-doo style corridor antics
Chase-ception?
@@MostLikelyMortal *Qui-gon Jin
Was just planning on using these mechanics for tonights session. Nice
Edit: The session was really fun, when they realized the machine that was chasing them down the tunnel was faster than them and they were running out of free bonus dashes, they climbed the machine and kicked the butts of the kobolds that were operating it.
I realized I've been watching your vids as they've been recommended to me. So, after sporadically watching a number of your vids out of order... Here's my sub!
When I'm running a chase a good thing to do is to put all their tokens/minitures next to each other next to a ruler to gage how far they are from their target. It works wonders :3
Wow! Your videos just keep getting better & better! I'm about to run a timed scavenger hunt [thing] in two sessions from now. PERFECT TIMING!
Oh thank you, I really needed this one!
Thanks!
How do you not have more subscribers?
this channel is quickly becoming one of my favorite dm resources, great stuff ❤️
3:36 that little pouch is adorable.
Literally just found this channel by way of this video… Subscribed
I’ve been reading the rules on Chase several times today; I love how genius this game is
The part re: the distances… seemed a bit overwhelming but I’ll figure it out 😓
Thank you; about to go through the rest of the videos on your channel
"But I am le tired" @5:13 now that is a blast from the past. Jesus, that reference is old enough to most of the world!
Just came here to say that the thumbnail was absolutely golden lmao
How have I never seen your channel before? This is GREAT! Insta-sub! Thank you!
I love this video so much! I can't believe I've never seen anything from this channel before. Easy subscribe! I'm telling everyone!
I love the chase rules. When I ran the Death House in Curse of Strahd, I turned the end of the mini adventure into an escape scene, and used the chase rules (customized for the environment and threat) to determine if the party escaped before or went all Monster House and imploded upon itself (I, uh, also customized the outcome). Of course, they survived. Good times!
Great stuff! I also loooooove the art in your videos, the characters all look expressive and interesting. Definitely subbing.
I actually ran a chase where one of the party had been separated from the rest and was being chased while the rest of the party was rushing to group up with him. Further complicating matters was spider webs that’s slowed the party down but not the pursuing monster. It made for a tense but fun encounter and when the party finally grouped up they were able to drive off the monster. It made a monster that was fairly take-able into a dangerous threat.
I have a set of rules I found and modified that I find fairly fun to use and make interesting chase scenes, its specific enough to account for mechanics, but vague enough for all the flavor you need.
I didn't know that. Thx
'But I am le tired'
Ah, I see you are a fellow veteran of the Internet.
Great video as always
I'm glad to have stumbled onto such a well illustrated and voiced D&D video. Awesome work by all (3 I think?) of you working on these videos.
Such a well made video. Filled to the brim with tips and tricks :D
This is great to think about.
I might do - like a list , like ranks .. where the more times it happens the more tired they get ..
Great vid! The problem I have with chase sequences in D&D is accounting for different characters' speeds. Unless you have a massive grid map, how do you track the relative distance between the gnome with 25ft speed, the monk with 45ft speed, and their quarry with 30ft speed?
The way I did was I had the furthest behind thing be the relative point. In my case it was a machine being operated by kobolds, but in yours it could the hafling or a bandit with a slight limp. I then kept track of how far away each individual was from this furthest back member. Finally I measured how far along the furthest behind thing had gone down my path and at what points it encountered something important, such as at 700ft the tunnel opened up into a wider quarry.
Additionally, some classe get the ability to dash twice in a round, therefore being effectively 50% faster than any other class. This does not make for interesting chases in my opinion and it also streches the limits of imagination
@@MasterAyBee that's a sprint though; if it doesn't accrue fatigue then it is, indeed, a game-breaker for _single_ pursuer chases. So there's either a dilemma of whether to leave slower fellow players behind to get caught, a later clash between players _because_ one was left behind, use multiple pursuers with at least one that can compete with the faster players and leaves the slower players for the rest of the pursuit team, or use a pursuer that is _attracted_ to movement or enjoys a challenge.
@@MasterAyBee There's still a fixed limit to how many dashes the PC can take in a given chase before they make CON checks, so a BA dash is like burning twice as bright for half as long. The Rogue or Monk is more likely to catch up but they'll also hit their limits sooner, plus depending on what you're chasing arriving 50% sooner than your allies might be a dangerous situation to be in.
My DM ran a chase for us by the rules of the DMG and it did _not_ go well. We felt like there were no options besides just dashing over and over again, the complications ended up being too much (though that was his fault for throwing too many at us), the rules neutered the rogue's Cunning Action dash ability because only one action and no bonus action are allowed, and it just in general didn't feel like there was any strategy or tactics that made a difference.
I have yet to figure out a better way, but I think something closer to a contested skill challenge would work better-putting the Athletics and Acrobatics skills to better use, keeping track of the number of steps of distance to the quarry the pursuers need to get (rather than exact numbers), and making sure the complications of the chase make sense and are predetermined (instead of randomly rolled) would be a good start. I've been playing Assassin's Creed lately, and there's just got to be a way to mimic that amazing heart-pounding feeling of being chased in the streets and finally escaping.
Great video, love your art style.
As someone who is constantly running from combat, this is very useful
Something I like to do is have a NPC who's entire purpose is to die. I establish that they are much stronger than the any of the characters in the party, it works well going on monster hunts. Once the monster is found it easily murderers the NPC, who may even give the command to flee. This immediately let's the party know they are out matched. The chase after wards is usually exilerating and brutal if a character is caught and most likely killed. Having the party separated and lost in the wilderness while a great beast haunts them is also a fun consequence of a good chase. If the party survives, they become absolutely hell bent on killing the thing which makes for more fun quests as they learn about the monster, what's it's weaknesses are and how to stalk and kill it. Makes good use of the rangers underused tracking skills as well.
I didn't know about this. Thank you for the video
I really like how you go beyond what's on DMG and covered the bases you need, but I still have no idea how to integrate them in my game.
Great coverage of the mechanics and awesome advice. Thanks!
The hands are gorgeous. I'm so jealous
I like your art. This was fun
I had a chase planned into a session which worked really well. rather then a full map I created 6 sections with different hazards to deal with that ended in the 5th section after some clever use of spells and a flaming badger.
I've only experienced this feature once in a game and it was short lived but fun.
Great video and very well illustrated. Keep up the excellent work.
I'm dming my first campaign, and I have a plan to have the group investigate a massive ship high in the tree tops, with a solid tree trunk piercing through the hull. They'd gradually climb the tree, fight some harpies, and reach the ship full of treasure!
Oh, and there will be a huge Roc nest built within it. So being chased down a tree and throughout a forest and plain is gonna be fun
Love this kinda content, I'll have any creature on low health start going for reckless attacks if theyre backed into a corner
Thanks for the video/advice. It just happens to be i was planning to have my players try to escape a sinking ship from the lower decks to the top deck. As extra incentive to run the ship is being consumed by a giant slime monster.
Good chase mechanics (and players who remember that fleeing is an option) is great for dungeons / encounters where traps or other effects remove someone from the party and he or she must now deal with proceeding alone until he/she can find their party members again.
i like running chases as a skill challenge personally. i think it lets a player get creative with their abilities instead of just rolling a con check every so often
Just found this channel and you guys are honestly a god send for a new DM like me xdd
My players are currently about to head into essentially a moving hedgemaze, keeping the pace to get to the end before the path gets lost would be an amazing use of this mechanic. Especially once the deer find them..
There's also the Complications tables.
Dragon Heist includes a chase but it hamstrings the rules by trying to railroad the players into failing and even then my group caught them pretty fast.
I think the reason why exhuastion is so underused, is because it punishes you hard for days.
A deadly encounter with a dragon, where 3 of the 5 players a knocked unconcious, one of them 3 times because he keeps being healed. 1 died and got ressurected, and the las players only had 2 and 5 hit points remaining respectively. Long rest and we are fine.
A chase after a thief, if you use the exhastion mechanic could take up to 5 days to fully recover from. Even with magical aid like the greater restoration spell, it quickly becomes expensive.
DnD is designed to be high fantasy, where the story doesn't grind to a halt over something as silly as being wounded, but exhaustion works differently.
My suggetion. Exhaustion reduces by 1 level with a short rest, and fully with a long rest. Lesser restoration might also cure a level of exhaustion. If you implement these rules, you can throw exhaustion around much more librally, and it won't grind your adventure to a halt.
Agreed, which is why I use a modified version of the One D&D Exhaustion:
-Exhaustion has 11 levels, rather than 6.
-For each level of Exhaustion, they suffer a -1 penalty to all attacks, skill checks, saving throws, etc.
-For every two levels of Exhaustion, they suffer a -5 ft. penalty to all speeds (to a min. of 5 ft because you should be able to drag your feet at a minimum; you're not dead until you're dead!) Note: I would say that magically-induced Flight or something like that is an exception and would never be reduced because it has nothing to do with anything about you. The speed is in the magic itself, which was already cast and is passively active. (That would be a pathetically Chaotic Evil DM move to restrict magical flight with Exhaustion.)
-At 11+, you die (no save).
-If you are revived, if you had 11 or more levels of Exhaustion at death, you revive at 10 levels; otherwise you revive with the amount you had when you died. (Your body is alive as you were just before you died, not fully restored to a Long Rest. Unless the spell/effect says so.)
I haven't decided how best to recover from Exhaustion... I rather feel that a Short Rest should heal 1 level and a Long Rest should heal 5 levels.
(I know that "logic" would say that a Long Rest should heal 8 levels, but honestly I think that if someone has that much exhaustion it SHOULD potentially impact them the following day with some Exhaustion left over. That's 5 or less, still enough to easily recover in a single day while still imposing some fair challenge for racking up that much.)
This is incredibly helpful
One of the easiest ways to keep track of a chase, IMO, is to put everyone's name in the initiative order, as you do, and write a number next to everyone's. The number next to the chasee is how far the chase is to the next location and the number next to the chaser is how far you to the chasee. When the chasee moves decrease his number and increase everyone else's, when the chaser moves decrease there number.
This also allows, for example, a chasee to knock over a cart of cabbages, force everyone to make dex saves and determine how much they are individually slowed down by.
2:26 the transition got me
My current Table started with theater of the Mind so it used to feel like roleplay all the time in those days we just had fun and people trusted me to keep track of things. Eventually only one player was annoying enough to want to change that. She didn't like theater of the Mind because it was too dependent on the dungeon master.
Which eventually meant that I had to map everything out, which further limited our playgroup because now the players just play Within the context of the map and they don't want to leave the map until they're done with a quest or something. She really limited the group for everybody.
I'll give you an example. When we were using theater of the mind the party purchased two horses and they immediately decided to start racing them. Two players on each of the horse and they decided to go racing down the busy streets of the city they were in. We gave them a series of animal handling checks for the player characters, or dexterity or Athletics for the horse depending on what they wanted to do. They raced neck-and-neck with animal handling for the first round, and then the second round they began to trip people and try to throw them in front of the horse behind the lead horse. The third-round somebody failed on their animal handling check causing their horse to Wipeout into a cabbage shop which eventually got the guards riled up and started having them start running up trying to grab these people and rip them off the horse. It was good fun.
They managed to handle writing the one horse out most of the way because they stop racing recklessly to beat each other and started racing away from the guards in a more safe manner. One of the two on the main horse failed his dexterity save us the gate was closing and got cracked on the face with it. He fell off the horse but the horses momentum carried him outside before he fell off and he had to go to run after the other horse in a comedic fashion
Excellent explanation!
So I've done some chasing and being chased during games of humans versus zombies and I think, while these mechanics can work for a short chase, I think there might need to be some additions for a longer one. Especially for chases that don't just end the instant the chasers catch up or they lose track of the chasee. There might be some attacking and dodging followed by a continued chase, you can get a second wind, or, if someone hides, they're not just gone, they'll have to somehow get out of their hiding spot without being spotted.
We had a dm for a oneshot that didn't use the chase mechanics for a chase scene. We spent there easily 6-7 hours instead of the expected 4 and I've avoided them since.
The NPC turned invisible, but since we could still spot him (different abilities that cave us his general direction) he had to sprint to not get caught. So he did. For over 2 hours.
As a starting DM (all my players are also new) I am actually going to start the game with a chase
my Warlock Goblin was messing with people in the forest for fun (backstory) so when the game starts a Satyr Ranger on a mount fox and a Draconic Paladin (protector of the nearby settlement) are going after him, the ranger is mounted so he can shoot arrows (with disadvantage cause of the movement) if within range and since the mount fox is faster than a goblin so my PC will probably be forced to hide or fight, once caught I'll bring him to a tavern for a bounty where he'll meet the other characters.
I think the 3 man chase start is a good way to give everyone a feel of how battles go, cause it got a little of everything
I ran a chase seen in an underwater air tunnel. Tunnel was littered with dark tentacles that what try to attack the party. They had to make DEX saves while running and if failed they got hit for 1d4 necrotic damage and their movement speed slowed by 5ft giving the monster the ability to gain on them quicker. It was fun and intense.
For covering, you can just use a big piece of paper with an appropriate hole in it
Paper isn't heavy, so most of the weight would be the tape, if such is needed
I like the battle worn idea. I might want to run a one shot were taking the dash action, attack, or Casting a Spell action does the same thing. You can only use any combination of these actions 3 plus your constitution modifier times in a row before you must start making constitution checks of DC 10 or take a point of exhaustion. I might do a short rest reduces exhaustion by 1.
And a long rest recovers all levels of exhaustion. Might make combat a bit faster and more nuanced.
I really want to add a chase between my players and a very angry moon druid. Thank you for the advice. I hope I can pull it off
Excellent! I love chases and i never actually thought about putting a limit on how many rounds of dashing a creature can go without running out of constitution but i love that this gives healthier actors an advantage due to their physique.
Id also say that a creature with a higher speed gets a bonus on their chase roll, +1 per every 10 feet faster
I completely forgot about chase mechanics. Might have to give this as an option for my players next time they are faced with overwhelming odds.
I'd say you don't necessarily even need exact distances. Just decide on how many rounds you really want the scene to last (Or even just 'how long'). Play it by ear. You can get quite abstract with it. I've run quite a few chase and 'moving combat' scenes (On horse/wagon back, ect). An exact distance can be useful if you have a failure plan (IE the party should have X rounds to do this, if success, do A, if fail, do B).
I've got a whole houseruled system I won't get into here, all I'll say is when you're planning out this encounter, really play it out in your head, and think about what it will be like.
One major part of chase sequences that weren't covered here are complications. After each chase participant's turn, they roll a d20 to determine what happens to the next player in the initiative order based on a random roll table. Lots of things can happen, like a street carriage cutting you off, running into a pack of stray dogs, or even stepping on a wasp nest. The DMG has tables for chase complications in urban and wild environments.
In my experience, it's best to have the DM roll for chase complications. My players figured out the roll table pretty quickly.
Great summary
I feel like having the pc’s just pure SPRINTING for it is funnier or more intense
Goliath with the athlete background
*I'm 100 meters from your location and approaching rapidly*
Good inspiration from this!
Ok, Thats the most cute RPG channel i ever see, Great animation and direct speech, Pretty good job
How to instigate a chase scene:
"As you enter the clearing you happen to see a chameleon, lying there in the sun." *cue music*
Recently, my charcter ran into some shenanigans. She wanted to read from a cursed tome that made you obsessed by it, but only was understandable if you were cursed.
She got the party's cleric to stand next to her, and to be ready to cast Remove Curse after a while.
While cursed, my DM informed me that I now saw my cleric friend as a danger, since she wanted to separate me from the sweet, sweet knowledge contained in the book...
And that's when I remembered that I had Misty Step prepared.
Cue desperate chase in the city streets. After a few turns, someone mentionned the official chase rules (which I didn't know existed), and we hastily implemented them to spice up this impromptu, improvised chase scene worthy of a Loony Tunes cartoon.
Fun times...
There are 4 potential problems with running,which can be addressed, but must be consciously addressed to prevent from happening;
1) Opportunity Attacks. If someone leaves your melee range, you can attack them unless they use an action to disengage. If you aren't a rogue, it's difficult to be able to disengage AND dash in the same turn. If you don't dash, then unless your speed is higher than your pursuers, they can simply catch up to you and take swings again, essentially just getting free hits. If you dash instead of disengaging, then you take an opportunity attack, but your pursuer can still catch up by dashing, and be back in range to take ANOTHER opportunity attack if you attempt to run without disengaging again.
Unless you can break out of this failure loop, it's not even worth treating this as a chase.
In order to break away, something must happen to break visual, (opportunity attacks can't be taken without seeing targets) allowing no opportunity attacks to be taken even while dashing.
2) With speed differences of certain races and classes, the outcome of a chase is often generally known as soon as it begins. Providing means of obstacles and unexpected shortcut gambles are important to throw uncertainty in the mix, which is important for making the chase worth attempting at all.
3) Spells/Ranged Attack distances are significantly higher than what any creature can move, often making the easier option to keep pace as much as possible, while also taking potshots even as they lag behind. It's important to remember to encourage creatures to run before they reach the point where they can't take any more hits at all, as between opportunity attacks and ranged attacks, they might still have to take more hits before they can manage to make a clean break. Having obstacles and many opportunities to turn corners and break line of sight is also important. Don't forget that crowds DO technically count as partial or even half cover. (and in many cases can wind up hitting the crowd if you miss by too little)
4) Exhaustion is worse than damage. 6 hits of exhaustion kill you outright. Needing to rest for an entire week because you ran too hard in the span of 5 minutes is downright INSANE, and many players don't realize how insane until too late. Try to avoid chases where getting caught is certain death, so that "giving up" is actually a feasible course of action.
I personally recommend homebrewing that chases only induce "Temporary Exhaustion" that stacks on top of regular exhaustion (count both, and if it totals to 6, you're dead) but can have one level removed on a short rest, provided you make a con save during the short rest. A long rest provides 8 opportunities to make the same con saves to reduce exhaustion, with any temporary exhaustion levels remaining at the end of the long rest becoming regular exhaustion levels (which will have 1 automatically cleared each long rest, no con save required)
This comment has better advise than the actual video.
To adress your first point, characters participating in a chase cannot make opportunity attacks. A small but important detail to keep in mind, so this would not be an issue.
@@LuxuriaU - sure, but you have to get far enough away to begin with before you can even be considered to be in a "chase" the act of trying to get far enough away to begin "the chase" is where you're constantly incurring those opportunity attacks.
@@GreyAcumen there is no defined distance required to start a chase. It is entirely up to the DM when an encounter constitutes as a chase.
Each table may decide individually, but nonetheless, it makes the opportunity attack point moot.
Even then, nine times out of ten, a chase is a predetermined affair. I've only experienced a small handful of impromptu chases arise out of combat, which is the scenario you're putting forth.
All in all, if a DM is having this issue, it is entirely their fault for ruling the mechanics the way you put them forward, especially baring in mind there is no written/mechanical reason to do things that way.
At the end of the day, each table is subjective. Okay how you'd like and what is most fun for you. But it is unfair to the system, and misinformative to present this issue as a rule as written flaw.
@@LuxuriaU - even the video mentions "the beginning of the chase sequence, in which one party runs, and the other pursues" which implicitly defines a chase as something that begins AFTER both of those prerequisites happen. (after all, if you run, but they don't pursue, then a chase sequence doesn't happen) This means the opportunity attacks would occur in every instance except for a chase being started BEFORE combat ever happened.
The lack of "ability to run away AFTER combat has already happened" has been understood as a flaw in D&D, as the game is geared in such a way that fighting to the death is actually the more sensible thing to do. I was running on the assumption that "hey, there's the option to do a chase!" was already addressing this flaw.
This is basically a catch 22. Even if the actual chase mechanics themselves aren't the source of the flaw, that just passes the buck back to 5e as a whole, in that there are no options to get from combat TO a chase sequence without taking opportunity attacks.
the exhaustion rule is interesting, but as it can affect for to broadly my table has Conditional or Temporary exhaustion that can be extended based on levels (points) & then extended into true points of exhaustion if the temporary levels (points) exceed the max amount per player build.
Brilliant. I've had enemies with the ability to reason fleeing from bad and counters for a while now but always just had them get away when they reach the edge of the map. Max I make tend to be larger so it works, but I've never been satisfied with it. This is much better. I tweaked the exhaustion some though. It's much too punishing for someone just running for a few rounds. Especially since by-the-books, you'd run yourself to death unreasonably quickly.
It's a great idea, but like most things in D&D, the players are just given way too many tools to completely undo a potential challenge thrown at them. If they were for some reason needing to chase someone, they could just slap a "Hold Person" on them. Or better yet, Polymorph them into a turtle, or themselves into something fast like a tiger. They could Dimension Door themselves right in front of the person they're chasing.
Or they could just straight up shoot the runner in the leg with an arrow. Combat is considered 6 seconds, and you can move 30 feet (or whatever your speed) in that 6 seconds, as well as do a bonus action, as well as draw an arrow and shoot it. That's a lot in 6 seconds, so imagine how quick your character is at drawing and shooting. Soon as someone decides to bolt you can get a shot at them.
I still consider myself fairly new to GMing, and I really enjoy the concept of D&D, but one of my biggest frustrations has been finding challenges for players only for the game to give them abilities that don't reduce the challenge, but outright remove it.
This is a problem with MANY challenges in Dnd: diseases, poisons, curses (a low level paladin/cleric and all these stuff are gone), physical obstacle (aarakokra can fly limitless, there are low level teleports spells, the "knock" spells and much more), survival (create food and water and the background feat of the outlander, which is like foraging food for the entire group without skill checks. (??)) Also there're the spells you saied. Something I really liked when I was exploring new systems and games (my group and I growed tired of dnd for these problems and more), it's Pathfinder 2e. Pf2 skills do not overcome these challenges in a blink of an eye, but they do help the party overcome them. For example, "Remove Diseases" does not remove the disease right away, but it allows you to counteract the disease with a check. Or they can give you bonuses to checks or much more limited time periods. And obviously PCs at high levels have a much easier time solving these obstacles, always staying in the mood of high fantasy heroes.
(sorry for bad english)
@@lorenzosaracino9912 your English is fantastic. I understood everything you were saying.
The more I play DnD, the more I see the rules and written spells as simple guidelines. All those spells don't HAVE to be in your world and available to your players. Because if they were, as we've both seen, they take away so many challenges.
I'd like to run a campaign where there is little to no magic. That way when you run into somebody who has magic, it'll be a very dangerous encounter. Instead, the players will have various tools and gadgets they can use.
@@handles438 Oh good for the English, I'm alwasy unsure about that :)
hmmm I think dnd (5e) with little or no magic is a desire for disaster hahah there's little space for no-magic healing and no magic things in general. Everything is scaled with magic in mind. I dont't think dnd works best with many conversions and homebrew rules so I can recommend you to try other fantasy system like Blades in the Dark, Warhammer Fantasy , Runequest, Burning Wheel or generic tollkit systems like Savage Worlds or GURPS. Better play in a system that fit your playstyle and setting than wasting time making homebrew rules without knowing how to balance everything
I'd recommend using a Skill Challenge for chase sequences, see Matt Colville's video on skill challenges. :)
This will be fun
10 feet per second (a move and a dash) is about 6.8 mph; an average person can run more than twice that.
"Sprint to the fountain!"
"But I am le tired."
I love this video! it is incredibly helpful! I've tried running chase scenarios before but they always turned out a bit janky.
Great drawings
I liked 4e for this, because it was a skill challenge.
I handle it this way, pretty simple, when you leave a battle scene, or enter a chase outside of combat, chaser and chased roll athletics or accrobatics agaisn't each other, if the chased succeed, they are free, if they failed, they provoke an attack of opportunity, that's it.
I can never run a chase since my PCs have access to and love to mobility spells (haste, fly, dimension door, and misty step) and use them regularly.
hey do you have a VTT maker with f.o.w that you could recommend?
Roll20 has the f.o.w ability, although it might be behind a paid service roll20.net/
@@masterthedungeon I also recommend Roll20's VTT system. the basic Fog Of War is in the free system, but the Pro edition's Dynamic Lighting is super great!
5:20 But I am le tired - Zhen have a nap... ZHEN FIRE ZE MAGIC MISSILE
5:41 i wonder if making a map with invisible ink and only using UV on whatever spots players can see would work well? its something lol
Me and my friends are playing our new d&d campaign today. Our characters are going to start on a heist mission for gold and magic items. We then will start a chase scene where the characters will have to run away from the guards and police and will have to use their wits and abilities to evade, distract, and defeat the guards. The characters goal is to make it to the nearby forest and escape through a tree portal to my character’s master’s house. My character is a wizard/Artificer who is a apprentice to a grand wizard craftsman who lives on the river Styx.